In reading for Women Destroy Fantasy, I’ve cleared about two hundred stories away so far, and there’s still about a hundred I have yet to read. Some amazing stuff, some familiar names, and all in all, a slush pile that is full enough of solid stories that I could fill several issues. It’s been a great pleasure to be elbow deep in so much excellence. So here’s a few notes on the experience so far.
In my head, I have these slots:
My fairytale/legend/historical slot: Right now there’s a very good historical piece that I’ve tentatively penciled in here. It hits a lot of my sweet spots as a reader, it’s an interesting magic system, and it’s a good story. We’ll see if anything comes along that knocks it out of that slot.
My steampunk/Victorian slot: Plenty of these stories to choose from, and again there’s a particular one in the lead.
My superhero slot: A good number of these, and they are all jostling for the slot. I don’t have a favorite yet.
My urban/modern day fantasy slot: Another one with multiple contenders so far, and there’s a number of wild and weird ones.
My criteria? I want good stories that will stick in the reader’s head and keep them thinking long after they’re done reading. I want lovely prose — but not so lovely that it eclipses the story. I want heart — I’m still looking for a story in the pile that makes me cry.
Other observations:
It’s a good idea to think about the impetus behind the anthology. Things like an anti-feminist message are probably going to be an awfully hard sell for an issue with what I’d consider a feminist theme.
Lots of wings in this slushpile. Not saying that’s bad, but man are there a lot of stories with this focus.
A lot has been done with fairytales in the past. Looking for fresher ground might be more rewarding.
I’ve heard other anthologists in the past talk about organizing in this fashion–x number of stories in each of several categories–and it almost always sets off my personal justice alarm. Your comment about the urban fantasy slot set it off again. So, in the urban/contemporary fantasy realm, you have several contenders, and it sounds like you even have a good range of stories (“a number of wild and weird ones”). So, what happens if you have a slot you’d to fill with a steampunk story, but the steampunks you have left are all just mediocre compared to the cluster of urban tales. Do you pass on brilliance in order to fill a category?
I realize my rhetoric in that first ‘graph is a bit slanted–perhaps even hyperbolic–but seriously, what are your determining factors? I understand that, having advertised that you would cover a range of subgenres, you are obligated to include at least one story in each subgenre you’ve advertised, but I didn’t get the impression you were publishing only one story in each subgenre. So what are the governing rules? If you have set aside four slots for steampunk/Victorian do you fill all four slots with that subgenre, regardless of individual story quality? Even if all the stories in that category are–say–sixes (on a 1 to 11 scale–we always have to go to eleven) and you have a surfeit of diverse nines in another category?
I’m sure you have a system to cover all these contingencies, Cat. I’m just curious how it works. Thanks.
That’s a great question. Fortunately for me, it’s not a case of passing on brilliance in order to fill a quota. There’s a ton of good stuff in every category and those categories are also entirely self-imposed and somewhat malleable. I’d like to have a good urban fantasy, for example, but if I haven’t hit one with enough wow to it, I’ll use something else.
At the same time, even if I had four great steampunk stories, I’d still be picking just one, because I’m thinking of the issue itself as an entity, and part of its identity is showing a range of fantasy, not just one genre. Part of the trick of editing is that you’re thinking along the lines of creating a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, using stories that inform or speak to each other. And that requires stories that differ from each other in various ways.
This is the sad thing about being an editor. Sometimes — perhaps even often — you can love a story and not be able to use it. I hit a story yesterday in the slush that I knew wouldn’t work — but I read it all the way through because it was a great story. But it’s not right for this issue.
All in all, though, this is something that is true of rejections; often they are not about a story’s quality. They may be due to the fact that the publication recently ran a similar story or even that the story doesn’t quite match the editor’s sense of their magazine. That’s one reason I suggest writers spend a stint reading slush, so they get a feel for it.
Interesting and scary comments! (As a writer, trying to see if your story 1: falls into any of the above categories, 2: has legs enough to overcome competition.)
On a weird side note: I always thought Steampunk was more sci-fi with the technology? I’m not a steampunk reader, though, so if there are fantasy elements there, I’m interested to see them in play.
What about straight up high fantasy? Home-grown world, medieval/ancient world/eastern faux world? Or would that be considered “historical fantasy?”
Cat, I think it would be worthwhile to write a blog post about your experience in reading for WDSF versus reading for Fantasy in general. I’m curious if an all-female slush pile “feels” different or if there are themes that simply disappeared from the slush and thus seem to be only broached by men. That kind of thing. Just an idea!
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When and Why to Hire an Editor, And What They Should (and Shouldn't) Do
The question of hiring an editor often comes up in my classes, and since editor for hire is one of the hats I wear, I wanted to provide some overview. There are different kinds of edits. I’m focusing on two: the developmental edit versus the copy edit. You might also hire someone to proofread, where they are simply looking for mistakes and errors, rather than making any editorial suggestions.
Developmental Editing
A developmental edit is an edit that looks at the big picture stuff. It is not a final edit, but an edit designed to help the writer improve on the manuscript’s strengths and address its weaknesses. The order of things may change, characters may get added or dropped, pieces of the plot may be altered. It does not do things like fix typos or look at individual sentences.
You want a developmental edit towards the beginning of the revision process, rather than after you’ve spent a lot of time polishing sentences, because polishing something that may get chopped out is inefficient and discouraging. This is an early draft, but one in which you have filled all the obvious holes and perhaps run it past a beta reader or two.
You want an editor who respects your style and your vision as well as the story’s voice. Your editor should take the time to identify all of those, working to tell you how to strengthen them and make them more effective, rather than to change them into the editor’s vision of the story. This is why editors are not one size fits all — it is quite possible to hire an editor who simply does not grok your style.
Developmental editors charge around $50 an hour, according to the Editorial Freelancers Association, which estimates 1-5 pages per hour. This…seems somewhat excessive to me, but I also read much faster than most people. When I work out the math of things, that’s $20k for a 100k word manuscript, which seems insane to me and is more than I would dream of charging. Another editor quoted a rate to me of 1 cent a word for developmental edits, which is about the lowest I would go, I think. Either way, you are looking at a decent amount of money and when you are spending that sort of sum, you do make sure that you are getting your money’s worth. Talk to other clients or read some of the editor’s writing. It is perfectly kosher to ask for a sample edit, but limit that to a few pages. Asking for a free chapter edit is a bit much; remember that’s a significant chunk of time for an editor and so they simply cannot afford to do many of these. In all honesty, I have enough clients willing to forego sample edits that I usually will not do them but will send the client elsewhere to someone more willing to perform that work without compensation. If you really don’t want to hire someone for a novel edit without a sense of their editing style, perhaps hiring them to edit a short story or essay might work just as well.
What I give a client in a developmental edit package is almost always the same, and I think many developmental editors work along similar lines: a 4-5k word write-up of suggestions for the overall manuscript, focusing on different areas that include plot, pacing, characterization, worldbuilding, etc; a copy of their manuscript with comments/notes specific to chapters; and notes/suggestions about their writing strengths and weaknesses along with a few pages of sample edits intended to help them work at the sentence level. For example, I might say something like, “You have very long paragraphs, here’s how I might break one up,” and provide a few samples. Included in all of this is a call beforehand where we discuss what they want from the edit and the option to do a call or lunch afterward where we talk about specific strategies and questions the client has about the edit.
Is a developmental edit always necessary? No. It can save you some work and time, and it can make a manuscript stronger in a way that may make an agent or editor accept it, but in my experience, they will also want to provide developmental edit level notes. If you cannot afford a developmental edit, a reasonable substitute is work: finding beta readers and then reading through and incorporating their feedback, looking in particular for places where they don’t understand what’s happening or don’t care about what’s happening.
Copy-editing
A copy edit is not going to do a lot of big change level stuff. It’s going to look instead at the sentence and paragraph level. This is for me the most labor-intensive kind of editing, and the amount of time it takes really depends on the writing. The last project I did required a decent amount of work, and my speed was 5-15 pages per hour. A few projects before that, I did an edit for a professional writer, and that edit moved considerably faster, because her work was already pretty clean and tight.
A copy-edit happens towards the end of the revision process. Usually the editor will go through the manuscript with track changes on and the writer will later go through, accepting (and sometimes rejecting) those changes. I would not expect a copy-editor to make suggestions for structural changes, but they might suggest an overall formatting strategy and they should definitely make things consistent as far as spelling, punctuation, and similar formalities are concerned.
Copyediting is a pain in the butt and it’s also expensive. Here you’re looking in the $40 an hour range, according to the EFA again. But this may be something that’s particularly useful for newer writers, because going through changes and thinking about why the editor made them can be truly enlightening. This is something I learned early on when working with my college paper. A good editor really tightens and clarifies sentences, and makes them effective and efficient. A superlative editor will show you how to write sentences that sing.
Again, you want an editor that figures out what your style is, and makes your prose more of that, rather than re-writing it to make it their own. A good editor can be a revelation; a bad editor can discourage and dishearten.
Is a copy-edit always necessary? Not a paid one, no. But you really should get someone to look over stuff if you can, because otherwise you will miss things. It simply is not possible for a writer to catch every mistake, and there will always be something that you find, and kick yourself about, later. If you do not have the financial resources, perhaps figure out a barter with someone, even if it’s just swapping manuscripts around with your crit group. On the other hand, as you know from reading, there are errors even in the books that have gone all the way through the traditional publishing process and its layers of edits.
Thinking about Becoming an Editor?
If you are a good editor, this is not a bad way to earn money. I would suggest that one thing you will want to do is figure out a schedule and amount of time you’re willing to do it, and make sure you don’t get deluged, even if it means turning down a project sometimes. Time and energy spent editing someone else’s work is time and energy that doesn’t get spent on your own. Remember that and plan accordingly.
Women Destroying Fantasy: What I'll Be Looking For
I've got a weak spot for weird Western stories as well, but the fact that I've read a lot of them means that the bar is set pretty high for that in my head.I was just at a Kristine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith workshop where people were using the idea of reader “cookies” and “anti-cookies”, things that delight or turn-off a specific editor, increasing or decreasing the appeal of a story when they’re considering it.
I want fantasy that showcases the amazing emotional range of the genre and the spectrum of forms it can take.
I’ll want at least one tearjerker and one humorous piece.
I’ll want something that draws on fairytale or myth, but which does so in an amazing, interesting, and fresh way, and I’m hoping to find something that feels urban fantasy-ish as well, also in a fresh and interesting way.
Fantasy that often hits well with me: superheroes, non-cutesy talking animals, linguistic-related, the weird.
I like language: make yours wonderful, but never at the cost of the story.
Your character should make me care about their fate (and for this issue, probably a female protagonist is, quite frankly, probably going to be a better fit).
I’ll want at least one piece with an utterly amazing landscape, that immerses me in a fantasy world that delights my heart.
Diversity does matter to me. It doesn’t trump quality, but when you’re going to be up against the very best, score your points where you can.
I don’t want retellings of D&D adventures. Or pirates. I really don’t like pirates (got exposed to an awful lot of fantasy pirate stories while at Fantasy Magazine) and I’m not particularly fond of zombies. Typos are another big turn-off: proofread your work.
This is not a time to go for the low-hanging fruit or play it safe. I have four, count ’em, four slots. Send me something — but make it the very best you have, something that is unique to your voice, something that you and only you could write.
In reading for Women Destroy Fantasy, I’ve cleared about two hundred stories away so far, and there’s still about a hundred I have yet to read. Some amazing stuff, some familiar names, and all in all, a slush pile that is full enough of solid stories that I could fill several issues. It’s been a great pleasure to be elbow deep in so much excellence. So here’s a few notes on the experience so far.
Developmental Editing
4 Responses
I’ve heard other anthologists in the past talk about organizing in this fashion–x number of stories in each of several categories–and it almost always sets off my personal justice alarm. Your comment about the urban fantasy slot set it off again. So, in the urban/contemporary fantasy realm, you have several contenders, and it sounds like you even have a good range of stories (“a number of wild and weird ones”). So, what happens if you have a slot you’d to fill with a steampunk story, but the steampunks you have left are all just mediocre compared to the cluster of urban tales. Do you pass on brilliance in order to fill a category?
I realize my rhetoric in that first ‘graph is a bit slanted–perhaps even hyperbolic–but seriously, what are your determining factors? I understand that, having advertised that you would cover a range of subgenres, you are obligated to include at least one story in each subgenre you’ve advertised, but I didn’t get the impression you were publishing only one story in each subgenre. So what are the governing rules? If you have set aside four slots for steampunk/Victorian do you fill all four slots with that subgenre, regardless of individual story quality? Even if all the stories in that category are–say–sixes (on a 1 to 11 scale–we always have to go to eleven) and you have a surfeit of diverse nines in another category?
I’m sure you have a system to cover all these contingencies, Cat. I’m just curious how it works. Thanks.
Hi Dennis –
That’s a great question. Fortunately for me, it’s not a case of passing on brilliance in order to fill a quota. There’s a ton of good stuff in every category and those categories are also entirely self-imposed and somewhat malleable. I’d like to have a good urban fantasy, for example, but if I haven’t hit one with enough wow to it, I’ll use something else.
At the same time, even if I had four great steampunk stories, I’d still be picking just one, because I’m thinking of the issue itself as an entity, and part of its identity is showing a range of fantasy, not just one genre. Part of the trick of editing is that you’re thinking along the lines of creating a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, using stories that inform or speak to each other. And that requires stories that differ from each other in various ways.
This is the sad thing about being an editor. Sometimes — perhaps even often — you can love a story and not be able to use it. I hit a story yesterday in the slush that I knew wouldn’t work — but I read it all the way through because it was a great story. But it’s not right for this issue.
All in all, though, this is something that is true of rejections; often they are not about a story’s quality. They may be due to the fact that the publication recently ran a similar story or even that the story doesn’t quite match the editor’s sense of their magazine. That’s one reason I suggest writers spend a stint reading slush, so they get a feel for it.
Interesting and scary comments! (As a writer, trying to see if your story 1: falls into any of the above categories, 2: has legs enough to overcome competition.)
On a weird side note: I always thought Steampunk was more sci-fi with the technology? I’m not a steampunk reader, though, so if there are fantasy elements there, I’m interested to see them in play.
What about straight up high fantasy? Home-grown world, medieval/ancient world/eastern faux world? Or would that be considered “historical fantasy?”
Cat, I think it would be worthwhile to write a blog post about your experience in reading for WDSF versus reading for Fantasy in general. I’m curious if an all-female slush pile “feels” different or if there are themes that simply disappeared from the slush and thus seem to be only broached by men. That kind of thing. Just an idea!