#working with an editor

[literaticat]

If an author does an R&R for an editor/publisher that results in an offer, would they expect not to receive huge edit notes after that as presumably the R&R addressed most of the concerns? Also, why do some publishers ask for these first and others offer first?

In my experience, an editor will ask for an R&R for three main reasons:

A: They have some specific vision for the book that may not be the author's intention at all, and they want to make sure the author is down for that. So they are basically saying, look, this is potentially different from what you were thinking, I totally get that you might not want to do this, if not, no sweat, but should you decide you are on board with this, I'd love to see it again.

B: AND/OR, the author is new, has no track record, and they want to make sure that they are actually good at revising before handing them a contract and bag of money. (Not to say that all debut authors will get an R&R -- not at all! Just, sometimes, particularly if it is an A type scenario; if the editor is talking to an author with a TON of experience who very clearly knows how to revise a book and has a great track record, they might take the author's word for it and be fine with just a conversation, but an unknown author, the proof would be in the pudding, yanno?)

C: AND/OR, they have already shared with their editorial team or at least talked about the work with some of their colleagues, they want to bring this to acquisitions, but they know based on these conversations and their own lived experience that in-house support for the title and their ability to acquire it will be greater if certain changes are made. In other words, they really want to give this THE BEST POSSIBLE CHANCE to get through acquisitions, and they want to do whatever tweaks/changes are going to help their case so that they can get this book.

(It could be all three, mind you -- or any combo!)

However, editors don't usually write a huge editorial letter for an R&R, it's more likely to be kinda 'big picture thoughts' or a focus on one or two particular things. (Writing a real editorial letter requires actual deep thought and a lot of time -- they aren't likely to be spending that kind of time on something for an author they don't know and aren't working with!) So just because they are asking for changes before they can offer doesn't necessarily mean they are HUGE changes. They might in fact not be that big a deal at all. And it also might not involve revising THE ENTIRE BOOK.

Here's an example of an "all three" scenario: Let's say they know that for whatever reason, their boss is more likely to say yes if {X} -- and in this made-up example, {X} = "this book has a 12 year old protag rather than a 14 year old."

A - they'd float that past you/your agent - are you even OK with this? If not really, well, OK, fair enough. If yes, great, well, B, you're new, would you be open to revising the first few chapters with this in mind? So that C, they can show that sample to their boss at acq. and say, see how wonderful this 12 year old protagonist is, shouldn't we buy this?

If that worked and they did indeed make an offer / buy the book, you'd still get a regular editorial letter. In this case, it would include whatever else would have gone into an editorial letter + whatever thoughts they might have bearing in mind that the protag will now be 12. (Because of course, that change would potentially have ramifications throughout the book!)

As for the second question: why do some publishers ask for these first and others offer first? -- If they know that whatever they will be asking for will not be a big deal, they are confident you are able and willing to revise, and what you've given them is already polished enough to show the boss, they don't need to ask for an R&R.

[rozmorris]

What's editing - and how do editors work with writers? Interview at Writers' Narrative magazine

Why is editing so important for writers? Why is it publishing’s biggest – and best-kept – secret? How do editors work with writers to ensure clarity and consistency – and yet preserve the writer’s unique voice and flavour? What if the writer disagrees about changes the editor wants to make? How do we keep a dialogue going throughout the editing process so the writer doesn’t feel they’re losing…

[ratlingrun]

I don’t care whether you like rooster teeth or not the idea of deleting 21 years of media should be incredibly concerning

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[dunmeshistash]

Extras compilation for anime only viewers

I decided to make a compilation of all extra comics and material that is safe to read and here is the first part of that. “By safe to read” I mean stuff that don’t have spoiler or is not too closely connected to stuff that will be shown in Season 2. That means most of it are more fun stuff featuring the characters, backstory for some minor character and small expansions on the backstories that already featured in season 1. Most of it was published after chapter 52 (season 1’s stopping point), but I made sure to check none of it is spoiler despite that.

Part 2; Part 3; Monster tidbits 1 and 2.

This first part features the main gang.

There it is, all non spoiler extra material about the main characters I could find. Well, the ones with some narrative content, Kui makes too many random illustration for me to shuffle through, at least for now. Hopefully I didn’t miss anything. I hope it is interesting or useful for someone. Next it should be the other characters, hopefully it will be a bit easier.

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

I decided to redraw one of my earliest Tintin fancomics! I've been drawing Tintin fanart for a bit before I started posting online.

I can imagine Tintin having a tumultuous relationship with his editor, hardly ever being in the office and having a very low rate of writing articles. Tintin's increasingly liberal politics also clash with the newspaper's conservative values. Tintin and his editor frequently argue over this but Tintin almost always wins out, as he is aware that it is his articles that sell the paper. His editor is reluctant to let go of his golden goose.

More headcanon under the Read More! It's background stuff and things about his editor.

Tintin started his journalism career at just 14, and seeing the dangerous situations he is sent into in his early stories suggests to me that whoever hired him didn't have his best interests at heart. I can imagine his editor taking advantage of Tintin's ambition and naivety, while styling himself as a sort of father figure to the newspaper he runs. I based him off of the editor we see at the very start of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets!

His editor hires him after Tintin demonstrates remarkable skills in investigative journalism, uncovering local corruption for his school paper. He takes advantage of Tintin's naivety, sending him off to various countries to write conservative propaganda pieces for the paper. He hopes Tintin will be easy to groom into a conservative pundit, but after witnessing atrocities and coming into contact with people from different walks of life, Tintin finds himself unlearning a lot of harmful beliefs he was raised with. After he earns global recognition in Tintin in America, Tintin leverages his star power to ensure less editorial interference with his work. His journey away from conservatism is kickstarted upon befriending Chang, who directly challenges a lot of his preconceptions.

Tintin stays with the paper under the misguided belief that he can steer the publication in a better direction with his influence. Deep down he also feels he owes his editor, as it was him who gave Tintin a platform and an oppurtunity to escape his situation, being raised in an orphanage and being deeply unhappy in school. His editor also frequently points out that other papers will not be as lenient with his low turnover rate of articles, and that he's lucky he's still with them.

After Tintin gets Chang a job there as his photographer, Chang ends up befriending a lot of the staff. He's one of the few non white staff members there, which causes quite the stir. While Chang is grateful for the job, he becomes increasingly uncomfortable with working for them the more he learns about the paper. He tells Tintin that by staying there, he's only legitimising the publication.

Tensions at the paper start rising as political tension rises in Europe. Tintin, Chang, and a lot of staff notice their editor acting erratically and making strange demands...

[yooboobies]

By day, one way, by night another...⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

{cr. 0613data, namuspromised, dwellingsouls}

[freelanceplatypus]

Dungeon Meshi modern au where both Laois and Falin are food vloggers. Laois is always travelling to remote areas and cultures to try the most "extreme" foods and bring them to light. He's known as the guy who will drink blood and slam a still wriggling bug just to comment on it's nutty flavor. Meanwhile Falin is visiting long-standing eateries and sharing the stories behind local cuisine.

Nobody actually puts together they're siblings (in part due to wildly different viewerbases) until Falin in one video mentions how she enjoys eating insects and the comment section is full of folks asking her to "collab with the bug guy". Her very next video is her and Laois smiling infront of a mukbang style platter of insects and she introduces him as her brother.

[zzztlk]

Making good progress with my comic so I put together a little promo to celebrate :D

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

The tgcf English dub dice rolling gambler’s den scene has me Insane, like it was already a metaphor for gay sex in the book but oh. My god. The dialogue choices in the donghua dub. Fuck.

Like let’s take a look at these out of context:

“No, relax. Gently.”

“Like this?”

“Yes that’s perfect.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

“You see? It’s bigger now. You’re doing great, don’t stop.”

Horniest possible dialogue, 30/10, I need to shake the scriptwriter’s hand.

[jackfuckingtwist]

— I'm doing what I can, okay? Just...trust me. Please.

[literaticat]

Question re the ask regarding the author who got the edit letter. While I know an edit letter is common, if it requires such huge changes wouldn’t the publisher have mentioned that at the offer stage or given some indication they’d require lots of changes? Can an author ever pull out at this stage? I imagine most don’t and knuckle down and do the edits but if it’s a really major edit or full rewrite wouldn’t the author have grounds to end the deal if this wasn’t indicated before signing?

My apologies, I think a couple of you may have read the ask from yesterday and felt like I was saying something a little different from what I was trying to say. That's on me! Maybe I made it sound too dramatic! (But it clearly does FEEL dramatic to OP, and to the authors I'm talking about who have said these exact words to me in the past.)

My point was just, yes, it IS totally normal to feel overwhelmed/freaked out by an edit letter when you first get it, and for the auto-reaction to be either "omg they hate this book" or "I can't do this" or "they are wrong" or etc etc.

You'll note, though, that I didn't actually say that the edits they are being asked for are anything close to "a total rewrite" or "such huge changes". More that it often FEELS that way to the author when they first get the letter. You've been waiting for this letter for perhaps months and months. You're already a little intimidated by your editor even if they are the nicest ever. Finally, a 10-page edit letter lands in your inbox.

Gut reaction: AHHHH THEY HATE IT! Because what the author SEES at a glance is a big ol 10 page document full of criticism -- but when the author takes a deep breath and looks at it properly with an unscrambled brain, they will see that it is in fact five pages of praise, and five pages of questions and suggestions.

Edit letters are not generally dictatorial, like "you must change XYZ and totally rewrite this" -- it's much more likely to be something like "I'm loving this scene, but I'm just not sure why so-and-so makes this choice here, it kind of seems to come out of nowhere -- can you clarify?" -- it's things to think about. Maybe it's resolved by something as simple as adding a line of dialogue from that character or another. Maybe it's something that needs to be woven into his backstory, like, you as an author KNOW why he made that choice, it's because of the bike accident he had when he was ten, but that isn't on the page, so maybe you add a flashback in a different chapter to resolve this question. OR -- maybe you just leave it a mystery. Like, it's your book, there's very little you HAVE to change if you really disagree.

This is hard work, not because you are rewriting a book from the ground up or something - - this is not demolition derby time -- it's actually the opposite of that. It's hard work because it's thoughtful and careful. You are getting to look at the book through somebody else's eyes (somebody who probably has a LOT of expertise about story and who has distance that you are too close to the work to have) -- somebody who is, in fact, trying to take what you already have and make it the best it can be, NOT destroy it. That's valuable! You don't have to make every change or address every question they ask, but you probably SHOULD at least THINK about all of them -- because if they have a problem understanding XYZ, it's quite likely a regular reader will, too. (I talk more about this in some of the Revision posts in the FAQ).

That's why IMO when you get an edit letter by all means look at it -- BUT THEN STEP AWAY FROM IT. You don't want to knee-jerk reaction this. Take your time, think about it, and then when you approach it again, look at what it is actually saying and asking you to do, and take it bird by bird.

If it requires such huge changes wouldn’t the publisher have mentioned that at the offer stage or given some indication they’d require lots of changes? Yep -- if they really did want a total rewrite or just A BIG EDIT that might take it the book in a very different direction from what you intended -- they would have said so at the offer stage and it would be a point of discussion. If you indicated you really were not in agreement with that, they probably wouldn't have offered at all.

Can an author ever pull out at this stage? I mean I guess they can if they want, but a) again, the editor probs would have said so ahead of time if it was really THAT major a rewrite, b) if you are going to break contracts just because you don't want to revise, that's not a great look and probably doesn't bode well for getting future contracts. I would just, you know, take a beat before returning the money and breaking the contract. That's a nuclear option, last-resort kind of thing to do -- conversations should probably happen before you go there!

[trungles]

I can’t tell if I’m kidding, really.

[1alchemistart]

returns after 2 months with art from a completely different fandom

Greetings. hows it goin KLSDFKLSD

ive been going through it (a bit o' burnout with a dash of my health going ough augh oogh) but hewwo ill make a bit of an effort to post more again owo

[fiepige]

Compilation of EVERY single time they changed Hobie's filter in the digital version:

Left: Theatrical release Right: Digital release

You might have to click on some of them to get a better look at Hobie, sadly I don't have a video editor that allows me to make better edits than these :')

[andi-o-geyser]

everyone say thank you subtitle team