Ed Hogan on what Editors do
Edward Hogan, author of Blackmoor, and the forthcoming The Hunger Trace (due in March 2011), discusses the invaluable contribution of his Editor to the evolution his latest work.
I often get asked about what editors do. Okay, nobody ‘often’ asks me anything. Sometimes, when people talk to me, and they find out I’ve written a couple of books, they ask me what editors do.
Also, I just read Stephen Guise’s interesting article about the problems facing editors. The gist of the piece is that skilled editors are being overlooked for commissioning editor positions (commissioning editors choose which books to publish as well as editing them) in favour of applicants with sales and marketing skills who might bring in a big celebrity book, but don’t have experience of actual editing. My editor at Simon and Schuster, Francesca Main, is very much a commissioning ed. who works with words, and I just wanted to talk about the editing process, in order to shed some light on the value of this work.
I submitted the ‘first’ draft (actually the ninth) of my second novel, The Hunger Trace, to Francesca in December 2009. We’re in the final stages of editing now. I hope. So, for a start, that’s nine months of graft. Back in December, I’d got as far as I could. I couldn’t really see the novel any more, and it was giving me gastric flu. It was the best I could make it at that moment. I needed new input.
In March, Francesca sent me a thoroughly marked-up manuscript (I’d say 4 or 5 comments per page) dealing with sentence level things, and an in-depth report on the major issues with the novel. This report broke down into sections including: Plot, Structure, Character, etc. So, fairly big stuff. We’re not talking about shifting commas.
Some writers might balk at this. Some don’t want that kind of comment, and I understand. I met a writer once who said they made sure their work was perfect before it went to an editor, and so there were few changes. This was an experienced writer, and a far superior craftsperson to me. I’m very much into collaborating with a small group of readers I trust (starting with the missus). I want people to like the book (at the root of it, I want people to like me) and so I value reader input. I’m okay at creating characters, writing decent sentences about the sky, and doing dialogue, but I’m still learning about what works in terms of plot and structure – getting folk to turn the page. I’m interested in it, I study it, and I hope to get better.
Francesca’s comments on The Hunger Trace were illuminating. So much so, in fact, that my first reaction was to get a bit upset! Once I started work on the changes, however, I realised not only how vital they were to THT, but how they would change the way I approached my work in the future.
Let me give you an example. The Hunger Trace is about the relationship between Maggie and Louisa, two women living on a rundown wildlife park on a lonely hill in Derbyshire. We enter the story after David – Maggie’s husband and Louisa’s long-term friend – has died. Louisa and David share a pretty horrific past. So, while the final third of the novel raced on chronologically at a nice quick pace, the early part of the first draft contained quite a bit of ‘backstory’ (passages about the past). Now, I’m a big fan of Close Range, by Annie Proulx. It’s fair to say I’ve read Brokeback Mountain fifteen times in the last couple of years. What I love is how Proulx gets through ten years in a couple of lines:
Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step out and have any fun, his yearning for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or power company, put her in a long slow dive and when Alma Jr was nine and Francine seven she said, what am I doin hangin around with him, divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
(Brokeback Mountain, Scribner, 2005.)
Genius. This is what I’d call ‘summary’ writing. I thought I’d give it a try. So I had quite long chunks of summary backstory (note how short Proulx keeps it), switching between character perspectives, wedged in between the story of the ‘present’ time. I’m not Annie Proulx and it didn’t work. Francesca pointed out that:
a) These bits – well-written as they were (why, thank you) – stalled the main narrative drive.
b) They weren’t from the perspective of any of the main characters, and so created an emotional distance between character and reader.
c) They weren’t ‘in the moment’. They didn’t have the immediacy of the ‘scenes’ in other parts of the book.
With Francesca’s help, I dismantled these problem chapters, cut the fat, and redistributed the relevant bits of backstory by putting them into the consciousness of one or other of the characters. When it was spread out like this, it became much more personal and engaging, and the first half of the novel flowed better.
Now, that’s some in-depth work. We’ve currently had two or three rounds of notes, and Francesca has been on hand to look at work in progress. We’ve also had a few meetings about the book, and I really feel that I’ve learnt a great deal from the process. And there’s no way she’d let me end consecutive lines with ‘progress’ and ‘process’.
I don’t think any of this stifles creativity. Having someone you trust at the other end means you can experiment a little more, safe in the knowledge that you’ll be told if it doesn’t work.
There was a nice moment yesterday when I was going through the manuscript and came across the line: The Greenwich deer had a bloodline dating back to Henry VIII. Very discretely – without giving me the hammering that line deserved – Francesca had put an arrow between the words ‘to’ and ‘Henry’ and written ‘the time of’! Think about it. Look, if you write 80,000 words, you’re occasionally going to accuse a monarch of bestiality. We’re now working on a genetic thriller about the antlered off-spring the Tudors tried to hide. It’s called The Ungulate Prince.
I hope this piece doesn’t sound self-congratulatory. I’m not, by any means, making predictions about the success of The Hunger Trace. All I’m saying is that my editor, by bringing her skills and experience to the novel, has helped me to make it much better than it was. As good as it can be. Maybe an experienced editor did that for your favourite novel. Perhaps they’re about to do it for your next favourite novel.
Anyway, if you don’t like The Hunger Trace, you know who to blame. (I’m kidding.)
October 28th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Yes, but who’s going to editor your novel if you don’t write like a 19th-century novelist?
October 29th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
[...] What do editors do, anyway? [...]
November 23rd, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Thanks for that, it was interesting. But I think you mean “very discreetly” in the third-to-last paragraph.
December 2nd, 2010 at 1:05 am
[...] novelist Edward Hogan discusses the role of his editor in shaping the book, which changed the way he approached [...]
December 14th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
An article highlighting those editors still open to unsolicited submissions, by genre, would be the perfect Christmas gift!
March 21st, 2011 at 2:21 pm
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March 23rd, 2011 at 8:36 pm
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January 31st, 2012 at 11:04 am
[...] post about working on The Hunger Trace (Simon and Schuster) with editor Francesca Main over on bookhugger’s blog and see what you [...]