Jennifer Fallon's Blog
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27-Jul-2008

Edit Update...

Part one of line edit of The Chaos Crystal finished (roughly 200 pages). Generally I'm quite happy with the changes.  Some of them, not so much...

For a laugh, I thought I'd share my favourite editing moment with you. You see, once upon a time, I wrote a sentence about a badly scarred character in a (now published) book that said:

He smiled, making him look quite fierce.

To which a very helpful editor replied with a note in the margin:

One can't smile and still look fierce so I have changed the sentence to what I think you mean -

He smiled, making him look...

(wait for it...)

WOLFHUNGRY

WTF!!!!

I am not making this up. But I can assure you, "wolfhungry" did not make it into the final draft.

It did, however, afford me an opportunity to demonstrate my mastery of cussing and cursing, which, as I recall, went on for a couple of hours, before I calmed down enough to pencil into the margin beside the correction "STET".

Ah... the joys of being an author:)

Comments

STET? What?


oh, my. I am in awe of the non-word wolfhungry. Given ample time, I'm sure I'll find there is a place for that word.

I just have to stop laughing, first.


Although, Elyse thinks it sounds like a terminal fungal disease;

Doctor, in sombre tone: "I'm sorry, he has Wolfhungry, there is nothing we can do for him now."


"Once had a man with Wolfhungry, had to disband the whole regiment."


@Sara: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stet


One wonders if the editor has read through the manuscript first to gain a sense of what the author is saying, and the voice they are using. Having only edited technical documents before I don't really know the process that is used for novels, but I would have thought that reading the book first would be useful???


I have, on occasion, had reason to wonder if an editor had read to the end of a sentence before making a correction... let alone to the end of the whole book... LOL


Thanks, David! I have now been enlightened.