Ruby's Editing Store ❤

Editor's Criteria [editors only]

This is for EDITORS to read. All editors should review this prior to editing. 

GUIDELINES: 

1. DO NOT STEAL OR COPY WORKS. You have been trusted with that person's work. Be responsible.

2. You must never write off another person's work as your own. Even if you have made significant changes to the work, it is not yours. Please respect the author and the law. 

3. Be kind and be patient. You may mean the best, but if you are not kind in the way you are editing, it can come across as rude and unhelpful. Authors are proud of their works and, even if though they asked for an edit, be patient with them. Criticism can be hard to acknowledge for an author, so be gentle but honest about it. Always justify the changes you are about to make. 

4. Do not look at the length of a chapter and judge it only by size. There is no perfect chapter size. If you are really worried about the length, do the following before you voice your opinion:

Look at the Genre:

Horror tends to be shorter for suspense. Romance tends to be longer because of feelings. Fantasy tends to be even longer because of world-building. 

Look at the Content: 

Did it end on a cliffhanger? Did it summarise what needed to be said/done in that span of time? Was it engaging? Longer chapters are wonderful for description and give room for more story development. Shorter chapters are good for suspense and cliffhangers. Before you judge the work by the length of the chapters, remember: it's not the length of the chapter that matters; it's what's in the chapters.

5. READ. READ. READ. We cannot stress this enough. If you haven't read what you're editing, how are you going to know how the characters act and speak? How will you know the writer's literary style? It is best you do a beta read first. This means you simply read it all over once, giving you a general picture of what is happening, supposed to happen, what is implied, what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. As an editor, your job is to point out and/or fix sentences or paragraphs that don't make sense or are phrased poorly. Next, do a deep read. This is where you look for the missing punctuation and fix things like sentence structure. So read. If you want to mimic the writer and know what's going on, read. 

6. Make suggestions and ask questions before you actually make changes. Make sure the author wants you to completely rewrite that dialogue. Make sure the author wants you to add or take away that paragraph. Ask questions and keep communication lines open.

7. Don't be rude. If a person's work is saturated with glaring mistakes, it is not your place to hold it against them. They have come to you to fix it, and that is your job. If you hate inserting commas, capitalising 'i's and fixing other tedious grammatical errors, then editing is not for you.

8. When inserting completely new paragraphs, dialogue, etc., try to mimic the writer as much as possible. You don't want it to be obvious someone else wrote it. 

9. Know your grammar. If you don't have a good understanding of at least intermediate English grammar, then you aren't going to be much of a help to the author.

10. Use dictionaries and thesauruses. Use them, look things up on the internet, do whatever you need to do to be more creative and versatile.

It is important that you follow these guidelines. Any editors not adhering to these will immediately be removed. 

Quick tips for editors! 

1. Watch out for speech tags! I'm not going to put a whole lot on this in here, but get rid of 'he said she said'. Oh, and I don't mean replace it with 'he croaked, she spat', I mean GET RID OF IT! Try it. Find a random paragraph and remove all of the speech tags. They aren't really missed, are they? Think it's too bland now? Try inserting something like, "she banged her fist on the table" instead of "she spat". Better picture, isn't it? 

12. Be careful of modern terminology! Ok, this is an interesting topic, and just something to consider during your edit. In a modern book (ex. It takes place in New York 2018) eating popcorn and watching Netflix is a great way to enhance the story. In a mid-evil fantasy book, maybe not so much. The words "cool", "awesome", "sick", (when used as an adjective) among others are modern. They are only here for a little while until they get replaced again. These words are called lingo, or slang. If your characters live in a different time, past or future, or on a different planet or dimension, chances are, those words, and Netflix, aren't going to exist. It's just something to keep in mind.

Most importantly: have fun! Editing is a mysterious action that is never the same each time and can be exciting. Try new things, be creative, and have fun with the work and the author!

Good luck, Rubies! 

This criteria has been written by the wonderful Effie_J_Stock.