Gratitude Post # 3 - Great Editors

They can make or break a book. And they are hugely important to the final version.

Before I became an author, I had no idea how incredibly vital the role of an editor was. But with each book I write, with each editor I work with, I learn something new.

On my latest book, The Surrogate Husband, I ended up working with working with three different ones in turn, for various reasons. The last one—who happens to be a fabulous writer herself—gave the book a wonderful polish and shine for which I am infinitely grateful.

From her I learned so much more than I'd ever known before about the complexities of the relationship between the hero and heroine's goals and conflicts. Just working with her on that one book was truly eye opening.

During the time when I was writing for Ellora's Cave, I wrote twenty books for them, all with the same editor. Believe it or not, I learned something new each time. That might not have been a huge thing, but there was always some nugget of information that I gleaned from her edits, something I hadn't known before.

So my group of editors is something I am very grateful for. for which I am very grateful. They stop me from ending sentences with prepositions ;-) and more than that, they make me the best writer that I can be. Thank you Tracy, Shannon, Alicia, Joyce, and all the rest.

Out Damned Spot

I was cleaning my wood floor today and I knew there was a spot in one place because it had been bugging me for days. I made the overhead lights brighter, but I still couldn't find it. Finally, I shut off the lights all together and low and behold, there it was.

I got to thinking that sometimes -- just like on my floor -- shining a more subtle light on something is more meaningful. When it comes to writing character emotions, the same can hold true. Just like the scene from MacBeth when Lady MacBeth continually tries to wash away the sight and smell of blood from her hands rather than admit her guilt directly.

Donald Maass, literary agent and educator, suggests finding a strong emotion then replacing it with a secondary one. Or find a throw-away moment and infuse it with rich emotion. Great advice to draw your characters with a more precise brush

Alicia Rasley, editor for Red Sage and author of The Power of Point of View, talks about evoking emotion  subtly to pull the reader deeper into the character's head. In one of her workshops, she reads a passage about someone visiting a relative in the hospital and the visitor sees an Amish family sitting with their child, who is ill. A few days later, the visitor passes a procession of black Amish wagons and knows the child has passed away. The image holds more power and speaks of a more skillful writer than if the scene had depicted the parents weeping as the doctor pulls a sheet over the child's head.

Writing the secondary emotions or the peripheral observations that figure in to a story take more effort and more skill than being more direct. But the technique deepens both the characters and the story.