As my first post on Paper Trail, I thought I’d give you guys some transparency into the editing process and what exactly my role is on the team.

Mehk made an excellent post beforehand about how he edits his writing, which directly ties into my role as an editor. In my opinion, the best editors are ones that give their writers the most freedom–and as such, I prefer to point out larger pacing problems to Mehk, who can then edit them, as opposed to editing them myself. This also works well with Mehk, because there isn’t some giant hand looming over him and correcting his work without his input. This is also great because I don’t have to ping-pong edits back and forth, which saves me time in a rather busy schedule.

Of course, I do have to make edits, and about 25. of that is correcting grammar. For instance, here’s a case where I changed the frowned-upon passive voice to the active voice. 

The rest of the time, my job is to nudge Mehk in the right direction. If Oliver’s being too much of a dick, I let him know, and he tones it down or we discuss how it fits into the scheme of things. 

My three goals right now are:

1. Fix the pacing of the first act.

2. Fix Oliver being too much of a dick sometimes.

3. Smooth items such as character-character dynamics, rough dialogue, and grammar.

We’re making slow but steady progress, so stay tuned.