If you’re at all interested in the copy editing process that a novel goes through before it sees print, you might find this interesting. Here’s a conversation I just had this morning with my copy editor, Deanna Hoak, about a sentence in my upcoming book MultiReal. I’ve done a very minimal amount of editing to remove the “brb”s and such, but otherwise this is exactly how the conversation occurred.
The chapter in question is a flashback featuring a conversation between Marcus Surina and his daughter Margaret. In the original passage, Marcus says: “There’s a look people get when the Null Current is about to pull them under, Margaret. A look of inevitability. It’s the look of the stalk of wheat, watching the thresher approach and knowing that the time’s come for a newer, stronger crop to bask in the sun.”
Now Marcus Surina’s supposed to be a little — well, odd. But Deanna’s concern was that having him ascribe emotion to a stalk of wheat might be a little too odd. So we hashed it out this morning over IM as follows:
Deanna: With the wheat thing, maybe about a mouse that can’t get away fast enough?
Deanna: I’ll look at it more closely on second read, or you can let me know if you think of something.
DLE: Let me look at that sentence
Deanna: I just know it hit me as off when I read it the first time.
DLE: Hmm
DLE: You’re right… it does seem weird for a stalk of wheat to have a “look”
Deanna: Yeah, I was afraid the reader would perceive him as loonier than you intended.
DLE: He *is* supposed to be odd, and use really weird metaphors
DLE: But… you’re right. That might be pushing it.
DLE: What if I said something like “It’s the look that the stalk of wheat must get when it watches the thresher approach…”
DLE: Does the “must get” distance it at all?
Deanna: Hm. I think “look” is really the problem.
Deanna: “Look” with “wheat”
Deanna: From my way of thinking…
Deanna: It’s early in the book. The reader isn’t going to know yet if it’s just him who talks that way, or if you just write that way. I would fear someone picking it up in the bookstore and thumbing through the first few pages might think you continually use those.
Deanna: It’s made more clear when you get to the part that explains his daughter thinks it’s weird.
Deanna: But your call regardless.
DLE: No, I totally understand what you mean
DLE: I just really want to keep the wheat metaphor in there somehow
Deanna: Not a mouse among the wheat?
Deanna: Hm…
Deanna: Well, I think you’d want to avoid ascribing emotion to the wheat.
DLE: Well, the point is that it’s seasonal… the wheat gets old and dies, a new crop rises up, then it grows old, etc.
DLE: LOL Sure, no, you’re right
Deanna: Oh, I wasn’t getting that. I thought it was just about the thresher coming.
DLE: Well, there’s that aspect too
Deanna: (Trying to think of live things that come and go in seasons, like mayflies…)
DLE: Hmm…
DLE: I’m wondering if I can reconstruct that paragraph so that he can use the metaphor without using a “look” of the wheat
Deanna: I’m sure you can. 🙂
DLE: I wonder if I did something like “It’s like the stalk of wheat, when the thresher approaches and the time’s come for a newer, stronger crop to bask in the sun.”
Deanna: That would probably work.
DLE: Let me think on it a few minutes here…
Deanna: NP. I’m just continuing to CE. 🙂
DLE: Okay. How’s this: “Like the stalk of wheat when the thresher approaches, and the time’s come for a newer, stronger crop to bask in the sun.”
Deanna: Let me go back and look at context.
Deanna: Well, it’s better. But the context is still talking about a look.
DLE: Hmm.
Deanna: It doesn’t have to be decided right now at all.
Deanna: You can think about it.
DLE: When I say “look,” I’m thinking more about the aspect of something when *you* look at it…
DLE: What if I said “You can look at some people and tell when the Null Current is about to pull them under. It’s inevitable. Just like you can look at the stalk of wheat,” etc.
DLE: Something like that
Deanna: That would be better. It ascribes agency to a human then.
DLE: Yeah.
DLE: “Some people, you can look in their eyes and see that the Null Current is about to pull them under, Margaret. You can see the inevitability. Just like you can see the stalk of wheat as the thresher approaches, and know that the time’s come for a newer, stronger crop to bask in the sun.”
Deanna: Yeah.
DLE: Cool. You’re right, I like that better.
DLE: As soon as you mentioned this, I started thinking of a stalk of wheat with a little cartoon face on it going “Oooooh noooo!!!”
DLE: And that’s not good. 🙂
Deanna: LOLZ
So that’s how it went.
Don’t think that we’re going to have conversations like that about something on every page in the book. But we’ll probably have half a dozen or more of these kinds of conversations throughout the copyediting process.
My understanding of the business is that this kind of interaction between copy editor and author is an anomaly, and that most of the time the twain shall ne’er meet. But personally I can’t see the harm in it. It helps produce a better book, doesn’t it?