The warm flow of fraternal affection cascading across the table between the two couples was obvious to see, and the Saturday evening dinner at Tassey’s Pier was coming to an end. Dr. Mike Hodges and Dr. Ronny Noble, both surgeons, had met in astronaut training. Both men had made the cut as medical officers to train to fly in America’s first interstellar spaceship, The Galactic Explorer. Ronny was scheduled for the maiden voyage and Mike the second. While in training, Ronny had married his fellow astronaut, Janet Wilson. The pair would not be the first husband and wife team in space, but they would be the first husband and wife crewmembers in interstellar space.
At a natural lull in the conversation, Mike’s wife, Leigh Anne, raised her wine glass, still half full with a Piesporter Riesling, and announced, “An after dinner toast to Mr. and Mrs. Astronaut. Or, should I say to Dr. and Dr. Noble? Nonetheless, congratulations, you two.”
Ronny and Janet lifted their wine glasses, both nodded their appreciation of their friend’s accolades and each said, “Thank you.”
Mike raised his wine glass full of water to add to the toast—he was the designated driver for the evening. “A toast to the first husband and wife astronaut team to fly in the Galactic Explorer.”
Again, Ronny and Janet each issued a “Thank you.”
Janet quickly changed the subject and asked, “Mike, how did you ever find this place?”
Above is an excerpt from a manuscript I just finished editing. It's the beginning of the second chapter, so you know about as much as I do about the characters and storyline at this point. How would you go about editing it?
More than with any other manuscript, I wanted to rewrite every sentence. The author had an interesting story line (think Interstellar meets Gravity) but it was hard for the reader to get invested when the dialogue felt awkward and the characters seemed superficial. Normally, if a sentence seems awkward to me, I highlite it and make a comment saying why it sounds awkward and providing a rewrite option. For this manuscript, I would have wanted to highlite every sentence. I ended up with 142 comments in 400 pages, many of which were me telling the author of an over arching problem that I would proceed to correct throughout the manuscript instead of commenting and telling him to correct it. It was a long, arduous process--the first fifty pages took me six hours, an unfortunate new record.
As a result, a lot of the manuscript looks like this:
As I was typing up a summary of my edits for the managing editor of the press, I felt awful for the author who was about to get this manuscript of his hard work just ripped apart! I tried to be patient in my explanations and gentle in my edits, but I also want this author to be successful and to publish the best book he can! That might involve learning how to transition from calm to excited in dialogue using written body language, and not repeating information that the other characters already know. So I just did it for him...
At the end of the day, I substantively edited the manuscript and copy edited the manuscript. It really shouldn't have come to me in the state it was in; it needed a broader look first and then I could go in and be nit-picky about commas and capitalization. But I cringe scrolling through it and seeing red everywhere. Of course the author can delete my changes, but I don't want to be the editor who changes everything to sound good in her own head. I love the voice of the author and one of my biggest goals as an author is to preserve that voice as I edit.
What do you think--did I overstep my bounds as an editor? Should I have let the author rewrite the problem areas, guided just by my comments?
