My friend Jesse at SFFaudio often laments the modern decline of the editor and the corresponding decline in writing quality today. I can’t help but agree. Publishers are cutting costs wherever they can which often seems to affect editing quality. Self-publishing takes its own toll as eager authors may not have either access or the inclination for attaining writing critiques.
A discerning editor can be a writer’s best friend. Column critiques from David Scott and Elizabeth Scalia have been as good as a class in helping me improve my writing. A friend willing to give an honest opinion can be worth their weight in gold to help me see where my writing falls short. Beta readers or a good writers’ group can also provide a critical eye to help give impersonal criticism that I can use to hone my work. It is not always easy to hear criticism, even when it is constructive, but it is always valuable, once I’ve managed to put my ego aside.
Here are three examples of books that had the potential to be great but which fell short because the authors needed more guidance. Don’t let this happen to you! Take your work to people who are passionate about story and will give an honest critique.
City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley
This noir fiction mystery features a female hard-boiled detective in 1940. Unfortunately, it also features meandering storytelling and inordinate length. A good editor would have curbed the author’s desire to “take us back in time” through excessive descriptions of everyone and everything. Many of those excesses should have been left in Stanley’s discovery writing, not inflicted on readers trying to get to the mystery itself. As further proof of sloppy editing, the detective tells her story in first person except for except for two occasions when the reader is suddenly jolted by seeing someone else’s thoughts for no apparent reason.
Recommended reading for vividly drawn mysteries: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey, Robert B. Parker.
Jasmine and Fire: A Bittersweet Year in Beirut by Salma Abdelnour
A memoir/travelogue by a food and travel writer spending a year looking for her roots in Beirut. The editor should have helped her make the transition from short pieces to the larger arcs and clear timelines necessary to draw readers through an entire book. Abdelnour does little more than sightsee, socialize, write, and agonize over finding a place where she “belongs.” That can make wonderful reading, especially when set in an interesting location like Beirut. However, the lack of focus jerks the reader from subject to subject to subject and then back again, all mashed together in as many paragraphs. The author may have experienced life this way but the reader needs form and focus to guide them through the story.
Recommended memoir/travelogues: My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme; Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie; The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley.
Wish You Were Here: Travels Through Loss and Hope by Amy Welborn
After her husband dies unexpectedly, Amy Welborn and her children travel through Sicily in an attempt to work through their grief. Flashbacks throughout the book reveal her husband’s deep Catholic faith and give insights into their relationship, providing parallel physical and spiritual journeys. Wish You Were Here is much better than the above two books, with Welborn’s trademark humor and self-deprecation showing while also revealing an unexpected talent for travel writing. The depictions of her young children’s reactions to foreign climes are particularly well done.
For me, however, there is a major structural flaw. Welborn’s unabated anguish is unaccompanied by a sense of growth or enlightenment. This puts readers in danger of losing sympathy when grief, naturally, continues to be a recurring theme which is not counter-balanced by further character development. The reason for Welborn’s stasis becomes clear when she reveals a piece of information which was key to her spiritual journey. Although the author learned this soon after her husband’s death, it is not revealed to readers until near the end of the book where it has the effect of a spiritual “wow.” Regrettably, the overall effect is that of manipulating the readers by withholding this key information until after the journey is almost over. A good editor would have forced an approach that shared Welborn’s journey more fully as a believer who balanced that crucial knowledge with her enduring grief and loss. This book is pretty good but it could have been an enduring masterpiece and that is what hurts.
Recommended reading about memory, loss, and love: A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, The Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
