A question from Dennis:
Lisa,
I am looking for an editor for my 64,000-word manuscript. It’s a memoir that focuses on the effects on my life of the death of my 18-yr-old sister. She was murdered by a serial killer. Agents refer to the work as a true crime narrative. I think of true crime as focusing on the killer, crime scene, forensics, hunt, capture, etc. I deal with that, in detail, including the execution, but the real story is how the event could have changed me, made me cynical. Instead, I decided to honor her by changing my life in a positive way. Is that a true crime narrative? Can you suggest how I can go about finding “the right” editor?
A sensitive question that demands a sensitive answer. And a sensitive editor.
I haven’t seen your manuscript, Dennis, but before you go about looking for an editor, you need to figure out not what your manuscript is according to a few agents, but what you want it to be. It doesn’t sound as if you set out to write a true crime book. Did those agents who told you the narrative is true crime read the entire manuscript? A sample? Just a query letter? It’s possible, even if you sent the whole thing, that they read only the beginning. If your focus at the start of the manuscript is on the crime itself, that may have influenced their thinking. Either way, if agents are repeatedly describing it in a way you didn’t foresee, rewriting may be in order.
Your description of the true crime genre is accurate, so if you want your book to be seen more as a memoir of your own experience of the events (and it seems that you do), you might want to find ways to deemphasize the details of the crime and the killer. Some true crime books are treated with sensitivity by their publishers, but as a whole, the genre contains a lot of sensationalism, so be wary of agents who want to sell it that way. You don’t have to strictly avoid the phrase, but be sure anyone you work with describes the book as “literary true crime” or “memoir/true crime,” or in some other way that indicates it’s more than just a lurid description of a murder.
Finding the right editor, for you, may be a matter of making certain you and the editor are on the same wavelength in terms of the book’s focus. A good editor may be able to help you reshape it so that your personal story (what you call the “real” story) is at the forefront for readers, and the story of the crime, while important, mainly provides context. Before you hire anyone, no matter what their experience, have a substantive conversation about exactly this.
Regarding the process of finding someone: a lot of editors advertise online or in writing magazines, so try a few Google searches, and try looking in the back of any writing magazines you can find, in the classified ads. Or, since you’ve had contact with agents, you can ask them to recommend some names. But, as I said, don’t rush to hire anyone before you talk at length and make certain they’re going to treat your manuscript with the care it merits.
I read a memoir recently that you might want to look at: Ken Dornstein’s The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
Best of luck, Dennis, and please do keep me posted on your book’s progress.
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June 7th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Dennis,
I am a freelance book editor; your entry caught my eye mainly because it was as if you were asking for me when you mentioned that you need to find a good editor!
I just finished doing a masterful job on an autobiography/memoir for a lady who had written almost 400,000 words on her 86 years of living! I had to pair that down to about 260,000 words, and I was able to do exactly as Lisa mentioned here — to keep the memoir feel to the manuscript while also keeping in just the right details and stories to add context, flavor, background, meaning, etc., so that it didn’t read like a journal (which is how it seemed before).
I think I could do an excellent job for you, and my rate is reasonable and fits right in with the industry standard: 2 cents per word according to the word count in your manuscript.
Please feel free to contact me if you would like for me to help you. I am great at staying in very close contact with my authors as well as I am a naturally gifted editor. ~~~Janet
June 8th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Dear Janet,
Thank you for taking interest in my manuscript. You sound like you might be a good match for a work like mine. Part of my problem in deciding who to work with is probably what every writers struggles with and that is feeling the editor has industry exposure experience, has been successful in bringing works to publication, and has genre experience (which you seem to have). Here is what the agent who committed to letting me resubmit the ms (he saw the first 20 and the last 20 pages) said I need in an editor:
“. . . a professional (i.e. worked at least 6 years at an editorial position - not asst. - for a major trade publisher) editor, someone who specializes in memoirs and/or current event non-fiction. If you get the right one, tell him/her that you are looking for an editor who could have helped with In Cold Blood - stripping away the veneer of the story to get at the reality. It may be a memoir, but it ALWAYS needs to have a MICKEY [my murdered sister] focus.”
Dennis
July 7th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Lisa,
I am working with an editor now. I put the ms into chronological order and what do you know, it fell into a three-act structure. There are some flashbacks, but they occur at the right time (pun). I broke the ms into 14 chapters and discovered that (everyone probably knows this) the ms is easier to outline (something agents where asking me to provide) when it is divided into chapters. I know that sounds obvious, but before I had a decent structure I was trying to outline it and was driving myself crazy.
Here’s where the editor comes in. First, he first analyzed the ms and gave me a 15-page feedback report. I took some good advice and fixed a few things. Next we started going through the work a chapter at a time.
I asked a lot of questions about chapter one. I struggled when, perhaps, I shouldn’t have, but it’s a new experience for me and I’m excited about it. Somehow, I got into to a “this is permanent” mode. Here, for your amusement, is how my head works:
1) He added a sentence at the end of a mini prologue on page one. “The full story began when I was a child.” I thought “I see what he’s doing. It’s a nice transition and reminds/lets the reader know I’m going to tell them a story, but it doesn’t sound like me”. I read it to my wife and she said, “I like it . . . a lot.” She’s a voracious reader so, although I don’t run my work past her because she can’t be objective, I can certainly take her advice on what someone else wrote. I looked at that sentence for 10 minutes wondering how I would say something similar. Finally, I realized I can deal with it later—if at all.
2) At the end of a violent scene, I had written “He’s not my father,” The editor added ” ‘He’s not my father, ‘ I said spitting out the words with all the venom that had been building up inside of me for seventeen years.” At first I thought, it’s a lot to say. It is expressed beautifully how I was feeling that night. But I’m of the “said” school, show the feeling. I started thinking about how I could show it. I couldn’t come up with anything, so I left it as it is (put it in my notes). But I loved what he wrote and might stay with it. The fact that he wrote it, drew my attention to the idea that I might not be giving readers enough and they may not experience the scene as strongly as they have a right to, and I owe it to them. Then again, what I do in the scene may already express it.
3) The only thing that really concerned me was that he changed “ox-strong” to “strong as an ox” which I think is a cliché metaphor. Maybe ox-strong (which I thought is a word/phrase I created by turning a cliché around) is the wrong thing to use. Maybe it draws attention to the cliché metaphor anyway, so I neutralized my intent. I could just say “A construction worker all his life, Dad was an ox (or ox-strong). Regardless, I can change it later.
I don’t know if this is being a pain in the lower dorsal posterior. As I said, I think I can keep some of these things to myself. It may all be a “chapter one dive in” reaction.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:56 am
Lisa,
Just to follow up. I signed a one-year contract with a large Agency in New York. Thanks for the help.