Evaluating Editing Critiques

Here’s a little secret: When you ask someone to read your work, they feel an expectation to find errors in your manuscript and by pointing them out, they feel they are helping you. The more errors they find, the more helpful they’ve been to you. As a writer, this can be discouraging because we tend to think in the opposite way: The fewer errors found, the better the manuscript.

As a result, there can be a lot of comments to sift through, and determining which corrections or comments to follow and which ones to ignore can be daunting. After all, not all comments and corrections are equal.

Over the last several days, I’ve been jotting down different ways to help evaluate edits and unlock some useful information from reader’s comments that go beyond the words they leave on your manuscript. Evaluating someone’s comments when they are in person and able to add to their notation on your manuscript is not always an option. A lot of times, you’re left with their notes on a computer screen without the person being able to explain their comment further.

When I sat to write this post, I thought of all the different types of documents I’ve edited and written over the years. They include countless research, theses, and capstone papers; newspaper articles; legal briefs; professional correspondence; nonfiction and fiction manuscripts. The list could go on, and I’ve edited countless items for friends, family, colleagues, and other authors. Editing for someone else is always easier because I’m outside of the writing. Criticism has always been easier for me to take when I’m detached from the piece of writing, such as research papers, legal briefs, and news articles. Fiction, I’ve struggled with because it is more personal. There’s a part of me in every piece I write.

Remembering that comments are meant to be helpful and shows that another person was willing to take time and energy to invest in your passion can help though. These next tips will also help guide you through the process.

Objective vs. Subjective: The first task is determining which comments and corrections are objective versus subjective. Objective edits are easy to spot. They will deal with spelling, punctuation, and grammar. They are easy to verify, and once pointed out, you will usually realize they are mistakes.

Other objective edits include formatting errors: double spaces, margin sizes, inconsistent indentation, spacing between paragraphs, font consistency (including style and size), etc.

An easy way to identify subjective edits is if the person tries to rewrite your entire sentence or paragraph in their voice. Or they try to change your story into the story they want to read instead of helping refine the story that you’re trying to tell. There’s an exception. Sometimes a portion of a sentence has to be rewritten, and on rare occasions, the entire sentence due to word order. Sometimes there is a simpler or less confusing way of saying something.

On the word level there are several things to consider. When editing, I often find unnecessary words that people will use, whether they are adverbs or redundant adjectives. Sometimes these are signs that the author needs stronger words. So when evaluating a word an editor changes or adds, whether or not you like the word they’ve added, it could be an indication that you need a stronger verb or more description. Sometimes you have to determine why the person wants the change. Perhaps the change they made doesn’t work for you as the author, but it’s pointing out a weakness that needs to be addressed.

Another word-level edit has to do with the tone of a piece. I’ve had words marked in my manuscripts before because the word I chose didn’t fit the tone of the piece. I’ve also had contronyms, words that are their own opposites, pointed out in my pieces before, because although they were technically correct, the common meaning for the words was the opposite of what I was trying to say in the piece.

There’s one point that every author should understand when evaluating comments. The author is the ultimate decision maker. In the end, it’s your story, so you have to be responsible for the way it is told. But let me add one important exception to this that authors sometimes forget. If you have several readers who point out that something doesn’t work in the story for them, you should listen. In his book “On Writing,” Stephen King said it this way, “Subjective evaluations are, as I say, a little harder to deal with, but listen: if everyone who reads your book says you have a problem…you’ve got a problem and you better do something about it.” Sometimes this means that if you really want to have something in your story but your readers said it didn’t work, figure out how to make it work. It may be a matter of tinkering. But, in the end, keep in mind that you’re writing for an audience and if they’re not happy, how can you be happy leaving something in a story that ruined the experience for your readers?

Here’s an easy way to tackle edits: Go through and make all the edits that are obviously objective. Then go through and add all the subjective edits that you agree with. Next, remove all subjective edits that clearly are objective and which you don’t like. This should leave some comments and edits left. Here’s what I do with these. I’ll make notations in my manuscript, usually little comment notes in the margins. I make sure they are thorough enough that I’ll understand what they mean at a later date. Then, I let time pass. When I read through the manuscript again, I’ll have a fresh perspective, and sometimes those comments I was unsure about become clear that there really is an issue at that point or I’ll realize the person who made them missed something earlier. Sometimes I’ll even find that I added something before I read the comment again that fixed the issue.

One last note, the number of errors in no way is an indication of the quality of the story. Personally, I only make comments if I think the author has the skill set to make the changes. In a way, a lot of edits from me says that I respect the writer’s ability. There’s no point in making a lot of corrections that the writer will be unable to use. The goal is always to make the manuscript the best version of the story before the author sends it out into the world.

On the other hand, especially with authors who I have not met in person, I only like to point out the things I like about their story, unless they specifically ask me to help find errors. My goal is always to encourage other authors, and sometimes critiques online can feel more discouraging than helpful (although this is sometimes the only option available when an author doesn’t have a community of writers in their area). I sometimes ask authors questions about their pieces, but that in no way is a critique about a piece, it’s to help my own understanding.

What helps you determine what edits and reader comments to follow and which ones to ignore?