In Praise of Editors
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Yes, I taught English for....many years. Yes, I'm good at commas and quotation marks and all their little friends. I know about story arcs and character development and figurative language. That does NOT mean I don't need a bunch of helpful friends and professionals to check my work. I start with a first reader . This person reads the manuscript in really rough form and gives me feedback on what she sees as its strengths and weaknesses. With her "outside" view (meaning outside my head), I begin to see where I spent too much time with unnecessary explanation or where I didn't "take the reader with me" on a plot point. I kind of feel sorry for my first reader, because she often has to piece things together and wade through a lot of junk that won't make the final cut. When I've reworked the story to my satisfaction, I hire a content editor. This is a professional who will comment on the story's development, strengths and weaknesses. I've h