ACL 2070
Editing Principles and Practice
Semester 1 2014

Lecture 7
Structural Editing

Structural Editing

There are three forms of editing usually performed in the following order.

  1. Structural editing (substantive editing) (conceptual editing)
  2. Copy editing
    correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation
    ensuring factual accuracy and consistency
    ensuring appropriate level of formality and language use for the target audience
    imposing a house style
    marking up copy for designer and typesetter
  3. Proof reading and correction

Structural editing is the physical and conceptual manipulation of texts into desirable or publishable form usually performed prior to the copy editing and proof reading stages.

Yet If we are doing something called structural editing then this presupposes that we are working on structures. This is a handy way to think of texts – as structures.

Allows use to use structural metaphors:

  • architectural
  • geometrical

Structural editing decisions are made from the most minuscule problems (such as single word choice) to those big decisions which affect the Australian publishing industry in general. I'd like you to try to think of all of these problems as ones relating to structural editing.

Levels of Structure : the fundamental components of a text

Word
Structural decisions are reasonably simple. Is it necessary and of the 10s of thousands of words or so at your disposal , is this word the right one?

Sentence
Structural decisions are still pretty simple. Allowing for the context, basic rules of grammar and tone need to be observed.

Paragraph
Things are getting slightly more complex. Paragraphs need to be complete, unified, ordered. They also usually need to have a thesis sentence or sentences.
Paragraphs can be

  • illustrative,
  • argumentative,
  • introductory/summary,
  • comparative.

But, like words and sentences, paragraphs still need to be conceived of as single and complete units of sense. In fact, for editing purposes, all texts need to be seen in this way. Even the longest book or multi-volume work needs, at at least one stage in its development, to be seen as a single and complete unit, composed of other single and complete units which are in turn . . . .

Things that are made of paragraphs

Poetry
It might not look like it sometimes, but poems are usually made up of sentences and paragraphs. Poets being poets are usually fastidious about leaving their works the way they are, so you're not going to get to do much structural editing of poetry. Pound on Eliot's The Waste Land .


Fiction
Stories and novels often need a lot of structural editing.

  • Cutting length or intros
  • Other structural decisions might be to recast the work in a different tense or narrative persona.
  • The second printing of Amanda Lohrey's The Morality of Gentlemen also involved a structural edit and new scenes, despite the fact the book had already been in print.

Book
A book is usually over 70, 000 words long. There needs to be some organising principle which justifies all these words all being brought together.

  • Is it a biography?
  • A history?
  • text book?
  • What principle organises these kind of works?
  • What sort of material gets excluded?

Chapter (in a single-authored book)
While the chapter needs to be a single and complete unit, it also has to fit into the flow and balance of the book as a whole. We need to avoid imbalances of chapter length and an over-focus on certain periods or issues. Even something as potentially fragmented as the selected writings of one individual over a period needs to be structured in such a way that a sense of flow obtains.

  • Thematically;
  • chronologically;
  • other criteria

Chapter (in a multi-authored book)
This is an interesting exercise because not only do we want the chapter to be a single and complete unit, we also want it to sit nicely next to the other chapters in the book. This despite the fact that the pieces are written by different authors.

What are we to do then when, for example, we find in a collection of book of serious and academic essays on funeral rituals around the world, that a few authors have taken humorous approaches which clash with the sombre tone of the rest of the content?

Do we ask the authors to rewrite?

Essay or article in a magazine
Similar to the chapter in a multi-authored book a magazine essay needs to be a single and complete entity that fits into the scope of the magazine – a scope which is often more broad than a book, but which has its own needs and logic.

Review
Reviews can often use a lot of structural editing. Basically they should answer the question of whether the reader should or should not buy or read the book under review.

Reviews don't need to paraphrase the plot of a novel or the narrative of a history or critical book.

For example, a review of Bill Clinton's autobiography wouldn't tell us the story of Clinton's life, it should say why the book is worth reading or otherwise.

The best reviews have an argument. They can be humorous, polemical or reflective but if they are really effective they'll place a book within a movement, cultural public moment, a debate, or a genre.

Reviewing can be harder than it seems but then there are also many poor habits reviewers fall into - mere summary of the contents of a book, or rushed reading to earn income and meet deadlines, for example.


Magazines
Successful magazines need to be seen as more than a random collection of disparate pieces, genres and forms of writing.

Any magazine is guided by an editorial policy and vision which has a strong influence over its content, balance and flow – all structural issues. Many hours are spent agonising over each of these questions in the production phases of each issue. Which pieces should be published?

In what balance (reviews, stories, essays, editorial matter) and in which order?

Order is often determined by practical questions like: Where can it fit?

  • Is it a good companion for another piece?
  • Does it need to start on a recto or a verso?
  • Does it need to be placed on specific pages?

Individual magazine (diachronic) But even if we manage to produce one unified and coherent single issue of a magazine, our job of structural editing is not complete. We have still to place it in relation to the history of the magazine.

Diachronic structural editing

  • what relation would such an issue have with the historical charter of the magazine?
  • How would it sit alongside past and projected future issues of the magazine?
  • Would its readership be all that interested?

Well let's say maybe it wouldn't but you, as editor, felt it was an important topic for Australian readers. What you have done is made an important diachronic structural editing decision about the magazine's direction.

magazine network Decisions about the content of a magazine need to made in line with the kind of material being published by peers/competitors.

Synchronic, as opposed to diachronic analysis.

  • Special issues published by other magazines.
  • Issues which are capturing attention:
  • Need to complement other magazines without being repetitive.
  • How absurd would it be if all the youth magazines in Australia suddenly produced a special issue on the legalisation of marijuana. Cf evening news.

Publishing company
Publishing companies have what is called a list. It's the material they have published in the past and what they have in print at the moment. No matter how oriented towards the market and profit, most companies have principled editorial policies which guide the kinds of ms that are accepted for publication. These policies are made manifest in the publisher's list. If we looked at these lists we could observe historical trends which show changes in a company's editorial policies (perhaps from ‘quality' to romance fiction as was the case with Mills & Boon). These are major structural editing decisions which can affect Australia's economy.


Australia's literary production
Australia's literary production is guided by a series of editorial decisions made at various levels.

  • Funding decisions made by the government through the Australia council.
  • Editorial decisions made by major publishers.
  • Editorial decisions made by magazines.
  • Editorial decisions made in the review columns of the major magazines and newspapers.
  • All of these are structural editing decisions.

Each of the things I've talked about today is a text and a structure (some obviously more complex than others) which requires editorial decisions to be made which have an impact on the nature of that structure.

  • relevance
  • balance
  • sequence
  • flow

 

Structural editing of fiction:

The process of structural editing for fiction can be summed up as checking on content, flow, style, clarity and consistency. Many of the skills you have practiced in your tutorials.

It involves identifying the strengths and weaknesses. This should not be confused with ‘strong' or ‘weak' writing.

At this point you are only looking at the narrative and asking questions such as:

  • Does the story flow?
  • Do I care about the characters?
  • Is the story accessible?
  • Does it make sense?

 

You will then looks at other areas such as,

  • Story elements
  • Theme
  • Flow
  • Tense and Voice

Some of you will dig deeper and bring out unseen elements of the story.

Story elements:

You will look at individual elements of the story, especially, but not confined to:

  • Plot
  • Characterization
  • Dialogue
  • Setting
  • And the interaction between them

Some questions you might ask yourself as you read might be:

  • Would this really happen this way?
  • Is it the right setting for it to happen/
  • Would the character really react this way?
  • How else might the character behave?
  • What is the basis for the character making this decision?
  • It this authentic/believable?
  • Would this character talk like this?
  • Is each character a good fit for his/her role?
  • Is this the most logical sequence of events?
  • What is missing?

You will look for inconsistencies and inaccuracies, especially in timelines, dialogue, characterization, setting and voice.

Balance of dialogue and exposition is important – is there too much dialogue and too much in between, or not enough dialogue? Maybe there is no need for any dialogue?

How is the story being told? Is there too much telling rather than showing? Productive use of dialogue and exposition can provide more subtle ways of getting the story point across.

A structural edit may also look at other landscapes travelled in the story:

  • the sensory landscape – is the narrative geared to too much auditory or visual experiences of the world, when other senses may give the reader a richer reading or better understanding?
  • The emotional landscape – does the reader experience an authentic range of emotions via the characters and their interactions?

Theme

Writers may begin with one theme in mind and deviate as they explore the world of their characters, creating discord or inconsistency in the way the story is told.

They may not have a theme in mind and one may emerge unconsciously as they write. There's nothing wrong with this, but it is not what you want in the final draft. You want consistency from start to finish.

Structural editing to deconstruct theme can help to clarify irregularities. Good thematic understanding can clarify narrative points, character actions and reactions and lend authenticity to a story, which may not have been there originally.

Flow

Ask “does this progress the story?”

This is an especially important question when trying to cut sections to bring in a word count.

You have to weigh up the value and beauty of the prose against the need for progress in the story, so as not to strip away what makes the story unique.

Knowing the actual start of a story. There is often too much backstory, an artifact of the writer wirting their way into the plot and characters.

Sometimes there is too much detail, sometimes not enough. Sometimes important information is skipped over or missed altogether.

You can tell when a narrative is stalling – it is where you start to get distracted or no longer care or there are sections which don't serve the story

Point of View and Tense

POV and tense are the crossover points between structural and copyediting. But POV and tense can be seminal to the way in which a story unfolds and is a structuring technique.

Summing up structural editing for fiction

Edits are only suggestions or recommendations. In the end it is always the writer's work.

In your major projects you will not be consulting with the writer but your guide is still you only ever want to develop the best possible story, not hijack the writer's work.

And finally, use these structural editing principles to help your own writing.