Looseleaf Editorial & Production

Book Editing & Design

Editing SFF

What You Need to Know Before Hiring an Editor

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Before you hire an editor, it’s important to have some foundational knowledge about the process. Here are five key bits of intel to get you started.

1. There Are Different Types of Editing

Many writers get to a stage where someone tells them to hire an editor (or comes to that decision on their own). But it’s important to know there is more than one type of editing, and those types usually need to happen in separate passes (and sometimes with different editors). Editing for character and pacing is difficult to do if you’re also correcting commas and hyphenation. [Read more…] about What You Need to Know Before Hiring an Editor

Where Are You in Your Book Journey?

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Especially if you’re new to the book-writing process, all the different types of editing and the steps for publication can be confusing. Now there’s a map for that! This map covers the main steps and phases for writing and self-publishing a book. (It also lets you know when to turn off to go the traditional publishing route via querying agents and publishers.) Once you know where you are in your process, it’s easier to get the help you need, whether from a writing group and critique partners or from professional editors and designers.

Go through the Draft Marshes to a Full Draft, then traverse the Range of Revision and seek out big-picture edits (on character, plot, pacing, scene structure, setting theme, & more) from writing groups, developmental editors, manuscript evaluations, and sensitivity readers. Then move to line edits, where you polish prose, tone, & word choice. Afterward, either send queries, write a new book, or move to design & copyedits. Split the party for design & copyedits! Cover design attracts the right readers for your book, while interior layout conveys the story's tone & makes it readable for the right audience. Copyedits correct continuity, grammar, usage, and word choice errors. Then your text and your design meet up again for ebook coding and typesetting, when the designs get applied to all the text and designers check for readability hiccups and compatibility across ebook platforms. Then on to the proofread, where we make final checks for typos & formatting errors. Then publish!

[Read more…] about Where Are You in Your Book Journey?

Add Evocative Sensory Details to Your Scenes

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Last week Looseleaf’s Kristy S. Gilbert was an editing special guest at the Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium, and we’re going to post a few snippets from her panels. Today’s bit is from the panel “I Sense Something: Adding the Senses.” Excerpts are lightly edited for clarity (and some parts are summarized).

Stephen Gashler: Some sensory details we can readily identify with, like the color of a sunset—the pinks and the oranges—or maybe the barking dog in the distances. Some things are harder to describe, specifically the tasting and the smelling and feeling sensations. Given that some of these are overlooked what are some tips you have for describing some of these harder-to-describe sensations?

Michaelbrent Collings pulled out some tough love, pointing out that just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it isn’t important to your writing or worth the effort to learn. He also noted that you can use other sensory descriptions. Saying “the orange tasted bright and clean” uses some visual descriptions, but it describes flavor.

Kristy S. Gilbert: Along those lines, I also think—it’s not necessarily that you have to get the other person to know exactly what you’re talking about. Like when you say something is the pink of a sunset, it’s not so they know exactly what pink it is: it’s so you get the emotional note of a sunset into your scene. So I can say I went outside and the air smelled of dying worms—and that is the smell after a massive rainstorm, and all the worms come out, and they’re all dying, but I don’t need to spend a bunch of time being like, “Yeah, it’s that weird metallic smell/taste/thing you get after a long rainstorm.” I just have someone walk out, and the world is sopping wet and smells like dying worms. [Read more…] about Add Evocative Sensory Details to Your Scenes

LTUE Special Guest Schedule

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This year I’m an editing special guest at the Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium. LTUE is an annual creator conference for science fiction and fantasy, and this year it’s all virtual, so you don’t have to be local (or travel to) Utah County to attend! Because I’m a special guest, I’m on an unusually large number of panels, some for my expertise in folklore and some for my experience as an editor and book designer. If you’re tuning in to LTUE (register at LTUE.net), stop by a panel or two!

LTUE is a relatively inexpensive conference that can introduce you to a wide range of topics, author perspectives, and community resources.

Thursday

Coffee, Tea, Me: The Culture of Drinking Coffee and Tea (4:00 PM)
Coffee and tea are common drinks throughout the world. Many places have ceremonies, rituals, and traditions, both formal and informal, that revolve around these drinks. What are these traditions, and how do they vary in different times and places around the world? (Other panelists: Guest of Honor Alaya Dawn Johnson, Christine Tyler, and Newell Wright)

Copyediting for Immersive Worldbuilding (7:00 PM)
You’ve built a world for your story, but have you thought about how to present that world’s elements on the page? Not all dragons must be Dragons, and imaginary worlds feel more real with internal consistency. Learn how to use capitalization, italics, and linguistic consistency to help immerse readers in your world the way your characters experience it. Then learn how to communicate your choices to any editors you work with on your book, whether you’re self-publishing or using a traditional publisher. (This is a presentation, not a panel, so it’s just me talking, and I’ll do a Q&A at the end.)

Friday

[Read more…] about LTUE Special Guest Schedule

Science Fiction & Fantasy Copyediting Survey

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"Copyediting Science Fiction and Fantasy." In the background, line icons of books, ereaders, and a pencil writing on paper.I’ve always been big on helping writers become better writers (rather than simply sprucing up the manuscripts they put in front of me). In my regular contributions to local writing conferences, I prepare presentations on various topics: designing effective book covers, retelling fairy tales, using folklore in worldbuilding, and more. One of my recent presentations “Copyediting Immersive Science Fiction & Fantasy,” always has a lively Q&A at the end. I’m retooling the presentation and developing other materials (blog posts, etc.) to bring more light to the quirks of editing in imagined worlds.

If you’re a writer or editor who works with SF&F (or who is thinking about pivoting or expanding your genre expertise), take a moment to fill out this survey so I can figure out which topics would be most useful. 

And hey, if you’ve got a really specific copyediting question, drop it in the comments below. (And if you need a lot of really specific editing advice, contact us about editing services tailored to your work!)