"Kill your darlings"

[tinkerdan]

I think what @Teresa Edgerton is referring to:

This one doesn't bother me at all. As you say, much depends on the execution, which is all me. Moreover, I don't mind fingerprints in that they are really no more than suggestions which I've adopted. Which is what a regular editor does anyway. To put it another way, if an editor is useful at Point Z, why not also at Point A?

Is when the editor does too much-too many changes, they cross a line where they become a ghost writer rather than an editor. This can easily alter the voice of the story and become quite evident to someone(reader) with a good eye to prose.

A good editor makes suggestions for changes and you do the final implementation with your voice and your prose-not theirs.
If there is nothing or very little to begin and they contribute new stuff then they become a collaborator.

There are some technical writing platforms that require a outline from a developmental editor--because specific things happen in specific places in all their manuals or all of their papers. There are often Peer Review specifications that have to be met.

Not so much with fiction. They might want to see the outline and suggest changes in the timelilne and fixes in continuity or other suggestions about what exists not so much what they'd love to see that isn't there. [Maybe if they work for a publisher and the publisher indicates a need, I could see them pushing you in directions with deeper help.]You might see an author's editor who is assigned to perhaps bring about changes for a type of writing the author is unfamiliar with. Or the lowest end of Substantive editing the Content Editing might include targeting specific audience and genre and making the work more readable to that target.[These would more likely be subtle changes that might be difficult for the author to know.]

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

As an author, I have always found an outline useful as a way of generating and organizing ideas. Those ideas may change as I gain a deeper understanding of my characters and the context in which they move, but I wouldn't call it self-deception. You have to start somewhere, and for many writers an outline is a good starting point. For me, it is where I begin but in most cases not where I end.

As an editor, I need to know, "Can the writer execute these ideas in this story?" And if they can't, what do they need to learn in order to do that? What can I teach them to help them get there? Or what suggestions* can I make that might help move them in a more fruitful direction? Having the manuscript there not only tells me where the writer is not executing, but what strengths they have to draw on in order to do it better, or where the weaknesses are that can be improved. If I don't have the whole manuscript, then yes, I do need an outline to know where it is supposed to be going. But if I have a complete manuscript, what use is an outline? If I only have an outline, then I would be helping them decide what story to write—I'd stop being an editor of any sort and become a collaborator. If a writer wants a collaborator then they should look for one of those.

The problem with commenting on the outline, whether it is done by an editor, a beta reader, a best friend, spouse, or other, is that they may be commenting on ideas which the author has not yet fully realized in his or her own mind, much less been able to put down in writing. Because the ideas have not yet had a chance to come together as they might do later, the writer might be more susceptible to suggestions to change things which, after more thought, might not really need changing, just a bit of fine-tuning.

Having experienced the process from both sides, having been in the position of being edited by various editors, and having been an editor myself working with authors at various skill levels, I have learned that sometimes the smallest changes can alter the whole aspect of a story and make things which previously seemed like they could not possibly work start to work not just well but very well. On the other hand, sometimes there are seemingly small problems in a manuscript that can best and (in the end) most painlessly be fixed with major surgery rather than with innumerable patches. But it is a manuscript, whether an early draft or one that has already been revised numerous times, that holds the clues to which approach will work the best for that particular story. Outlines are just too skeletal for the purpose.

_____
* And yes, they are only suggestions, but if they are suggestions that the author or a publisher is paying for they had better be darn good ones and tailored to the particular story and to the author's particular strengths, rather than stock responses that some freelance editors send out to everyone they work with regardless of the story itself or the author's intentions for it.

****

Cross-posted with tinkerdan.

 

[sknox]

Maybe the notion of an outline beta reader is foolish. Probably why it isn't done. But I thought it was worth throwing into the arena anyway.

>they become a ghost writer rather than an editor
Still disagreeing on this one. They only become that if I allow it. That is, if I accept suggestions uncritically, adopting them as if they were instructions, then yeah, my editor is my ghost writer. That's on me as author, though. It's no fault of the editor nor of the process of editing. That's why I said this concern never concerns me. I always feel I'm in control of my story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

And another point I meant to make but this is a hectic day for me, so my apologies for the double post:

If people (beta-readers, editors, critiques--really anyone) have only an outline to go on and not a largish chunk of manuscript to accompany it, they tend to start filling in the gaps in their own minds. As a result, they start commenting on the story they think w eare writing, which may not be very much like the story we are writing. The suggestions they make are aimed at that story in their own heads, not the one in ours. So while they say, I love this or this, or hate that or that, it may be based on details that do not and will not appear in the actual story. We may follow their suggestions--or not. But since they are not talking about our story but their own story based on our outline, those suggestions are less likely to take us where we originally intended to go than if they had more of our writing to go on before formulating those suggestions. We may keep something because they say they love it, when the part of whatever it is that they love is not in our story at all. Or we may reject a good suggestion because we can see that they do not understand where we are headed, so why take suggestions from someone who has such a wrong idea about our story? Yet that particular piece of advice might have actually applied, even though they were wrong about so much else.

Of course, as writers we must learn to evaluate the advice we receive, and figure out how much it accords with the story we are working on at the time. That will always be the writer's own responsibility. But when asking for advice, it helps to give the people we are asking enough to work with in order to give the best advice they are capable of giving. Providing them that much is our responsibility, too.

 

[tinkerdan]

This is a great point because it extends beyond outlines:

If people (beta-readers, editors, critiques--really anyone) have only an outline to go on and not a largish chunk of manuscript to accompany it, they tend to start filling in the gaps in their own minds. As a result, they start commenting on the story they think w eare writing, which may not be very much like the story we are writing. The suggestions they make are aimed at that story in their own heads, not the one in ours. So while they say, I love this or this, or hate that or that, it may be based on details that do not and will not appear in the actual story. We may follow their suggestions--or not. But since they are not talking about our story but their own story based on our outline, those suggestions are less likely to take us where we originally intended to go than if they had more of our writing to go on before formulating those suggestions. We may keep something because they say they love it, when the part of whatever it is that they love is not in our story at all. Or we may reject a good suggestion because we can see that they do not understand where we are headed, so why take suggestions from someone who has such a wrong idea about our story? Yet that particular piece of advice might have actually applied, even though they were wrong about so much else.

Someone(a reader)might have read something or several somethings that gave opinions about writing in general and the 'rules' ; and though they never have written themselves they take on the little knowledge as though it is big knowledge and they define their reading by it(often in rather incomplete generalizations). An author has to understand this and try to recognize it before taking the criticism to heart.

A little knowledge can be dangerous.
A lot of little knowledge(s) can be a devastating hurricane of dangerous.

 

[Phyrebrat]

edited out.

 

[The Big Peat]

Maybe the notion of an outline beta reader is foolish. Probably why it isn't done. But I thought it was worth throwing into the arena anyway.

>they become a ghost writer rather than an editor
Still disagreeing on this one. They only become that if I allow it. That is, if I accept suggestions uncritically, adopting them as if they were instructions, then yeah, my editor is my ghost writer. That's on me as author, though. It's no fault of the editor nor of the process of editing. That's why I said this concern never concerns me. I always feel I'm in control of my story.

I have considered throwing outlines up here for critique before. It would be a different sort of critique as its very difficult for people to go "Oh, I like that" or "I don't like that" as there's not enough information for that (and if they are saying it, you get Teresa's point), but I think it could be very helpful in terms of

a) Forcing you to learn how to communicate with the utmost clarity and write really good synopsis (or whatever the plural is)
b) Working out what elements of your story people naturally gravitate to (and therefore arguably what to make prominent)
c) Forcing you to *really* think through what you're doing ahead of time when people keep saying "I don't get why Character X goes after Y" then... assuming there's enough information for people to think things like that. Which might take an unusually big outline.

I don't know. I might try it some time. Sure it could go horribly wrong, but continually testing assumptions and trying things is as good a way to make progress as any at times.

 

[sknox]

I'm showing my outline to my crit group. We're newly-formed and I don't actually have any writing to offer, so I'm taking the opportunity to try out the "critique the outline" approach. Another possible advantage I thought of: the outline includes in one way or another "this is what I intend to write." Beyond the observation that your intentions are muddled, once I actually start writing chapters, the crit group will be able to say "I know what you intended but what you actually wrote falls short." Or succeeds. Hoping for the latter.

When a crit group is handed a chapter of a WIP, they can't see the whole arc of the story, so it's harder to say that what the author wrote in Chapter 2 is a nice piece of foreshadowing for what happened in Chapter 19. Or this imagery encapsulates the theme well. That sort of thing.