Intro

Arlene Furman:

I’d like to introduce Letitia Glozer. Letitia is a Managing Editor here at Technica and our go-to person for Developmental Editing.  Why don’t you share your background with us, Letitia.

Letitia Glozer

I’ve worked in editing and translating off and on since I was an undergraduate. I got my first full-time paying job as an editor with an independent comic book company. At the time, it was the third largest comic book publishing company in the United States, way behind Marvel and DC, but still the third largest. That was where I was introduced to the idea of doing a lot of meta-editing. I’d work with the authors; typically, I’d read through, for example, a 6-issue story arc, and then supply feedback that maybe x subplot shouldn’t just come up as a big surprise, or certain characters who would turn out to be pivotal should be expanded earlier on.

Arlene Furman
You actually went through each comic book and its companion issues to make sure that the story stayed on point. The kid in me is thinking that is super cool.

Letitia Glozer
It was! I had eight or ten titles I handled and then some one-offs here and there. And I did that for six years. I worked on a variety of projects; some of the books we published were translations into English of Japanese comics, or manga. We did some reprints of classic comics, as well as brand-new projects. We were a company at the time that gave ownership to the authors, which was not the norm for the big companies. I worked on a couple of the company’s marquee titles as well, with some quite important comics authors and artists. I would follow an issue all the way through, from script to spelling corrections on the boards.  

Arlene Furman: How would you describe the difference between the role of a developmental editor as compared to a copyeditor?

Letitia Glozer
I would say for a developmental editor, you’re going a step beyond copyediting. The copy editor is dealing with what’s on the page, they are working to correct typos and syntax, looking for any glaring errors that might jump out, whereas a developmental editor has to read in a very different way and ask, “What’s missing here?” In fiction, for example, it might be characters who really aren’t fleshed out, or motivations that are unclear, or characters who suddenly have these strange unexplained changes in their behaviors. It’s a much more global type of editing.

It’s also called substantive editing sometimes, which I think gives a nice sense of all that’s involved. If you’re doing a developmental edit on, say, a self-help book, you really need to step back and look at it critically, asking yourself, is this author actually writing an autobiography, or are they looking outward, offering guidance to the reader.

For nonfiction, particularly scholarly nonfiction, it can be a little trickier. You need to make sure that the references are up to date as well asking the author to identify their audience, and make sure they are consistently addressing that group. By that I mean, are they writing for experts so that they can skip over some basics? Or, if they’re writing for generalists, have they provided adequate background to bring the readers along on this ride? The copy editor just isn’t that granular.

Arlene Furman: Your job then is to really get into the weeds as opposed to the copy editor, who typically focuses on grammar, syntax, style, and overall readability.

Letitia Glozer
Right. And the developmental editor is trying—always—to hold a sense of the complete work in their head, so they can spot any weak areas or any gaps in story or plotting. Like, have they skipped from C to Q in laying out a process that a person should follow to achieve a desired end? Those sorts of things.

Arlene Furman: How do you typically approach a new editing project? What steps do you take to understand the author’s vision and goals?

Letitia Glozer
Whenever possible I like to speak with an author so that I can find out what they’re looking for, and I would say that an author doesn’t always know what’s involved. They might think yes, I want the whole package. If you do something called developmental editing, that’s what I want, but they might not actually want that, right? They may feel that the work is done, completed, and they may not want someone else moving pieces around. They may feel that they have done the best job they can and the work simply has to be accepted as it is. So, talking to them, really determining the scope of work that they’re looking for, and the level of engagement on my part, is key.

I also like to have a work timeline established. I want everyone’s expectations to be crystal clear. Every author works differently. Some may want to start the revision process as soon as they can, so they want sections or groups of chapters back as soon as possible. Other authors may want to step away from the project and read all of my comments at once, to get a more global perspective.

Sometimes they have a publication due date, so they need material back as quickly as possible, and in a conversation with them I can determine all that and then I can reverse-engineer a schedule that will work for everyone’s needs.

Arlene Furman: How do you balance maintaining the author’s voice and the overall improvement of the manuscript? I assume the key to that is communication.

Letitia Glozer
Right. I would say though, also in terms of of keeping their voice, I start by speed reading or skimming my way through the entire project, so I have a sense of it in its entirety. I often take notes as I go along. Then I start the more careful reading. Having read it front to back will help me to see if, for example, again, a plot point should have come in earlier or a surprise is given away sooner than perhaps the author would originally have hoped—those sorts of structural points.

So again, a careful reading in two different ways will give me a clear sense of their voice.

And interestingly, as to this point of voice, I would say one problem that I have encountered often in fiction is that every character has the author’s voice, whereas they all need to step off the page differently, right? And that’s not something that really can be addressed at copy editing, that’s a developmental question. The author needs to go back; maybe have a character who doesn’t use so much slang, or one who avoids contractions, or one who’s more formal—just ways to give them more distinct identities on the page.

Arlene Furman: Typically, how often do you provide feedback?

 
Letitia Glozer
I would say that that varies in some ways based on the author. You can usually tell if they are a little bit concerned about the project and need more immediate feedback. Then, other authors just want to step back and wait until all my work is done.

 
I would say from my experience that authors who have published more frequently are more hands-off. But overall, staying in touch with an author, giving them, say, two sample chapters as I finish them, can make communication easier and increase their faith in our work.

Arlene Furman: What are your favorite subjects to edit?

Letitia Glozer
Gosh, that’s hard. And I would say that the challenges are so different from genre to genre. I find academic prose is the most challenging. I need to have at least some background or read enough into the literature so that I can point out any errors or missed references—or opportunities—in the work. So that’s time-consuming. I also find it very rewarding.

Maybe academic writing on music is my favorite, right up there with progress reports I do for some international aid companies. I find those fascinating. They’re factual but they have to be written so that they’re not repetitive. Also, often they’re written by people who are not native English speakers. So, you have to bring fluency to that without obscuring the points they’re making. And, with something like a progress report, it can be somewhat challenging because you don’t want it to read like a bulleted list, “Here’s 28 pages of bulleted lists, with everything we did.” You want some narrative flow to it, you want to keep it interesting.

Arlene Furman: What should an author know about Developmental Editing that will help their project?

Letitia Glozer
I would always like to have trust on both sides. I want them to trust me to respect their work, but that they will then in turn respect my work and my comments. And that doesn’t mean, again, that they have to take them. It’s their work, right? Anything I suggest is just an idea, a suggestion for their consideration, intended to add value and improve the overall quality of the manuscript.  

Arlene Furman: What makes you a good editor?

Letitia Glozer
Gosh, what can I say? I love editing. I so enjoy it. I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. I learned to read very young because my parents and my older sisters got so bored with reading to me at night, they taught me so that I could read to myself. I think that helped me as an editor because I’ve read so many books by so many authors—probably hundreds of thousands of styles and voices over the course of my life—that it has opened my mind to a sort of flexibility that allows me to work with any author’s voice.