Editing Explained
I’ve been working on a new project this week–copyediting another author’s manuscript. I’m really enjoying getting into the fine detail this entails. (Can you introduce a line of dialog with a colon? Does the cat say “mrow” or mrow? Do we talk about the duke of Mantua or the Duke of Mantua?)
It led me to think that I might explain a bit about the different types of editing a book goes through.
-
Editing. This is the stuff people generally think of when they think of a book editor. An editor looks at the shape of the overall book–the plot arc, the character development, whether the climax is satisfying or falls flat. She’ll also niggle about word choice, repetition, sentence structure, and that kind of thing.
-
Copyediting. This is the final stage before the a manuscript goes to design. It’s a very careful, detailed look to make sure the manuscript conforms to grammatical standards and standard spelling and house style. Where do the commas go? Should that be a colon or a semicolon? If a character flips through a pile of paper, is she rifling or riffling? A copyeditor also checks consistency (does a character have red hair in chapter three and brown hair in chapter seventeen?) and chronology (oops, the author accidentally put forty-seven days in September).
-
Proofreading. The final stage of all. A proofreader checks over a manuscript once it has been designed. In the old days, when books were actually set in type, a proofreader was checking to be sure that the printer had not introduced errors during this process. Now, when books are produced electronically, a proofreader serves as a final set of eyes to check those pesky commas and to verify that all of the copyeditor’s changes actually got made and that the formatting didn’t go wonky during the change from manuscript to book.
I like to think of it this way. The editor makes sure the book is good, the copyeditor makes sure it is correct and consistent, and the proofreader makes sure no little details were missed.
(FYI: Yes, you can use the colon, but do it sparingly. Either “mrow” or mrow, just be consistent. The Duke of Mantua. The character who flips through the papers is riffling.)
Read MoreWombats Poop in Cubes
Photo credit: Dmitri Brant
Wombats are adorable. They are fantastic diggers. And they are the only animal in the world that leaves cube-shaped poop. (Everybody else does balls, tubes, or splats.)
Even more weirdly wonderful, they take the cubes of poop and arrange them into piles to mark their territory. Cubes are better than rounded shapes for this purpose because they don’t roll away.
This was not a fact that I managed to work into my new picture book, Wombat Underground, but it was so delightfully fascinating I felt I had to share it with you.
Read MoreThe Real Heroes
Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)
We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)
Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.
Read MoreWhy the Beak?
It looks like something out of a steampunk dystopian nightmare, but it’s real: this is the outfit of a Renaissance plague doctor. It consists of a long coat of waxed linen and a mask with glass eyeholes, all to keep the physician free from contagion.
But why must he look like a hooded bird of prey? Is he trying to frighten his patients to death before the plague can get them? Nope. The beak of the mask is actually stuffed with herbs and spices and, one source says, vinegar. Since bad smells or miasmas were supposed to spread the disease, it was hoped that good smells near your face would ward off illness.
I don’t know what breathing vinegar fumes would do to your lungs, but I suppose the outfit as a whole might actually have provided some protection, at least from the airborne bacteria that spread pneumonic plague. It probably didn’t do much about the fleas that spread bubonic plague, but then I don’t know what would have.
This is the kind of thing you discover when you are researching historical pandemics. I really love writing nonfiction.
Read MoreA Pandemic Is Worldwide
HarperCollins is going to publish my new picture book, A Pandemic Is Worldwide! Pandemics through the ages, up to COVID-19. The research is a little grueling, but it’s quite remarkable to note how behavior patterns stay consistent from age to age. (Anti-masking prejudice, fyi, is not new….nor is anti-vaccine hysteria.)
The Art of a Wombat
A sample of Charles’s warm, sweet, tender, richly colorful art
So excited that Charles Santoso has ageed to illustrate my upcoming picture book, Wombat Underground! I know he’ll give it both warmth and humor and pathos. It’s so great than an Australian artist will illustrate this story of fear and danger and community during the Australian bushfire season of 2019-20.
Read MoreBlast Off!
The Story of Neil Armstrong is now on sale! From building model airplanes to landing on the moon, the life of an iconic American…
…who, as his younger sister once said, “never did anything wrong. He was a Mr. Goody Two-shoes if there ever was one. It was just his nature.”
(Thank you, June Armstrong, for my favorite quote in the whole book.)
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly