Some of my fellow Rhemalda authors have
blogged recently on the subject of editing and, with the second book of my
Artesans of Albia series, King’s Champion, nearing this process, I thought I
would add my own thoughts.
Being a British author in an
American publishing company brings its own unique set of circumstances when it
comes to edits. As I am also a freelance editor, proofreader and writing
mentor, I have experience of this process from both sides. Does it make having
my own work edited easier or harder? The answer is that I don’t really know. No
one likes to see their precious text covered with red, or have someone tell you
that a certain scene doesn’t work, or that you have failed to spot a glaring
typo in the sentence you’ve read a hundred times. Yet maybe I can take this
process easier than some, because I have personal experience of trying to be
diplomatic when dealing with other writers. I know that the process isn’t
personal, and that my editor is trying to help me make my novel as clean and as
good as it can be. And I do know how hard it is to spot your own mistakes! A
case in point was when I first decided to design and have printed some King’s Envoy bookmarks and flyers. How many times did I check and recheck the wording
on the files before I sent them to the printer? And how ticked off was I when
they came back, and my mother instantly spotted the “h” missing from the word
“publisher” and the “g” missing from the middle of “engaging”?
Very ticked off. Seriously – very!
So, if an experienced proofreader
can still miss typos, a good, impartial editor is invaluable.
Yet there is leeway for discussion
when your edits come back, especially if your novel, like mine, is set in a
particular historical period.
My Artesans of Albia series is set
within a completely fictional fantasy world, yet for inspiration I drew heavily
on the English Medieval period. There are no machines in my novels, no guns or
engines; people rely on horses for transport and swords, bows and knives for
defense. The nobility live in fortified manors or castles, wealthier citizens
in towns, the ordinary people in small villages. Health care is basic, with
drugs being purely herbal, although procedures such as blood transfusions are
just coming into use.
Ok, you are thinking – what does this have to
do with editing?
It all comes down to terminology.
If you follow a certain trade, you
will use terms that most lay people will not understand. For instance, how many
people today could name all the parts of a sword? How many of you know what a
tang is, or a quillon? Yet a swordsmith or blacksmith would know these terms
intimately. The same applies to the various sections of a castle – it’s no good
someone telling you there’s a fire in the bailey if you run with a bucket of
water to the keep.
This issue of long-forgotten, or
specialized terms came up for me once the first round of King’s Envoy edits
came back. Two in particular caused some confusion. The first was the word
“midden”, and the second was the term “sally port”. For those of you who don’t
know, the word “midden” means a dung heap. It can apply equally to what comes
out of a horse’s stable or to the unusable leftovers from a kitchen. It is,
quite simply, a pile of refuse. This is where the differences between UK
English and US English come into play because although it’s an old word, I
believe more UK readers would recognize the term than readers in the US. As it
was not vitally important to the story, and I didn’t want to make my readers
keep reaching for their dictionaries, I was quite happy to substitute this word
and use “dung pile” instead.
However, the term “sally port” is a
specialized term relating to castles and fortified manors. Simply put, a sally
port is a small door either to the side of, or actually let into, the huge
doors or gates leading into a fortified building. It would be used when a small
number of people, on foot, wanted to enter or leave. The word “sally” can also
mean a charge or sortie (as in battle) or to go forth, as in an excursion. The
term is derived from the Latin “salire”, meaning “to leap”. (Who says fantasy
novels can’t also be educational? J)
In this case, I felt justified in
sticking to my guns and asking for the term to be kept in the novel. As the
photographs show, I also managed to find a living example of a genuine sally
port in the ruins of a small castle in Pembroke, Wales, UK.
So, although the editing process can
often mean change, it can also be useful for highlighting what is important, or
what needs to remain.
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