The Importance of Maintaining the Author's Voice

Last week, I wrote about the importance of critical thinking in book editing. Read it here: https://leebarnathan.com/blog/editing/critical-thinking-in-book-editing/ Buried in the 11th paragraph of that piece was this sentence: Are my edits removing the author’s voice?

Too often, one editor takes a manuscript and butchers it in such a way that the author no longer recognizes it. Something has been removed, and it’s often the author’s voice, or the unique combination of personality, word choice, style, and tone that shines through in the writing.

In my sportswriting days, I became quite skilled at writing in-depth, human-interest stories about athletes overcoming some great adversity to star in their sport. These articles, usually between 5,000-10,000 words, necessarily covered some deeply emotional issues and topics that the athletes had to be comfortable sharing. These included remembering how hard it was to see your mother in a drug den getting her next cocaine fix or how your pursuit of perfection drove a wedge between you and your family.

My writing had to accurately reflect the turmoil and triumph of their journeys. But if the wrong editor got his hands on these stories, he would inevitably edit the life out them. The emotion would vanish, leaving only the cold, hard, factual details. So, I made sure to not let that editor ever touch those stories.

My point is that this editor didn’t engage in critical thinking when editing my stories, nor did he do what Gareth Dyke wrote about editing:

Think of copyediting as a task where you want to leave as few traces that you’ve been there as possible. If an author sees your footprints all over their text, it’s possible that as the copy editor you didn’t preserve the “author’s voice.”

The same holds true with book editing. A book editor must carefully look at a manuscript and ask, How can I make this better without inserting myself into it? That takes critical thinking.

“I find it hard to conceive of a good editing job that somehow ruins the author’s voice,” editor Hazel Bird wrote on her website Wordstitch Editorial https://www.wordstitcheditorial.com/is-there-such-a-thing-as-authorial-voice/. “Such an edit would automatically be bad, because the editor would have been imposing their preferences rather than judiciously employing rules and experience to make the text fit for purpose.”

I found this great example online from The Society for Editing blog. You have a sentence: As far as I’m concerned, there are no true human couch potatoes. You edit it thusly: One could say that there are no true human couch potatoes.

It says the same thing, but something is different. The question then becomes, Is that acceptable?

"While the edit is grammatical and the meaning is the same, the voice has changed,” the blog’s authors wrote. “The author is no longer your best girlfriend sharing her thoughts on nutrition. She’s now a professional—distant instead of friendly.

“In isolation, the edit is harmless. Added to many other edits that change voice and you have a problem.”

Editing tips

Here are some suggestions for using critical thinking to keep the author’s voice.

1. Read the manuscript first. Be a reader, not an editor. Pretend this unpublished manuscript is a book you purchased. Sit where you sit when you read for pleasure, but critically examine the author’s word choices. Notice where the personality, style and tone come in. Do no edits until you’ve read through it once.
2. Examine the grammar. Critically ask if the intentional errors are okay. There’s more leeway with works of fiction, but as a non-fiction book editor, I generally frown at them. At the same time, certain slang terms or informal language or jargon might fit (they’ll certainly sound more like the author), so the editor will have to decide if they work or not.
3. Check for clarity. Sometimes, the author’s word choices are intentionally vague, or they contradict or are inconsistent with another part of the narrative. Fixing it is probably necessary (especially in non-fiction), but the editor has to think critically and find the words the author would use to clear things up.
4. Watch for repetition. Writers have their favorite cliches and expressions that they use over and over again. These irritate readers (and editors), so they have to be changed—again, using the author’s preferred words.
5. Beware of inconsistency. Characters must behave logically in the world they inhabit. They can’t act a certain way in chapter 2 and then do the opposite in chapter 13 if there hasn’t been an evolution the character has undergone. Editors need to catch these, point them out to the author and then together decide what to do. Similarly, the tense and narration should remain the same throughout; i.e., past or present tense, and first or third person.

Nos. 2-5 can be done in any order, but it’s important to remember this ABC when editing (apologies to David Mamet):

Always

Be

Critically thinking

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