You Need an Editor: Show, don’t tell (and tell, don’t show)

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count, as we finish out our series for the month of September! All month long, as you know, we’ve been talking about the myriad reasons why you need an editor. During this series, I’ve talked about some of the things editors will look for in your manuscript, and (I hope), shed some light on how the editing process goes, in general. I’ve had a lot of fun with this series, as I always do, and I hope that you’ve learned some things as well. After all, editing is one of those things that we just can’t get around. We, as writers, really need editors. We just do.

You Need an Editor: Show, don’t tell (and tell, don’t show)

Now, I’ve talked about this before, fairly recently, but I still wanted to bring it up in a series about editing. Why? Because it’s one of the first things we ever learn when it comes to writing, and yet it somehow never completely sticks—or it sticks so much that the manuscript suffers in the exact opposite direction as before. We don’t want either of those things to happen.

See, writers have a constant struggle when it comes to knowing how much to show and how much to tell. We do. I know, because I’m a writer. I still struggle, with knowing what sections need to be fully shown and what sections don’t. But my editor? She knows. She knows almost instantly, in my manuscripts, what pieces I need to show more of.

Again I’ll tell you: as the writer, as the creator of the manuscript in question, it’s nearly impossible for you to spot the errors in your writing. You know how it’s supposed to read. You know how every scene plays out. You’ve blocked it all out in your mind, and you can see it, without even having to read it. But that’s part of the problem. You can see it, without the words. Your readers can’t. But how are you supposed to know what they can’t see, when you can? An editor; that’s how.

Your editor will look through your manuscript and highlight areas where you’ve told instead of shown. They’ll look through your book and tell you why you need to add more details in some areas, why some sections of the book need to be better described and given the extra attention. But they’ll go one step further.

If you’re anything like me, then there are some descriptions you’ve done that you absolutely love. You just love them, fully and completely, and you don’t want to remove them from the manuscript at all, ever. But some of those descriptions don’t need to be there. Sometimes we’ve spent a great deal of time describing something that has literally no significance in the story, and that’s a problem. If you’re going to spend a lot of time describing it, then it needs to be important. But I highly doubt that you can see those things, that you can notice them at all, because, of course, you wrote and love that description. Which I don’t blame you for, in the least.

But I do encourage you, as I have all month long, to seek out an editor. Hire someone you trust, someone you know will work well within your genre and lead you in the right direction. Find an editor. Work with them, all you can. Let them change and better your manuscript—because, believe me, your work will be better for it.

All you have to do is take the plunge.

Thank you all so much for sticking around through this series! I have something really fun planned for October, but if you have any suggestions for upcoming topics, please let me know!

[love]

{Rani Divine}