My editing mostly consists of GrammarianX, Word spell check, and a light read through to see if what's on screen is what should be on the page.
I found a whole bunch of bees once in my writing. And then I killed the bees. And then I hung myself because I found that the longer I wrote on that particular day, the more passive the voice became. Don't even get me started on the repetition. One of my checkers red flagged the words "And then."
Think I used it 150 times in a 60,000 word mss.
I've passed it off to an alpha reader or three, but their observations were pretty much horseshit. "I don't understand what's happening here," said one reader, who turned out to be dyslexic. THAT didn't help.
I'd love a good editor by my side. Providing they can distinguish between "Voice" and "Grammar"
Like, I don't need someone to tell me that the narrative lacks because the speech is poor. Well, if my character's a drifting cowboy with no formal education, then it wouldn't be out of line for him his narration to read something like this:
Quote:
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West, always west. Away from the oceans and them big cities. Cities was worse than these lands. But, nothing was worse than cities. Even the ones that didn’t get hurt bad. All them people can get to acting mighty crazy when there ain’t no food to be fed.
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Would it make a scholar of proper english rip their hair out? Probably. But is it understandable? Does it make sense in the grand scheme of the narration?
Or would they rather it be this:
Quote:
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West, he had to always walk west. If for no other reason than because it was far away from the oceans and cities. Everyone always said that cities were worse than these lands. But, it could also be said that nothing was worse than a city, even if they managed to escape the wars unscathed. It's always difficult to survive when there's a family and no food to be found.
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