No text? The various series illustrations mashed together look as if they are pieces that have been stretched at different ratios. Maybe they weren't, but that's how they strike me. I think this would be better with the illos separated by some text.

I agreed with Lily, on my hi-res monitor, the images are pixilated.

R.C.

Quote from: LilyBLily on July 26, 2021, 12:18:11 AM

"Narrative consistency and flow from scene to scene."

As a longtime professional copyeditor, I dispute the definition above...

When I say narrative consistency and flow, I mean the flow of words (how the writer is communicating), which includes most everything you mentioned, except, none of the editors I've worked with proofread.

It's also my understanding that copy editing and line editing are often used interchangeable these days. However, in my experience, line editing is mostly worried about individual 'line' clarity and copy editing is mostly worried about all of the other word stuff. Perhaps it might be better to say that line editors worry about accurate/better communication at the granular level and copy editors worry about non-story beat mechanics.

Copyeditors can be foolish enough to rewrite the incoherent words of a subject matter expert, but that's way more than a copyeditor should do, and a ms. should not reach the copyeditor in that dreadful condition overall, either. It's also extremely dangerous to do it because, not being a subject matter expert, the copyeditor may introduce factual errors. When we read about the process that important literary figures have had with their editors, there's often a lot of discussion line for line and word for word, but it's not about mechanics and it's not a copyeditor that's doing the editing. It's a line or acquisitions editor (the distinction there is that some acquisitions editors do the line editing, too, but some line editors are not acquisitions editors). I can't stop people from being confused about these roles, but they are very different. Obviously so, in nonfiction. Not perhaps as obviously in fiction.

The important thing for indie authors to understand is if they hire a copyeditor, that person should not rewrite their story, nor should the author expect it. Expectations should be discussed in detail in advance, and a sample edit of five pages or so from the middle of the story should assure that both parties know what they are dealing with and what they have agreed to.

Things do change, of course. For instance, today's proofreads are mostly "cold reads" of a single digital file instead of comparing physical typeset galleys against a physical copyedited ms. Spellcheck can eliminate many typos--but also introduce malapropisms and other errors if the person doing the spelling check doesn't know the words in question or is careless. The proofreader's command of vocabulary is now much more important than it was before, because "grizzly" is spelled right but is the wrong word to describe a "grisly murder." And so on. This is popping up all over today even in books from small presses.     

"Narrative consistency and flow from scene to scene."

As a longtime professional copyeditor, I dispute the definition above...

When I say narrative consistency and flow, I mean the flow of words (how the writer is communicating), which includes most everything you mentioned, except, none of the editors I've worked with proofread.

It's also my understanding that copy editing and line editing are often used interchangeable these days. However, in my experience, line editing is mostly worried about individual 'line' clarity and copy editing is mostly worried about all of the other word stuff. Perhaps it might be better to say that line editors worry about accurate/better communication at the granular level and copy editors worry about non-story beat mechanics.

I take w/a pound of salt any come-hither offered by cover, blurb, book critics, star ratings, etc. All that counts for me is the first line of text. I'll buy a good first line, any genre. After all, who could resist Faulkner's opener "And me on a buckskin pony with eyes like blue electricity and a mane like tangled fire, galloping up the hill and right off into the high heaven of the world"? Or the fellow who wrote, "Later, he made soup"?

Author. I usually buy works by the classic oldtimers--Vonnegut, Steinbeck, Lewis, Uris, Rawlings, etc. I also buy current non-fiction works as promoted on political talk shows and anything by Woodward.
And sometimes I buy works by members here.