How to Edit and Stay Friends

If people know you write, there are times someone you know will ask you to look at their work. It's happened to me many times. A few pages here and there are no problem. One guy asked me to look at his work and the next time I saw him he handed me his 500 page rough draft. I never agreed to read his book. He asked me if I would look at some of his work. "Some" must have meant a whole book.  I did half of it. In giving it back to him I told him he was repeating the same tell and show issue in every scene. To start showing what was going on in the story would go a long way in giving the reader a better visual of what was happening. He was upset I didn't finish it and asked how  he was going to know where the other problems were. Hey! You got a 250 page free edit, go read the notes!
I understand his need for feed back but where do we draw the line? If I'm doing it as a favor, do I need to give a page count?

Now I edit on Fiverr. I've met some very good writers and a few who need help. Friend or stranger, here are a few things I keep in mind when editing.

1. Say something nice. Start with positive comments. This could be about the story premise, characters, or overall theme of the story.

2. Let your comments be constructive. If they don't know how to write dialog, offer examples of good dialog or link them to a site that covers it.

3. When correcting punctuation, tell them why. When listing three things put a comma before the word "and."  John likes meat, potatoes, and beer.

4. Catch the typos and flag them, but let the writer make the change.

5. Give them an overall synopsis that covers the good and explains the issues. "You have an excellent voice, but I'm seeing a lot of places where you tell more than show."

Just changing their writing or telling the person they're wrong won't help them grow as a writer. Give a clear and concise explanation of the things you flag in their story. Link to grammar or story structure sites will help to explain your comments. Every writer has a voice that is uniquely their's and an editor should respect it.

Write on, my friends...I'll see you in the pages.

How to Edit Socially

I work in a place where I often see writing that needs a little help. Now, I'm no grammar expert but I think I have a basic handle on it. I've been at it for years and have been published here and there. Hopefully, that counts as something.

When I see mistakes, missing commas, repetitive writing, etc. the corrections sometimes just pop right out of my mouth. I went on a job interview once where the owner of the company was using a word wrong and he kept repeating it. Suddenly, in the  middle of the interview I blurted out, "You're using that word wrong." I couldn't help it. My mouth had a mind of its own and my poor little grammar lovin' heart couldn't take it any more.
Surprisingly, I got a call the next day with a job offer.
I turned it down.

Now back to work. My job is nothing spectacular. I answer phones, process mail, write stuff, and help everyone else in the building do everything. And I love it. There's always work to do, the people are happy, and the bosses are great. Everything my last job wasn't. Except for writing. My pet writing peeves take a hit almost every day.

Peeves;
1. Repetitive words. The home was devastated and needed repairs. The devastated condos were devastated. For God's sake get a Thesaurus...or hit shift F7.

2. Starting each sentence with the same word. When they fixed the home... When it was time for... When the family... Think outside the box. There are millions of words out there. Something else will work just as well as that one word.

3. Run on sentences. If you're sentence runs three or four lines and takes up three separate thoughts....Separate them!

4. And as the guilt washes over me from #3...pet peeve #4...No exclamation points in business writing. I once had a journalism prof tell me, "No exclamation points unless you're on fire." Good advice.

5. Almost as annoying as repetitive words is repetitive thoughts. Turning one sentence around and saying the same thing as the previous sentence. Same thought, different words. They worked day and night to get the job done. Everyday they worked long into the night and finished the job.

Enough of my peeves, what's yours? And what's the best way to bring it to the person's attention? Some don't like to be corrected. Then I vacillate between taking it to a manager or just forgetting about it. Not my circus, not my monkey.
But I like the company and want it to do well.
Dilemma.