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My editor, read my wife, read both the stories I submitted here and she edited them to make it better. Basically she cleaned up the language, because when I write I do it stream of consciousness.
See, I hook my fingers into sync to my unconscious mind and take myself completely out of the way and let the story flow. The back part of my head is the one that composes and writes, who is the truly creative one. The most the conscious mind does is to try to keep it on topic, spelled correctly and making sense.
This means that both those stories I wrote were done in about an hour, no edits other than on the fly. Because I wanted them to be up quickly I only glanced through the content. However, my wife took the work and went back over it all, clearing a bit up.
So the revised and edited versions are up on in the stories. Hopefully it flows a bit better.
She wants me to completely re-work the stories to make it a little less fantastical. She objected to the appearance that the protagonist (who still doesn't have a name) being the ultimate everything in his life, and that it needs to be a bit more reasonable.
While I can understand what she is saying (she wants scenes where the characters go to the bathroom because that's real life), I'm not so certain that it needs to be really reworked. I might at some point later, however.
That being said, I have one other story I wrote that is kind of a romance, not a TG story at all, but an interesting piece that I wrote fairly quickly. I'll have to ask Erin if it should go up or not.
Comments
Before rejecting your editor's
suggestion, think very carefully... They usually have a reason for the suggestion. Perhaps a compromise might be enough to satisfy. It is your story, but, from what you said you believe editing helps. So don't just reject the suggestions.
Another thing you can consider - a 3rd part editor... (I ended up with 4 editors for my story in Karen Pages' SPA universe... I THINK it made things better. I'm certainly getting fewer complaint notes... :-) Good luck)
Annette
she wants scenes where the characters go to the bathroom
Bathroom scenes, like every scene in a story, are worth including only if something important and revealing happens there that drives the story along. Because bathrooms are typically private space away from the opposite sex, it's entirely possible for them to be places of revelation and conflict, but few of us desire to examine the flush pan as carefully as do the French to judge the condition of their livers.
Cheers...
Puddin'
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I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.
--- Ani Difranco quotes
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Bathroom Scenes
Well, she started on this particular crusade when reading the Sleeping Beauty series by Ann Rice. In there they had people tied in impossible ways for extended periods of time, so much so that if a real person were put in that situation they would be losing limbs and be dead from various things, like gangrene and infection.
So her point was to get some realism into a story she is reading, and have the characters have human needs, like going to the bathroom.
Sorry, it wasn't supposed to be literal.
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May the Stars light your path.
Joy