Do I Need an Editor?

Hiring an editor can be expensive and scary, but do you need one? That depends on a lot of things—your publishing goals, current progress on your novel, where you are as a writer, your financial resources, etc. Ultimately, it's a question only you can answer.

Today's post is an effort to help you make that decision. I'm aware there is a potential conflict of interest in that I am an editor-for-hire, but you're all very smart. I trust you can take my opinions to make your own informed decisions.

I'm Just Starting My First Novel

If you're just starting to write—you haven't even finished a draft yet—I'm going to say no, you don't need a professional editor.

An editor could provide high-level feedback on your first chapters or even your outline. Depending on your experience and personal goals, that might be really useful to you. But for most people, you will learn far more by finishing a novel (including but not limited to whether the writing life is even for you) than you will from professional feedback at this stage.

If you really want help with that first novel, then what you might want is a writing coach, not an editor.

I Finished My First Novel

That's great! Finishing a novel is hard! The question now is what do you want to do with it? You need revisions, and you very likely need extra eyes on it for objective feedback, but do you need a professional editor for those things?

Maybe. First, consider the following:

• Do you want to publish this novel for a larger audience (i.e., people you don't know)?
• Is this novel so important that you want to get it just right? (Let it be known that most writers feel this way about their first novels.)
• Have you gotten feedback from others yet?
• Can you ruthlessly rip your novel apart? Are you willing to delete whole chapters, rewrite whole sections, or worse?
• Can you afford it? And can you afford multiple rounds of editing if it comes to that?

If the answer to most of these is no, then you might not need a professional editor yet. The price of editing has to be worth what you get out of it—including how much of the editor's advice you are able to act on!

Before seeking a professional editor, try to get feedback from people you know. You can learn a lot from other writers or even friends and family, and it won't cost you any extra.

Don't know any other writers? Dig around online. Hang out on social media. Put out a call to swap beta reads. And keep track of the people who say yes! Not only can you get extra feedback this way, but it's also a great way to find new friends.

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Let's say your novel is finished, you've gotten high-level feedback (professional or not), and you've completed your revisions. Your novel is pretty good, you'd say. Now, do you need an editor?

Depends. What do you want to do with that novel?

I Want to Get an Agent

In general, agents are looking for two things: (1) is your story something they can sell and (2) is it written well enough to sell it. After you've finished the novel, there's little you can do about the first one—the agent will either like your story or not.

The second is where an editor can play a role, but is hiring one necessary? Again, this is a maybe. If you have no other way to get feedback, then a professional editor can provide that for you. If you've received several rejections—I'm talking dozens, probably hundreds of rejections, maybe even on multiple novels—then a professional editor might be able to help you figure out why and how to move forward.

Do not assume that an agent will edit your novel for you. Most don't, and those that do are usually just looking at massaging certain selling points so they can more easily pitch it to publishers.

But also, don't assume you need a professional edit to get an agent. You do need feedback, but it may or may not need to be professional at this point. That's up to you.

I Have an Agent

If you have an agent and are shopping your novel to publishers, then ask your agent about this. That's what they're there for, after all.

If you have a publisher, then you probably don't need a freelance editor. The publisher is likely doing that work as part of your deal.

I'm Ready to Self-Publish

You've finished your novel, gotten your feedback, revised it like crazy, and now you're ready to push that button and rake in the dough. Should you get a professional edit first?

Yes. HECK yes! At the very least, you want a proofread to make sure there are no obvious errors, but you probably also want a line edit (sometimes called a copyedit) to identify weaknesses, inconsistencies, and make your prose really sing.

A publishing press will do this for you, big or small. It's part of the deal that benefits both the press and the author by putting your best foot forward. But if you are your publisher, then—just like getting a book cover, typesetting, marketing, etc.—you are the only one who's going to do this for you.

Don't assume you can catch everything yourself. I have edited for a number of excellent authors, and no matter how good or experienced they are, I have always found ways to improve their work—not because they aren't as good as they think, and not because I'm so awesome, but because a novel is never perfect, and it is always worth the money to improve it.

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This doesn't cover every possible scenario of course, but these are the most common points at which you might consider hiring a professional.

And for your second, third, or fourth novel? I'd say the calculations are the same, except now you have more experience as a writer (and possibly as an agent-seeker or a published author, depending on what you did with those first novels). If anything, you can trust your gut even more about whether a professional edit can help you.

If you are considering a professional edit, I'm happy to help. I can even provide a free sample edit to help you decide. But there are many, many other editors who can help you as well. I encourage you to do your research, compare, and find the best editor for you and your work.

If you're willing to do all of that, you are unlikely to regret it.

Prequels, Can They Ever Be Good?

The year was 1999. My generation hadn't had a new Star Wars movie in sixteen years. We believed the series was done. Over. The trilogy had been groundbreaking, but it was in the past never to be revisited. Then, George Lucas announced the release of The Phantom Menace.

It is difficult to convey to my Gen Z kids how big a deal this was, how over-the-top excited we all were to walk into that theater to see the first new Star Wars movie in sixteen years...

...and how thoroughly disappointed we were walking out.

I did not enjoy The Phantom Menace. A lot of us didn't, and this experience cemented my skepticism toward movie releases for decades.

It's pretty easy to find examples of prequel let-downs. The Star Wars prequel trilogy. The Scorpion King. The Grindelwald movies. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.* It happens so often that it raises the question: Is it possible for a prequel to be good?

* And I apologize if you love any of these examples I chose. Although you might be in the minority, I love that these bring you joy anyway. Don't let me or anyone steal that from you.

My answer—informed as it was by my teenage Star Wars disillusionment—used to be no, of course not, prequels, by definition, are a bad idea. But as more counterexamples appear, I'm beginning to change my mind. What makes prequels bad is what makes any movie bad (e.g., when it's a blatant cash grab) but they can be done well.

I think a good prequel requires three things:

• An intriguing question
• A story that stands on its own
• Characters who grow

Let's take a look.

An Intriguing Question

For a prequel to be interesting, it has to promise an answer that fans of the original actually want. Why does Maleficent hate the king and queen so much? How did Mike and Sully become friends? How did Vito Corleone become so powerful?

An intriguing question isn't enough to make a prequel good, but it's a necessary start. If the fans don't care about the mystery that connects the prequel to the original, then it's hard to care about the prequel at all.

Also...

The question can't be dumb. We don't care how Han swindled the Falcon from Lando or what Obi-Wan was doing in his cave while Luke grew up. We don't need to see how the wizard came to Oz or learn why Cruella de Vil wants to skin puppies. The originals give us enough information that we can fill these gaps in our head. The questions might be interesting, but they're not worth making a whole new story about.

The answer can't be dumb. Han Solo's name can just be his name; it doesn't have to be a thing. And God help me but the mystery of the Force was so much cooler without a scientific explanation. If you're going to use a prequel to answer some outstanding mystery, your answer has got to be cooler than any fan theory out there (spoiler: that's very hard to do).

A Story That Stands on its Own

If the goal of your prequel is solely to explain where the protagonist got all her character quirks, then it might not be a story worth telling. If you're going to write a whole novel (or make a whole movie) out of an origin story, that story should be just as compelling to a newcomer as it is to the fans.

How to do that is the same as telling any story: give the protagonist goals and motivations, obstacles, stakes, difficult choices... all the things that go into telling any story.

Do not just walk us through the protagonist's upbringing as they pick up each piece of their iconic outfit.

Characters Who Grow

This is part of telling a standalone story, but it's important enough that it demands its own section. In a prequel, your fans already know how or where the protagonist ends up. We know Elphaba becomes the wicked witch. We know Cassian ends up a jaded pilot for the Rebel Alliance. We know Obi-Wan ends up an old hermit in a cave on Tatooine. What we don't know is how they got there.

This can be great (an intriguing mystery even!) if your protagonist starts off in an unexpected place—Elphaba as a misunderstood sorceress with a heart of gold or Cassian as a down-on-his-luck orphan who wants nothing to do with the rebellion against the Empire.

It works less well if your protagonist starts in the exact same place, physically and developmentally, as they finish. The end of Revenge of the Sith had already placed Obi-Wan on Tatooine. He had already learned to keep his head down, just wanting to keep Luke and his family out of trouble from the Empire—the same place and with the same goals and motivation he had at the beginning of A New Hope.

This makes it very hard to care about his actions in the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. He's already where we know he's going to end up! There's nothing he can learn (that wouldn't undercut the action of the original movies)! He doesn't really grow, so there's no compelling reason to watch.

Ensuring that your characters grow and change in the prequel can prevent this.

What a Good Prequel Can Do for You

Done well, a good prequel can be a joy to fans of the original while also fully entertaining the uninitiated. It can give your audience those dopamine hits of fan service while still delivering a new, fantastic story.

A good prequel can also make the original better—adding depth or new perspective to an old, familiar story. It can create new fans and make existing ones want to revisit that world again.

I'm still wary about prequels. More often than not, the backstories in the audience's heads are cooler than the one you can give them. But there are ways to do it well, to expand the world of your story and tell a new story that's worth telling.

You just need to care about it and put in the work.

Writing as Resistance

Politically speaking, a lot happened since I left. I knew it would—I was traveling to the US on Election Day, after all—but the results are not what I hoped. (According to current voting counts, they're not what a majority of voters wanted either.)

It's been almost a month since the election, and people are still hurting. Still scared. Still anxious. And why wouldn't they be? We don't yet know what will happen next. I know not everyone believes the US is headed toward an autocratic hellscape, but historical precedent does us few favors here.

To those of you who are worried like me: It's okay to be anxious. Feel what you gotta feel. I'm still considering what I can do in the coming months and years, but here's one thing I do know:

We can write.

Stories give us hope. When the protagonist gets back up after being left for dead, it makes us believe we can do the same. When the heroes win against all odds—when Katara defeats Azula, when Sam carries Frodo to Mount Doom, when Luke strikes the Death Star's core—it reminds us that those in power are vulnerable.

Even the coziest stories give us joy and an escape, and these are every bit as necessary as hope. Stories also share the power of love and connection. They remind us what we are fighting for.

Stories give us symbols. Alan Moore inspired the face of Anonymous, and Katniss's three-finger salute has been considered cause for arrest. Symbols are powerful. They remind us that we are not alone. They terrify oppressors by reminding them how outnumbered they are.

Stories foster empathy. Empathy is the antidote to fascism. It is vital to creating a world we can all live in together.

No matter what you feel about the present time, even if you feel powerless, know that your stories matter and are absolutely necessary.

There's a reason fascist regimes always ban books.

It is the same reason we need to write them.