What would you do?

[j_cheney]

More tweaking...on the massive re-write. Rough in spots at the 'sentence level', so some line edits are coming my way.

I've already done a pretty big re-write to get this story to fit what this editor wants, so little line edits probably won't phaze me at all.

I'm always curious about working with editors on this kind of thing (as in, learning their editorial style). Some editors are likely to impose themselves on one's writing, others aren't. It doesn't really bother me as long as they don't cross the line.

Where is that line? For me, I suspect it would be:

a)where we had an instance of the "I'm going to make all your sentences simple (noun verb noun) enough for third graders." I hate it when people rewrite my sentences into third grade form. I'm not the Comma Queen for nothing! Or,

b)where they want to change something that would ruin the overall 'outside' story arc. By this I mean changing something that would affect a related novel--or in the case of a Dragon story, mess up the related short stories past redemption. And once the first story is published, some things will be set in stone.

What would you not be willing to change for an editor?

Comments

[tchernabyelo.livejournal.com]

You may be comma queen, but I am comma (and semi-colon) king! I recently had a story edited where a lot of my longer sentences were chopped up, and I have to day I didn't feel entirely comfortable with it. I asked for a couple to be changed back, just to get some semblance of rhythm back into the prose, but didn't feel it worth fighting over to any greater extent - perhaps because it was a reprint sale (and thus the "preferred" version of the story still exists and is available). That's only the second time I've had anything significant asked for in a rewrite; one other sale went through a minor back-and-forth. Oh, actually, thinking about it, there was a third one, where I was actually asked to change the end of a story. I found a way to keep the ending I wanted in principle while providing a more dramatic climax, so I was OK with doing that. And another editor pointed out I had too much "whiet room" dialogue in the heart of a story, so I brkoe that up a bit.

In general, it's noticeable that the "bigger" markets seem less inclined to fiddle with prose details, though obviously my sample size is pretty small. If an editor is pointing out ways to make a story stronger, I generally feel happy going with the changes, but where it's a matter of changing prose for what seems to be the editor's stylistic preference, I'm less happy. But I haven't really had occasion to dig my heels in yet.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

it's noticeable that the "bigger" markets seem less inclined to fiddle with prose details...

I will say that the market that changed my ending up and rewrote part of the story was 'contributor copy only', the one that did multiple rewrites was token (but I really wanted to be in that issue, so I was happy to keep at it until I satisfied the editor), and the bigger markets have made pretty much no changes at all (maybe a word or two). The most recent bucks that trend, though, so perhaps it's all in my head.

It is hard when they want to re-write sentences. I've seen people do that in critique (Here's how I would have written your story.), and it's extremely irritating at times. I hope I don't get one of those, ever...