I'm now Editor on Battle Fuck, and it's the first time I've really edited anything, and I was wondering what is acceptable for an editor to do. So far I've been fixing all problems with spacing, spelling, tense and grammar. Is it acceptable for an editor to add things? So far I've been putting in missing words, when obvious - "You across the room and shake her hand" for instance, I'd add the missing "walk", but what about situations where there's a confusing gap in the action that'd take a sentence or two to correct? Is it acceptable for an editor to add that much to the authors work? Or if there's continuity issues, is it acceptable to just remove or heavily alter large amounts to make it fit?
As a creator/editor, I've done fairly serious overhauls of newly contributed threads for spelling, vocabulary, and phrasing, and sometimes broken them into two for a better branch point. If they love the story but not my vision of it, they're welcome to become author/editor of their own version of the story. If I were appointed editor of someone else's story, I'd go much lighter on existing threads -- fixing obvious typos -- and try to be guided by the original author's threads and story summary for new ones.
I'm currently editing "a hot night at the hotel", but I want to alter some of the guidelines for the authors, how do I change them please?
in that case I would try to contact the writer and ask him to post an empty thread for the second post, just to be sure the work is released under his name. Not sure, if I understand that correctly... I think, it's okay, if the writer don't share your vision of the story, as long as he agree with your vision of your storyworld and he doesn't mess it up.
Editing is hard... especially as many authors get their knickers in a knot, so to speak. I tend to edit heavily. But even editing lightly, don't stop at spelling and spacing. Look for point of view shifts, second person/third person transitions (I see this quite a bit here), awkward word choices (unintended puns and 'swifties' are also things to look out for). And good luck...
What are "view shifts"? Switching from say "You think that the one legged Latino girl might like you" to "The one legged Latino girl thought that she might like you, but she still harboured a preference for moustachioed gravediggers"?
Exactly. If we've been in Fred's point of view, worrying about the one-eyed latina, and then, abruptly, we're in the latina's viewpoint looking at Fred, readers tend to get confused. General rule in writing is either to stick with a single viewpoint or change viewpoints only in a scenebreak. Of course, if we're telling the story from the viewpoint of an omniscient observer (God?), this doesn't matter but that viewpoint tends to distance the reader from full immersion in a character. Another I've seen here is something like "Fred's dick was rock-hard and Betty's snatch dripping. You stick that dick right in and..." You see how we went from third person (Fred) to second person (you). Again, this tends to tear the reader out of the story and make them worry about the writing.
I'm the editor of a few stories on here. I've been very light on actual thread editing, instead focusing primarily on additions to those stories, myself. I endeavor to keep to the author's original guidelines, so if they return, they won't find their stories butchered. Fixing typos and POV issues is fine, in my books, so long as the original author's intent behind the story is maintained. The other thing I watch is other author's additions, making sure they fit with the theme of the story and so forth. Generally speaking, I use the original author's standpoints for quality as a basis for approving additions. If the original author accepted only superb, detailed threads, I try to stick to that. If the author was more lenient in what threads they allowed to be added, then I'm more lenient. Basically, my goal is to keep the spirit of their work alive, for their hopeful return.
That sounds like a good approach. When I said I was a 'heavy editor,' I was speaking of the novels I edit before publishing. Here, I figure if someone wants to contribute to one of my stories, I'm happy to accept the alternative path. Perhaps I should attempt to find a middle path as you suggest. As I'm still working on my first story, I'm still learning the ropes of how chyoa works and what might be a desirable approach. As I also said, I do think it's worth looking for weird POV shifts, strange constructions and unintentional puns and swifties (for those who don't know, a swiftie is an unintentional clash between dialogue and tag like '"We've passed the speed of light," Tom said quickly.'
