Blunt

If you hire me as an editor and your work has problems, I’m going to tell you. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it, either.

These are the kinds of comments I frequently make:

• This is a clichè. It’s in every management book.
• This sentence is so long it needs a little kid walking behind it to keep the end of it off the floor.
• I’m three pages in and I’m bored. When are you going to get to the point?
• This is the tenth time you repeated this phrase in 14 pages. That’s going to annoy readers.
• These details don’t illuminate anything.
• There are more em-dashes than periods in these three pages. And that’s too many.
• You said the exact opposite of this two pages ago. Which do you believe?
• You seem to have difficulty focusing on a single audience; it keeps changing from section to section.
• No one will believe this. You need evidence.
• Stories need endings. This one doesn’t have one.
• I don’t care if she’s blonde or brunette. Irrelevant.
• Stop telling the reader what they probably think. What matters is what you think.
• Bold in running text, underline, ALL CAPS, and exclamation points tell everyone you’re not a professional writer.

I sometimes wonder why people don’t fire me, but so far, with more than 100 clients, no one has told me I’m too mean to work with. In fact, they often tell me how refreshing it is to hear from someone who won’t pull punches and will tell them the truth.

How to be blunt

This works. But it’s not just about being nasty. Here’s how to be blunt:

• Critique for the reader. Always couch your critique in terms of how the writing fails the reader, not how it personally offends you.
• Be useful. Critique things that need changing, not just things you don’t like.
• Be insightful. Reveal not just the problems, but why the writers have the problems. For example, “It seems like you’re not confident about this, that’s why you keep equivocating.”
• Offer solutions. “This is dull” is a lot easier to take if you suggest how it could be more interesting. In general, an editor shouldn’t criticize something if they don’t have a way to make it better.
• No personal insults. “This is boring” is fine. “You are boring” is not. Personal criticism creates resentment without making prose any better.
• Be witty. It’s a lot easier to take criticism if it reveals that you’ve been inadvertently funny. We can laugh at our own mistakes; in fact, it’s healthy for the writer to realize that they’re actually smart even if what they wrote isn’t.
• Offer some praise. It’s a lot easier to believe a passage that’s marked “This is novel and really interesting” if the comment comes after some critical comments.
• Don’t pile on. The third time you mark passive voice, you can comment about how it’s a problem. The fifteen time, you should just mark it and move on.
• Calibrate the criticism to the writer. When a writer expresses gratitude for your bluntness, that’s your cue to keep doing it. When they’re sensitive and express insecurity, you can dial back the attitude. The critique is the same, but you may change the tone.
• Don’t be obsequious. This may be the most important tip of all. I detest editors who praise work that is substandard and puff up the writers who wrote it. You’re doing the writer a disservice by praising their lame prose. They won’t grow. You’re doing the reader a disservice, since they deserve better. And you’re undermining your own credibility by proving you can’t tell greatness from crap.

As I look over this list, I can see that being an honest editor is a lot more complicated than I’d realized. There’s a fair amount of psychology to it.

And that may be one reason that AI tools won’t do what I do — at least not the same way. Grammarly may find problems but it will never be witty.