How to interpret my editorial feedback on your chapter
When you give me a chapter to edit, you’re going to get one of four types of responses from me:
- You completely missed the point. Start over. Let’s discuss why.
- There is a lot of value here, but there are serious problems. We ought to talk over how to solve those problems.
- This is basically in good shape, but you have some issues to address. See my edit.
- This is fine except for some text edits throughout.
Basically, I’m rating the quality of what you write from one to four stars.
In all four of these cases, I start by praising some of the good things about the manuscript. There are always some good things, because I don’t work with clients who are completely hopeless and have nothing useful to say. When I find parts of chapters that are awesome, I always highlight them. I’m not just a critic.
Then I explain how I can help.
When you missed the point
This is rare, but it happens. I can’t figure out how the chapter is supposed to benefit anyone. You lost track of the audience. You contradicted yourself. You shared only clichés and platitudes that everyone already knows.
I won’t get into detailed edits in your draft, because there’s no point in doing line edits on text you’re going to have to completely rewrite anyway.
Our discussion will focus on what you’re trying to do and what’s worth saving.
One way to reset yourself if this happens is to return to the reader question method. Who is the reader and what question is this chapter supposed to answer for them? You can use this principle to re-center yourself and write from a better place.
Don’t lose all hope. It’s always easier to write the chapter a second time, since you already thought about a lot of the ideas.
When there are serious problems
I’ll write this kind of critique when large parts of the chapter are valuable, but it can’t be finished until you solve a major issue. Your chapter might be inefficiently organized, written in an odd tone, too long, self-contradictory, or marred by ambiguities about the audience.
My discussion with you will center around how you can take the pieces that work, rearrange or revise them, and use them as building blocks for a chapter that’s effective.
You can write this chapter off as a shitty first draft. Use it as raw material for a rewrite. You’ve made progress, but there’s still a lot of work ahead.
When you have issues to address
Good news. Your work now is to revise, not start again.
There are likely one or two big issues that require extra work. Maybe you have two repetitive sections that need to be combined. Maybe your first-person story isn’t personal enough. Maybe you ignored someone else’s well-known idea that’s relevant to your chapter.
If this is my feedback, I don’t necessarily have to talk it over with you. You’ll have to put in the work to fix the big issues, but since the bulk of the chapter is in good shape, I know you can do it.
When you just need text edits
You might be discouraged when you look at my feedback and see edits all over your draft. Don’t be. If that’s all I have to say, you just have to review and address those edits. They’re likely grammatical problems, redundant sentences, punctuation problems (too many em dashes, perhaps), or a lack of citations. You can just work through the chapter from beginning to end and fix what’s wrong.
Feedback on AI-generated drafts
I’m unlikely to have lots of detailed edits on an AI-generated draft, because such drafts don’t tend to have a lot grammatical issues.
What they do tend to have is a meaning problem. I’m more likely to be wondering, “Why am I reading this? What is the point here?”
As a result, I’m more likely to tell you to start over again and write from scratch.
Except, unlike the other people who missed the point, you never thought through the problems in the first place.
So just delete the draft and start over again as if you’d never written anything about the topic.
Does that seem like an inefficient and wasteful way to write?
It is. And it’s not just your time you just wasted. It’s mine. (And I charge for it.)