Copyediting and proofreading are the same no matter the material, right? Wrong. Both fiction and nonfiction can bring their own challenges.

Usually I talk about copyediting and proofreading simultaneously, but proofreading really is a different level of work and should be talked about as such for this topic. So let’s jump into proofreading first.

Proofreading

Honestly, the requirements for proofreading are pretty much the same no matter the topic. Proofreaders are looking for correct spelling and grammar at the most detailed level. Words are words, for the most part, so the proofreader’s job stays mostly the same.

However, in fiction, there’s dialogue. Dialogue is written the way people speak, which is not always correct grammar. When it comes to dialogue, proofreaders have to adopt a habit of looking for good punctuation despite the bad grammar. In other words, the proofreader is trying to ensure that the dialogue is understandable by the reader by punctuating it in a way that it conveys the author’s intentions for the dialogue. The proofreader will not go through an author’s dialogue and make it sound like formal English.

That’s pretty much the only major difference in proofreading for fiction. Of course, fiction isn’t necessarily the only time that good punctuation for bad grammar may be needed—there could be real-life situations where a writer is including exact quotes from someone speaking—but it’s more rare; dialogue happens in fiction the majority of the time.

Copyediting

For copyediting, there’s a good deal more to consider in fiction than there is in nonfiction. And all of it needs to be done while being careful to maintain the author’s voice and not rewrite it in the copyeditor’s own voice.

In nonfiction, there are often citations and a bibliography that need careful checking. In fiction, that’s very unlikely to happen; however, there’s still a good amount of fact checking. For example, if a historical fact, book title, or location is mentioned, among other things, a copyeditor will look them up and verify their accuracy. Or, a copyeditor may look up things that are presented as facts in a novel to see if they’re reasonable. I once looked up how fast an eye could swell after someone is punched when it was mentioned that a character’s eye swelled shut almost immediately afterwards (answer: it’s unlikely to swell immediately, especially that much; it generally takes a couple of hours and up to twenty-four hours).

There’s also quite a lot of attention to detail required over the length of the fiction manuscript. The copyeditor will track things about characters (What do they look like? What are they wearing? Where are they while other characters are doing something else?), about the time line (Is the time line reasonable, or would the characters have had to go back in time to accomplish something? Are they attending school on a Saturday? Did they get across town in ten minutes during rush hour traffic?), and objects (Did water get spilled from a glass of water that seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere? Was that object on a table across the room a minute ago?), and even the weather (e.g., Was it mentioned that someone was wet from the waist down after crossing a river, but it was pouring down rain, and he didn’t have an umbrella, so he was probably wet all over?).

In fantasy, science fiction, and dystopian novels, there can also be a good amount of information about a world that needs to be tracked because it’s different from ours—creatures, technology, aliens, and so forth—all with their own details and abilities that may need to come up again later (even in a subsequent novel for ones in a series or ones that are set in the same world). The copyeditor will keep a style sheet to track all of these details to help ensure there’s not a break in consistency or reasonableness. Some of these style sheets can become quite extensive and take a lot of work to compile. Just think of tracking every creature, alien, and ship in Star Wars!

It’s also easy for authors to accidentally shift point of view. If a story is being told from a certain character’s point of view (whether first, second, or third person), that character wouldn’t suddenly know the thoughts of another character. Sometimes it’s just a slip in point of view for a sentence—a little extra fact to help with character building—and the author may not even notice he’s done it. For example, an author may mention that a character’s parents always wanted him to live nearby. That’s from the parents’ point of view. It represents his parents’ thoughts, not the characters, so the character wouldn’t know that. It could easily be rephrased to say that his parents had always told him that they wanted him to live nearby so that it stays in the same point of view. Such small slips are easy to overlook. Copyeditors have to stay vigilant to find them.

Lastly, there are an abundance of style issues specific to fiction that a copyeditor can help an author identify to help strengthen their writing. I’ll quickly run through a few here.

Authors should show us, not tell us. In manuscripts, there generally shouldn’t be long blocks of narrative where the author tells what happened to a character. Instead, readers should be placed in the action or in a conversation where they can understand what a character knows and is feeling because the reader was there. Narratives have their place. They can be used to speed past something unexciting so that the author can focus on the next bit of action. They can be used to give readers a break between the action, to slow down the pace for a bit. But if it’s an important scene, authors shouldn’t tell readers what happened; they should let them experience it.

“Show, don’t tell” extends to dialogue as well. If a character says something sarcastically, make the dialogue itself come across as sarcastic. Then authors don’t need to tell us that it was sarcastic because it’s already evident. A big clue that an author is doing this is when there’s an “-ly” adverb, such as “sarcastically.”

Another sly thing that is easy to miss is body parts doing something they aren’t supposed to do or being mentioned unnecessarily. For example, “my hand fired the gun” makes it sound like the hand had a mind of its own, which isn’t the case (except maybe in sci-fi). Instead, the character fired the gun. In phrases such as “he shrugged his shoulders” or “he nodded his head,” mentioning the body part isn’t necessary. We don’t normally shrug anything other than our shoulders or nod anything other than our heads. If a character is nodding a tentacle, then that’s worth specifying a body part.

One of the other things a copyeditor looks for is repetition—not just of the same or similar words in close proximity, but also pet phrases of the author that are used throughout the novel and repetition of the same meaning through multiple sentences when one would do. For an example of the last one, consider this:

I was so tired from my long day. I threw my purse on the table, contents spilling. I didn’t clean it up. Instead, I flung myself on the bed. I really hoped I could have a quiet night to catch up on my sleep.

In those few sentences, I’ve expressed multiple times that the character was tired, which is unnecessary. Edited, it would look something like this:

I threw my purse on the table, contents spilling, and flung myself on the bed, where I planned to stay until morning.

This sentence combines all of the sentences into something that lets the reader see the actions of the character and expresses that the character is tired without telling them (it all comes back to “show, don’t tell”). The character obviously notices that the contents of the purse have spilled, since it’s mentioned by the narrator, and has chosen not to do anything about it; it doesn’t have to be spelled out. Going straight to bed, especially with a verb such as “flung” shows that bed is a place the character desperately wants to be. Indicating that the character is staying there until morning shows that she’s planning to catch up on sleep. It also keeps the author’s voice. The edited version doesn’t significantly change what the author wrote; it just tightens it.

What I’ve mentioned here isn’t an exhaustive list of what copyeditors look for in fiction. There’s even more that could go into helping with pacing and tightening up dialogue, for example. But I hope what I’ve revealed here helps explain some of the differences.

What Should Fiction Authors Do?

It’s always helpful if an author has already developed a style sheet, character sheet, time line, map, and so on, as applicable to their manuscript. It’s helpful for authors to be able to track these things as they’re writing, especially if it’s a series, so that they can reference it themselves. If these things are already produced, it helps the editor be clear about the author’s intentions and could reduce the number of inquiries. I’ll talk about style sheets in a later blog.

I also recommend working with an editor who has some experience editing fiction or who has some education in editing fiction. A nonfiction editor or the average English teacher may not be aware of some of the specific style elements that should be edited.

Ultimately, the best method is to get a small sample edit of a couple of pages from any editor you’re considering working with and see if they catch some of the things I’ve mentioned. It also gives each of you a chance to make sure you’re compatible and will have a good working relationship.