A Detail Lost....

[alfreda89]

There are things I can catch and change, like "monstrous" carpetbags, or corn "stooks" instead of stocks. But I just realized something that was lost from the original manuscript that will have to remain lost, unless there is ever a special edition of Night Calls and Kindred Rites. Marta is a language chameleon--she changes her voice patterns to help her connect with the people she's currently speaking with. Allie even notices this at the beginning of the third book.

But the copy editor, thinking this was an adult, smoothed out those times when she did it with someone who was less educated, or who needed the comfort of a dialect.

The original files exist, but I can't stop to look for that now--I am officially late for the first time in my career, but grateful to still be editing....

Still. It seemed small or inconsistent to the editor, so she didn't ask, she just changed it and turned it in.

I find that my subconscious usually has a reason for something it does.

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, how very annoying. I don't feel, myself, that copy editors should mess with dialogue at all. I had some characters use the locution "you better [do or not do x]," and the copy editor added "had" into every one of them and I HAD to take them all out. The most a copy editor should do with the actual structure of the dialogue is to query it. Mmph.

P.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I still have the STET stamp you and DDB gave me! ;^)

And used it!

[pameladean]

Oh, that's wonderful!

We concluded at some point that we really should have made the stamp slightly larger so that its marks would be easier to see. At the time I was incensed by the lower-casing of a great many names in the Secret Country trilogy, and mostly concerned with being able to stet numerous words in the same line or paragraph.

P.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Yes, if you were re-doing it, a tad larger would probably be good--if only because vision is challenging right now.

I should send you the 25th anniversary piece I wrote to go inside the ebook for Fire Sanctuary. I talked a bit about being a new author, and allowing a copy editor to lower case Initial Caps or Initial Cap lower case words for a language that was thousands of years in the future.

So I matched the copy edit on the second book.

Then the CE on the second book lced the ICs and ICed the lc.

On the third book I went back to my original manuscript style and STETed the life out of the manuscript. By that time, I'd figured out that up to a point it was a game, and although I was not an English major, I could play, too. ;^)

[pameladean]

AAAGH. Such finicky nonsense!

And yes, indeed, you could play, because you are the WRITER.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden once wrote a special guide for people copy-editing fantasy novels, and one of the pieces of advice she provided was that they should seriously consider leaving the capitalization alone.

I'd love to read the essay. I wish I could buy the ebooks, but money is pretty tight right now.

P.

[sheilagh.livejournal.com]

so you know that the editor changed some number of lines -- do you know which scenes?

how is it that you know lines were changed?

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I hit a big change one, said #$%$ It and matched the book. One of those side effects of sometimes SQUIRREL and continuing through trying to get it done.

Some days I hate my brain.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

I remember in (I think) the first book, Allie also notices this ability of Marta's.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

It's in there somewhere still, if diluted, which is why I think I can leave it behind for now. I might go looking for one example, but it's a small thing in the overall presentation of the book. I have to finish today. Have to!

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

I remember trying to see where in the dialogue Marta had changed her patterns of speach and not seeing it. It itched a bit at the time.

Yay on the progress of the book.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I was too tired and just changed one example to the HC version as I was going through, but when I hit a tiny but telling one among friends in the very last chapter, I left the original manuscript unedited. So you will have an Easter Egg to find if you like!

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

I look forward to the 'hunt'.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

;^)