Editors are humans too

This weekend I spent some thirty hours reading through the edits sent back by my editor.  Looking at all I did in getting a total of thirty out of thirty-four chapters edited back in, I probably accepted over 98% of her edits.  I don’t know how that equates to other writers, but I truly found the new version far easier to read.

Where I did disagree was in some of the content, I thought was important for the main character’s arc.  Some things she thought were unnecessary I did not agree.  In some cases, I did take the option to rewrite it, in others I simply left my copy in and ignored her changes.  We as authors – wannabe authors – have to keep in mind that the story we tell is ours to tell.

 

Erotica versus Erotic Romance

The more I read my story the more I stand firm on my opinion that there is romance in the story.  It doesn’t meet the criterial of a romance trope, so I see why my editor keeps telling me it is only an erotica story. 

There is a love affair between Mike and Helen.  They do meet the rudimentary trope steps of:

Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Fights for her and gets her back.  In this case it should be Man is married to girl, etc., and in the end, they leave Happily Ever After – at least for now.

 

Next Steps in Publishing my Erotica (Romance?) Piece

I’ve been here once before.  I thought I was finished. Reality told me that the manuscript was not ready for prime time.  This time I feel more confident because of all the extra work, the tightening of the story, and the more reasonable length.  The question has to be, what do I do next.

As I see it, I have to finish the last four chapters this week.  I need to format it for my eReader and then sit back and read it from cover to cover.  I’m sure I’ll find lots of things to clean up.  Once I have done the best job I can, I think Beta Readers are in order.  I need feedback and that’s my next step.

 

What to ask the Beta Readers to tell me?

There are a couple of obvious things that a Beta Reader needs to give an author.  The first being, do you see some typos I missed.  The second, and related to the first, are there some words missing, or used improperly. What I don’t want are structural changes at this point.  This novel has had two structural reviews and a full professional edit.

 

Is this Erotica (Romance?) novel readable?

That is a new question I have to have the Beta Readers tell me up front.  Did you read it all the way through?  Would you have read it all the way through, had you not committed to help me with the book?

I never would have thought of these questions in the past.  It was a casual conversation with a friend that I let read the early version of the novel.  She let it slip that she did not read all of it, and that she skipped some of it before putting it aside.  That went in one ear and out the other, but apparently, I did pay attention to it.  In the last two weeks that slip, almost missed, comment has come back with a vengeance.  If a friend cannot read the novel she asked to read, then how good is the story?

The next Beta Readers are not going to be close friends, they are going to be acquaintances at best, and experienced Beta Readers at least.  I will want to know if they read through it all the way or not.  That will tell me if the story is compelling enough to publish, or if it was an expensive course in writing.