In praise of line editing

I was involved in a discussion about line editing recently, and it was very thought-provoking. It provoked so many thoughts, in fact, that I actually dusted off this here blog of mine to write about it.

Line editing, combined with copyediting, is one of the services I offer, and on my services pages, I describe it thus: “line editing, also known as heavy copyediting or stylistic editing, looks at the style and flow of your writing to make sure those ideas are expressed as beautifully as they can be, while still retaining your distinct voice.” I then list a few things I consider (or at least I did at the time I wrote my web copy) to be elements of that, such as ensuring variety in sentence structure, reducing over-description, and show/tell balance.

But as I’ve been pondering line editing, what it means to other people and what it means to me, I’ve started to wonder if there might be a different way of thinking about it. Line editing is a relatively new term, at least here in the UK. It is much more common in the US, so it makes sense that those of us working in the indie market, which borrows a lot of its practices and terminology from the US, have adopted it. And the distinction that some of us draw between it and copyediting is one that many editors, and perhaps some clients, aren’t 100% comfortable with.

Copyediting, the argument goes, is the art and the process of editing the copy. When the text has been through all the developmental stages and the content is sound, the copyeditor does what’s needed to get the text ready for the next stage (which in a traditional publishing workflow is layout). That’s everything – everything – from rearranging sentences to spotting those rogue italicized full stops. Line editing isn’t a separate thing and doesn’t need to be.

There’s a lot of substance to this argument. Copyediting can sometimes get very, very heavy. Some texts require a lot of intervention; there are copyeditors the world over doing that kind of work, and neither they nor their clients feel the need to call it anything different or divide it into different elements. Critics of the term are also concerned that it devalues the whole practice of copyediting – by creating a distinction, it “reduces” copyediting to the mere mechanical fixing of errors. And while I’d definitely say that there’s nothing “mere” about the skill involved in the mechanical side of copyediting, I have sympathy for this argument too. I see this limited view of copyediting in writers groups from time to time, where authors will argue that a copyeditor has overstepped their remit by restructuring a sentence or suggesting different wording. This idea that copyeditors shouldn’t be looking at sentences this way is ill-informed at best, nonsense at worst, and I can see why people aren’t keen to reinforce that idea any further. True copyediting does take in the nuanced issues of style and flow and voice, and good copyeditors are so much more than grammar checkers.

But here’s why I think line editing is a useful concept, especially when it comes to long-form fiction, which is what I almost exclusively edit.

One reason is to do with the practicalities of today’s publishing landscape. Editorial staff at publishers get ever more overworked, and budgets get ever more squeezed. Traditionally, many of the things that I call line editing would be handled at the developmental stage, by the acquiring editor (as described in this LitHub piece). But, as the article posits and I strongly suspect is true, acquiring editors have to wear so many hats these days that they don’t always have the time to go into that level of detail with their authors, much as they might like to. So this stage sometimes gets squeezed out of traditional publishing altogether (although I know of at least one major imprint of one major publisher that specifically outsources it), because publishers’ budgets for copyediting rarely allow for an edit with a high level of intervention. And then, of course, many fiction editors now work directly with self-publishing authors, who don’t have that one person dedicated to their book until they pay one. Sometimes, these authors only have the resources, or the desire, for the bare minimum of editing.

So lines have to be drawn. Copyediting often, by necessity, becomes about readability above all – ensuring clarity, consistency, correctness, and paying enough attention to things like style and voice and rhythm to make sure that the reader’s journey through the text is as smooth and obstacle-free as possible. There is nothing “lesser” about this skill, not at all. In fact, learning how to hold back from making changes that aren’t necessary is one of the very hardest things for an editor to do.

But to me, line editing is different, and the distinction is one that I think mainly applies to fiction.

Copyediting edits the copy. But, and allow me to switch into insufferable author mode for a second, my novel is not *copy*. I mean, it is, obviously. It’s words on a page, and those words need to be prepared for publication in exactly the same way that an academic paper on Neolithic woodlice or some marketing text for fish fingers does. But no novelist would ever say they’ve created “copy”. We’ve built universes. We’ve breathed life into people made of words. We’ve built a thousand tiny moments that add up to something greater than their whole. (I know, I know – I’ve gone waaaayyyy pretentious here and am probably losing a lot of you. I told you, I’m in author mode. It’s allowed.)

A line editor’s job, in my opinion, is at that level of the moment.

(If your eyes just rolled so hard you think you might have sustained some kind of injury, I don’t actually blame you. That sounds wanky AF. But I stand by it.)

In effective fiction, a sentence is rarely just a sentence. It is part of a moment, one experienced by both character and reader, and very often, that moment is supposed to evoke some kind of emotional reaction in the reader. The aim of line editing, in my opinion, is to make sure those moments are doing what the author intended them to do, as effectively as possible, in the author’s style.

It’s a somewhat nebulous concept, difficult to fully explain, because art is a slippery creature. There isn’t necessarily a clear hard boundary, with copyediting on one side and line editing on the other and never the twain shall meet. Both types of editing have the same tools at their disposal – we can reorder sentences, substitute words, delete words, add words, deploy punctuation. But for me, I’m coming to realise, the difference is not in the what, but in the why.

When copyediting, I might add a full stop because a sentence was long and unwieldy, and breaking it up will make it much easier on the reader. In a line edit, I might suggest adding a full stop because, say, this is a moment of stark realization. It’s hitting the character hard, and it should hit the reader hard. So we hit them. Hard. As a copyeditor, I might suggest adding an adjective for clarity; as a line editor, I’m more likely to suggest one to add impact, to more strongly depict a character’s perception or reaction, to create atmosphere.

These changes might not be necessary in order for the reader to understand or even enjoy the sentence, the page, the book. But they’re helping the author elevate their prose into something that, at every juncture, does what the author wanted it to do.

Some might say wait, isn’t this developmental editing? And in some ways, perhaps it is; the lines are blurry here too. The two certainly share many of the same aims – creating a satisfying, powerful story. But in developmental editing, we’re largely focusing on the high-level problems and the high-level solutions to them. The plot is implausible – how do we make it work? This character is too flawed – how do we make them relatable? The pacing is all wrong – what do we cut?

But once those big-picture elements are on a firm footing, line editing can use sentence- and paragraph-level techniques to bolster them further. Characters are made of words, plot is made of words, atmosphere is made of words – those are high-level issues, but they don’t always require high-level solutions. The example I like to use is one that I come across a lot as a romance editor: chemistry. Chemistry is a big-picture issue – if it’s not there, a romance novel fails. But chemistry is built in tiny moments – glances, touches, actions and reactions – and those moments consist of sentences that we can polish. We can add adjectives to make them sizzle. We can play with the punctation to make them breathless. You strengthen the sentence, which strengthens the moment, which strengthens the story. Line editing, to me, is the process of helping an author to mindfully tweak and pull at their sentences in order to maximise the impact of those moments.

Copyediting makes the sentences easier to read. Line editing makes the moment harder to forget.

My fellow editors may not agree with any of this. That’s fine. As long as you know what you do, and your clients know what you do, it’s all good, baby. (My fellow editors of a more pragmatic bent may no longer wish to associate with me now after all my flowery pontificating, which would be a shame, because I promise I can still be a proper copyeditor who has strong opinions about commas.) But I love line editing, and I’m not letting go of either the term or my passion for the process any time soon.