Editors can be weird. Really weird. I thought I’d share a couple of “those” stories today.

If you’re reading this, then you’ll probably know me as a Christian blogger. What you might not know, however, is that I spent several years freelancing as a copywriter for some high-profile clients. I’ve written for large tech blogs, newspapers, financial services, celebrity bakers, and fashion brands.

Each contract required me to write to a very specific brief, within a tight timeframe, in a bespoke tone, and sometimes in imitation of another’s voice. It’s all very specific and immensely demanding. I gave this up when my first book was accepted for publication.

I think that by writing in both the ‘secular’ and ‘Christian’ worlds, I have gained some insight into the differences that exist between the two. Spoiler alert, I’ve had by far the most difficult experiences with professional editors in the Christian world.

Before I go on, I’d like to say that I have met some incredibly talented and professional Christian editors. My book Rebooted, for instance, was edited by IVP with great skill and care. I’m not saying, therefore, that all Christian editors are poorer at their jobs than their non-Christian counterparts, as I’m sure I’d be wrong.

What I am going to do is tell three stories, each with a different editing oddity that I’ve experienced uniquely with Christian editors.

Amputating voice

I was commissioned to write a piece for a large American site on the topic of theological education. There were issues from the beginning.

As a large group, the site had multiple editors, and the commissioning editor was not the editor that was chosen to work with me. This second editor showed very little interest in the idea and took weeks (and sometimes months) to respond to my messages. This meant the piece took half a year to publish which, even on larger platforms in the digital world, is a very long time.

The biggest problem, however, was when I received the final draft back every single piece of personality or ‘voice’ was edited out of the piece. It was almost completely rewritten to be tone-deaf. Every single joke or lightly toned line, every carefully placed anecdote, and even every metaphor, was unceremoniously removed from the piece. One word for this would be ‘bland’ but it’s actually worse than that.

When I write an article that I know could be easily misunderstood or contentious, I work hard to flow in and out of concepts and suggestions both lightly and deliberately. Articles like this are composed, not just written. Tone is a specific tool that’s honed by a writer to move through paragraphs with rhythms and colour that serve the content. By removing these textures you create far more room for misunderstanding and end up with a much more polarising piece.

The result was a Frankenstein’s monster of what I’d written. It was completely without nuance, personality, or flow. As a result, it came across as aggressive and divisive.

If you need to change the tone that dramatically from the author you have chosen to voice the piece, then you need to go back to the author for a rewrite with a clearer brief. That, or you need to find a different author. Personally, I’d much rather an article is just rejected than published badly.

Click-bait

Online Christian media over the last decade has become increasingly funnel-shaped. The idea is to get as many hits onto an article as possible in the hope that some of them will read it, some of them will engage with it, some of them will share it, and some of that will result in revenue. It’s an awkward business really.

This often means that titles don’t always clearly flow from the piece but are designed to draw people in regardless of the content. I’ve had several debates with editors about titles to my pieces, but I’ve had a couple which changed the meaning entirely – and were published without checking with me first.

In one, I had phrased a title with an abstract question, which was instead changed into a blunt, definitive statement. One which I didn’t believe, and that the article didn’t say. In another, I had a description of a person from within the piece taken out of its context, and then starkly made into the entire title. Both rewritten titles were aggressive, volatile, combative, and deeply polarising – which I guess was the point, as they were clearly click-bait.

I did manage to get both changed back (somewhat), but this was after they were published, and some of the damage had already been done.

In a similar story, a friend wrote a 1000-word article about relativism in youth ministry in which Game of Thrones was mentioned just briefly, once, as one of several examples. The editor then retitled the piece something like ‘why Christians shouldn’t watch Game of Thrones’ even though the article had nothing to do with it. This provoked a huge social media backlash that wrongly tainted the author’s reputation and resulted in a very poor ‘response’ piece– which was then published by the original editor! If you’re interested, you can read my response to that response here.

When an editor uses an author’s piece to push readers into the funnel by using click-bait, they are showing enormous disregard for the author’s hard work and ongoing reputation – and it shows that they value the effect of a post far more than its content.

Pointless changes

This is an odd one, but probably the most pervasive. In many of my articles there has been something changed that absolutely didn’t need to be changed. This isn’t me just being a diva (although that can happen), it’s genuinely editors making completely unnecessary corrections, additions, deletions and significant voice changes without any discernible grammar, flow, audience, or content reasons why.

This can be quite innocent, like making sentences a little longer or shorter by changing punctuation. Sometimes this is necessary, but I’m talking about times that it makes genuinely no difference to the flow or sense of a piece. More frequently though its changes to metaphors or ideas that totally did not need the change. The one that sticks out mostly in my memory is changing my example ‘half a banana’ to ‘half a red bull.’ Why?

This, I believe, comes down to working with an editor who doesn’t have much experience developing somebody else’s voice other than their own. They might have done plenty of writing, but editing truly is a different skill set. This means that they read while subconsciously overlaying their own style and making changes through that personal lens. Unaware to them they read with a ‘how would I say this’ approach, rather than ‘is it good, does it work’ approach.

If you’re going to suggest a content change to an author, first suggest it and give them chance to address it, don’t just do it. Second, give a reason why you think it serves the point, the piece, or the platform better than what they had put.

A little suggestion

I’ll end with a little suggestion to editors: Work with your authors not just with your products.

Editing a piece for your platform while forgetting about the fingers than penned it, or the heart that sowed it, or the mind that formed it, is blatantly disrespectful. Almost all of my issues with editors have come from this sense of passive disregard that I have felt from them.

Because I’ve written professionally for paying clients I expect changes, disagreements, and critique. I want my piece to genuinely serve your readers. Working with an editor, then, should be a dialogue between two people and two audiences, not just a ‘platform’ and an ‘article.’

I know authors can be a pain too. I certainly can be. So, let’s do better together.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash