I recently read a story that had perfect grammar, spelling, clarity, punctuation, conciseness, and all the rest. You might think this would be a dream story for an editor. But, nope. It read like a robot had written it. The rules for some of these elements, such as spelling and punctuation, are more strict. But, some, such as clarity and conciseness, have a little more flexibility.
So, my tip for authors is: don't overedit. To overedit is to edit too much. The problem with this is it removes the author voice. As an example, I've been rereading one of my favorite spec-fic series and it's chock-full of things a strict proofreader might remove. To illustrate, a sentence from page one of book one:
But rural northern Louisiana wasn't too tempting to vampires, apparently; on the other hand, New Orleans was a real center fot them--the whole Anne Rice thing, right?
There's a reason this series is fun to reread. :) Wonderful writing! Wonderful voice!
Good luck with your imperfect stories!
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