14 October 2014

editing

First things first: tomorrow is the submissions deadline for the November 2014 issues of Electric Spec. Get those stories in.

Our submissions page says A note on our editorial policy: before publication we may edit the story for length or readability. However, we always remain true to the spirit of the story.

Some authors are scared away by this. Don't be. Obviously, we edit for spelling and grammar. The most common other edits are cutting extra words and lines. Many authors repeat themselves. Sometimes authors go off on tangents that don't relate to the story at hand.
Sometimes authors have pov shifts--we fix these with as few word changes as possible.
Sometimes we alter the spacing of prose on the page. For example if something is very important we might give it its own paragraph.
Once in a while we don't feel the title does justice to the story. We might tell the author: we think the essence of the story is this. Can you come up with a less generic title?

Electric Spec editors do not write any part of your story. We have never changed the essence of any story and we never will. If we didn't like your story we wouldn't have bought it.

And, bottom line, any change has to meet with the approval of the author.

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