If you’ve never worked with a book editor before, you’re probably wondering what it’ll be like. What kind of feedback do editors give and how do they interact with your manuscript? Is all the time and money of a professional edit actually worth it?

Here I’ve included the first draft and two successive rounds of edits on a flash fiction story that I edited as part of Havok Magazine’s team. My hope is that you will see how editing can bring out the best in a manuscript, clarifying the language, character and plot, and emotional impact.

Havok is an online flash fiction magazine that publishes a 1000 word story each day of the week on the following schedule: Mystery Monday, Techno Tuesday (sci-fi), Wacky Wednesday (humor), Thriller Thursday, Fantasy Friday. I was an editor with the Mystery Monday team for a year.

I share these various drafts with the permission of the author, Victoria Roberts, and Havok’s owners – Andrew Winch and Teddi Deppner.

First Draft

This is the first draft the author submitted to Havok. I, and my fellow editors, read all of the submitted stories for that month and chose which ones to acquire. There were a few reasons this story stood out to me for acceptance:

• The character has a clear goal and transformation
• High life and death stakes
• The situation is emotionally and politically complex, but grounded in a simple scene and decision
• Strong physical interactions between the characters, space, and the objects in it
• Varied descriptions using multiple senses
• A balanced mix of dialogue and internal reflection

Take a moment to read the original version before reviewing successive edits.

First Round of Edits

These are the edits I and my team submitted to the author for review. She then had a chance to make submissions and submit a second draft. In my comments, you’ll see a combination of the three major types of editing (proofreaders were a separate team).

Developmental feedback: questions about the character’s situation and motivations and suggestions for how to improve the opening and ending.

Line edits: improving sentence structure, clarifying descriptions, and offering suggestions to maintain conciseness.

Copy edits: grammar and spelling corrections.

Second Round of Edits

This is the stage where collaboration and clarification come into play. You’ll see that the author accepted a number of my edits as they were. In other places, she left comments explaining what her vision was and asking for further input, or made the suggested edits in her own words.

That’s the sign of an effective editor-author collaboration. Editorial suggestions are just that – suggestions. A good editor will help shape a story into the best it can be according to each author’s style. A good writer will be willing to communicate openly with their editor, standing up for their own choices where it matters, asking questions, offering various revisions and asking the editor which one they think is the clearest and most compelling choice.

Third Round of Edits

A third round of edits isn’t always necessary – here, you’ll see that the author fiddled with her word choice a little more and made sure her word count fell within parameters. And I assured her that she should be the one to finalize these details.

Final Version

If you want to read the final version of this story, you can find it on Havok’s website! They publish a story every day of the week – each story of the day is free to read, and an annual subscription of $4.99 gains readers access to their entire catalogue.

If you’re interested in submitting a flash fiction story of 1000 words or less, you can find information about Havok’s monthly themes on their website. They are such a kind and joyful team to work with, and I highly recommend them! Thank you, Andrew and Teddi, for allowing me to share about Havok’s process!

You can also follow Havok on social media.

• Instagram
• Facebook

Thank You, Victoria!

A big thank you to the Victoria Roberts, the author of “To Break a Kingdom,” for letting me share her in-progress story on my website. Many authors hate for their early drafts to ever see the light of day! But that makes it hard for other writers to understand how stories can change during the process of editing. So thank you for sharing your work so others can learn from your example! Please check out more of Victoria’s work through the links below.

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Thanks for stopping by my website! I hope you’ve found some helpful resources about reading, writing, and publishing. If you liked this article, here’s some more free content…

• Learn more about the different types of book editing
• Send me an email to receive a free sample edit on the first 1000 words of your story
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