Thursday 27 July 2017

The Traits Of A Developmental Editor

By Edward Reynolds


People, who offers support to authors either before or during the publication and release of a manuscript is referred to as the developmental experts. The developmental editor offers his services to the clients either directly or through an editing firm. Depending on their skill set, an editor can handle different genres.

The editor performs a myriad of tasks so that the success of a book or manuscript is a success. One of the main responsibilities is giving relevant suggestions. It is part of their job to ensure that they offer not only suggestions, but also tangible ones at that. Such ideas may be improvement of the style, language or even character development. They however are not responsible for correcting spelling or grammatical errors. Theirs is just to highlight and let the writer carry out the necessary corrections.

A good publishing supervisor should possess a couple of qualities. First of all they have to be able to make clear edits. They should be able to make changes that are understandable such that the writer may be capable to see them clearly. The edits should be written where they may be visible so that the writer might be capable to compare the original manuscript with the edited one and make all the necessary changes.

Secondly, they need to be problem solvers. Once the problem has been identified, they have to offer alternative solutions. Where mistakes have been made a clear way forward should be given so that the problem is addressed and the author is able to focus on other issues.

They should also possess creativity. They are required to view things according to the expert perspective in that they enter their world and see things as the writer does. This way, the publishing supervisor will be able to come up with new creative concepts that can be incorporated into the story to add that little spark to the story. They should also have the capabilities of putting the right words together to help add spice to the story.

Respect is another core value. At the work place, everyone needs to practice mutual respect and recognize that everyone has a unique role, which they need to play in order to ensure that business runs smoothly. The same applies here, where the editor should realize that their job is to revise, offer suggestions, and leave the rest to the writers, who are the only ones with the control of making any kind of alterations to the script.

Everyone needs some guidance at some point of their life and it usually does not matter how experienced you might be. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the editor to give the writer proper instructions of what needs to be done. They should also provide market analysis and know what the readers want.

In order to ensure the success of a book, then both the writer and the publishing supervisor need to chip in equal efforts. They ought to both try and work together by for instance being open-minded, respecting each other in addition to promoting good communication between them.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment