#am editing

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[moonlight-444]

Ngl this took me an entire ass day to create and finish it, I dont even know where I got the motivation from 🥀

Also I tried looking up the lyrics many times but apparently there were multiple versions so I had to settle on one

It may be a lil off beat btw 🫶

[x3emi]

SAIOUMA EDIT!!!

bro its ao choppy stop i thought it was just my lag im genuinely disappointed 😭😭😭

[bethelreads]

Things I catch as a beta reader that authors miss every single time:

I've been doing this professionally for a while now, and there are 5 problems I find in almost EVERY manuscript I read. These are things the author literally cannot see because they are too close to their own story. 🚩 The Phantom Character: A side character who shows up in chapter 2, disappears for 200 pages, and then randomly reappears at the climax like nothing happened. The author knows where they were, but the reader forgot they existed. 🚩 The Repeat Reveal: The author explains the magic system/rules in chapter 3... and then explains it AGAIN in chapter 8... and then AGAIN in chapter 15. The reader is screaming "I KNOW ALREADY." 🚩 The Competent Streak: The protagonist wins every single confrontation. They never fail, never get embarrassed, and never make a wrong call. There are no stakes because we know they'll succeed. 🚩 The Calendar Crisis: The story says "three days passed" but the characters traveled 400 miles on horseback, healed from two injuries, and had four long conversations. The math does not add up. 🚩 The Sagging Middle: Chapters 8-15 are just characters talking in rooms. No one is making decisions. No one is in danger. The plot is technically moving, but it feels like walking through mud. If any of these sound familiar, don't panic! Every author does this. That's literally why professional beta readers exist—to be the fresh eyes who catch what you can't. My DMs are open if you want me to hunt down these problems in YOUR manuscript! 📚✨

[love-takes-work]

I'm asking for a test audience so we can let these girls kiss

If you didn't know, uh, I'm an author in my Other Life and I have a new YA novel that needs test readers. This is a far-future science fiction coming-of-age type story with a sapphic romantic storyline and a lot of queer rep. Includes lesbians in spaaaaace.

You should volunteer if any of these apply:

you have experience beta reading

you think you can give good commentary (not looking for "editing"; just your thoughts and advice)

you can say more than "I liked it"

you are willing to not share the manuscript with anyone

you have experience being a gay teenager

you have experience being raised in a religious household

wanna read something gay af

you think the story sounds cool

So about the story (sorry, want to be very vague, for Reasons):

A girl from a humanlike race of aliens is struggling with how to achieve maturity. Her species worships a goddess and is obsessed with fertility, which defines their adulthood and inspires all their rituals. This becomes a problem because the girl is realizing she's gay and that's an issue for a race that thinks typical procreation is everything. She probably wouldn't even know being gay was an option if she wasn't getting her education outside her commune at a mostly-human school. And that's where she meets . . . the new girl. The aliens have a complicated history with humanity. Humans nearly caused their species to die out 600 years ago, back on their home planet that also embodies their goddess. But her school isn't there, or on Earth; it's another new world that the two races are colonizing together. So when the protagonist develops feelings for the new girl in school, it's not only weird to like a girl, but weird to be getting close with a human. While she's trying to figure out what all this means and begins secretly dating the human girl, her home life is also getting more complex. Her family, especially her grandmother, expects her to go through a series of rituals and participate in life-giving ceremonies, and it's becoming more and more difficult to avoid just declaring interest in a boy from home and move forward in her life. And she DOES find her people's religion fulfilling in most ways; she just wants to be allowed to explore it on her terms, and that doesn't seem to be an option. She and her girlfriend have to figure out where they go from here and whether their love will require a revolution.

What will happen if you volunteer:

I'll send you 3 chapters to see if you like it

You send comments and thoughts, and constructive criticism if you have it (feedback can be provided any way you like, from Word comments to rambly e-mails)

You decide if you want the rest, and if you do, I send it for more of the above

I incorporate your thoughts as appropriate

I finalize the draft and send it to my agent and she likes it and we go on sub and get published????? I have done this before. I know what I'm doing y'all

You can be in the acknowledgments if you want?

Just send me a private message with contact info for where to send the chapters or if you want to ask me stuff first you can.

[moonshinemagpie]

publisher: it's a light copyedit only the manuscript:

i don't think people, including honestly many publishers, understand how much a book is a handmade thing.

yes, all books have typos, but it's because the publisher gave me 15 days to copyedit a 400-page book with a 57-page bibliography where all these extra spaces have to be deleted individually, all these backwards and misplaced quotation marks individually noticed and fixed. Microsoft Word macros and wildcards and specialized editorial software help, but these processes are not magically automated.

the manuscript will go back to the author after this, who will be given a limited amount of time to review edits and may or may not have the energy to actually read through the manuscript again, not just glance at the changes I made and give a general stamp of approval.

even experienced authors often dont really understand their role in the author review process, so there's like a solid 50/50 chance they're going to do something very unhelpful, like rewrite an entire chapter, and there goes their chance at having a thoroughly, fully copyedited manuscript.

after the review, i'll get a small window of time to "clean up" the manuscript. then it'll go to the typesetter, and then to the proofreader, who at that point can't make major changes and also has a very, very tight deadline. oftentimes the proofreader is just the production editor, which means that they have approximately .15 seconds/day to get proofreading done, and also they've already read the MS, so they're not actually the fresh pair of eyes you'd really need to catch minor mistakes.

anyway. just a lil' glimpse into why books can look sloppy.

[adrenaline-whump]

I'm editing a sentence. I'm rearranging words, trying different phrasing, scowling at the screen, and generally fighting with what I want to say. Why? Because the darn sentence works perfectly with an em-dash. But I feel obligated to reword it anyway. Stupid AI....