My guest writer, Desiree Villena, is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with editors, designers, and marketers. Over to you, Renee . . .

How do you know if you need an editor?

Needing an editor isn’t like a medical condition — you can’t exactly diagnose someone as either needing or not needing an editor. That said, certain patterns exhibited by some writers tend to mean they’ll benefit from working with a professional editor. And hiring a professional editor isn’t just about improving one book, after all! It’s also about improving your process as a whole, since an experienced professional can really teach you a lot. With that in mind, here are five ways you can tell if you need to work with an editor to improve your writing.

1. You’re too precious about your work

No writer has ever sat down on a sunny day and admitted, of their own accord, ‘Man, it really seems like I’m too precious about my writing.’ Writers tend to arrive at that thought after the tender nod of external feedback has caused them to react defensively or even aggressively. You might not think that you consider your own work perfect, but if you respond to people’s feedback with hostility, you really are the epitome of “precious”.

If this sounds like you, I strongly urge you to consider hiring an editor, as they’ll have suggestions that could help tighten up the plot of your story, trim out unnecessary scenes, enhance character, and show you how to self-edit more effectively by creating distance between yourself and your project.

If that sounds really painful, it’s just further proof that you might be too emotionally attached to your work to edit it objectively yourself. Besides, it’s important to learn to handle external feedback. Even if you publish your book without listening to anyone’s opinion, being able to accept constructive criticism is an essential skill for a writer’s survival. If you can’t handle a single negative comment, what’s going to happen when you start getting book reviews?

2. You’ve never shown anybody your work

Not every writer has an MFA under their belt. Sometimes, a shy writer will tentatively send their secret project to a literary agent, and find themselves landing a publishing deal without having shared their writing with anyone before. Miracles like this do happen, but if you would rather not bet on a miracle, it’s always safer to consult an editor before attempting to find a literary agent, to make sure that your work is up to standard.

The truth is, because the ‘slush piles’ of submissions that agents go through are so enormous, minor issues or mistakes in your writing could determine whether your work is accepted or not. Many writers receive rejections and take these to be a sort of satisfaction survey, indicative of their worth as an artist. But had they consulted an editor to make sure their work started off strong before submitting it, they might have received a different response. If you’ve never shared your work with anyone, and especially if you don’t have someone in your immediate circle you can ask for feedback, hiring an editor means maximizing your project’s chances of literary success.

3. You have too many ideas

Another predicament that should lead you straight to a professional editor is having too many ideas. If you have grand ideas of crafting the book that will appeal to every reader, like a paranormal romance set in the Roman Empire that is suddenly overtaken by zombies and a mysterious conspiracy of cyber-assassins, for example, you are in dire need of an editor. An editor will be able to see the value in your ideas, while also telling you which parts you need to sharpen up and which overwritten parts may need to go. (If that sounds painful, refer back to point #1.)

Yes, sometimes heterogeneous ideas can be a powerful asset for authors looking to write quirky literary fiction — but most of the time, mismatched elements are the result of simple overzealousness. So do yourself a favor and get an editor to look over your ideas. You might be trying to write two novels at once and not realize it!

4. You don’t have a strong sense of genre

Following from the point above, an editor can also help you if you aren’t sure what genre you’re primarily working within. This might sound like it’s not an especially necessary aspect of the writing process, but in truth, the most sophisticated projects will always exist in significant relation to previous works in their genre.

Think of it like this. If you know the convention for your genre is for there to be a happy ending, you might consider playing around with that trope in dialogue with existing works. If you end your work with the villain getting the better of the protagonist, for example, or a mystery remaining unsolved, you could make a powerful point by defying the expectations of the genre.

It depends on how you handle it, of course, but if your sense of genre tropes isn’t strong enough, you’ll need an editor’s help — and while we’re at it, I’m prescribing an intense dose of reading around your subject, too! Reading books similar to your work in progress will always help you become more familiar with your target market. If your target market is children’s books, for example, your editor will be able to direct you to essential children’s lit, as well as help you with the early stages of your marketing strategy (in other words envisioning your book on the right shelf of a bookstore).

5. You aren’t writing in your first language

There are so many authors writing in English that people sometimes forget that English isn’t everyone’s first language. Many excellent writers who wrote directly in English (not in translation), weren’t actually native speakers — think of Nabokov, for example! Or, to bring it closer to home, I’m writing this post in my second language, too, even though you might not have thought about that possibility.

No matter how fluent you are as a second language speaker, you may sometimes make tiny mistakes such as using the wrong preposition or getting punctuation wrong because your first language uses speech marks differently. That’s okay! You’re already accomplishing something that, to many, would seem completely impossible. Still, as a non-native speaker, you are likely to particularly benefit from an editor, just to eliminate any minor linguistic errors that could detract from the great first impression your writing should make. A copy editor or proofreader will be able to clean up your manuscript in no time!

I hope these ways to tell whether you need an editor help you weigh your individual circumstances and come to a decision. The fact that you’re on this blog, reading this post, indicates that you’re on the right track, researching your way along — so I have no doubt you’ll find your way!

Renee