# Genre-Specific Editing Considerations

## Literary Fiction

**Core principle:** Form and content are inseparable. Meaning emerges through the relationship between what is said and how it is said.

**Editorial approach:**
- Be deeply attuned to prose at the sentence level while holding structural and thematic architecture in mind
- Resist the temptation to impose your own aesthetic — literary sensibility is not literary taste
- Serve the author's vision. The most damaging interventions make a book sound more like the editor
- Look for: narrative voice, thematic coherence, prose rhythm, structural innovation, emotional depth
- Be willing to read slowly and repeatedly — literary fiction rewards and demands attention

**Economic reality:** Literary fiction rarely produces large commercial returns. Editors who publish it must either work at a house whose mission supports it or cross-subsidise with more commercial titles.

## Genre Fiction (Romance, Mystery, SF/Fantasy, Thriller)

**Core principle:** Must entertain. Boredom is the cardinal sin. Genre fiction competes not just with other books but with every form of leisure.

**Editorial approach:**
- Readers don't just follow the protagonist — they become them. Character identification drives engagement.
- Know the genre deeply. Genre readers have sophisticated expectations; meeting them is craft, not formula.
- Each genre has specific requirements:
  - **Romance:** Emotional tension and satisfying resolution
  - **Mystery:** Fair-play plotting, misdirection, satisfying revelation
  - **SF/Fantasy:** Internally consistent world-building
  - **Thriller:** Pacing, stakes, escalation
- The distinction between "genre" and "literary" is increasingly meaningless. Genre fiction frequently crosses into literary territory.

## General Nonfiction

**Core principle:** Must be persuasive — carry the reader along as a good dinner-table story carries its audience.

**Editorial approach:**
- The most useful marginal comment: "I'm bored here"
- Watch for: drive, richness, economy, clarity, and shape
- Flag repetition, excessive detail, and passages where the author assumes knowledge the reader doesn't have
- The editor represents the non-expert reader. Deep knowledge is the author's greatest asset but can lead to skipping steps or dwelling on specialist detail.
- Nonfiction must offer a journey — the promise that with the author's guidance, the reader will see something new and be changed.

## Memoir and Biography

### Memoir
**Core principle:** The author's subjectivity is a feature, not a problem. Memoir is a life examined from the inside.

**Editorial approach:**
- The story must impose narrative shape on messy chronology
- Not everything that happened belongs in the book — selection is craft
- The memoirist must answer: why does this story matter beyond my own life?
- Voice is paramount — the reader is investing in a relationship with the narrator

### Biography
**Core principle:** A life examined from the outside, with the apparatus of research and verification.

**Editorial approach:**
- Two opening questions: Why does this life matter? And to whom?
- Watch for: excessive reliance on sources without authorial synthesis, inability to distinguish important from merely interesting, reluctance to draw conclusions the evidence supports
- Be sceptical of the "there's never been a biography of X" pitch — usually there's a reason
- What makes a life book-worthy is not novelty but resonance: the capacity to illuminate something beyond itself

## Children's and Young Adult

**Core principle:** Audience awareness. What a toddler needs is entirely different from what a ten-year-old needs, which is entirely different from what a teenager needs.

**Editorial approach:**
- Constantly ask: is this appropriate, comprehensible, and engaging for the intended reader?
- Picture books demand that text and images work together, not duplicate each other — the editor must leave room for the illustrator
- Children read for the story, not the commentary. They don't theorise. When bored, they simply stop reading.
- This radical honesty should discipline editors in every category.

## Scholarly Nonfiction

**Core principle:** First, do no harm. Scholarly authors have invested years in preparation. Improve without distorting.

**Editorial approach:**
- Common problems: excessive citation burying the author's voice, jargon signalling insider status at the expense of accessibility, excessive length from reluctance to cut research, structural problems from converting a dissertation to a book
- Help authors step back from their material, find their argument, and present it with economy and clarity — without losing rigour
- A dissertation demonstrates knowledge. A book communicates it. The editor helps make the transition.
