Republic, not Royalty

Eight or nine centuries ago, the word 'roialte' appeared in Old French to describe the office of the king and, in due course, came to describe the rights and privileges granted to those in his favour, including the right to exploit resources on lands claimed by the king.

About three centuries ago, the first copyright law was created and the modern manner in which authors are paid for their work (through outright purchase or a share of profits) was established. 

About a hundred and fifty years after that, the term 'royalty' developed to include intellectual property and so became a standard term in publishing contracts.

So, I as author, am like the feudal lord of the publisher, who plays the role of king, and I am granted the right by them to collect money from those who buy my book, who play the part of peasants in this increasingly bizarre pantomime.

As a writer, of course I believe that words matter and therefore terminology matters, and so I call for an end to this anachronistic spectacle. Just as, according to Roland Barthes, the birth of the reader necessitates the death of the author, so the death of the royalty is necessitated by the birth of the republic.

Henceforth, it is by that latter term - republic - that I will refer to my writerly earnings.

Seven Innovative and Low-cost Ways of Marketing your Book

1. Put it in the tray when going through security at the airport. Explain to the guards that it's absolutely not a risk to national security whatsoever.
2. Turn the title into a cheerful well-wishing, e.g. 'Have a glassy day, worldians!' or 'Upwards and out of the darkness, my friends!'
3. Strap a copy to your chest when shopping, touching it occasionally and uttering a sound of religious devotion like 'whoopiteewoo'.
4. Pretend to read it at the bus stop, laughing and crying uncontrollably before telling fellow passengers that this book has changed your life.
5. Paper your bathroom with it, then invite friends to a meal at your house and slip a diuretic or laxative into their food.
6. Get a parrot from the pet shop, teach it to say the best lines from your book, then return it to the pet shop complaining that it keeps spouting nonsense.
7. Pulp it and use it to fill potholes because that's how roads read books.

Parts of the Novel: A Perspective on Editing

I spent much more time editing and revising my first novel, Glassworld: Out of the Darkness (Amazon link), than actually writing it. In the process, I noticed that not all edits or revisions are alike. This is an attempt to categorise the types of edit that I did and explain how they differ.

This information is most likely to be of use or interest to other novelists or writers of longer fiction, but it might be interesting to readers to see inside the process of polishing a novel at least from the perspective of this writer.

My categories fall into a reasonably clear hierarchy, so it makes sense to refer to them as levels and describe them starting from the most significant and working down. I'm going to refer to the work I did to create Glassworld to provide examples of the concepts I'm discussing. I have tried to avoid spoilers, but if you really don't want to know anything about the book in advance of reading it, you had better stop here. In that case, I suggest going to the index to choose something else to read!

1. Message-level Edit: To me, this is the top level because, perhaps ironically, the deepest motivator for me to write is to impart some kind of message. In my first draft of Glassworld, I managed to satisfy the wish to impart messages about authority but, in my eyes, that draft failed to get my environmental message across. Therefore, a fair proportion of the eighteen months I spent on my second draft was about developing and clarifying my environmental message. My message-level edits involved writing a new beginning to clarify that the world was disintegrating at the edge and developing the idea that the Device had caused much of the fabric of the world to crack.

2. Plot-level Edit: The plot is the backbone of the novel and comprises its major events or segments. This is the highest level element that actually describes the action of the book, but its fundamental purpose is to deliver the message, so plot-level content is inferior to message-level content. In some ways the plot operates obliquely to the message because it interfaces more closely with characters and actions. Nevertheless, the plot is relevant to the message because it broadly permits the writer to show how characters are affected by their circumstances, which may be a source of the message.

In my second draft of Glassworld, I created a new strand of plot in which First Citizen Solarquin inserts a recording device into Skantriftic to force them to become unwilling agents for the government. This was only partially a message-level edit because it only enhanced the message that power is corrupt, but it definitely forced me to alter and add to the sequence of events over the following eight chapters, almost a quarter of the book.

3. Story-level Edit: The story is essentially the details of how the plot is developed. It includes the specifics of which characters were in which places at what point in the novel. Plot and story are nearly synonymous in everyday language, so I'll try to detail what I think the difference is. The fact of Skantriftic and Stranshiftic travelling to the First Citizen's palace to demand an explanation for the descendance that destroys their Community Pod in Chapter I is plot. It's plot because it's the second significant event in the novel, evidenced by its taking from Chapter VI to Chapter XVII to be described. It's plot because any summary or synopsis of the novel would include it.

Whereas, their encounter with some officious guards who try to block their progress in Chapter XII is story. This is story because the related characters and events are fully contained within that chapter. It's story because it's just one of several events which demonstrate the arbitrary and cruel use of power in the novel. An example of a story-level edit would be when I took the dance festival in Aixh-Glsu-Mhellen in Chapter X and added the governmental attack which now takes place subsequently.

4. Character-level Edit: In this kind of novel, the characters serve the story rather than vice versa, so I think it makes sense to say a character-level edit is inferior to a story-level edit. In another type of novel, they might be structured differently. My addition of the scene where Skantriftic and Stranshiftic are seized and taken to the palace to meet First Citizen Solarquin, although it introduces Solarquin earlier in the book, is a story-level edit because its primary function is to satisfactorily conclude the second major plot element (the journey to the palace to deliver the petition). Whereas, my efforts to show that Mastatric felt betrayed by what they learned about the government in Chapters XXI and XXII were character-level edits. It was a character-level edit because it helped to explain how Mastatric became less didactic and more compliant towards the end of the novel.

5. Scene-level Edit: As scenes are the relatively non-dynamic locations in which characters appear and actions take place, we can say that the scenes serve the characters and other higher level parts of the novel and so take an inferior position in the hierarchy. In Chapter XXXIII, I decided to change the location where Skantriftic meets Ultrageldian into the reception room of the Society of Affectionate Companions, rather than the Union of Atmospheric Replenishers, which it had been previously. This had no impact on the novel other than to indicate that escorts existed in Glassworld and operated within the law. Therefore, it was a scene-level edit. I did slightly alter Ultrageldian's dialogue to reflect their different position, so there was a minor character-level edit involved here too.

6. Format-level Edit: Format is my word for how the story is presented at the lowest level of detail and it covers grammar, vocabulary, spelling and layout. Although a format-level edit is the lowest level of edit, it is probably the most time-consuming. One format-level edit involved ensuring that I had used -ward/-wards endings correctly through the book, i.e. 'forward-facing' but 'going forwards'. An example of a format-level edit would be my choice to change 'descend' for 'decline' at the beginning of Chapter XXII. I made this change to subtly indicate that the situation is worsening and that immorality is being exposed, so this is a format-level edit.

I hope these descriptions provide an interesting exploration of my perspective on editing and that I have clearly dealt with edge cases where they arose. If you have a different approach to editing, I'd love to hear about it. Please comment below!