How to Read Three Ways: Reader, Editor, Writer

Is an editor "an advocate for the reader"?

An idea I became obsessed with when I started editing books almost seven years ago is that a person can read with a lot of different minds, a lot of different eyes, a lot of different hats, a lot of different…well, you get it. Recently, I’ve been thinking about this in a new context thanks to the writer who has a knack for making me think, the inimitable Elif Batuman. As she wrote in her excellent newsletter The Elif Life:

Since nobody is editing me right now, I will go ahead and talk about one concept I find particularly unhelpful, which is the idea of the editor as “an advocate for the reader.” This is NOT AT ALL to neg any individual editors—I can't overstate how much I have learned from the many incredible editors I have been privileged to work with over the years. But I don’t think “advocate for the reader” is a constructive way of framing the relationship. For one thing, this phrase implies that “writers" and “readers” are fundamentally different groups whose interests are at odds. (In fact, literally all writers are avid readers, and many readers are also writers.) To think of editors as lobbyists for the reader's interests, which are somehow opposed to those of the writer… I don't know, it's antagonistic, and I think it underestimates readers. I think a professional “advocate for the reader” has a vested interest in underestimating the reader, in order to justify having that job.

There is some truth to this claim. And I can see why Elif of all people finds this guiding dogma particularly useless: she is the rare individual who has the self-reflective quality to both know what she wants to write and also judge how typical readers will respond to it. Editors, especially at the early stage (as she mentions earlier in the newsletter), therefore just get in the way by giving her unhelpful advice on what to write. I agree with that underlying argument: editors should not be involved too early, as analytical questions and reminders of the economics at play tend to quash creativity. But rejecting the idea of editor as “advocate for the reader” is not entirely accurate either in my experience. Even though my whole livelihood is predicated, somewhat, on the belief that editors are useful in bridging the gap between writers and readers (Elif got that part right about our economic—small “e”—imperative to advocate for this argument ), that doesn’t mean I try to see every manuscript as a nail for me to hammer using an “advocate for the reader” philosophy (some editors do, and I’d advise anyone to avoid these people—they are the worst). I’m very happy and completely open to receiving and publishing a manuscript which needs little of my services. And I’ve seen plenty of writers who are pretty much are able to do the job of editing themselves, playing a similar role as an “advocate for the reader,” polishing and polishing until they have what can be legitimately said to be a finished product. However, most writers, even great ones, maybe 98%, can gain something from a professional editor.

But, as Elif asks, why can’t writers be readers also? Why can’t they be the arbiter of what their reader might want to read rather than having some arbitrary view of a third party (The Editor) inflicted upon it? The answer to me lies in the different ways readers, editors and authors read. Yes, a writer was also a reader first, but they are also the most intense reader of their own work. A writer, unless they are extremely lazy — and in this case also likely not a very good writer — is usually the closest reader a piece of writing will ever have; the person who has put the most thought into each individual word, phrase, and idea on the page. For that reason, reading as a writer is fundamentally a different than reading as the Typical Reader. For starters, a Typical Reader plans usually on reading a short story or book just the one time. Secondly, they’re probably not going to read it that one time at the meticulous and scrutinizing pace at which the writer of that book probably read and revised it.

The reverse is also true, in my own reading I find that switching on Writer Brain is almost impossible to do while simultaneously trying to read as either an editor or a Typical Reader. Trying to figure out word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence, or paragraph-by-paragraph exactly how a writer is constructing and achieving their effect is a practice that allows no parallel tracks of thinking. Frankly, reading as a writer is exhausting and not that much fun. But as an editor you do start to understand this way of reading because you are called to do it, occasionally. This happens when you encounter something that feels wrong, doesn’t sound right, or doesn’t make sense and you get the impulse to “fix it.” Then an editor puts on their writer hat. This can be as simple as suggesting a missing word or a whole sentence of an idea that’s implied but not explicitly stated. In fiction, it is usually a “is this what you were going for” or “is this what you meant” kind of feedback.

This is an image that comes up when you Google “continuum”, it is titled “The Continuum of Cloud-Native Topologies” and clearly wants nothing to do with the whole construct of “reading”

Reading a Paragraph of Stephen King Three Ways

Let’s take a real example of a piece of writing and demonstrate how the reader, the editor, and the writer might approach reading from each of their unique perspectives with varying levels of intensity. Here’s a (semi) random paragraph from early on in Stephen King’s Misery, which I’m reading with my annual Halloween book-to-film book club:

These things all came at widely spaced intervals, but then, as the pain itself began not to recede but to erode (as that Revere Beach piling must itself have eroded, he thought, because nothing is forever—although the child he had been would have scoffed at such heresy), outside things began to impinge more rapidly until the objective world, with all its freight of memory, experience, and prejudice, had pretty much re-established itself. He was Paul Sheldon, who wrote novels of two kinds, good ones and best-sellers. He had been married and divorced twice. He smoked too much (or had before all this, whatever “all this” was). Something very bad had happened to him but he was still alive. That dark-gray cloud began to dissipate faster and faster. It would be yet awhile before his number-one fan brought him the old clacking Royal with the grinning gapped mouth and the Ducky Daddles voice, but Paul understood long before then that he was in a hell of a jam.”

Reader: A perfectly normal paragraph, the parentheses are a little hard to follow. I like the line: “he wrote novels of two kinds, good ones and best-sellers,” which is pretty funny. Paul seems like a classic kind of mid-career, writer type who’s a little bit of a menace, drinking, married twice, but clearly clever and talented. I’m interested in seeing what happens next. Who is his “number-one fan”?  “He was in a hell of a jam” is pretty good dry humor, it lets you know Paul is in on the joke a bit, gets the absurdity of this situation across.

Editor: The voice in this paragraph works really well, we know exactly who Paul is, and it sets up character right alongside the situation. But it could be a bit tighter. What’s in the first set of parentheses doesn’t seem to be doing too much: it’s cramming a lot of clauses and information—what exactly is the point of “although the child he had been would have scoffed at such heresy”?— that doesn’t feel necessary to the scene at all. The childhood connection clearly intended isn’t quite coming through. Should what’s in the parentheses be cut or at least cut from “he thought…” on? It will still convey the overall sense of him coming out of a stupor and be slightly dissociative while making it more economical.

There’s an overuse of the word “things,” (e.g. “these things all came” and “outside things began”), a filler word that could be replaced, cut, or worked around. Is “Ducky Daddles” a common enough reference for the reader to understand? Perhaps, if kept, add some context clues around it? Finally, does the “it would be yet awhile” piece of the final sentence telegraph too much about what’s coming— shouldn’t the reader just “see” this unfold later. Is there something else that could start the final sentence that would lead into the stronger part of the sentence “he was in a hell of a jam” to emphasize even more just how much of a “hell of a jam” he is in?

A free stock image—looking over top of the book is not one of the three recommended ways to read a book.

Writer: The first sentence is to establish the transition from Paul being in total pain and drugged out of his mind into a lucid state. Part of this transition should be in the language and structure of the sentence itself, from Paul’s third person close perspective it has to be less than full coherent, but heading in that direction over the duration of the paragraph. Then we move to describing what the reader already knows but with a little more flair from Paul’s limited perspective (“something very bad had happened”) and more in his language (e.g. “good ones and bestsellers”; “a hell of a jam”). Then we’re ending the paragraph with a little foreshadowing of what’s to come as we transition into the next chapter. Maybe the line “the dark-grey cloud began to dissipate faster and faster” might be improved to get away from the cliché of dark clouds—is there a more precise way or metaphor for the mental fogginess clearing up, a stronger transition to the final line? Does anything else needed to be added to the final line? I definitely need to keep the “number-one fan” part, but is there an even better moment to allude to in the future rather than the Royal typewriter?

Comparison Between the Three Types of Readers

Generally, you’ll see that the Typical Reader is reacting, the typical editor is deconstructing, and the typical writer is building. For example, the Typical Reader is hitting the speed bump of the first parentheses and it’s a blip of a thought, easily brushed past, because why would you spend thirty minutes thinking about one part of one sentence when there’s other good King stuff to get to? The reader—which was me when I first read this paragraph reading the book just for fun—is more likely to forget this slight hiccup in prose even if they felt it as a reader and instead remember the stellar lines like “good ones and best-sellers”. Meanwhile, the editor in me picks up on this speed bump, but on a closer second read hones in on it as something to be improved—asking a) what is the writer trying to do? and b) can we discard or alter some of this? Finally, reading a couple more times closely as if I were the writer, this “speed bump” for the reader and editor ended up not being an issue at all. To my “writer’s eyes” the sentence achieves its purpose: it sets up the paragraph, has the right POV and correct style of language for the situation.

These differences between reading modes are an illustration of the editor as an “advocate for the reader” in motion. The reader notices something they don’t like and may not entirely care about it enough to annoy them if the overall effect of the paragraph, page, book is largely good. Meanwhile, the editor notices the same issue and reading more carefully questions if it needs to be there, hoping to improve it a little for everyone. Finally, the writer, focusing more on making sure their intent gets through, rather than reacting to it as a causal reader might, may not be concerned at all with the issue that the reader felt slightly and that the editor felt acutely. And that’s the essential argument for the editor as a middleman—or, the advocate for the reader—they read between the intensities of a ordinary reader and the writer, helping the writer see what they sometimes can’t when they are so close to the work.

To Elif’s point there is nothing stopping the author from putting on either of these other hats—the plain truth is that it’s possible float along this continuum and read any of these ways. And let’s face it: no one likes middlemen. Cut us out, if you can.