Substantive editing sample 9:
Setting the scene

In this opening of a mystery novel, the second in a series, my suggested revisions removed distractions from the author’s endeavor to effectively set the scene. With the very first sentence, the author established the “narrative present,” how the narrator describes the scene he was living through, in the simple past tense—the traditional way to tell a “once upon a time” story, and I needed to be alert to infelicitous deviations from that way of presentation: The simple past for the narrator’s lived present (and the past perfect tense for the “past of that past”). However, the regular present tense (and the present perfect tense) is fine for describing things that are universally true in nature or always true for the narrator himself (not just in the situation he was “currently” experiencing). See my commentary in the markup.

I also suggested revisions to enhance emphasis and coherence, as you can see in the commentary. Finally, my copyediting imposed mechanical style on the text (punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, and so on—recommended by the style guideline of the publishing industry).

Skip this sample and advance to the next one in the series.

This sample is presented here with the author’s permission.

Original
Click to go to the markup.

Julien Hall was packed with booths of boutique ice cream vendors, cupcake bakers, chocolatiers, craft beer brewers, vintage cheese makers, artisanal picklers, and small batch whiskey distillers. Dubuque, the Iowa city that began as a crude mining camp in the early 19th century, was hosting the annual meeting of the hip Midwest Alliance of Craft Food Producers, an organization of chefs and restaurateurs and the small farmers who supply them. I was happy to be there, and I was pretty sure Brian Jefferson was, too, fresh off a post-divorce vacation in Honolulu where he bought the dreadful yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt he had on. Ruby Beck seemed a little confused by it all, like she’d never seen anything quite like it in her eighty-five years of small town life. Maybe she just wasn’t sure where to start. I’m supposed to be writing a story for New York-based Wandering Gourmet about the explosion of boutique food producers in Middle America. Middle America, where cultural trends arrive via Pony Express in the mind of my editor. But hey, it’s my home, where I keep my stuff, parachute pants, pet rock, and all. Folks on the coasts might be excited today about food prepared with fresh, local ingredients, but here in Flyover Land we’ve had that all along. We just called it gardening. When my parents planted tomatoes, squash, beans, rosemary, thyme, and basil they were boutique food producers; they just didn’t know it. When mom threw together a summer salad with greens, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes from the backyard and served it with trout dad caught in a nearby stream, we didn’t know we were at the forefront of a food revolution. We were just doing what we were raised to do, what our parents did and their parents had done. What’s different now, I guess, is that a lot of people stopped planting gardens and fewer of us cook for ourselves, especially in our cities. At some point, though, we got tired of eating heavily salted Salisbury steak TV dinners and mashed potatoes reconstituted from sawdust. Some of us, did anyway. A few restaurants noticed that their customers were getting tired of eating the same burgers and steaks that every other restaurant served. A few chefs got creative—they probably had gardens when they were kids—and started serving dishes with fresh ingredients, sometimes buying from local farmers because they had the freshest produce. This was generally well-received, so more restaurants started doing the same thing. At some point, many people—a minority but still a lot—got sick of the way food and culture had become mass produced and dumbed-down as big corporations took control of what we ate. These folks turned eating fresh, seasonal foods into a political movement, into a cause they could rally around, to separate themselves from a mass culture they didn’t approve of. Soon freshness was no longer good enough, food had to be organically grown, an approach to farming that may have started with good intentions but quickly evolved into a marketing trick to get us to pay more for something we were already buying. But it didn’t stop there. Eating food from local producers became an end unto itself. The true believers who embraced this philosophy, locavores, developed a compulsion to buy all their food from a producer who lived close enough to visit and get back home before finishing a half-caf, almond milk lattè. In the same family tree of dietary zealots, there were people who would only buy food that was certified “cruelty-free.” Cruelty-free. For me to eat, to live, something has to die, whether it’s a pig or an asparagus plant. That fact is fundamentally cruel and doesn’t change just because you gave it a name before you killed it. So sure, I’m skeptical about many of today’s food trends, but I can keep an open mind, open enough, anyway. I accepted the assignment to write about the boutique food movement in Middle America because I needed the cash, but I know what they expect me to write. I’m supposed to flatter the sensibilities of my New York-based editor and other coastal trendsetters with a piece about how folks in the cultural backwaters have adopted another one of their trends, all while shielding them from the truth that it’s really the coastal elites who’ve been influenced. That’s how we roll in the Midwest. When folks on the coasts adopt things that we’ve been doing all along, we’re content to let them think they invented it. It’s important to them to feel that way, and we’re sensitive to other people’s feelings.

Markup
Click to go to the result.

Julien Hall was packed with booths of boutique ice cream vendors, cupcake bakers, chocolatiers, craft beer brewers, vintage cheese makers, artisanal picklers, and small batch whiskey and small-batch whiskey distillers. Dubuque, the Iowa city that began as that had begun as a crude mining camp in the early 19th century early nineteenth century, was hosting the annual meeting of the hip Midwest Alliance of Craft Food Producers, an organization of chefs and restaurateurs and the small farmers who supply them.[I put a paragraph break here—for eye rest and to enliven the pace] I was happy to be there, and I was pretty sure Brian Jefferson was, too, fresh off a post-divorce vacation in Honolulu where he bought Honolulu, where he’d bought the dreadful yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt he had on. Ruby Beck seemed a little confused by it all, like she’d never seen anything quite like it in her eighty-five years of small town life. of small-town life. Maybe she just wasn’t sure where to start. I’m supposed I was supposed [“Julien Hall was packed with booths” (simple past tense) is how you opened the chapter (and the book). Let’s keep the “narrative present” (what narrator Frank was doing in Julien Hall during this craft-food fair) in the simple past tense and restrict present tense to describe things that are universally true (say, about nature) or—of course—appropriately in dialogue] to be writing a story for New York-based Wandering Gourmet New York–based Wandering Gourmet [an en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) is called for when the unit adjective includes a two word proper name, such as “New York”] about the explosion of boutique food producers in Middle America. Middle America, where cultural trends where—in the mind of my editor—cultural trends arrive via Pony Express in the mind of my editor. Express. [(1) The preceding suggested revision enhances emphasis (“Pony Express” is emphatic, but “my editor” is parenthetical), and the end of a sentence or phrase is the place for emphasis; also, there was ambiguity (admittedly momentary, but still a noise distraction in the unconscious of the reader) about the Pony Express arriving somehow in the editor’s mind (if you feel that the surrounding em dashes [—] are too much, the parenthetical phrase “in the mind of my editor” can actually be within parentheses). (2) The present tense “arrive” (and the present tense in the following paragraphs) is OK because it denotes things that are always true (not part of the narrative-present description of narrator Frank at Julien Hall).] But hey, it’s my home, where I keep my stuff, parachute stuff—parachute pants, pet rock, and all. Folks on the coasts might be excited today about food prepared with fresh, local ingredients, but here in Flyover Land we’ve had that all along. We just called it gardening. When my parents planted tomatoes, squash, beans, rosemary, thyme, and basil they basil, they were boutique food producers; they just didn’t know it. When mom threw When Mom threw together a summer salad with greens, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes from the backyard and served it with trout dad caught with the trout that Dad had caught in a nearby stream, we didn’t know we were at the forefront of a food revolution. We were just doing what we were raised to do, what our parents did and their parents had done. What’s different now, I guess, is that a lot of people stopped planting gardens and gardens, and fewer of us cook for ourselves, especially in our cities. At some point, though, we got tired of eating heavily salted Salisbury steak TV dinners and mashed potatoes reconstituted from sawdust. Some of us, did us did, anyway. A few restaurants noticed that their customers were getting tired of eating the same burgers and steaks that every other restaurant served. A few chefs got creative—they probably had gardens when they were kids—and started serving dishes with fresh ingredients, sometimes buying from local farmers because they had the freshest produce. This was generally well-received, so generally well received, so more restaurants started doing the same thing. At some point, many people As big corporations took control of what we ate, many people—a minority but minority, but still a lot—got sick of the way food and culture had become mass produced and dumbed-down as big corporations took control of what we ate. become mass-produced and dumbed down. [(1) “At some point” is an unneeded repetition of the phrase in the preceding paragraph (“At some point, though, we got tired . . .”)—Note: some repetition is good, especially as an emphatic device called a “reprise,” but here it is just redundant. (2) “dumbed down” is far more emphatic than “what we ate” and thus should close the sentence. (3) What the big corporations did happened at the “some point” at the original sentence’s opening, and that placement has better transitional coherence with what you wrote in the preceding paragraph about the industrialized TV dinners and the sawdust mashed spuds.] These folks turned eating folks transformed eating fresh, seasonal foods into a political movement, into a cause they could rally around, to separate themselves from a mass culture they didn’t approve of. Soon freshness was no longer good enough, food enough; food had to be organically grown, an approach to farming that may have started with good intentions but quickly evolved into a marketing trick to get us to pay more for something we were already buying. But it didn’t stop there. Eating food from local producers became an end unto itself. The true believers The True Believers [change OK? the initial capitals provide a bit of satiric twist] who embraced this philosophy, locavores, locavores, [italics for introducing a new term (as in a technical nonfiction book, but here with a slight sense of satire)] developed a compulsion to buy all their food from a producer who lived close enough to visit and get back home before finishing a half-caf, almond milk lattè. [The proper spelling is “latte” without the accent, from the Italian caffè latte, but see Latte: “latté” and “lattè” (as you have it) are hyperforeignisms, a type of qualitative hypercorrection of a foreign-origin word that is generally considered pretentious (think Häagen-Dazs ice cream, made in the Bronx) or ignorant or silly. Unless you use “lattè” satirically, I recommend “latte.”] In the same family tree of dietary zealots, there were people who would only buy food would buy only food [the adverb “only” should attach itself only to that which it limits (“there were people who would only buy food” implies that they were willing to buy it but not to eat it or to sell it or to do something else with it, whereas you mean to limit the kind of food that they would buy, so “only” should be attached to “food”; yeah, I know people speak with “only” in the wrong place and nobody really misunderstands, but this is writing)] that was certified “cruelty-free.” Cruelty-free. For me to eat, to live, something has to die, whether it’s a pig or an asparagus plant. That fact is fundamentally cruel and doesn’t change just because you gave it a name before you killed it. So sure, I’m skeptical about many of today’s food trends, but I can keep an open mind, open mind—open enough, anyway. I accepted the assignment to write about the boutique food movement in Middle America because I needed the cash, but I know what I knew what they expect me they expected me to write. I’m supposed write. I was supposed [just as with “I accepted the assignment” (simple past tense) in the preceding sentence, we should maintain the narrative present (what Frank is doing) in the simple past tense and restrict the present tense to describe things that are always true about Frank in general: “I’m skeptical about . . .” and “I can keep an open mind” and “For me to eat . . . something has to die . . .” Also, all the verbs in the rest of this paragraph can remain in the simple present tense and present perfect tense (“have adopted” and “it’s really” and “who’ve been influenced” and “That’s how we roll” and “adopt” and “we’ve been doing” and “we’re content” and “it’s important” and “we’re sensitive”)—but after that, watch for my suggested markup revisions to the simple past tense to describe the narrative present] to flatter the sensibilities of my New York-based editor my New York–based editor and other coastal trendsetters with a piece about how folks in the cultural backwaters have adopted another one of their trends, all while shielding them from the truth that it’s really the coastal elites who’ve been influenced. That’s influenced by us. That’s how we roll in the Midwest. When folks on the coasts adopt things that we’ve been doing all along, we’re content to let them think they invented it. It’s important to them to feel that way, and we’re sensitive to other people’s feelings.

Result
Click to go to the next sample in the series.

Julien Hall was packed with booths of boutique ice cream vendors, cupcake bakers, chocolatiers, craft beer brewers, vintage cheese makers, artisanal picklers, and small-batch whiskey distillers. Dubuque, the Iowa city that had begun as a crude mining camp in the early nineteenth century, was hosting the annual meeting of the hip Midwest Alliance of Craft Food Producers, an organization of chefs and restaurateurs and the small farmers who supply them. I was happy to be there, and I was pretty sure Brian Jefferson was, too, fresh off a post-divorce vacation in Honolulu, where he’d bought the dreadful yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt he had on. Ruby Beck seemed a little confused by it all, like she’d never seen anything quite like it in her eighty-five years of small-town life. Maybe she just wasn’t sure where to start. I was supposed to be writing a story for New York–based Wandering Gourmet about the explosion of boutique food producers in Middle America. Middle America, where—in the mind of my editor—cultural trends arrive via Pony Express. But hey, it’s my home, where I keep my stuff—parachute pants, pet rock, and all. Folks on the coasts might be excited today about food prepared with fresh, local ingredients, but here in Flyover Land we’ve had that all along. We just called it gardening. When my parents planted tomatoes, squash, beans, rosemary, thyme, and basil, they were boutique food producers; they just didn’t know it. When Mom threw together a summer salad with greens, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes from the backyard and served it with the trout that Dad had caught in a nearby stream, we didn’t know we were at the forefront of a food revolution. We were just doing what we were raised to do, what our parents did and their parents had done. What’s different now, I guess, is that a lot of people stopped planting gardens, and fewer of us cook for ourselves, especially in our cities. At some point, though, we got tired of eating heavily salted Salisbury steak TV dinners and mashed potatoes reconstituted from sawdust. Some of us did, anyway. A few restaurants noticed that their customers were getting tired of eating the same burgers and steaks that every other restaurant served. A few chefs got creative—they probably had gardens when they were kids—and started serving dishes with fresh ingredients, sometimes buying from local farmers because they had the freshest produce. This was generally well received, so more restaurants started doing the same thing. As big corporations took control of what we ate, many people—a minority, but still a lot—got sick of the way food and culture had become mass-produced and dumbed down. These folks transformed eating fresh, seasonal foods into a political movement, into a cause they could rally around, to separate themselves from a mass culture they didn’t approve of. Soon freshness was no longer good enough; food had to be organically grown, an approach to farming that may have started with good intentions but quickly evolved into a marketing trick to get us to pay more for something we were already buying. But it didn’t stop there. Eating food from local producers became an end unto itself. The True Believers who embraced this philosophy, locavores, developed a compulsion to buy all their food from a producer who lived close enough to visit and get back home before finishing a half-caf, almond milk latte. In the same family tree of dietary zealots, there were people who would buy only food that was certified “cruelty-free.” Cruelty-free. For me to eat, to live, something has to die, whether it’s a pig or an asparagus plant. That fact is fundamentally cruel and doesn’t change just because you gave it a name before you killed it. So sure, I’m skeptical about many of today’s food trends, but I can keep an open mind—open enough, anyway. I accepted the assignment to write about the boutique food movement in Middle America because I needed the cash, but I knew what they expected me to write. I was supposed to flatter the sensibilities of my New York–based editor and other coastal trendsetters with a piece about how folks in the cultural backwaters have adopted another one of their trends, all while shielding them from the truth that it’s really the coastal elites who’ve been influenced by us. That’s how we roll in the Midwest. When folks on the coasts adopt things that we’ve been doing all along, we’re content to let them think they invented it. It’s important to them to feel that way, and we’re sensitive to other people’s feelings.