Rose & Thorn: You co-authored the book, along with Dave King, entitled: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print. Usually, writing and editing require different "hats," if not different individuals. Do you consider yourself a writer or an editor? Do you believe that most people are, or can be, equally good at both writing and editing?

Renni Browne: I'll take the easy question first: A writer may, or may not be, a good editor, but an editor had better be a good writer. Good writing accomplishes the same ends whether you're a writer or an editor: to communicate, to get through, to fulfill whatever your intentions were in writing. An editor evaluating a manuscript needs to describe its strengths and weaknesses in a way that inspires or convinces the author to do whatever is needed to bring it to its fullest potential. You can't inspire or convince via weak prose. When an editor does line editing--which is simply bringing the literary style to its fullest potential--any suggested change needs to be in the (best) voice of the author, not the editor. That takes a lot of writing skill.

Do I consider myself a writer or an editor? At the moment I'm half one and half the other. Your working schizophrenic: I edit books and I write them. But by the time The Editorial Department reaches its 20th anniversary (in October of 2000), I will have retired from the company and completed the current process of turning it over to my son, Ross Browne. He has actually been running the business for several years.

I'm retiring from editing to become a full-time writer. I expect to co-author at least three more books for writers: one on dialogue, one on characterization, and one on scene-building. The first of these will be a Browne/Browne collaboration-my son is the co-author for a book tentatively called, Dialogue That Dazzles. He'll be writing the first draft, then I'll jump in.

Upon retirement I will at last have time to do the commentaries (on writers and writing) that a public radio station invited me to do four years ago. There's also a book I want very much to write that isn't targeted specifically to writers (although they'll be the biggest market) and won't be co-authored.

R&T: You were an editor for William Morrow and other publishers before you founded The Editorial Department (http://www.editorialdepartment.net). How do you feel the publishing industry has changed in recent years, especially regarding development of new authors?

Browne: The industry I entered in 1961 is radically different from the one I left nearly twenty years later. I went into publishing in 1961, right after college. I edited magazine articles and stories until 1966, when Scribner's hired me to edit books. In those days, "development of new authors," as you put it, meant -- above all -- editing their work, writing long memos crammed with editorial suggestions, having editorial conferences with the author, face to face or on the phone, coaching the author through subsequent drafts, line editing every page of the final draft, offering feedback about the next book -- often as a work-in-progress. As an editor, I actually spent most of my time editing in one form or another.

Now flash forward to the late 70s, when I dropped out of mainstream publishing. As senior editor for Morrow, I spent most of my time lunching literary agents, reading manuscripts, attending meetings, "costing out" a prospective title, fighting with the editorial board when I wanted to acquire it, negotiating a contract when I won the fight, addressing sales conferences..you get the picture. To the publisher, developing a new author now meant-above all--making subsidiary rights deals, promoting the author, publicizing the book, etc. I loved editing manuscripts, I was better at that than anything else I did. But the measly amount of editing on the books I acquired was done by my editorial assistant, Gary Fisketjon (now senior editor at Knopf). When I wanted to acquire a bestselling author's new novel and told my boss it would take a month to edit, he said, "It's out of the question. I can't have you using your time that way."

Although there are certainly exceptions to it, this pattern has held in recent years. An article in The New York Times last year suggested that many publishers, editors, even literary agents expect -- or demand -- that a manuscript they take on be as good as it can possibly be before it's submitted to them.

Other big changes in recent years? The movie industry's insatiable demand for fiction and nonfiction stories (which is good news, especially on the money front, for fiction writers). There's also been a mushrooming of small, independent publishers. This is good news for new writers because, thanks to new technology, they can risk publishing a first book that may sell only a few thousand copies. There are also more resources for writers: off-line and on-line writer's groups; writer's conferences; www research sites; internet publications, chat rooms, critiques, magazines.

R&T: How can self-editing help to get a book published?

Browne: It can get your manuscript into the kind of shape that makes agents want to represent it and publishers want to offer a contract.

R&T: The writer fantasy shown in some movies involves an author hurriedly typing out the last page of his, or her, novel, then rushing the manuscript to the post office so the publisher can get it in print. Obviously, you recommend significant work between that final written page and shipment to a publisher. How much time do you believe should be spent editing a novel relative to writing it?

Browne: As much time as is needed to take it to the max. The craft is in the rewriting: the polishing, cutting, tightening, rearranging, rewriting, polishing, cutting, tightening, rearranging. . . In other words: editing. Certainly I know authors who spend more time working on a draft than it took to write it in the first place. This one does.

R&T: In your Show and Tell chapter, you discuss how you mark R.U.E. in the margins, meaning, resist the urge to explain. Why is that important in a story?

Browne: Because by resisting that urge to fill the reader in, you leave space for the reader to "get it." This forges a connection between story and reader that can be incredibly powerful. When you explain something -- your character's emotion, the significance of a detail, the meaning of a line of dialogue -- you pre-empt that level of reader engagement.

R&T: You playfully compare dialogue attributions that use -ly adverbs to Tom Swifties (e.g., "Hurry up," Tom said swiftly, or "The radiation level isn't very high," Tom said glowingly). Could you offer some simple recommendations for writing professional dialogue?

Browne: You've put the question in just the right way. Dialogue can signal an agent or editor: Hey, this is the work of a pro, not an amateur. And I know acquisitions editors who, when "sniffing" a manuscript, leaf through the pages to the first dialogue scene. The best tip I can offer is to use professional instead of amateurish dialogue mechanics. By "mechanics" I mean the stylistic means of presenting content, not the content itself. Dialogue mechanics are covered in Self-Editing For Fiction Writers. Don't use the -ly adverbs, use "said" most of the time for speaker attribution, start a new paragraph whenever a speaker starts talking, don't have your characters answer direct questions directly, etc. And read your dialogue aloud. Read it aloud. Read it aloud. Your ear will prompt you to make little changes (edits) that make it better and better and better.

R&T: In some examples in your book, you edit (or offer exercises in editing) sections from well-known published works. In some cases, like that of Lewis Carroll, writing styles have changed since the author was published. Are there modern stylistic trends that authors should keep in mind while editing?

Browne: By definition, trends are temporary. But there are some modern stylistic tendencies so entrenched that awareness of them while editing a draft -- not while writing it -- can help the editing process. One example would be the modern tendency to jump-cut in fiction, a trend inspired by the movies. Today's readers don't want to move through a room step by step.

Certainly writers should avoid stylistic trends (or tics!) from the pop fiction of yesterday (pulp fiction, romance novels, early [contemporary] religious fiction, early detective fiction, etc.).

"If you really want to look like a hack," she hissed, sitting down heavily to type her indignation, "make sure your manuscript has lots of italics, exclamation points, 'action' verbs for speaker attribution, and other tacky stuff!"

R&T: Your paragraphs on See How It Sounds, Interior Monologue, and Easy Beats give great examples of how to make writing read more smoothly. There are few easy rules in these chapters, though; a lot of the editing and trimming is based on what sounds best, is most concise, or meshes best with the tempo of the story. What do you recommend if a writer gets stuck and can't hear the problem with his or her own written work? (In other words, is that when you'd seek an author's editor, a writing workshop, a helpful friend, etc., or do you feel most people can break through by rereading those chapters?)

Browne: I don't think rereading the chapters would help -- but reading and rereading scenes aloud might help a great deal. If you're still stuck? The problem is likely to be content rather than style. When that happens, editorial feedback is invaluable. Getting it may involve hiring an editor, reading a scene to a writer's group, showing the scene to a friend whose literary tastes are similar to yours, attending a workshop . . .or waiting, staying away from the pages in question until enough time has passed to enable you to see them more objectively.

R&T: Obviously, Self Editing for Fiction Writers could be all the help some writers need to break into print. Which writers, though, might benefit from a service such as The Editorial Department, an author's editor service? What are the benefits of an author's editor service?

Browne: The book alone has enabled some writers to get published for the first time, but the success rate is much greater -- or at least happens much faster -- if you also have a real, live editor going the whole distance with you. Which writers might benefit? I'd say all writers, potentially, because your book (or story, or article) is your child. How many of us can be 100% objective about our children?

The simplest way to describe the benefit of getting your manuscript edited is that the book gets the editorial attention it deserves. The chances of your getting in-depth, hands-on editing at a publishing house are slim. Rejection is a far more likely outcome for unedited manuscripts.

Over 50% of the writers we work with to completion eventually get published. ("Completion" means as many drafts as it takes -- sometimes one edited draft, often more than one.) This is a phenomenal success rate, but in all fairness, I must mention two factors that increase the odds: First, we connect unagented writers with literary agents when the work we've done with them results in a clearly publishable manuscript. Second, we're selective about what we take on. We'll read anything, and report on it, for $2.00 a page. But we won't recommend or agree to any further editorial work unless we see the potential for a publishable manuscript. This policy keeps really weak manuscripts from dragging down our percentage.

R&T: How would someone "hire" an author's editor (e.g., for an entire novel, for one difficult section, by the hour, etc.)?

Browne: "How does a writer hire an editor?" Very carefully, I hope! There are a lot of good editors out there, many of them fellow drop-outs from mainstream publishing. There are also self-proclaimed editors out there who don't know what they're doing -- and unethical ones who offer false encouragement to get a writer's money. Giving false hope to a writer whose material will never get published isn't just unethical, it's cruel.

How do you tell the wheat from the chaff? Some editors (ours included) will give you references -- generous-spirited, published clients who can tell you how happy they are. Much the best way, of course, would be to sample the wares, something most editors don't make possible. We do. We offer a free critique of the first five pages of any work-in-progress to any writer visiting www.EditorialDepartment.net. If we think the pages may be the start of a book with publication potential, we recommend whatever work (quoting price) we think is needed to accomplish that end. If we think it will never get published no matter what the editor does to it, the author does to it, or God does to it, our report tells the writer why.

Fees vary widely. Sample Editorial Department fees are posted at our website, but we have only one set fee: the $2.00-a-page preliminary evaluation, for which the author gets a written overview of the manuscript's strengths and weaknesses-plus overall recommendations. Some editors charge more than we do and some charge less.

I'm well aware that literary talent and deep pockets don't necessarily go hand and hand (that's the main reason I wrote Self-Editing For Fiction Writers). If the author can't afford the fees and the book clearly has the potential to be a big seller, we occasionally agree to be paid with a percentage of future earnings.

R&T: How do you think writers' conferences and writers' workshops can benefit authors? Specifically, what does the Lost State Writers' Conference, which you helped organize, offer aspiring authors?

Browne: You can learn a lot at a good writing workshop. I used to do one on self-editing. One of our editors still does, another editor can do characterization workshops, Ross has a dialogue workshop, etc. Writer's conferences give you the chance to hear or even meet authors, agents, editors, and other people who could be valuable contacts along the long bumpy road to publication.

The Lost State Writer's Conference rounds up the usual suspects -- established authors and agents and editors -- and actually offers more of them than many big conferences. A trip to the website for the conference just concluded, http://LostStateWriters.xtn.net (note there's no www.), makes that clear. But our real advantage is having a small conference in a small town with a small hotel (35 rooms and one suite) hosting the event. This means writers get to actually sit down and talk to the southern agent or the agent from William Morris, the editor from Random House or the one from HarperCollins, the prize-winning southern novelist (Ellen Douglas) or the bestselling mystery writer (Lawrence Block), the regional newspaper columnist or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution feature writer-not to mention all sorts of other writers and editors, from publishers large and small.

R&T: When do you encourage writers to keep writing? Do you ever discourage someone whose writing needs a lot of work?

Browne: I encourage writers who have something going for them -- writing style or content or both. I would never discourage a writer because the manuscript needed a lot of work. Writing is a lot of work. Technique can be learned -- by any writer capable of putting words together in the first place. "Mechanics" can be learned. Craft can be practiced. Prose can be honed and polished. Etc.

R&T: What general advice would you offer writers who have so far not been published?

Browne: Write the very best story or article or poem or book you can write -- and in a very important sense you can't lose even if it never gets published. Our closing speaker at this year's Lost State Writer's Conference was Alex Jones -- co-author, with Susan Tifft, of The Trust: The Private And Powerful Family Behind The New York Times. He had, just that minute, learned the book was on the New York Times bestseller list. At the very end of his luncheon address, he shared with the audience his most rewarding moment as a writer. It wasn't winning the Pulitzer Prize (which he got for a series of NY Times articles about the Binghams, a Louisville newspaper dynasty), it wasn't having the book that grew out of the articles become a bestseller. It was a moment when he finally got a certain section of a certain article on a certain member of the Bingham family exactly right -- and knew it was good.

If you work on a piece of writing until it's as good as you can possibly make it, your worst-case scenario is a tremendous inner satisfaction and the value of everything you've learned during the process of writing or rewriting. Nothing can take either of these rewards away from you.

So if you get published, in a sense that's a fringe benefit!