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Book review: The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction

by Geoffrey Hart

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2023. Book review: The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction. Technical Communication 70(3):110.

The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction
Amy Schneider. 2023. The University of Chicago Press. [ISBN 978-0-226-76737-6. 240 pages, including index. US$18.00 (softcover).]

Years ago, I attended Amy Schneider’s copyediting fiction presentation. After she’d finished, I begged her to write a book. The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction is that long-awaited book and will please both fiction editors and authors who must self-edit. “[This book] is intended as food for thought, a road map for helping each author, character, and manuscript tell their own story in their own voice and their own style” (p. 2). The fiction editor must therefore question how each edit serves the author, the reader, and the story. Thus, rules “are made to be broken if doing so serves the story” (p. 192).

Schneider assumes you already know how to copyedit and are familiar with the vocabulary and shows how to apply those skills. (Much of the advice also applies to substantive and developmental editing.) Unlike non-fiction, each story comprises its own editorial and stylistic universe. To manage that universe, Schneider provides a thorough discussion of style guides, though she omits the common synonym story bible used to describe them. Internal consistency is essential in any writing, but authors must also be consistent between books in a series and with the world outside the book. She quickly but thoroughly covers style guides, characters, and locations. Each provides excellent advice to help authors create richer descriptions of these key story ingredients. The text is packed with good examples, as well as advice on handling issues you won’t find in other guides, such as “naughty words and dirty talk” (what I call cussin’ and courtin’). As she notes, a “good copyeditor has a dirty mind” (p. 147). Schneider also brings us up to speed on issues such as conscious language, gender pronouns, and whether to italicize non-English words.

There are a few things I’d like to see in the second edition. Although Schneider emphasizes that most copyediting is done by computer, and provides basic tips, there are no references to major onscreen editing resources in the text, though Adrienne Montgomerie’s Editing in Word (https://eiw365.com/) appears in the bibliography. I’d also like to see better online support for the book, such as downloadable templates and an addenda Web page. Finally, I’d like to see clear distinctions among genres and their unique editing needs. For example, “speculative fiction” ranges from science fiction (in which authors must be consistent with known science) to fantasy (in which authors can break the rules if they’re consistent).

If the number of details seems overwhelming, a good approach is to treat each chapter as a separate editorial pass and focus on those specific details. You’ll quickly internalize them and become a much stronger author’s ally.