Editors

“I had been waiting under a slab for the light to go. In truth there had been little light, it had been a grey, sunless day with the sort of drizzle that makes you wet to the pores in minutes regardless of what you are wearing.

Rations were gone—less to carry; still hungry but not far now to get back to the fence.

Easing each muscle in turn to get some blood flowing back into it when there was movement above me. I peered out and saw a figure vaulting over the rubble pile. At first he seemed to be unarmed but then I saw he was carrying a rabbit gun.

Another one leapt over after the first. Neither made any pretence at hiding. Brave or stupid?

I unslung the HK416, checked the load and snapped off two shots. Both of them dropped immediately. Another one stepped over the top, more cautiously than the others. Another quick shot and the third boy turned and fell with a short cry.

I slid over to where the third one had fallen. The first two were visible from here. They were both dead; staring at some distant horror only they could see.

This one was hanging from some rebar. It had gone in just under the rib cage and lodged in his right hip bone to leave him dangling at an angle.

He was early teens, maybe? Possibly twelve. Right age for the gangs. They are impressionable at that age. It is all fun, excitement and glamour until this happens. Then the thrill ebbs away pretty quickly in those last few moments of life.

He looked around at me. His eyes big, round and pleading—full of pain.

I reversed my Sig Sauer and hit him as hard as I could where the spine meets the skull. His young bones crunched. Only the left leg twitched a couple of times.

His thin, wet jacket was good enough to wipe the butt of the Sig.

Their guns were useless to me but I gathered them up so that nobody else could use them then sat for a few minutes unloading them and throwing the firing pins away.

Seven rounds between them. Who goes to war with seven rounds?

It was dark enough now to make a move.

Above me I heard more movement. Someone had heard my HK chatting with their friends. I felt my lip curl—more lambs to my private abattoir.”

This is an excerpt from “My Name Is A Number” that never made it into the finished product.

Why?

Because it was edited out. It was thought to be ‘unnecessary to the story’.

They were right.

It was just a bit of gratuitous violence that was not needed.

In the end I put it back, rewritten, where it was a necessary part but only because I wanted to emphasise that the ‘gangers’ were not always well armed—sometimes they came out with .22 rifles (rabbit guns) to do battle with us.

I also wanted to explain what a ‘rabbit gun’ was to the reader since not everyone will be familiar with the term. Possibly ‘varmint gun’ might be more acceptable in the United States.

The fact is, and I hear many complaints about this from other authors, an independent Editor is vital for your stories.

Having your Mum or a beloved person edit your stories is hopeless because most people are not analytical enough or knowledgeable about writing sufficiently to be able to do the hard things—like chop up your beautifully worked manuscript.

Besides, Mum will tell you that your story is perfect just as it is even if it is so bad you wouldn’t even paper the toilet wall with it!

It is common practice, on my part, to review my stories thirty or forty times no matter how long (or short) a work it is.

You would imagine that, after that many times of reading, you would spot all the mistakes but you don’t.

I re-read my last ‘Blog’ many times before publishing it and yet there were still mistakes in spelling and punctuation that I had to return to and edit.

You never get them all. Some will slip past.

Very often my wife will read my stories (she is a sci-fi fan) and then give me critical views about it. She will also find errors of fact or grammar that I have missed.

It is because we writers tend to get our heads down and pound out a story straight from the mind to the keyboard. We are not looking for mistakes because we are entirely focussed on getting the story down.

Mistakes can be sorted later.

That is why an editor is vital.

Several times I have had to cut bits out or change wording or, in one case, move an entire chapter to the front of the book to provide a better ‘beginning’ to the tale. That meant rewriting several of the subsequent chapters to make it all ‘fit’!

Was I annoyed at doing this extra work? You bet I was annoyed. How dare they tamper with my flowing prose; my carefully wrought scenes; my cunning visualisations?

But they were right.

A good editor is worth their weight in gold. They only make your story better.

Now I am about to send off  ‘Deep Space Squadron’ for butchering when it is already perfect!