Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (34 page)

Broadly speaking, though, the cost of a twenty- to thirty-five-page critique of a four-hundred-page, double-spaced manuscript can range from as little as $600 to as much as $2,500. Hiring a book doctor to line edit, cut, or revise a manuscript or a proposal can cost between $35 and $150 per hour. Some book doctors take less of a fee up front for their critiquing and editorial services but take a percentage of the book’s advance and royalties when and if it is sold. Fees and percentages should be discussed in great detail, and be clearly understood by both parties, before the letter of agreement is sent to the client. Avoid phrases like “fee to be mutually agreed upon.” Work on the manuscript should not begin until that letter of agreement is signed by both parties—author and editor—and at least a portion of the critiquing fee is paid to the editor.

Fees for the creation and development of a book proposal vary according to the extent of the book doctor’s participation: How much of the idea for the book came from the book doctor? How much of the writing and organization of material will be done by the author and how much by the editor? Will the book doctor be critiquing an already written proposal or creating one from conversations with the author and some rough notes?

Hiring a free-lance editor as a collaborator or ghostwriter involves not only a fee for the editor’s services but also agreeing on the percentage of the advance and royalties the editor will receive if the book is sold. Depending on the extent of the editor’s participation in the project, the percentage received by the book doctor could vary anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of the advance and royalties earned by the book.

A final caveat: A talented, creative book doctor can help your work achieve critical and commercial success. An ineffective, unimaginative book doctor can be hazardous to your creativity. Take as much care in choosing a doctor for your manuscript as you would a doctor for your body. The life of your career may be at stake!

Charles Spicer

C
HARLES
S
PICER
is a senior editor at St. Martin’s Press, where he edits both fiction and nonfiction. In addition, be heads the True Crime Library imprint of St. Martin’s Paperbacks and was the editor of
Unanswered Cries
by Thomas French
, Beyond Reason
and
Murder in Boston
by Ken Englade, as well as
Sudden Fury
by Leslie Walker and
The Milwaukee Murders
by Don Davis, both
New York Times
best-sellers
.

“There are all sorts of theories about why people buy true crime,” but Mr. Spicer contends that “the real reason people are so eager to buy true crime books is that, in the best of them, the reader is guaranteed a terrific story. And story, with all its elements of character, plot, setting, texture, and resolution, is what I look for when I sign up a book.”

Defining the difference between two basic types of true crime books, “gut” (“books that affect us at a very primal level”) and “glamour” (“books … set in the world of the rich or celebrated [that] usually involve a fall from status”), Mr. Spicer then discusses the editorial elements each type needs to make it successful
.

Despite predictions of the imminent death by overproduction of true crime as a genre, Mr. Spicer takes heart from the fact that “as long as wives and husbands gleefully kill each other off, and parents and children merrily rub one another out, there will be someone to write about it and someone to read what they write. True crime is here to stay. And for the right writer, true crime can certainly pay!”

The
New York Times Book Review
recently called true crime “currently the hottest genre in publishing.” Perhaps it is, but it is certainly not the newest genre. True crime has been around since Cain killed Abel and the Bible gave us a bird’s-eye view of
that
family’s problems. Even its current vogue status can be traced back at least to the sixties, with Truman Capote’s
In Cold Blood
(Random House, 1966). Recently there has been an explosion of popularity, particularly in the paperback market. Best-seller lists reflect it with reprints of well-known hardcover books being joined by instant books published sometimes within weeks of a highly publicized case.

There are all sorts of theories about why people buy true crime and certainly there seems to be a voyeuristic element, a kind of morbid fascination with the dark side of human nature. These books permit the average reader to peer into the mind of a psychopath, to look into a world where murder really does happen, without ever leaving the safety provided between the covers of a book. But I still contend that the real reason people are so eager to buy true crime books is that, in the best of them, the reader is guaranteed a terrific story. And story, with all its elements of character, plot, setting, texture, and resolution, is what I look for when I sign up a book.

Frequently I receive news clippings of particularly horrific crimes from aspiring writers with the question, “Wouldn’t this make a great book?” And, just as frequently, my answer is, “No.” There is a world of difference between a crime that makes a shocking news story and one that makes an exciting book. At the risk of sounding callous, I might be the first to pick up a
New York Post
cover about a man who loses his job, shoots his boss and then himself, but I doubt that I’d want to read 360 pages about it. Now, give me a tale about a beautiful woman who carefully plots the death of her own babies to earn the love of the man with whom she’s sexually obsessed, and you’ll bring a smile to my face. Reading
that
book will be a weekend editorially well spent!

Okay, the bare facts of the second story are compelling, but there is another, perhaps more important element that makes a successful book—the
telling
of the story. It takes a writer with a novelist’s ability to reveal character and create suspense to make a true crime story really take off. It is a big mistake to assume that any reporter, given access to the facts in a case, can deliver a good book. Chilling as it is to contemplate, there are other women besides Diane Downs who have been accused of murdering
their own children (remember Alice Crimmins?), but it’s because Ann Rule is such a masterful storyteller that
Small Sacrifices
is such a riveting book.

What do I look for in a story? A colleague of mine came up with an excellent description of
types
of true crime books: she calls them “gut” versus “glamour,” and by “gut” she does
not
mean more gore! Rather, there are books that affect us at a very primal level: in
Small Sacrifices
(NAL, 1987), a mother kills her children; in
Sudden Fury
(St. Martin’s, 1989), an adopted child stabs the couple who gave him a home. We are shocked and deeply disturbed. A mother’s love for her children is sacrosanct; the gratitude of an adopted child to those who have rescued him is assumed. And yet the world isn’t working as it should and, as readers, we find ourselves profoundly unsettled by the experience of reading about it.

Glamour crime books are set in the world of the rich or celebrated and usually involve a fall from status: in Tommy Thompson’s
Blood and Money
(Doubleday, 1976) and William Wright’s
The Von Bulow Affair
(Delacorte, 1983), wealthy, privileged husbands are brought to trial for allegedly murdering—or trying to murder—their beautiful, rich wives. The husband’s fall is evident as he is dragged into a crowded courtroom, and the victims themselves have suffered the ultimate fall. There’s a titillation as the reader is allowed into the halls of the rich and a smug satisfaction at seeing their lives come a cropper. “So the life of the rich is not that great after all!” The glamour ones are my favorites; many is the time I’ve closed a book after turning the last page, awash in a warm feeling of smug self-satisfaction.

Character is every bit as important in a true crime book as it is in a novel. And, again, the actual story may involve fascinating people, but unless the writer knows how to reveal character, the book will fail. There are heroes, villains, and victims, and each has a crucial role to play, but my own favorites are villains—and the kinkier the better!

Frances Schreuder, the scheming socialite murderess of Shana Alexander’s
Nutcracker
(Doubleday, 1985) and Jonathan Coleman’s
At Mother’s Request
(Atheneum, 1985), is delightfully appalling. What could be worse than a mother who kills her own children? How about a mother who blackmails her own child into killing her own father? And neither Alexander nor Coleman is content merely with
telling
us what a horror Mrs. Schreuder is; they
show
us. And if God is in the details, so is the Devil, because we learn that this pretentious, social-climbing dragoness, so concerned with public appearance, has filthy personal hygiene habits. This woman, who claimed to be a loving mother, ambitious only for her children, was emotionally sadistic, and the authors let her speak for herself as she cruelly abuses her young daughter, a dance student. Character is so important to this story because the catharsis comes at the end with our knowledge that Frances Schreuder will pay for her sins.
Beyond Reason
by
Ken Englade (St. Martin’s, 1990) successfully depicts the villainess as a study in contradictions. Englade contrasts the prim, extraordinarily intelligent, boarding school-educated Elizabeth Haysom with the grotesquely spoiled, vindictive girl who helps plan the vicious murder of her own parents. Something is wrong with this picture and we want to know more.

Are there no heroes anymore? Of course there are. In
Small Sacrifices
, Fred Hugi, one of the men who helped put Diane Downs behind bars, is raising two of her surviving children. Unlike the villains, the hero usually achieves his status by dogged determination rather than one showstopper of an act, and the writer’s challenge is to make his or her struggle compelling and moving. For me, Joe McGinniss, the author of the classic
Fatal Vision
(Putnam, 1983), turns Freddy Kassab, the stepfather of the murdered Col-lette MacDonald, into a memorable hero and character. How? By making the reader experience Kassab’s anguish as he begins to suspect that the son-in-law he has trusted just may be the monster who destroyed his stepdaughter and grandchildren. By making Kassab a figure with whom we all can identify, the author lets us empathize with Kassab as he begins to think the unthinkable. McGinniss’s formidable talent as a writer enables us to enter into the story, rather than just hear the facts.

What about the poor victim? In many ways this role is the pivotal one because, unless the writer can make us care about the victim or find him or her intriguing, why read the book? Again, in
Blind Faith
(Putnam, 1989) Joe McGinniss demonstrates why his books are so unusually successful. It is exactly because Maria Marshall was such a devoted mother and wife, a woman who believed so completely in her role as both, that her death at the hands of her husband’s hired killer is so bitterly ironic and emotionally stirring. In the early part of the book, McGinniss takes us into her home to watch her prepare pancakes for her all-American sons, and later we see her attend their sporting events with such happy enthusiasm. She takes such joy in them and they so warmly return her love that later, when they discover that it is their father who has taken her from them and had her murdered brutally, we want to rip him to shreds. In Thomas French’s
Unanswered Cries
(St. Martin’s, 1991), the victim, Karen Gregory, has already been killed when the book opens. It is a testimony to French’s ability as a writer that he makes her so real to us through the carefully selected and presented memories of her friends that by the story’s end, she dominates the book. And her haunting absence is almost as achingly painful to us as to her friends.

What do I look for in addition to characterization? Every mystery buff knows that a good investigation is essential, and in true crime, it has the advantage of being real and authentically portrayed. Here is the place for a writer to include what happens when detectives arrive at a crime scene, to
explain the fascinating complexities of forensic science and its vital role in proving guilt, to take the reader inside a police task force and show how each person plays a role, to make interesting to readers the grueling legwork that goes into tracking a killer. Of course, it helps if luck plays a role. In
Beyond Reason
, Ken Englade places the reader with the Virginia detectives as they close in on the beautiful Elizabeth and her bizarre lover only to lose them when they flee to England and disappear without a trace. Months later, Englade places us inside an English department store as a young couple is arrested for shoplifting. Smelling something bigger at stake, the British detectives soon discover false identity papers and a connection is made that gives the investigation section of the book real suspense and drama.

Again, it’s the author who must judiciously pick and choose the highlights from mountains of material and then weave them into a riveting story. Anyone who has ever listened to hours of testimony from a medical examiner knows how deadly boring it can be, and the author who transcribes it word for word is not telling a story—he’s recording. Like a mystery writer, the true crime writer may decide for himself when and how to reveal a piece of information to the reader—even though the writer presumably knows it all before beginning the book. Here’s one hypothetical example of how to create tension: “As Detective Smith studied the blood spatters on the wall, a pattern began to emerge and suddenly he understood what happened that terrible night. But, he wondered, could he prove it?” He doesn’t tell us what he has discovered—yet. The reader is kept hanging, giving the writer the opportunity to introduce red herrings, keep his audience guessing and suspense churning. How much more interesting than, “As Detective Smith studied the blood spatters on the wall, he realized that John Jones had committed the murder because …” And this in the first quarter of the book!