Meet ‘Stupor Wordie’

A post on line editing 10,000 word submissions: The ‘Stupor-Wordie’ 
(stupor from the Latin for wonder as in stupor mundi: wonder of the world)

For some emerging writers, submission to a literary agent of the first 10,000 words or three chapters of a manuscript represents months if not years of work. As a line editor I particularly enjoy collaborating on first submissions. Revising a text line-by-line focusing on style and tone is a thrilling exercise. The task is to achieve maximum accuracy and readability so that at no point is the reader distracted from what is being said on account of how it is being said. 

Line editing a text is much like rinsing hand-washed clothing; it takes several rounds for the water to achieve perfect clarity. Most edits are fairly straightforward: elimination of repetition, tautology, redundant words and phrases. Other types of edit present a challenge. Meet the ‘stupor wordie’. A stupor wordie is what I have come to call a word or phrase that does not fit the text, that arrests the reader’s attention in an unwarranted manner and yet to which the writer is particularly attached. It is a conceit, a word brain-child that is, alas, only beautiful in the eye of its author-parent. It may be a turn of phrase inherited from published prose that has left the author hypnotised by its beauty, a clever metaphor, or a made-up word that came to the author in a moment of genius certainly, but possibly not sobriety.

Spotting it is not the problem. The difficulty normally lies in persuading the author to let it go, for how is a writer to be separated from an unwise love? Recently I discovered that the editor may also be the one who cedes. While revising a 30-page double-spaced submission, I came across a particularly exotic stupor wordie (involving a pair of galoshes and a muddy trail) that I had already flagged three times at earlier stages in the creative process. Unwilling to pass sentence on it a fourth time, I was forced to find another option. Indeed, some subtle scaffolding and seeding of the components of the metaphor did soften the jarring effect. I am grateful to this stupor wordie, for reflecting to me my own attachment to a certain way of doing things, and pushing me to embrace a novel editorial device.

If you have ever been parted from a stupor wordie, do reach out. I’d love to hear your story.