Editing in PR: how does it compare to fiction?

The saying goes, there are no good writers, only good editors. This is mostly true. The catch is, authors – or good ones, anyway – tend to be both. Being a storyteller and novelist for nearly six years, I have come to love the editing process possibly more than writing the content itself. Where drafting is creative and fluid, editing is structured and methodical. At first glance, writing fiction and press release content hold few similarities but, looking at the editing process, there may be more than meets the eye.

Story structure = angle of the press release

I learned a key distinction during my creative writing degree that has served as a point of reference ever since. A plot is defined as the chronological events of the narrative, whereas the story is how the plot is organised for the readers’ experience.

As I spent my first few weeks at Nielsen McAllister, I realised that editing the story, or the how of the plot, draws many similarities with the angle of a press release. In both cases, the events – or the what – are the same. The key question is whether your way of telling the piece gets the most out of it. The flashbacks, points of view and dialogue is the fiction equivalent to the angle at which you choose to strike a news story. It begins and ends with you asking yourself if it’s the clearest, most effective, and engaging way of framing your work.

The elevator pitch = headline of the press release

The bane of all fiction writing is the dreaded elevator pitch: condensing 500+ pages into one punchy but accurate sentence, capturing all the nuance and charm in one go. To do this, I found myself always waiting until the manuscript was fully written, at least through the first draft.
Then, it occurred to me during my second press release that plucking the ideal headline follows the exact same procedure. It needs to be the strongest news line that may not be the most obvious, but it’s the one that acts as a hook and an indicator of the angle. For me, it can only be found after the story has taken form.

Proofreading the unconventional way

As a fiction writer, I came into PR armed with some unorthodox editing strategies. They come with a risk of raising eyebrows around the office, but are always worth trying and could save you on a crucial edit.

Using Microsoft’s Narrator or a read-aloud feature comes as a bit of a shock at first and always sounds a little stilted. However, having the trusty robot voice slowly go through every word prevents any skim reading that becomes increasingly likely when going over the piece in your head for the tenth time.

The same can of course be said for reading aloud yourself, which sounds considerably less concerning when reading a press release in the office compared to a murderous villain’s monologue at 11pm at home.

Whether it’s a string of dialogue or a quote from a CEO, one last – rather odd – trick has helped me catch a rogue double space or punctuation error, and that is reading the piece backwards. It takes me a long while and I don’t understand anything I’ve written, but that is exactly why I do it. It’s so easy to get sucked into the story that you’re constantly battling against skim reading. With this, you are forced to check every word – no, every character – in a machine-like process. And as strange as it sounds no one is the wiser, so no strange looks are thrown your way!

Beneath the polished surface of a story, the written process shares many similarities no matter the genre, style or readership. From the larger structural edits like finding an angle to adding the final proofreading touches, writing at Nielsen McAllister has proven that experience in writing – regardless of form – always brings welcome benefits.