This is going to be part rant/part education. Unfortunately, I'm going to make you suffer through the rant part first. I'll go on and apologize for that.

Every so often, I'll go into the IYW club and see a thread asking how you should pay your editor. And it never fails that someone will say that editors should not ask for dedications, reads, comments, or critiques--that they should do it out of the kindness of their hearts. 

Obviously, the people making those statements have no idea what editing entails. 

Let me give some examples. If you went to a mechanic, would you have the audacity to tell him that he should fix your car out of the kindness of his heart? What about if you go to the beautician? Should she cut your hair out of the kindness of her heart? Would you say that the surgeon who just fixed your mom's heart shouldn't accept payment, that he should do it out of the kindness of his heart? 

If you answered yes to any of those questions, I have a question for you: Why didn't YOU fix your own car, your own hair, or your own mother's heart? 

What was that answer again? Because you don't know how to? Well, isn't that interesting... 

When you pay to have things fixed, you are paying that person for his/her knowledge and the time it took him/her to acquire it. It may be that you don't have the knowledge of how to fix whatever it is that needs fixed or that you just don't have the time to fix it. Regardless, you're paying that other person for the time s/he spent learning his/her trade and the time that s/he is spending fixing whatever it was that needed fixing. If you want this fixed for free, your best bet is to do it yourself--and hope that you don't really screw up in the process. 

I'm sure that someone is probably still laughing his/her arse off at my comparison of editing to the aforementioned careers, but let's use this analogy: A doctor is to the body as an editor is to a story. This also works with beauticians and mechanics. Editing involves surgery on the story, polishing it to make it beautiful, and just making it work.

Now, back to the original question: What should you pay your editor? 

I'm going to admit that I do some editing on the side for my most dedicated followers. And I do it for "free"--but, they have given a lot to me in the way of reads, comments, and friendship. This is my way of paying them back. I only do this for people that I consider my friends on some level, and they are very understanding of the fact that it may take me some time to edit the chapter, possibly a month or longer depending on what I have going on.

I have lots of people that I'd like to edit for, but I don't have the time. I have my own writing and editing  to do, and when I'm editing a story like The Contingency Plan, I have no desire to look at someone else's story. Between chasing a one-year-old around most of the day and life in general, I have about two hours per day that I can devote to writing and editing--and that is only if my son takes a nap. If he doesn't or he wakes up early, it won't happen that day. The only thing I require from these people for whom I've offered to edit is that they don't tell others that I'm the editor. 

But what should you pay your editor?  I don't think it is unreasonable for an editor to ask for a read, comment, or critique, to be honest, you should do that anyways; you need to know that the editor actually has a clue about writing and grammar. I don't necessarily agree with a dedication, but I don't think that's unreasonable either. It really depends on how much s/he does for your story. Keep in mind that a professional editor can cost thousands if you are trying to self-publish a book. 

How much time did your editor spend on your story? I've spent hours upon hours on some projects (college papers, Wattpad stories). There are times that I've been certain that I spent more time polishing a project than the writer spent writing it. I'm not exaggerating. If I'm spending more time correcting your mistakes than you spent writing, well... I almost think you owe me naming your firstborn child after me. If you've already had your firstborn, you should change his/her name. Okay, I might be kidding about that. 

How could I possibly spend more time editing than you spent writing? Very easy to do if you don't know basic grammar and haven't taken the time to learn anything about this craft we call writing. I've seen English papers that were all over the place with horrible spelling and grammar, and the content was atrocious. I've also seen other papers that didn't even answer the topic that was supposed to be discussed.

A four-Wattpad-page chapter can take me about an hour or more to edit, and that's if there aren't many grammatical errors and the writing is decent.

There are two different ways that I edit. One, the way that takes the least amount of time, is when I make the changes and then give notes at the end so the writer can do a side-by-side comparison. The problem with this is that there isn't a lot of learning involved if the writer doesn't take the time to read my notes and look at the comparison. The other way involves lots of color coding. I do make some changes in the text, which are always made in red font. And then I may highlight in several other colors. This can take hours to do, but the writer can easily see the problem areas. And, of course, I put in a note at the end to explain the color codes and anything else that I've noticed in the chapter. Sort of a critique on steroids.

What goes into editing? A lot. Proofreading is only one small component of editing. Most of the people on Wattpad are really only looking for someone to proofread. They don't know about the other "stuff" an editor does that can really polish a story. 

You mention this other "stuff"--what is it? And this is where we're going to get educational. These are some words that I use when critiquing and definitely some words that I use in editing. 

1. Tightening. This often involves getting rid of adverbs, some prepositions, choosing the write word, etc. Some examples: walk slowly = creep, walk quietly = tiptoe or creep, talk loudly = shout, eat really quickly = scarf... You get the idea. I also look for redundancy. Tiptoe quiety. Shout loudly. You want to use the correct word, and you want your story to be tighter than my husband on a shopping trip to the mall. 

Tightening also applies to words that can be omitted from the manuscript. You'd be surprised by how many "thats" you can eliminate from your story. 

2. Frequent use of words. If I see a word becoming problematic for the writer, yes, it will be highlighted. That writer will receive a "Your favorite words this chapter were suddenly, even, only, just, back, that, then, I...." You never want to the same words over and over again, and the ones I listed are some of the most commonly overused. You don't want "hand" to appear five times in the span of two paragraphs, or even on the same page if you can avoid it. 

3. Awkward sentences. They may be grammatically correct and just don't belong, or I may not have a clue what the heck the writer is trying to say. Usually a face-palm is in the writer's future. 

4. Making cuts. I don't make cuts for anyone but myself. I might make recommendations as to what can be cut, but that is up to the writer. I've cut thousands of words out of The Contingency plan. To be honest, I've probably cut a thousand words from each chapter. Some people could argue that I need to make further cuts on what I've uploaded. Whole scenes, chapters, and characters may be eliminated in the process. Ouch. That's why I don't do this for anyone else. 

5. Adding scenes into the story. These are recommendations. An editor won't write your story.  I may tell the writer that I think it should happen in order to make the story flow better. Sometimes we need to understand why X is now in love with Y when they hated each other five minutes ago.

6. Sentence structure. Walking to the park, I tripped on the sidewalk. Falling on the cement, my head started to bleed. Bleeding profusely, I started to scream..... Understanding my point, you probably wish I'd move on already. Amazingly, I will touch this one when I edit as long as I can make it work. 

 7. Story structure. This is one that typically I don't touch, but I may say, "Hey, I think you've started your story too soon." I hate telling a writer that. Really, I do. What it means: You need to scrap a whole chapter (or three) to make it work well. 

8. Discrepancies. Your chapter starts in a mall but ends in a supermarket, and your characters haven't left the mall. Your character was sixteen two chapters ago, but now she's twelve and there's no sign of this being a flashback, she just seems to have grown younger without having acquired an Age-Turner-Backer 4000 (By the way, if you find one of those, please send it my way. I'll edit your whole book for free). Or maybe you're writing something that just isn't possible without some sort of an explanation. Maybe you didn't do your research, and it was easy for me to spot. I won't catch everything, but what I do catch, I will point out. 

9. Issues with POV. Your chapter starts in first person, and ends in third person. There's a lot of head-hopping going on to the point that your reader isn't sure whose head we're in.

10. And did I mention grammar, tense issues, punctuation, and spelling?  

That pretty much sums up what I do when I edit. 

Okay, so how do I edit for myself? 

1. Learn proper grammar and spelling. I am constantly pulling out the dictionary and The Elements of Style. If you are unsure about something, look it up or ask someone who might know the answer. 

2. Go line by line through your story. Read it aloud. Or have someone else read it out loud while you listen. 

3. Look for all of those things that I mentioned earlier: Redundancies, areas where it can be tightened, sentence structure, areas that need to be trimmed or fleshed out, awkward sentences, and words that are being used too frequently.

4. Make the necessary changes.

5. Repeat the process. Feel free to cry; it's painful. Then go back to number one.

Rant over. Time to edit. Let me know if this has helped you.