Candidates have three minutes to make nine cubes out of a pile of blocks in the centre. Those who complete the puzzle in time will move on to the next test; those who don’t are eliminated and must return to the slums—their one chance at a better life dashed. Among the nine candidates in the room are Rafael (Rodolfo Valente), who steals a cube from another candidate to get his nine. Michele (Bianca Comparato), who initially out of kindness helps Fernando (Michel Gomes), who’s reach to the pile is limited, is in turn helped by him when she is shy one cube: at time-end, he cleverly piles her eight cubes into one large cube—the ninth—and she passes the test.
So begins Netflix’s 3%, a Brazilian dystopian thriller series created by Pedro Aguilera and directed by Cesar Charlone. In a kind of Hunger Games contest, candidates cheat in self-service; others violently impose Darwinian entitlement and survival of the fittest; yet others rely on reciprocal altruism.
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3% is set in the near future after the planet has fallen into a divided haves and have-nots through some calamity. Three percent of the population live well on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, called Offshore (Mar Alto). The remaining 97% struggle Inland with poverty and scarcity. A selection process lies between them.
Every year the 97% send their 20-year olds to undergo The Process, a grueling Hunger Games-style contest run by the Offshore elite to replenish their numbers. Only 3% of the candidates will be considered worthy. They must pass psychological, emotional and physical tests to earn a place in Mar Alto.
3% test
By the time Season 1 is over, candidates will have committed a full range of desperate and unsavory acts to make the cut—the stakes are high, after all: secure a position in the 3% elite or die in squalor and poverty. After being eliminated during the interview process, one youth throws himself off a balcony of the testing centre.
Major players in Season 1 of 3%
“It’s not so far from our own world, where the competition to get into a good school and land a good job drives many to self harm,” writes Matthew Gault on Motherboard. “In the 3%, as in our own world, society looks down on those who don’t achieve and there’s a certain kind of person who believes that life’s losers earned their place at the bottom.”
Ezekial, who runs “the Process” speaks to the new contestants
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Inland is valued by the elite only for its reserve of youth to recruit Offshore’s strictly controlled population (you only find out how in the last show of Season 1). As for what personality and fitness The Process tests for is also uncertain. “You each create your own merit,” says Ezequiel, who runs The Process, to the candidates. “No matter what happens … you deserve this.” The corollary is that if they don’t have merit—value, as determined by Ezequiel’s Process—they don’t deserve to move Offshore. There is, of course, a resistance to The Process, called The Cause. They cause stirrings of unrest and may even be responsible for the first murder in Offshore in over 100 years—which puts Ezequiel’s Process under question. Ezequiel dismisses The Cause by suggesting that it operates “in the name of a false or hypocritical equality.”
There is no inherent equality or fair entitlement in a land of scarcity; there is only proof of merit to a limited resource. This meritocratic notion—and the need to prove one’s worth to be accepted—is so ingrained in society that not even the poor question it. It was American writer John Steinbeck who argued that socialism would never take off in America because the poor see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed capitalists.”
Michele and Joana in the poor section of town
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We find out in the first show that the first murder in 100 years has occurred Offshore—which puts Ezequiel’s Process under question. And there are stirrings of unrest—some likely instigated by The Cause.
“3% is a brutal commentary on the world’s rising income inequality and the lengths we’re all willing to go to improve our lot,” writes Gault. “It’s a world of extreme income inequality where techno-fascists rule with an iron fist…Brazil has some of the highest income disparity on the planet,” writes Gault. “São Paulo is a megacity where the ultra-rich travel the skies in rented helicopters and cruise the streets in bulletproof cars. It’s a city where the poor live in makeshift favelas that resemble something from William Gibson’s nightmares. It’s a city where plastic surgeons do a brisk trade in reconstructive ear surgery because kidnapping is common and the easiest way to prove you’ve got a mark is to send their ear.”
Ezekial confronts Fernando in 3%
With each episode, 3% examines the motivations and paradoxes of heroism and villainy, sometimes turning them on their sides until they touch with such intimacy you can’t tell them apart. At its deepest, 3% explores the nature of humanity—from its most glorious to its most heinous—under the stress of scarcity and uncertainty. How we behave under these polarizing challenges ultimately determines who we are.
3% joins the ranks of several other films and shows about near-future scarcity-driven societies, with two examples below:
Snowpiercer—a stylish post-climate change apocalypse allegory. The train’s self-contained closed ecosystem of scarcity is maintained by an ordered social system, imposed by a stony militia. Those at the front enjoy privileges and luxurious living conditions, though most drown in a debauched drug stupor; those at the back live on next to nothing and must resort to savage means to survive. Minister Mason, an imperious yet simpering figure who serves the ruling class without quite being part of it, reminds the lower class that: “We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot. Yes? So it is. In the beginning, order was prescribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you…Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.”
Advantageous—Jennifer Phang’s “pre-dystopia”, where jobs have become heavily automated and opportunities for education are cutthroat. Women have been generally forced out of the workplace and onto the streets: the logic being that they will be less violent while living on the street than men. Artificial intelligence has supplanted most people in middle management. “The people you do see are either impoverished and disenfranchised or are hidden in the upper floors, the protected places,” says director Jennifer Phang. Unemployment is close to 50% and there are no public schools. The only options for a young girl—if she is not to end up on the streets, either as a beggar or prostitute—is to attend a highly selective free magnet school or a very expensive private school.
In his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, author Peter Frase considered effects of climate change and automation in possible outcomes of a post-Trump election America. Frase envisioned four scenarios based on abundance and scarcity and whether a society operated by equality (e.g., communism or socialism) or hierarchy (rentism, exterminism).
With scarce resources, socialism (aka Ecotopia) may arise within an egalitarian society if driven by altruistic notions of self-limitation. Ecologists describe such a self-limiting system as K-selected (see my discussion of K-selection and r-selection in “Water Is…”). A K-selected population is at or near the carrying capacity of the environment, which is usually stable and favors individuals that successfully compete for resources and produce few young. The K-selected strategy runs on a successive gradient of maturity, from initially competitive to ultimately cooperative. Competition is a natural adaptive remnant of uncertainty and insecurity and forms the basis of a capitalist economy that encourages monopolization and hostile takeovers. Competition results from an initial antagonistic reaction to a perception of limited resources. It is a natural reaction based on distrust—of both the environment and of the “other”—both aspects of “self ” separated from “self.” The greed for more than is sustainable reflects a fear of failure and a sense of being separate, which ultimately perpetuates actions dominated by self-interest in a phenomenon known as “the Tragedy of the Commons.” Competition naturally gives way to creative cooperation as trust in both “self ” and the “other” develops and is encouraged through continued interaction.
Exterminism (aka Mad Max) may arise under a hierarchical model, driven by greed and exacerbated by uncertainty in the environment—not unlike what we are currently experiencing with the planet’s system and cyclical changes. In this scenario, in which resources are both limited and uncertain, those with access to them would guard or hide them away with desperate fervor. Frase writes:
“When mass labor has been rendered superfluous [through automation], a final solution* lurks: the genocidal war of the rich against the poor.”
Gault says it best: “3% hits so hard because it seems bizarre and distant, but as the show unwinds and reveals its mysteries, audiences will come to realize that we’re already part of The Process.”
*the Final Solution was originally used by Nazi Germany as “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question”; the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews during World War II, formulated in 1942 by Nazi leadership at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, culminated in the Holocaust, which murdered 90 percent of Polish Jews.
References:
Fisher, Mark. 2009. “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?” Zero Books. 92pp.
Frase, Peter. 2016. Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.” Verso. 160pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2016. “Water Is…The Meaning of Water.” Pixl Press. 584pp.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
“Nothing in nature stays the same. Or if it does, it’s because change has brought it back to what it once was.”
Lynna Dresden
“Munteanu excels at extrapolating today’s science into a stark vision of what we face in the next decades. Environmentalists, science fact enthusiasts, and science fiction fans will be shaken by this cautionary tale of climate change. Great for fans of James Lawrence Powell’s The 2084 Report, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thompson Creek, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
“We hold ourselves apart from our profligate nature. But we aren’t unique. We are more part of Nature than we admit. Using the thread of epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer, Nature stitches in us a moving tapestry of terrible irony. The irony lies in our conviction that we were made in the inimitable divine image of God. That we are special. Water flows endlessly through us, whether we are devout Catholics or empty vessels with no purpose. Water makes no distinction. It flows through us even after we bury ourselves.”
Lynna Dresden
A Diary in the Age of Water is “Unsettling and yet deliciously readable … Brilliant.”
THE PRAIRIE BOOK REVIEW
Swamp forest by country road, Kawarthas, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In the “Hero’s Journey” myth, Elysium (or the Elysium Fields in Greek mythology) is the paradise that true heroes go to when they die (think of Frodo in Lord of the Rings and the hero in The Gladiator). To the ancient Greeks, Elysium was a place at the ends of the earth where heroes, favoured by the gods for their altruism, went. It is a state or place of perfect happiness; the equivalent of Heaven.
Elysium is also the name given to the Earth-orbiting space station of Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) new science fiction political allegory of the same name. Elysium is where the privileged live in luxury and perfect health (thanks to health-pods) — after they abandoned Earth to the squalor they no doubt helped create. This is not made clear enough for me and is one of the film’s major weaknesses, in my opinion (more on that below).
Earth seen from Elysium
The year is 2154 in a Los Angeles that strangely resembles the slum shanties of Johannesburg, South Africa (where Blomkamp filmed District 9). We soon learn that Earth struggles in the mire of humanity’s waste in a state of general social strife. Abandoned by the wealthy elite (who have moved to Elysium), the rest of an overpopulated humanity lives in the squalor of abject poverty without food, healthcare, or the motivation to live. I, for one, would have liked to know a little of how humanity devolved so dramatically on a planetary scale.
A Different Hero’s Journey
From the time he was a young orphan, Max Da Costa (Matt Damon; Maxwell Perry Cotton) dreamed of going to Elysium, its impressive phantom form visible in the daytime sky. He promised his childhood love Frey (sympathetically played by Alice Braga and Valentina Giros) that he would take her there, to paradise. His mentor, a kind mother-figure nun at the orphanage, gives him the hero’s talisman (a locket with a picture of Earth inside), and prophesizes, “Es su destino hacer algo maravilla cuando tu es hombre” (“It is your destiny to do something great when you are a man”). She reminds him that when he gets to Elysium, he will see the most beautiful thing: planet Earth. “You see how beautiful it is,” she says to him as he gazes out at the ghost of Elysium in the sky. Then, as she hands him the locket with Earth inside, she adds, “look how beautiful we are from there. Never forget where you come from.” Seen from this perspective, the planet Earth is a beautiful thing to behold.
Max and Spider share a heated conversation
Max is a reformed criminal who, like Blomkamp’s “workaday” anti-hero in District 9 (Sharlto Copley), is not very hero-like until the last five minutes of the film, when he has his personal epiphany and decides to act altruistically rather than self-servingly. This is a pattern that Blomkamp has used before; the reluctant-hero (Wikus Van De Merwe) of District 9 was an unimpressive man with many obvious blemishes. A rather unlikeable man until he makes his heroic decision in the end. This is where Blomkamp’s heroes differ from most action movie heroes, who generally start their journey from higher positions on the evolutionary scale. Blomkamp’s heroes must journey farther to gain their hero-status; they are perhaps more realistic portrayals of ordinary men who finally shine under extra-ordinary circumstances. Men who we start out disliking—hating, even—but find ourselves cheering for, perhaps even crying for. Max’s behaviour defines that true hero: rising from his need to save himself to his quest to save humanity—at the cost of his own life. But, as with the ordinary man, it is only when he connects a personal quest to save the daughter of his first love to his global quest to save Earth that Max transforms into the altruistic mythic hero he is destined to become. Everything came together at the film’s end, in a montage of scenes that depict the locket of the planet Earth in his dying hand (Earth is Home; save the planet), the demise of a police state, the saviour of his love’s daughter, and med-pods landing on Earth to dispense aid to the dying masses.
Elysium orbiting the Earth
A Story About the Planet Earth
Ironically, it is to do with our beloved planet Earth that I felt in Elysium the most discord in plot/thematic story treatment and lack of resonance. Blomkamp begins with the planet and he ends his film with the planet. The symbolism is clear: in the stylish shots of Earth seen from Elysium (and vice versa); in the strategic scenes of Max and the image in his precious locket of not his childhood love Frey but of planet Earth; and his mentor’s advice to Max, delivered in one of the most powerful scenes of the movie. Yet, Blomkamp fails to follow through to give us that visceral connection. Why is the planet so important? How is Max connected to it or anyone else, for that matter. What is Spider’s story (Wagner Moura), a latter-day Che-Guevara, who fervently leads the proletarian rebellion of Earth? Who, why and how did the planet come to be so destroyed? There is not one ounce of suggestion, backstory or context. This is an important consideration; because without it, instead of feeling total resolution and redemption in the end, I felt a disconnect to those masses being helped and even some distrust in their fate and direction. Instead of feeling true victory, I felt ambivalence.
Called a “sci-fi socialist film” by P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters.org, Elysium is clearly an attempt at examining and dramatizing the social segregation of humanity and economic fascism: a dystopia that promises commentary on social and economic issues in society today. However, I felt that its delivery was compromised by Blomkamp’s choice to focus more on action tech at the expense of good backstory, context and empathic character development. I’m not saying that it’s a bad story. It is a very good story; it’s just that it could have been a great story. The heart of the story—delivered through the main protagonist—lacks the global connection it could have had. This is not, as some reviewers suggest, due to any infirmity of the hero, his antagonists, or lack of symbolism (of which there is much), but the lack of context, backstory and richness of setting (I’m not talking about the visible setting, which was spectacular, elegant and stylish). It comes back to how each character relates to “home”, the planet, and to each other.
Matt Goldberg of Collider.com says that, “Elysium‘s message about economic inequality is couched in a finely-drawn sci-fi world, but the power of that message becomes diminished when we cease to care about the messenger.” Detroit News Tom Long added that, “Elysium is the sort of big, noisy sci-fi film that seems to want to say something but opts instead to concentrate on fight scenes involving gimmickry.” While I appreciated the depth and breadth of Blomkamp’s references to pop culture from an Armani-clad female Darth Vader to the Judeo-Christian references and symbolism, it just didn’t hold its promise.
Jodi Foster plays Defence Secretary Delacourt, the threshold guardian of Elysium
What began as a promising exploration about an important social issue, devolved into a sequence of ever-escalating gratuitous gore and violence—clearly aimed for a different audience.
Elysium
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
“When you look at a deep pond, you don’t see the bottom. Instead, you see yourself reflected there. The calmer the pond, the more you see of you, the less of the pond.”
Lynna Dresden
A Diary in the Age of water is “delightfully unique … a story where there is a lot more underneath the gleaming surface.”
The Otonabee River under rosy haze from northeastern wildfires, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
It was pleasantly cool yesterday evening during my walk along the Otonabee River. Over the day, the smell of ‘campfire’ smoke from the raging northern wildfires intensified and the sun became an eerie copper disk in the peach-coloured sky. The river had gone still, as if hushed and waiting beneath the cloud of haze. Houses along the shore had become fluid watercolour paintings, colours and textures blending in a soft fabric of grey and green. As I set my gaze on a favourite cottage by the river, its reflection caught in the still waters, I thought the scene beautiful…
My heart then reminded me that this wasn’t a mist rising off the river but the yellow-brown dust descending from the corpses of millions of burnt trees, sent here by a cruel northeast wind.
Map of Ontario wildfires June 5, 2023
Today, the Ontario government reported heavy smoke conditions in the Northeast Region due to a large number of fires in eastern Ontario and Quebec—with fires worse than usual this year in Quebec. More than 160 fires are burning, most out of control, in Quebec. Smoke drift is travelling as far as just north of Timmins, down through Sudbury and past Parry Sound. Environment Canada issued Air quality warnings today for Peterborough, where I currently live.
Global News reported today that “relentless wildfires have devoured 3.3 million hectares of land across Canada so far this year—roughly 10 times the normal average for the season.” In the last 24 hours, 21 new fires were discovered across Ontario, amounting to 159 active fires provincially. According to Global News, “Searing hot, tinder-dry conditions, similar to what was seen in western Canada, has only worsened the situation in Ontario.” And Quebec.
Map of Quebec wildfires June 5, 2023
Sun setting over smoky Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
There is an old willow tree on the river bank by the path I walk daily. Its massive arms stretch out over the water and one arm leans low over the path so you must bend down to walk under it. The derecho last May had cracked the tree open. But the sturdy willow continues on, undaunted, as all Nature does, thrusting up suckers from its large limbs toward a future of many more willows. It’s a favourite tree of many a walker who like to sit on its generous arms and look out over the river. Each day I touch its bark and say hello.
Old willow on the path by the Otonabee River, the glow of smoke-sun on its generous arms (photo by Nina Munteanu)
New suckers burst out of the leaning willow limb (photo by Nina Munteanu)
I think of my old friend. How a fire would take it.
First its leaves would sizzle and take flight in a requiem dance. The trunk, a funnel of fire and smoke, would sway and groan then crack with a final death shout to the roaring hissing fire. Like flying kites, leaf corpses would join embers of curling bark and soar in a vortex of billowing coal black fury. The river would flow through a killing field, black stumps and burned debris flying with the vagaries of a mischievous wind. Covered in a film of thick and oily debris, the lonely river would grow dark and surly, smothering its own aquatic forest—the algae, benthic invertebrates and fish.
And I would weep…
Sun setting over hazy forest at mouth of Thompson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s recent book is the bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” (Mincione Edizioni, Rome). Her latest “Water Is…” is currently an Amazon Bestseller and NY Times ‘year in reading’ choice of Margaret Atwood.
Poplar trees in fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I just finished reading Ben Rawlence’s 2022 book The Treeline. It is a book that made me think. It made me cry. It made me despair. It also gave me hope.
Cattails line a snow-covered marsh with spruce and fir behind, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I was gripped by this honest and unflinching exploration on the moving treeline with climate change and what it will mean for humanity. Beautifully written and rigorously reported, Rawlence invited me on a journey of all major treelines over the globe from Scotland, Norway and Russia, to Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Throughout his description of a warming world and a vanishing way of life, Rawlence meditates on the many repercussions on how humans live.
Pine-cedar forest in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
He aptly describes the forests of the world as the ‘heartbeat of the planet,’ the cycles of breathing and the pulses of life from the spike of oxygen in the spring when trees put out their leaves to the peaks and troughs over day and night that regulate plant photosynthesis and respiration. The peaks and troughs are getting shallower, he writes. With more carbon dioxide in the air the trees work less; they inhale less and exhale less oxygen.
“The planet is a finely tuned system. A few degrees of change in its orbit can usher in an ice age; a few degrees of temperature change can transform the distribution of species, can melt glaciers and create oceans. In the future, when the ice is gone, there may be no such thing as a treeline at all. As the stable currents of air and water associated with the Gulf Stream, the polar front, polar vortex and Beaufort Gyre dissipate or fluctuate, the Arctic Ocean melts completely, and the Rossby waves in the upper atmosphere go haywire, the fine gradations of temperature, altitude and latitude first observed by Alexander von Humboldt will become decoupled and ecological transition zones scrambled. Instead of a majestic sweeping zone of forest around the planet, we might find discontinuous pockets of trees in odd places, refugees from soil and temperatures long gone, and crocodiles once again at the North Pole.”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Snow-covered river shoreline with mixed forest, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Rawlence brings this all into perspective to our present situation and the role science has played in our hubristic illusion of control:
“An unfortunate side effect of science is the illusion of human mastery: the idea that if we know what is happening then we can control. The irony is that we might have been able to. The tragedy is that it is too late. The chain reaction is under way. The curve only gets steeper from here…five metres of sea level rise is locked in; it’s just a question of how fast the ice melts. Once again, the models seem to underestimate the speed…”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Willow by a river at first snow, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
What is most unfortunate for us, for humanity, is that we have known all this for some time. But we’ve done little. “Industrialist capitalism and its export colonialism” with its exploitive gaze that drives our needs and wants and actions has chosen to ignore the signs. That exploitive gaze ignored that we are not only embedded in but dependent upon the natural world and all the forests to live and flourish.
Tamarack and birch trees in the fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
What Rawlence does acknowledge is a way out of our self-created doom and accompanying solastalgia:
“Our present emergency is forcing us to remember what, until recently, we have always known: that there is a web of communication, meaning and significance beyond us, a world of life forms constantly chattering, shouting and flirting and hunting each other, indifferent to human affairs. And there is solace in such a vision. The way out of the depression and grief and guilt of the carbon cul-de-sac we have driven down is to contemplate the world without us. To know the earth, that life, will continue its evolutionary journey in all its mystery and wonder. To widen our idea of time, and of ourselves. If we see ourselves as part of a larger whole, then it is the complete picture that is beautiful, worthy of meaning and respect, worth perhaps dying for, safe in the knowledge that life is not the opposite of death but a circle, as the forest teaches us, a continuum.”
Ben Rawlence, The Treeline
Poplar trees line a road in the Ontario country (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
The planet will be alright. Species will go and others will come. Earth has experienced five extinction events (we are currently experiencing the sixth extinction event now) and after each, life flourished again, albeit different life.
Is there still hope for humanity? Perhaps—if we set our hubris aside and embrace humility and kindness. And, if in that humility, we can adapt our way through the succession we’ve triggered. There might be hope for us still…
Rawlence devotes his epilogue called “Thinking Like a Forest” to the wisdom of the indigenous people who have for millennia co-existed sustainably with the natural ecosystems of the Earth. “The Koyukon, the Sámi, the Nganasan, the Anishinaabe are just a few of the countless indigenous peoples whose world view attests to our foundational reliance on the forest.”
Time to learn from them.
Trees at sunset in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of award-nominated speculative novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s recent book is the bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” (Mincione Edizioni, Rome). Her latest “Water Is…” is currently an Amazon Bestseller and NY Times ‘year in reading’ choice of Margaret Atwood.
Alvar in spring, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
In my previous article, “Five Things Writers Wish Editors Knew—and Followed,” I focused on clarifying expectations between editors and writers from the writer’s point of view.
Part 2, this article, focuses on this same relationship from the editor’s point of view. If you are a writer, this article serves as a workable checklist of what you should expect from a good editor.
Realizing Expectations
Indie authors often come to editors with unclear and, at times, unreasonable or unrealistic expectations on services. Many writers know very little about the kind of editing we do and the different levels of effort (time and associated fee) required. They do not understand the difference between “copy-editing” and “structural editing”, particularly as it pertains to their own work. In fact, many indie writers don’t even know what their MS requires. This is because of two things: 1) they can’t objectively assess their own work, particularly in relation to market needs; and 2) many authors have not sufficiently considered their “voice” or brand and matched it to a relevant target market. Both of these will influence how the writer comes into the relationship and the nature of their expectations.
It is best to be “up front” with everything, from understanding a writer’s work and market expectations to establishing your fees, your time, and the nature of your services. This is why a savvy editor will ask for a one to several page example of the author’s writing prior to offering their services and finalizing the nature of a potential relationship. Such an exchange may, in turn, include a sample of the editor’s work for the writer to assess. This exchange helps clarify the process for both parties.
A savvy editor will want to establish with the author the following things prior to taking him/her on as a client and embarking on the actual editing task:
The nature of the writer’s work: a writer’s work should harmonize with the editor and achieve a good fit; e.g., I edit fiction and non-fiction; however, I do not edit horror, because I simply can’t relate to it and don’t care for it. More on this below.
The author’s expectations and target market: this is key to establishing the kind of editing required for the author’s piece. Is it good enough to just copy-edit or will the piece require substantive edits to succeed in the identified market? This often requires open and frank communication between editor and author.
Nature and time of submission: on which the schedule is based.
Schedule and deadlines for deliverables: based on the editor’s realistic timing (including other work) and the nature of the editing job (to be established by some reliable means).
Nature of communication: form and frequency; partly to ensure that the writer does not abuse the communication stream with a barrage of emails, e-chats, phone calls, etc.)
Nature and cost of deliverables: e.g., use of track changes; inclusion of summary letter; follow up meetings, etc.
Mutual agreement on fees, fee structure and payment details: what, how and when.
Inclusion and nature of contract: this may include an NDS, if desired.
By clarifying these, you and the author create a new set of realistic agreed-upon expectations.
Fitting Writer with Editor
The right fit for editor and writer includes more than harmonizing genre, writing style, and content. The fit includes personality. A professional editor and writing colleague of mine recently shared on our list-serve about his experience as both a freelance and publishing house editor. The editor shared that a majority of writers responded to his edits with comments like, “finally, someone who just comes out and plainly tells me what’s wrong!” However, others complained: “why are you so mean?” The editor admitted to using humor liberally in his assessments and was described by one of his clients as “playfully harsh.” While the work of this editor is no doubt impeccable, the added humor may not be a good fit for some writers, particularly those who are not highly confident in their work.
Knowing your own brand of editing and being up front with it is part of achieving a good fit with a writer and can avoid huge headaches down the line for both of you.
Toward Honesty & Moral Integrity
I and some of my editing colleagues have run across several cases of indie writers who have come to us with “already edited works” that they believed only needed proofing or minor edits, but in fact called for substantive editing and story coaching to fulfill market requirements. The previous editor had either done a poor job of editing or the author had done a poor job of incorporating the edits. Either way, I was now in the position to inform this author, who had already spent several thousand dollars on edits, that his work required more than a “trim job off the top” to meet the standards demanded by the market.
My colleague suggested that it is unethical to copy-edit a manuscript that obviously requires structural editing or has serious “story” problems. I’m inclined to agree. The key lies in the expectations of the author and his/her intended market. This is where the editor’s knowledge of “matching work to market” becomes a critical part of the relationship with the author, whether you take him/her on as a client or not. I talked more about this in an article on Boldface: “The Moving Target of Indie Publishing: What Every Editor (and Writer) Needs to Know.” Honesty is best. Following the path of moral integrity may not put food on the table; but it will maintain your reputation as an editor of quality, which will keep the roof over your head.
Below is a mock email of a general response to a writer’s inquiry for help on their MS:
Dear Alice,
Thank you for your interest in my editing services. I am still taking on clients and would be happy to help you.
In your initial letter, you included a brief description of your story. It sounds intriguing and interesting. Science fiction is my passion (I’ve published nine SF books so far).
Before we proceed, I need a few things from you to ensure we are a good fit and to help me do the best I can for your project. First, can you please send me a short sample of your work (2-3 pages) and a very short summary. From this I’ll be able to confirm the kind of editing that best suits your project. For the kinds of editing/coaching services and associated fees please refer to this page on my website: xxxx.
Can you also answer the following questions?
1. (If they haven’t included the genre or a short premise, I ask them for one). 2. How do you intend to publish this book (traditional, indie, self-publish)? 3. Who would you say is your intended audience and market? 4. Is his book a sand alone or par of a trilogy or series? 5. Is the book complete (firs draft or higher? If not, how much is written?
Based on this, I will suggest the kind of editing (and coaching) required to best fit your needs. This may be one or a combination of the following: 1) an evaluation/assessment at $xx/page; 2) copy-editing (with some substantive editing) at $xx/page; or 3) story coaching at $xx/hour. As outlined on my webpage (xxxx), I provide digital commentary (line by line) in your manuscript (in Word through track changes) accompanied by a summary letter with recommendations. You can find examples of what I do on this page of my website: xxxx. Once I’ve determined what services best suit your work and you are in agreement with the service and fees, I will draw up a contract for you and I to sign. The contract will stipulate a reasonable schedule that you and I can agree on for the process and deliverables.
Once the contract is signed by both of us, I would ask that you send me your material along with Paypal payment for the first half of the agreed total fee by the date marked in the contract.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Wishes, Nina
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 