The Editor

It’s a pulp-action thriller about an elite editor who takes on a big assignment for a super-secret branch of the US intelligence services. The job involves multiple authors, nested revisions, thousands of reviewer comments and a mysterious style guide.

Our hero, who is both linguistically and editorially ripped, operates at a level above and beyond most editors, employing a fiendishly elaborate armada of macros, speed-reading techniques and version-control software before even reading the source text.

Rich and humorous detail is provided by a dedicated squad of copywriters, proofreaders and spellcheckers who assist the editor by performing the referencing grunt work, among other tasks. But complications arise as a result of mismatched file formats, unrealistic client expectations and changes to the original brief that go all the way to the office of the President.

Despite a series of setbacks as well as attempted sabotage on the part of a nameless contributing author, the editor successfully produces a version of the document that is totally free of errors, bodaciously structured and indexed, insanely readable and delivered in .rtf, XHTML and PDF formats.

Highly charged, meticulously detailed and surprisingly realistic, The Editor features an offbeat cast of characters, sparse yet grammatically correct dialogue and daring feats of rewriting.

Suggested tagline: No more tracked changes — this time it’s final (.docx).