Last time we talked about commas. In particular, I brought to you the serial comma, or the Oxford comma. I emphasized the fact that details—even commas—really do matter to writers. This was on my mind because of that court case ruling hinging upon how workers, an organization, and the state of Maine interpreted its statutes as a result of a missing Oxford comma.

As I warned at the end of episode 94, however, this is a detail-level edit. Don’t let concern over comma placement stall the writing of your draft. You have to write with freedom and abandon when you’re in the writing stage.

Comma concerns come later, in the editing phase, when you pop on your fedora and dig into that draft. Even then, though—even when editing—comma concerns are not your first concerns.

They're important, no doubt—I mean, I dedicated an entire episode to a single type of comma—but the first time you revisit that draft to consider edits and changes, the commas are not the first thing you tackle.

Focus on your high-level edits first.

Before you worry about sentence-level changes or stylistic flair you can add—that’s that jazziness that Ayn Rand called it in The Art of Nonfiction. In episode 69, I quoted her saying: "The first absolute is: be clear. Drama, jazziness, color—which can be added later—are never as important as clarity.”

Clarity before commas, high-level concerns before proofreading, high-order concerns before low-order concerns.

High-Order Concerns or High-Level Edits

That last set of phrases traces back to academia. When I taught composition to high school students, I kept encountering that terminology: “high-order concerns,” or “HOCs” and "low-order concerns," or “LOCs.” I used this with my students, reminding them to focus on HOCs first, then spend time on the LOCs. In the publishing world, you might hear the high-order concerns, or HOCs, referred to as:

high-level edits

big-picture edits

developmental edits

structural edits

substantive edits

global edits

macro concerns

It doesn’t really matter what you call this stage or level of editorial input. Just make sure you and anyone else involved understands what you mean and joins you in attending to these types of evaluations and recommendations first.

Focus

When you’re focusing on your high-level edits, the HOCs, you’ll be examining the overall focus of the piece. You’ll look at the big idea and the theme. You’ll need to be sure of your intended audience—make sure you know who you’re writing for.

What are you wanting to share with these readers? Can you state in one sentence what your piece is about? If you can't, you may need to revisit the big idea or thesis of your project and figure out what you’re really trying to say. Have a friend read the opener of your nonfiction project and without letting him read further, have him try to tell you what it’s about. Did he get it? If not, figure out what needs to be brought out more and refine it. And then write the rest of your piece to match that opening explanation.

You may find in that evaluation process that you need to narrow your focus or tighten it up if you’re trying to tackle too much. Or, it's possible you’ve narrowed your idea so much that you actually need to expand it a bit or dive more deeply into it.

These are all high-order concerns—the macro concerns for the developmental stage of your project.

Organization or Structure

The organization and structure of the piece also need time and attention at this stage. We make choices as writers about how to present our information or story. In fiction, this could be the point of view or the tense we choose to tell the story—is it first person and present tense? Is that working well for the story? In nonfiction,