Paying Attention to Factual Accuracy
This sounds like an obvious one. For example, if we mention St Omer as the capital of Spain, we will be tossed on the slush pile faster than the time it takes to press on key on your keyboard. Unless the story is clearly taking place in an alternate universe, but for this time, we will stick to the world as we know it.
An editor has to ensure that the writer did his homework properly. For example, in “the position of the Narrator“, Jane goes to St Andrew chapel in the cathedral. We have now established that the story takes place in St Omer. The editor is a thorough one, so he actually checked whether there is a St Andrew chapel in the St Omer cathedral. There is none. However, surprise, surprise, there is a St Omer chapel in St Omer Cathedral, with a statue of St Omer. So it is not such a problem to correct the mistake, simply by replacing Andrew by Omer.
This sounds like a piece of cake, doesn’t it? Not so fast. Just out of curiosity, let’s try googling St Andrew and St Omer Cathedral to check it up. We will see immediately that, though one might find everything online, it is not always so simple. This is exactly why the writer had given up and trusted a misleading memory. Luckily, he has a brilliant editor that caught his mistake in time.
So far so good, as far as geographical and cultural clues are established. Since the open market in St Omer only takes place on Saturdays, and that the market changes location every day, all scenes taking place at the market have to be at the right location on the appropriate days.
As you can see, factual accuracy covers many minute details, which is why editors do specialize by genre and subjects. Once again, the devil lies in the details, and it takes more than one person to clean the devil out of sight.