Editorial Services

A person wearing a gray knitted sweater writing with a pen on paperwork, with a mug and a laptop on a wooden table.

This is the “big picture” editing. This step addresses plot issues, world-building questions, character development, and story arcs. In a developmental edit, I will dive into your book wholeheartedly and provide you with my feedback in a “manuscript evaluation.” What that looks like is a several-page long letter (often 10-20) filled with my thoughts on how your book is or is not hitting the beats you are aiming for; how it fulfills, exceeds, or falls short of genre expectations; and address any issues I see with suggestions as to how to fix them. 

While all of editing is a collaborative process between the editor and the author, this step most heavily relies on communication from the beginning to the end of the process. I will start the process by asking specifically for your concerns with your book so that I can look for potential solutions to suggest alongside my own thoughts. But it doesn’t end there—after I’ve provided the manuscript evaluation we can continue our discussion through any needed revisions and potentially additional rounds of developmental editing and evaluation. 

(This service is also often referred to substantive editing, structural editing, or content editing)

Developmental Editing

Close-up of a fountain pen writing on lined paper with cursive handwriting.

Unlike developmental editing that looks mainly at the ideas in your manuscript, line editing is the first stage of editing that focuses on the actual text. It involves me going through your manuscript line by line and paragraph by paragraph, providing suggestions for improving the language of your manuscript and bringing out your unique writing voice. I perform this edit in Word with tracked changes on and will include frequent questions for the author in the form of comments across the document. This stage includes suggestions for how to maintain your style, improve dialog and descriptions, and checking for common writing pitfalls.

Line Editing

A person holding a laptop displaying text. The person is seated at a white table.

Copyediting is probably what you think of when you hear the word “editing.” It is the process of an editor systematically going through your manuscript and removing errors, checking the grammar, correcting the punctuation, and beyond. In this process, I will be editing for the three C’s: consistency, clarity, and correctness.

The copyedit is performed in Word and returned as a document with tracked changes that the author will accept or reject. In conjunction with that document, I will also provide clients with a stylesheet unique to their manuscript to stand as an author’s guide in revisions. This stylesheet will also aid the proofreader in maintaining consistency and accuracy across future versions of the manuscript.

Copyediting

A person using a laptop with their right index finger on the keyboard. They are holding a pen in their left hand over a notebook. On the desk, there is a cup of coffee, a potted plant, and a stack of books.

This is one of the very last stages of the publication process. Proofreading refers to the concept of checking a “proof,” or the publication-ready manuscript to act as a final line of defense against errors, and search for any issues that may have come up in typesetting and formatting your manuscript for print. Such issues can include aesthetic concerns such as overly-loose lines in the justification process, etc., and any potential errors introduced in typesetting.

While previous editing stages will likely be made on .doc or .docx files, proofreading is usually performed on a PDF or other such publication-ready file.

Proofreading