Recently, a developmental editor colleague expressed some frustration around working with indie authors. She had three main areas of concern, all very common. The first is addressed here. I’m addressing the second today. I’ll address the third next week. Here’s the second concern, in the editor’s own words: “Scope creep: I do it to myself!…
Recently, a developmental editor colleague expressed some frustration around working with indie authors. She had three main areas of concern, and I’m going to address each of these in a blog post. They are all very common concerns. Here’s the first, in her words: “The responsibility. Having someone pay me (hopefully) good money to take…
Developmental editing is sometimes called content editing, substantive editing, or story editing. The focus is on the big picture, not on sentence-level concerns although we may make sentence-level edits to address the big-picture concerns. For fiction, a developmental editor looks for problems in plot, including implausible plot events and timeline errors; character development, including the…
“I feel overwhelmed,” editing students tell me from time to time as they learn the craft. Mostly they’re worried that this means they’re not cut out for working as a DE. And sometimes, yes, it’s not a good match for someone’s personality, skills, and abilities. But it’s also perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed. Developmental editing…
It happened again this week: a writer got in touch with me, told me some information about their book, and asked for some guidance about next steps. This is a very common ask, and I have a boilerplate email I use in response. If I got more of these types of emails I might have…
Writers often use setting like a painted backdrop to their stories, rather than as an integral element of their storytelling. As DEs, we can help them make the setting come to life. If we think of Wuthering Heights, we think of the Yorkshire moors. When we think of Moby Dick, it’s a whaler on the…
A lot of editors ask me how to get started in freelance editing for publishers (so many that I actually started a class to show you how to get editorial work from book publishers and packagers). Other than having the skill to do the work, the most important element in successfully freelancing for publishers is…
Many freelance editors work for indie authors, but some of us also work with (or only work with) publishers. Occasionally I get an email from a freelance editor who wants to know if you actually can make a living freelancing for publishers. Here’s an excerpt from a recent one: “I’m finding it really, really hard…
I’m frequently asked for help by editors trying to get established as freelancers. Not surprisingly, many people want to know how to get editorial projects from publishers, as obviously this could be a good source of ongoing work. So when I received the following question, at first I thought of it as a “how to…
Developmental editing is the art of looking at a manuscript to identify big-picture concerns. For nonfiction, this would include helping an author make a clear argument; showing an author how to reorganize disorganized material; pointing out where they need to support the points they make with data, examples, and/or case histories; making sure terms are…