A questions I’m often asked is, “What are some of the biggest challenges people have in learning to become developmental editors?” This is usually from someone interested in developmental editing (particularly of fiction) as a career. The biggest challenge for people who are already working as copy editors or proofreaders is being able to let…
Authors often write novels in a series, and this poses a special problem for developmental editors. One of our jobs is to make sure a novel has internal consistency – what we might call being in charge of continuity. If Jeremy is bald in Chapter 2 he should be bald in Chapter 5 as well,…
Over the years, Club Ed students have asked for more nonfiction classes, and I’ve finally had a chance to create some. I’ve also organized them into a certificate program to make it easier to plan an effective course of study. More information about the certificate program can be found here. Classes include everything from how…
Recently a post popped up in my LinkedIn newsfeed describing how a business coach helped the poster think about decisions using the “pick your hard” framing. The poster used as an example of this approach the framing that “staying healthy is hard” and “having a chronic illness is hard.” The idea is that you can…
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 two are addressed here and here. Here’s the third concern, in the editor’s own words: “The general perception regarding the market value of the work. I think it’s not highly…
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…