Dev Edits And Sticker Shock

I’ve had a couple inquires about developmental editing recently. Both customers balked at the potential cost. Both also wanted them within a timeframe not conducive to doing a good job. This is something I ran into as a client myself. It takes weeks to breakdown a story and put it back together again. Sometimes months. If you’re on a deadline of two weeks to a month, the best I can do is a copy edit. Those I can for relatively low rates and turn around in about two weeks. But a copy edit doesn’t address the structural issues.

Yet 1.) you need something to deal with this fast, and 2.) you don’t want to be in hock to the strange guy from Cincinnati for months. (Yes, we can work out payment plans. This is why I always talk to the clients.) So what are your options?

My most recent lead on a dev edit wants their independent novel out by year’s end. So after some back-and-forth, we compromised. I wouldn’t do the full dev edit, wherein I workshop scenes with the author and deep-dive into it scene-by-scene. Instead, I called what I would do “story analysis.” Not quite an edit, but providing enough creative rabbit holes to go down. Essentially, it’s the prep work for a dev edit, where I break down the story and locate the fat. You, the author, are taking on the details of fixing that yourself. In this case, he’s already working with a copy editor, so hopefully, I don’t make her head explode (even with dark forebodings, too.)

I’m addressing budget concerns. I get that. Budget squeezes me as a writer, too. So I have to find the happy balance of not breaking a writer’s bank while getting compensated for my labor. (I have one writer I would gladly edit for free, and she always pays me anyway.) So very soon, you will see “Story Analysis” added to my list of services. It’s a half-step between copy editing and developmental and maybe something you should consider before I hit your unwieldy manuscript over the head with the Chicago Manual of Style so it obeys you.