What’s In A Developmental Edit

Early on in this space, I talked about the different types of editing. Most people think of copy editing, cleaning up the prose and trimming the fat. Sometimes, people think of a proofread, which is a once-over of a manuscript looking for typos. But what is a developmental edit?

This is where you let someone take your story apart and put it back together in a smoother order. This is where you kill your darlings. That scene you thought was pretty clever but doesn’t add to the story? Here’s where you cut it. Is there an event with no explanation how it happened? Your dev editor will point that out. It’s a long drawn-out process, and it can crush a writer’s ego. That’s not intentional. It’s just having someone tell you there’s more work to do.

Now not every story needs a developmental edit, but if you ask me for one, here’s what you’re paying for:

First off, I read your manuscript. My TBR stack gets put aside, or I spend less time on it to focus on your work. I will go through the manuscript once, make a few notes. Then I reread it, making an outline. Here’s where the structure comes into view. This is what needs done before you and I have our first phone call or online chat. I’m going to suggest changes you might not think necessary, but remember, I’m a disinterested party. So will your reader, even if they are a fan. (Yes, I take the series as a whole into account if the story belongs to one.)

Once I’ve done a couple of read-throughs, I will make notes on issues I see and ways to strengthen the storyline. This is where it gets daunting for the writer. Stacy Robinson, who helped pull my The Children of Amargosa into shape, called me out on some of my sillier whims. It can be disappointing, but it makes a story better. You may find it funny. The reader likely will skip it. Too many skipped sections, and hey, Amazon’s full of other books. And the indie bookstore beckons.

We discuss this in a phone call or online, no more than an hour. A writer will want to talk longer about their story because, hey, it’s their story. I get it. I’ve been there. My wife no longer cares what I write because I will go on and on about the new scifi series I’m working on or how the latest chaos in the city of Monticello will make the Holland Bay series the second coming of Bosch. But resist that urge. You’re here to work, and you’re paying an editor. I, like most editors, will add to a bill if it gets excessive.

At the same time, do not allow an editor to monopolize your time or your story. A friend of mine, who’s become a fair editor in his own right, sent me the notes he got back from one rookie editor. I pretty much exploded when I saw the notes. The comments in the Word doc were longer than the paragraph where she highlighted one sentence, and their first phone call was six hours long. Plus, the suggestions amounted to basically rewriting the story the way the editor would write it. That should be a red flag. So while I, the editor, don’t want to spend more than an hour on the phone/messaging app/video chat, chances are you don’t, either. This stage of a dev edit is hard on the writer. Don’t make it harder on yourself or let the editor hijack your story. Besides, you’re going to be doing the hard work of revision. Even in a copy edit, if a paragraph needs a lot of work, I highlight it and comment on what the problem is because it’s not my place to completely rewrite a passage.

The goal of the first real-time conversation is to decide what you’re going to keep and what you’re cutting. (Not to mention adding. It’s really easy to assume the reader knows something you neglected to explain.) Maybe come up with a new outline. And maybe you’ll decide this isn’t for you. I won’t put dollar amounts here because rates change from what’s on the site as of this writing. So to begin, I’ll charge about 40% the total estimate up front. The beginning is where I will do most of the work for you, and you may decide this isn’t working. No harm, no foul. We just don’t continue. For the next phase, where we go over your revisions, we’ll have some more realtime conversations or quick emails. Once you’ve gotten the story to where you want it to be, I’ll review the new manuscript. We’ll have another conversation, and we decide where to go from there. Unless there’s still a huge amount of work to do, this phase will be 35% of the estimate.

The final 25% goes for a copy edit. And you will need a copy edit. We just took your original draft and did the equivalent of a home renovation. With all the deletions, additions, and shifting of scenes/chapters, dialog will get out of sync, scenes may need proper context, and who the hell is Gwendolyn the Evil Sorceress, who wasn’t in the original version? This part I’m willing to waive if you want a different copy editor. And while I’ll happily take your money, fresh eyes are never a bad idea. In fact, some of my copy-editing business comes from referrals from another developmental editor for that very reason. But that 25% amounts to what you’ll pay with some of the more affordable copy editors, so unless you’re on a deadline, we take a short break, and I start treating it like the next stop is your agent/acquisitions editor/Kindle Create.

So there you have it. Is it money well spent? It never hurts to have your story taken apart and reassembled. After all, you want it to be the best it can be. However, you might not need that type of work. A copy edit might be in order. Pretty much every manuscript needs a copy edit whether by the writer themselves or someone else. On the other hand, if you’re shopping for an agent or trying to land a publishing deal, a full dev edit, including copy, might be in order. It won’t be the end. Agents love to rearrange things. Acquisitions editors will want to nudge things. And with even a small press, you will be copy edited. Again. I copy edited a novel I didn’t realize was a bestseller over a decade ago and had been slated for rerelease. The author thanked me for my insight. Was his last editor sloppy? No. But unless the Hemingway estate dumps For Whom the Bell Tolls in their laps, a good publisher will go through a manuscript again. There’s always room for improvement, and as long as the editor knows what kind of edit to use and allows the writer to make the revisions, it will stay true to the original.