What’s In A Copy Edit?

You hear the terms developmental and copy edit bandied about. I talk a bit about the former here. These days, a lot of developmental editors are calling themselves “story coaches,” and that’s probably a more accurate term. Especially because, when the developmental edit is done, you will most definitely need a copy edit. All that adding, shifting, and deleting creates even more typos than you began with. I know. I went through a handful and… ouch.

Not every story requires a developmental edit. Most stories require some form of copy edit. Every story should be proofread. But what is a copy edit?

The term is a blanket one for three different types of edits that address the prose itself. It may drift into developmental territory if a structural problem is minor enough. For the most part, though, it’s there to get rid of repetition, maintain consistency, and, as I like to point out, trim the fat. But it encompasses three terms that blur into each other.

• Scene Edit – This is a term I’ve not heard very much and sounds more like developmental territory. Scene editing is taking each scene and editing for consistency, clarity, and, most importantly, place in story. One thing I always do that falls under the scene editing umbrella is POV checking. Head hopping is a no-no in modern prose. There are four authors I’ve read who can get away with shifting the POV character within a scene, but they’re so smooth at it, you don’t notice. So, unless you’re SA Cosby, Stephen King, George Pelecanos, or Frank Herbert, stop that! (And Herbert should have stopped before he wrote God Emperor of Dune.) But also, I look for “drive-ups,” a term I got from a screenwriter who did away with a certain star’s demands for establishing scenes of him getting out of the car, locking the car, walking up to the house, and knocking on the door.
• Copy Edit – This is more in-line with consistency. Are they Steve on Page 3 and suddenly Gwendolyn on page 98? Either there’s a gender identity issue you left out or Gwen’s messing with Steve’s stuff, and Steve (not to mention the reader) needs to know why. Also, this is where we look for repeated or overused words and that bane of all readers, the run-on sentence. Copy edits are a deeper dive than a simple proofread, but a lot of the basics of proofreading are covered in this process, as they are with…
• Line Edit – This is more focused on the text itself. What’s the difference between line and copy editing? Line editing is more basic. You’re less likely to cut whole paragraphs at this point. It’s still more in-depth than a proofread as you’re still attacking repetition and overuse, but the editor will know if you’ve already done a lot of the more in-depth work.

So why the blanket term copy edit for all these? Well, when you get into a manuscript, you don’t know what’s going to be needed. Sometimes I “move commas around,” as I did for one author who works for a major national daily. Sometimes, I have to add a lot of comments, as with my first author for Down & Out, who’s been writing longer than I’ve been alive. It was obvious he expected a lot of notes back and thrives on working on deadlines. Those are extreme cases. (And I’ve done two more for that writer, so I must have done something right.)

Another thing to consider is where the manuscript is coming from. Down & Out sends me most of my manuscripts. So already a certain amount of work has been done, and having been edited as a writer by them, I know some of what they expect. But I also get a handful of manuscripts on referral or direct inquiry. I’m a little more strict on those as the author is frequently shopping for an agent or a publisher. So The Chicago Manual of Style must rule. That said, if a writer can send me a style sheet, it helps keeping things consistent.

The copy edit is the most common type of edit. Usually, the author knows their story, so it’s a matter of streamlining prose.