Developmental Editing ($0.01/word | 80,000 words = $800)
Developmental editing focuses on the overall shape and scope of your content. I leave detailed comments, suggestions, and edits designed to help you improve the plot structure, tone, emotional beats, and clarity of your manuscript. I pay particular attention to:
- Story Premise: Does your story fall into a specific genre? Does it have a unique hook or new facet that makes it your own? Is the premise interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention? How does it fit into the tenets of the genre? Based on the writing style, who is the audience? What’s the tone?
- Plot/Subplot: Does the story have a clear beginning, middle, and end? If not, why? Does the plot drive the story? How does the plot support the theme of your story? Do your subplots add to your character’s motivations while also weaving back into the main plot?
- Conflict: What’s the central conflict of the story? Does it hold reader attention? Is there a mix of internal and external conflict at the story level, character level? How is the overall conflict represented in each chapter?
- Main Characters: Does your protagonist have a unique arc? Does your antagonist? If not, does that serve the narrative you’re building? Are your main characters 3-dimensional? Do they have clear motives, goals, strengths and weaknesses? Will the reader care about their story and their struggle?
- Setting/Worldbuilding: Does your setting remain consistent throughout? Do you describe your world well enough for readers to understand the rules/systems? Does the setting serve the plot/characters? Does it offer unique challenges or obstacles to the protagonist? Does it hold up to close reader scrutiny?
Line Editing ($0.008/word | 80,000 = $640)
Line editing focuses on the way you’re using language at the paragraph level. This involves looking for overused words, phrases, cliches, and adverbs. Reading your work for individual scene cohesion, tonal shifts, authorial voice, and internal rhythm is also done during the line edit. This edit focuses on:
- Consistency in character voice
- Word choice, language usage, tense consistency
- Tonal shifts and timeline adherence between scenes and chapters
- Tightening the story by removing extraneous words and sentences
- Evaluating paragraph and sentence length to adhere to pacing and tone
- Dialogue tags, eliminating extraneous ones and adding in necessary ones
- Review of “Show & Tell” instances and suggestions for the inclusion of both
- Review of side characters and the way they interact with the plot/main characters
Copyediting ($0.007/word | 80,000 = $560)
Copyediting focus on correcting spelling, grammar, and punctuation. It also involves consistency checks. Are character names spelled the same throughout? Does the village have its own language? Is the usage uniform? I review:
- Sentence structure
- Punctuation, grammar, and spelling
- Consistency in names, titles, descriptions
- Subject/Verb/Object Agreement
- Author-specific rules and naming conventions for adherence to style guide
Proofreading ($0.003/word | 80,000 = $240)
A proofread involves a final check of your manuscript right before publishing to ensure your work is error-free. This confirms the spelling, punctuation, and grammar checks out. In the case of print books, it eliminates any widows/orphans plaguing your work.
Blurb Review ($35)
Your blurb is not meant to be a point-by-point summary of your book. That’s right. Despite what you may have heard, your blurb’s job is to entice the reader to click Purchase by tugging at the hearts, minds, or stomachs of those who read it. For this service, I review your blurb and offer comments and edits designed to leave the reader so hungry, they have no choice but to buy your story. You’ll get:
- Three rounds of edits on your current blurb
- Comparison and analysis of your blurb against a top-selling novel’s blurb in your genre
- Novel tagline included upon request