THE WRITE ADVICE – Types of Edit
We’re thrilled to welcome The Write Advice team, Justin Lee Anderson, Stephen Aryan, and Anna Stephens, to the Hive. Throughout June, they’ll be joining us weekly with their expert writing advice.
The Write Advice are a group of seasoned authors that provide support for writers on the path to publication. They focus on mentoring, guidance, editing, and feedback on submission packages. You can find them on their website, Twitter and Instagram.
Week 1 – 4 Common Mistakes in Query Packages
This week, Anna Stephens takes us through the different types of Edit you may be faced with.
The difference between Developmental Edit, Copy Edit, and Manuscript Assessment
You’ve written a book, or a script, or a story. Congratulations! Now it’s time to work with a publishing professional for the next part of the story’s journey. The trouble is, there are so many editors out there, and they’re all offering different things – or maybe the same things but with different names. How do you know what your book needs?
Well, fortunately, I’m about to lay it all out for you.
What is a Developmental Edit
The Developmental Edit (or dev edit) provides the author with detailed feedback on “big picture” issues. This means (among others) things such as structure, pacing, worldbuilding, character arcs, tension, and the narrative (story) itself.
Because it deals with such overarching themes and narrative structures, a dev edit can happen before the manuscript is even finished. If, for example, the author has 80% of the story written but just cannot work out how to pull the threads together into a satisfying conclusion, they may hire a Developmental Editor to look at the big picture plot and offer suggestions.
The other time a dev edit is extremely useful is once a first draft is complete. Feedback at this stage can help the author plan how to revise the story, what needs the most work, and which bits to leave alone because they’re already great.
What is a Copy Edit
The Copy Edit is where an editor will focus on style, continuity, and language, pointing out inconsistencies, repetition, and ensuring flow and tone carries through evenly.
A Copy Editor will ensure that if you said on page 10 your character has blue eyes, that they don’t later on have brown or green eyes. If your character is carrying something when they walk into a room, they’ll be carrying it – or have put it down – when exiting.
Copy editing is all about the details: it’s about the work at the micro level, whereas the dev edit is all about macro issues.
It is perfect for writers who are confident in the narrative structure and plot of their work, and want a professional to tighten up prose, point out inconsistencies in language and spelling (particularly of SFF neologisms) and suggest tweaks at paragraph and sentence level rather than story level.
What is a Manuscript Assessment
A Manuscript Assessment is less detailed than a dev edit, but still deals with the big picture elements of your story. The fact it is more generalised makes it a very versatile tool for writers, who can request a Manuscript Assessment at various stages of their writing, e.g.:
- To ascertain if the book is nearly ready for publication and/or submission to a literary agent or publishing house;
- To help writers who aren’t sure if their narrative flows properly, or whether, for example, the middle joins to the end satisfactorily;
- To provide an author receiving conflicting feedback from readers with a clear opinion from a publishing professional.
That said, because the evaluation is more high level, it probably isn’t suitable for a writer who has five different ideas for how a character arc should go but doesn’t know which one to pick.
So, Edit or Assessment?
If you choose a Manuscript Assessment, you should ensure that the story is as good as you can possibly make it beforehand, or you may end up paying an editor to make suggestions you already know about.
For a Developmental Edit, the manuscript can be looser and messier – the point is that you need detailed feedback and a helping nudge in a direction that will see all the plot threads weave together.
And for a Copy Edit, you need to be completely confident in the strength of the story as a whole, as your editor will focus on the line-by-line structure and continuity of your work.
Always remember, an editor will never, ever suggest anything to deliberately make your story worse. You may not agree with everything we say, but we are saying it with the best of intentions. It’s what you hired us for, after all.
For more information about what services The Write Advice provide,
including the types of edit they provide, you can visit their website
Anna Stephens is the author of the epic fantasy Godblind and Songs of the Drowned trilogies through HarperVoyager, and also writes for Black Library in their Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Horror imprints, as well as for Marvel Comics through their tie-in publisher, Aconyte Books.
These literary feats have been accomplished despite the nefarious intentions of Bailey the miniature poodle, who deploys his weapons-grade cuteness with irresponsible abandon.
As a black belt in Shotokan Karate and a once upon a time historical fencer, Anna’s no stranger to the feeling of being hit in the face, which is more help than you would expect when writing fight scenes.
