What types of editing are there?

Broadly speaking, there are three types of editing and each one focuses on a different stage of the writing and publishing process.

Manuscript evaluations give you an overall evaluation of your story’s strengths and weaknesses. You get feedback on your story’s structure, pacing, tone, and overall readability. The focus is on the big picture, addressing whether the story works as a whole and if it meets the expectations of its genre and target audience. 

You get a written report and annotations on your manuscript. It’s ideal for authors seeking general guidance and direction on how to refine their story before diving into more detailed revisions or editing rounds.

Developmental editing is a deep, hands-on process. It’s more involved than the high-level review of a manuscript evaluation. Developmental editors work closely with you, offering specific examples to address weaknesses in the manuscript. 

You get a written report and comprehensive comments, suggestions, and edits on your manuscript. It’s ideal for authors who want more in-depth help and collaboration to get their story exactly how they want it. 

Copyediting focuses on sentence-level suggestions. It’s all about flow, word choice, and overall tone. It’s best for authors who are happy with their structure but need help refining the language, weeding out inconsistencies, and improving the story’s flow from sentence to sentence. 

The goal is to give you the tools to produce a polished manuscript that’s one step closer to publishing. 

Think this is you? Check out my adventure edit.

(Proofreading is, strictly speaking, not editing. It’s the very last step in the publishing process, done on the laid out PDF. It hunts out typos and layout issues, and isn’t about rewrites.)