A developmental editor puts fresh eyes on your project when you have a completed draft. There is tremendous value at this point in being open to new possibilities; your work may still need some restructuring or rewriting. We will go through your manuscript page by page and can offer direct and concise feedback on big-picture issues, and help you to shape your narrative, refine your ideas, and fix any major plot or character inconsistencies. A developmental edit looks at the following:

  • Plot and structure
  • Character descriptions and development
  • Chronology and timeline consistency
  • Narrative point-of-view (POV)
  • World-building
  • Tone and mood
  • Thematic development
  • Conflicts and resolutions
  • Dialogue and inner monologue
  • Showing and telling elements
  • Backstory, flashbacks, and info-dumps
  • Action and pacing
  • Genre and reader expectations

Sentence-level editing is NOT included, since your manuscript is still undergoing structural and content changes.

Here’s how our process typically works:

Step one: You fill out the Contact Us form.
Step two: We contact you within 48 hours with follow up questions and arrange a zoom or phone call of up to 20 minutes.
Step three: Once we have agreed on payment and time frame, we draft a contract which all parties sign.
Step four: You send us your entire manuscript along with 50% of payment.
Step five: After we complete the edit within the agreed time frame (usually two to six weeks), you pay the remainder of the money owed and we send you three documents:

  • Your manuscript with comments
  • An extensive editorial letter that puts all of the individual comments into context
  • A style sheet with character names, preferred spellings, and style choices to keep things consistent

We include up to an hour of email or instant message exchanges once you have reviewed the manuscript. A second round of editing can be arranged if required.

Rates: Approximately $0.04 per word. For standard manuscript pages of about 250 words, this works out at about $10.00 a page. Our per-word rates are based on the Editorial Freelancers Association’s standard pricing scale, and are dependent on the level of editing required, which determines how long the edit will take. For short projects, we have a minimum fee of $100.