From £25 per thousand words
(Authors who use this service are also entitled to a 10% discount on other services for the same manuscript)

Developmental editing

What is developmental editing?

A developmental edit covers all the bigger-picture aspects of your manuscript, including plot, characters, emotional impact, perspective, style, and pacing, as well as suitability for your target audience. It’s all about bringing out the best in your story and characters, and ensuring they appeal to readers in your genre.

It might, for example, flag that your main character lacks a goal and make suggestions to help you give them clearer motivation. It might suggest that you have too many side characters distracting from your main character’s important relationships, and tell you which could be cut. It might suggest that your manuscript is too long for reader expectations in the genre and offer some ideas about how to carve your story up into a number of books instead.

It’s then up to you to take this feedback and make revisions to your manuscript.

I’ll make comments directly on your work and write up a separate editorial report, highlighting both things that need work and things that already work well. When you’ve had a chance to digest this feedback, we can discuss any further questions in an additional consultation (via Zoom or via email, depending on your preference).

What’s included in this service?

You’ll receive comments and suggestions on your manuscript, along with an editorial report that covers both the strengths and weaknesses of your manuscript in areas such as:

Plot
Structure
Characters
Dialogue
Setting
Point of view
Voice
Emotional impact
Suitability for target audience

It also includes an additional consultation, which we can book in once you’ve had a chance to digest my feedback and think about revisions to the text. This can be a Zoom call (of up to one hour) or questions and answers via email, depending on your preference.

Note that developmental editing does not include any sentence-level corrections to the text, such as you’d get with line and copyediting or proofreading. The focus is exclusively on the bigger picture. After all there’s no point moving commas around if you might still decide to remove the whole section! Once you’re happy with the manuscript as a whole, then you can move on to the detail.

What does a developmental edit look like?

See below an example of a manuscript in Word with the types of comments I might make during a developmental edit, as well as the template I use for my editorial reports (which are usually around 15–20 pages long).

(Best viewed in a desktop browser. Images and embedded files may not load correctly on mobile or tablet.)

KNEditorial – Editorial Report Download

Ready for an developmental edit?

Great! You can send me a message here.

If you’re looking for another type of editing, check out all the services I offer here.

TESTIMONIAL

“Kate is an excellent editor; timely, professional, and with fantastic feedback to any project. Her notes on my novel showed me story possibilities I had not considered, drove me to have a more dynamic cast of characters. Where I once felt like I was simply recounting the events of the story, Kate encouraged me to put myself in it, to ask deeper questions of the characters so I may find gems of truth hidden within the narrative. I absolutely cannot recommend her enough!”
MARIO PIUMETTI, AUTHOR OF SCI-FI NOVEL