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Stages of Editing
Congratulations on finishing your book! That’s a huge feat, one that many people don’t accomplish. What do you do next?
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First, revise as much as you can, both on your own and with the help of a critique group. Be sure at least one (ideally three or so) person reads it all the way through. Even if you are lucky enough to have found a critique group already, they’ve probably only heard your book one scene at a time, so they won’t see some plot holes or pacing issues. Make sure that at least one of your readers reads or writes in your genre. If you’re asking non-writers to read for you, it may help them give you useful feedback if you give them some questions to answer. Anything you’re unsure about or that came up during critique group. If you don’t know what to ask, it can be as simple as asking for three things the reader loved and three things the reader thinks you should work on. This level of reading is a beta read. (If you need to find a free beta reader, Goodreads and Facebook both have groups that do this. You may need to trade a read, but that’s not a bad deal.)
When you have revised as much as you can on your own and with your group, then it’s time to hire a professional editor. It's important that you do the following edits in the order I lay them out below because each stage leads to the next stage or each stage builds from the prior stage.
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The first stage of editing is a story edit, in fiction usually called a Developmental Edit (DE).​​ Your developmental editor will go through your manuscript and let you know what's working, what's not, and different ways to approach fixing weaknesses. This is probably the stage where editors differ the most in how they approach the edit and how they communicate with the client, so it's important to read prospective editors' websites carefully. Some of us also offer Manuscript Evaluations, which still look at the story but don't go as in depth as the DE. ​
A note on Developmental Edits: You cannot price shop on these without carefully comparing what each editor does. Also note that MS Evals and Dev Edits do not include any kind of copyediting.
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The next stage of editing is Line Edits. This goes through sentence by sentence (line by line) and helps tighten your writing, ensuring it's as clear as you and your editor can make it.
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After line edits come Copyedits. Copyedits look for grammar, usage, and mechanics errors and fix them.
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Proofreading comes after all the other stages. Traditionally, proofreading is done on the laid out manuscript (the proof) and only the most egregious errors get fixed.
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Please note that your editing needs to happen in the order I've listed above: story edits (the dev edits or MS evals, then line, then copy). If you pay for a copyedit but your story is not what it needs to be, you will have paid to copyedit whole sections that may get cut from your story. You can refer to this booklet from the Editorial Freelancers Association for more information on editing and its stages.
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