When you are preparing a manuscript for publication, it might be tempting to think that you only need a copyeditor to tighten your prose, correct your grammar mistakes, and check your punctuation. However, the developmental editing stage is one you should not skip. In this post, I’ll break down why you shouldn't skip developmental editing and go straight to copy editing or proofreading.
Developmental Editing First is More Cost-Effective
During one of my first editing projects, I agreed to focus on both the author’s story and their prose at the same time. Twenty pages into the project, I realized this combination would not serve the author’s interest in a very efficient way. Even as I corrected grammatical mistakes and recast unclear sentences, I knew that many of my corrections would end up becoming irrelevant as soon as the author began to implement the developmental feedback I was giving them—feedback that included suggestions to approach certain characters differently, altering points of view, and even rethinking major plot points.
When you hire a copy editor to work on a manuscript before it’s been through a developmental edit, you risk the possibility of realizing later that your manuscript does, in fact, still need a lot of developmental work. Revising after receiving developmental feedback often involves extensive rewriting and rewriting. Waiting to hire a copy editor until your story is rock solid will, in the end, save you both time and money.
Related: What Is Working with an Editor Like?
Developmental Editing Will Help Your Book Stand Out
Anyone can query an agent or self-publish a book. If you want your book to stand out among the hundreds of thousands of books that land in agents’ slush piles or on Kindle Direct Publishing every year, you need to take it through the developmental editing process. By hiring a developmental editor and carefully revising according to their feedback, you will create a polished manuscript with a clear hook, great characters, and a plot that will sweep your reader away, a book that can stand out among the millions of other books out there.
Developmental Editing Helps Even the Most Experienced Writers
Think your book is clean and tight enough to skip the developmental edit? You might want to think again. Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to review unedited work by established authors, I’ve always been surprised at how much developmental help they still need. Even the best authors rely on developmental editors to help their writing become the best it can be.
The truth is, writing at a professional level takes more work than most new writers realize. It’s more than writing a first draft, going through a couple rounds of self-revisions, and fixing mechanical mistakes. While completing these initial steps represents a huge amount of work (and seriously deserves to be congratulated), that’s just the start of the journey. If you want your work to reach its full potential, you’ll need a developmental editor.
Developmental Editing Accelerates Your Growth as a Writer
Writers have a truly stunning amount of information about the craft of writing at their fingertips. With just a few keystrokes, you can access hundreds of books, workbooks, courses, websites, and videos breaking down every step of the writing process. While I highly encourage every author to make use of this wealth of knowledge to improve their skills, there’s something about working one-on-one with a developmental editor that other learning methods cannot fully replace.
It’s one thing to learn how to build great characters from a book or a seminar, but it’s another to have an editor look at your characters, see the whole of their journey in the pages you have written, and give you specifically tailored feedback to help you improve them. It’s one thing to learn all the different plot structures, but it’s another to have a developmental editor see your entire plot and tell you exactly where it strays or drags.
When you hire a developmental editor to turn their laser-like focus on your work, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to learn about your personal strengths and weaknesses as a writer and receive tailored, professional instruction on how you can improve. In this way, working with a developmental editor is like working with a mentor, and receiving this kind of mentorship is a sure way to fast-track your development as a writer. With each developmental editing experience, you gain a greater understanding of the writing craft and your abilities—knowledge that you can apply both to your current project and every project after.
Wrapping Up
A developmental edit is one of the best investments you can make in your manuscript. It’s also one of the best investments you can make in yourself as a writer. If you're serious about your craft and you want your work to stand out in a saturated market, don’t skip developmental editing.
Happy writing!