By Myli-Ann Goodine
As someone who writes, I find knowing types of editing styles important. When you know different styles you know what editors will look for, and you know what you should pay attention to. While working on my own writing I have heard about copy editors and proofreaders, but there are many more. There are many editing styles like copy editors, line editors, proofreaders, structural editing, developmental editing, and more. In this blog I will be focusing on developmental editing.
Developmental editors focus on the piece overall. From the characters to the plot down to pacing and voice, they help flesh out the story. Their goal is to get the story to its full potential. They will also provide editorial letters. These letters can vary depending on the piece but it would thoroughly go through elements they evaluate in the story.
As a writer, you should know the basics of how to do developmental editing yourself and what to look for. This helps your writing, develops your understanding of your own writing, and helps the editors. The first thing you would want to do is reread your work, once or twice to get a grip on it. I suggest before that, stepping away from your work for a couple of days, to give yourself a reset. I do this when going into a new draft or editing. It helps you see mistakes you wouldn’t have seen before. Take note of big plot points, important characters, setting, style and big elements. Are there plot holes? Are all characters necessary and do they develop? Is there importance in time and place, is there cultural significance? These are questions you will want to keep in mind when going through your work. Remember point of view, do subplots make sense with the plot, make sure details are consistent.
If you want to write an editorial letter for yourself there are categories you can write about to understand your writing. Here is an example of an editorial letter, https://freshinkbookediting.com/sample-editorial-letter. You can always look up more if you want more categories. Some examples for categories are plot, characters, worldbuilding/setting, title, themes, and more. Writing a letter helps you answer the questions from the previous paragraph, and break those questions down. Developmental editors take each of these categories and comment on what they thought was good and what they thought needed fixing. This helps to see if you’ve accomplished your goal with your writing.
There are different ways to go about the process. I read the whole piece, then go paragraph by paragraph to find inconsistencies, and then I go back through the text and focus on each of the different categories I’m looking at. I get to know the text better this way and can find anything I might have missed in a different category.
No matter how you go about it, developmental editing can help develop your understanding of writing and help you elevate your work. It will help you with future projects and make the editing process quicker and easier, providing a smooth process.