Types of Editing: For New (Overwhelmed) Independent Authors
Congratulations! Your hard work has resulted in a manuscript, and you’re ready to share it with the world. You probably fall into one of two camps right now.
You’re so excited that you’re done, and you’re ready to hit submit! You’ve been writing and researching for months, or even years, and you’re confident in your work. You give yourself five stars, and you can’t wait to see everyone you know agree.
You’re stressed that you’re done with the initial manuscript, because what do you do now? You’ve heard big words like “queries” and “copyrights,” and you’re pretty sure you’re supposed to hire an editor. You almost wish you were still writing; at least you know how to do that.
Either way, take a breath and celebrate your hard work so far. This is a huge accomplishment! There are lots of steps to go, but they’re not as difficult as you may be fearing. Second things second (the first was celebrating)—getting the necessary information so your upcoming decisions are informed.
You might associate the word “editing” with the phrase “kill your darlings,” or maybe you dread the price tag on a professional edit. You’re not alone. Many writers balk at editing and choose to either edit their work themselves or pay a bare minimum to their cousin’s nephew.
The good news is, editing is not for ripping your writing into pieces against your will, nor is it for draining your wallet. A good editor will cooperate with you to make your manuscript the best it can be while preserving your vision, and there are many ways to make the process more affordable.
There are many stages of editing. After evaluating the types of edits and your current manuscript, you will be better suited to choose what’s right for you.
Self-Editing
Self-editing comes before everything else. For readers to understand your story, some basic housekeeping needs to be done first. At minimum, make sure your spelling is (mostly) correct, you’ve used punctuation (including quotation marks around dialogue), everything is split into paragraphs (you need a new one every time someone new speaks!), and you’re consistently in past or present tense from the same character’s point of view. You’re not trying to cross every T, just making sure the writing is good enough that it doesn’t hinder the story.
Alpha Reader
An alpha reader is not an editor, but someone who reads your story very early in the writing process. They’re your first audience and will give you big-picture feedback on whether the story makes sense, if the characters are believable, and if anything is confusing. This is like story validation—your alpha reader will help you understand whether you’re telling the story you meant to tell and whether readers will enjoy it.
Manuscript Evaluation
Also called story critique, manuscript assessment, and editorial assessment, an evaluation is a multi-page report on major story elements like your plot, pacing, structuring, characters, dialogue, and more. It doesn’t include in-document changes, but is a separate developmental-level document to help you figure out what needs to be changed.
Beta Readers
A beta reader is not an editor, but represents an average reader who will tell you what they think worked and what didn’t. Much like an alpha reader, they’ll give big-picture feedback, but slightly more zoomed in. Where an alpha read assumes the story is going to change significantly, beta reading focuses on plot holes (etc.) that are still large-scale issues but won’t override the whole manuscript.
Developmental Edit
A developmental edit suggests changes in the structure and narrative of a manuscript. Your editor will look for genre conventions, story logic, organization and restructuring, character arcs, and emotional payoff. Changes will be made in-line for scene-level edits, as well as a chapter-by-chapter report that addresses pacing and flow, as well as plot and character development.
Line Edit
After the story is complete and solid, a line editor will help make sure your writing is effective, sharp, and clear. Your editor will work with word choice and syntax, tone, consistency, and reorganize phrases to make your manuscript smoother and more consistent. Where previous stages have made sure the story is engaging, line editing makes sure the writing is engaging.
Copy Edit
Copy editing works to perfect your language technically. In this stage, errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation will be corrected, along with stylistic consistency and tense usage. If you’ve used written numbers in some places and spelled them out in others, your copy editor will fix it.
Proofread
After all other editing, proofreaders focus on technicalities such as sentence fragments, comma splices, typos, and all other word-by-word edits that have thus far slipped through the cracks.
Whew! That seems like a lot, but not every manuscript needs every type of editing, and many editors offer multiple services in a single package. For example, copy and line editing are commonly done in the same pass. In the coming articles, we’ll be addressing some of the most frequently asked editing questions from new (overwhelmed) independent authors.
How do I know what type of editing I need?
Where do I get beta readers?
How do I find an editor anyway?
I’m scared for people to read my work.
I can’t afford any of this!
~Allison of Sigmon Editorial
From idea to ISBN, Sigmon Editorial's got your back.
