The Developmental Edit: Shape Your Manuscript

A developmental edit lets your manuscript bloom

Way back in June 2018, I wrote a blog article about developmental edits. I have just read it for the first time since I published it and it’s held up well. In December 2021, I wrote an article for my blog defining five levels of editing: developmental, substantive, line, copy, and proofreading.

Even though I have defined a developmental edit in two other articles I’ve written, I have a few new insights I want to share.

What is a Developmental Edit?

Developmental edits are often what finished first-draft manuscripts need. Why? Because a DE is done to have another pair of eyes give your manuscript a big picture review. DEs are organizational and structural edits, since the editor will look at your entire manuscript to evaluate how effectively and thoroughly the material is organized and presented.

For nonfiction, a DE checks to see if the chapter arrangement is logical, the text has a cohesive flow, jargon is defined (or eliminated), and tone and word usage are appropriate to the purpose and audience.

For creative nonfiction, such as memoir, the DE looks at how well the writer has established a theme, how well the plot develops the theme, how well characters are presented, and whether the tone and pace (tempo) of the writing is right for the subject and audience.

What are the Benefits of a DE?

There are several reasons you should have an editor do a DE on your finished first draft:

• Offer an objective point of view

• Bring a beginner’s mind approach

• Fill the experience gap

Let’s look at these three benefits.

Objectivity

I, too, am a writer. I know from my own experience that the more time and effort I put into a piece of writing, the less objective I am able to be about it. I either fall in love with my writing and grimace at the thought of changing a single word, or I hate everything I’ve written and want to delete the Word doc and throw the printout into the wastebasket!

The importance of objectivity cannot be overemphasized. I think it is almost impossible to be completely honest about the quality (or effectiveness) of our own writing. What we create—whether a blog article, essay, memoir, novel, or textbook—is like our baby. As an editor, I have found that critiquing a manuscript is like criticizing someone child—it can cause offense.

That is why it is imperative to keep an open mind when working with an editor during a DE.

Beginner’s Mind

Simply, beginner’s mind means adopting the mindset of a beginner.

It means you approach everything you write as if you are hearing it, thinking about it, or describing it for the first time—free of preconceptions, expectations, and judgments.

With nonfiction (self-help, how-to, educational, etc.) writing with a beginner’s mind forces you to present your material using these three old-school guidelines:

1. Known to unknown

2. General to specific

3. Simple to complex

I talked about these in my blog post Three Simple Rules to Clear Writing. The purpose of these rules is to create a piece of writing that builds your material by starting on familiar ground and slowly slipping in new or more complex ideas.

With creative nonfiction, such as memoir, a beginner’s mind forces you to realize that your reader does not know you or anything about you, your family, your life’s experiences, and so on; therefore, you must take the reader by the hand and gently ease them into every aspect of your journey.

Filling the Experience Gap

This is the most basic benefit of having a DE done on your manuscript—editors know stuff you don’t. Stuff about how to identify a theme and stick with it, how to identify the most appropriate audience for your theme, how to be clear and concise, and how to present your material in a way that will inform, entertain, teach, and support.

In a blog post from May 2020, Overwriting, the Death of Clarity, I quote English and Rhetoric Professor Richard Norquist: Overwriting is a wordy writing style characterized by excessive detail, needless repetition, overwrought figures of speech, and/or convoluted sentence structures.

These kinds of issues jump off the page at me. Fixing them are part and parcel of what I do for a living. Chances are excellent they are not what you concern yourself with on a daily basis. Hence, filling the experience gap.

The Benefits are Worth the Investment

Yes, I know, I'm an editor so, of course, I would tell you that the money you spend on editing is worth every penny. But honestly, it's true.

Think of writing with the goal of being published as a business. Be a professional throughout the process. Being in control means being responsible. Take each step in

the process seriously.

In addition to working as a nonfiction and creative nonfiction editor and writing coach, I am co-author, with Dr. Terri Lyon, of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism: No activism degree required—use your unique skills to change the world. Visit my website page Make a Difference and Dr. Lyon’s activism website Life At The Intersection to learn more about Make a Difference, including how to place bulk orders.

Five Levels of Editing: Which Do You Need?

O

Editing is essential to producing quality writing

Often, potential clients reach out to me to ask what I would charge to do a copyedit on their manuscript. I will answer their question but I always refer them to the Services & Rates page of my website. I do this for two reasons. First, I want them to see that my quote is the published rate on my site and not a fee I’ve pulled out of thin air. But the second reason is a bit more surreptitious. I want these folks to read the definitions of each level of my editorial services. Why? Because some of those seeking a copyedit for their writing aren’t ready for a copyedit. Their manuscript is far too rough, maybe even just a first draft.

In this article, I have extracted the details from my Services & Rates page to let you see what I do at each level of editing. My definitions are a conglomeration of multiple editing service sources and the definitions used by the publishers I’ve worked for.

Developmental Edit

A developmental edit has many nicknames: a deep-dive edit, a macro edit, or a big-picture edit. Whatever you call it, this is an organizational edit. At this early editing stage, I look at the presentation of the material in the entire manuscript. I might move chapters around, as well as large chunks of text within a chapter. I suggest how to plug holes in the material. I will:

• make the chapter arrangement logical.

• give the text a cohesive flow.

• highlight jargon to be defined or eliminated.

• check to assure the tone and language are appropriate to the purpose and audience.

Substantive Edit

A manuscript that I can do a substantive edit on is in overall good shape, clearer and more coherent than one requiring a developmental edit. A substantive edit addresses the flow of ideas within a chapter or sections within a chapter, the clarity of the ideas and information, and the quality of the prose. I make sure:​

• the work has smooth transitions between chapters.

• we fill in missing content.

• the prose is clear and appropriate for the target audience.

• the prose uses an active voice and engages the reader.

Line Edit and Copyedit

[Note that every level of editing separates the type of work from the word edit. But, oh no, not copyedit. Editors fight over whether it’s one word or two. The Chicago Manual of Style likes copyedit as one word, so that’s what I go with.]

To my mind, it's hard to separate line edits and copyedits, so I lump the descriptions together. These are paragraph- and sentence-level edits, with proper grammar checking thrown in. I check the flow. I decide if every paragraph, every sentence, and every word is necessary. I make sure:​

• the text is clear, logical, and coherent.

• the structure is consistent throughout and easy to follow.

• the tone is appropriate to the material, audience, and purpose.

• spelling, grammar, and punctuation are consistent and correct.

• repetitious words are removed.

• awkward phrasing is rewritten.

• you've used active voice and you're showing not telling.

Proofreading

Note: to allow myself maximum time for coaching and editing, I only proofread manuscripts that I have first done a higher level of work on.

This is the end of the line to make the manuscript the best it can be. Technically, it's the final review, after the manuscript has been typeset. (Often, people ask me to proofread their manuscript, when what they really mean is copyedit. Mistakes happen during the typesetting process. A proofread is what catches those.) It’s a clean-up, looking for errors of any kind that happened during the typesetting process: checking one last time for PUGS (punctuation, word usage, grammar, syntax), any inconsistency of font style, weight, and size, problems with page layout, numbered charts, graphs, and images, and widows and orphans. (A widow is a paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, separated from the rest of the text. An orphan is a paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column, separated from the rest of the text.)

“Which Level of Editing Do I Need?”

To answer this question, I ask writers to send me a sample of their work, maybe ten or twelve pages, which is sufficient for me to see the quality of the writing and the state of the work. I read with my levels of editing in mind, making notes and jotting down questions for the writers. I tell them what I see and suggest what needs to be done to make their manuscripts of the highest quality.

And, as you might imagine, we don’t always agree on how to proceed. Some insist on a copyedit, which is my cheapest level of service, even when the work obviously needs a higher level of editing. Be warned—I will not do a copyedit on a manuscript unless I agree it’s ready. A manuscript that is disorganized, incoherent, has holes in the information or story, lacks a clear point, uses vocabulary and language that is inappropriate to the intended audience, or doesn’t have an intended audience is not one I will invest time in as an editor.

If you feel your manuscript is finished, or you simply don’t know where to go from here, look at my definitions of editorial services and decide which one you think would best suit you at this point. Please reach out with questions or comments. I’d love to work with you.

In addition to working as a nonfiction and creative nonfiction editor and writing coach, I am co-author, with Dr. Terri Lyon, of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism: No activism degree required—use your unique skills to change the world. Visit my website page Make a Difference and Dr. Lyon’s activism website Life At The Intersection to learn more about Make a Difference, including how to place bulk orders.

Write with Purpose Using Indexing

Edit, edit, edit your writing.

The woman whose memoir writing advice I most admire, Marion Roach Smith, recently discussed a technique for self-editing your writing that I love: indexing. Now, this is not the process of creating an alphabetical listing of important words and phrases and the pages you will find them on that appears in the back of an academic or instructional nonfiction book. No, the way Marion describes her form of indexing is this: to read each paragraph of your writing and make a little note or symbol next to it that tells you what the paragraph does, i.e., what purpose it serves in the manuscript.

Does this sound overwhelming to you? Or does it thoroughly confuse you? Or both?

I’m going to try to offer more insight on this technique, but be warned—this process is for those who really want to improve their writing by acknowledging whether each paragraph has a clear purpose. If you can stick it out through an entire manuscript, it will make your writing tight, precise, and far more enjoyable to read.

Most Common Writing Mistake

I edit a lot of manuscripts, some by accomplished authors, most by novice writers. But both groups often make the same mistakes, especially when they are trying to make a point—they overdescribe, overexplain and repeat, repeat, repeat. (See what I did there?) This is an issue with all forms of nonfiction I’ve worked with—political science, economics, business—but it is most often the case with memoir.

Because the memoirs I edit are nine out of ten times written by first-time writers, they want to make darn sure you understand their reason for writing the memoir: trauma, grief, redemption, new insight, physical or mental health challenges, and so on. So, they say the same thing, more or less, repeatedly throughout their writing. If your reader finds themselves thinking, “Yes, I know, I get it, you told me already!” too many times, they won’t bother to finish the book. Or recommend it.

Once you have made a point, assuming you’ve made it clearly, that’s great. Now more on. There is no need to bludgeon your reader with the same point in passage after passage.

Indexing—Analyze Purpose

As I said, if you really want to streamline your work, indexing is one way to do it. With good writing, every paragraph should perform a purpose. Here are the thirteen most important paragraph purposes, taken from an article by the Jackson School Writing Center at the University of Washington:

1. Stating: Making an assertion.

2. Supporting: Providing evidence for an assertion.

3. Concurring: Agreeing with another author's assertion.

4. Qualifying: Restricting the meaning of an assertion already made.

5. Negating: Offering reasoning or evidence to demonstrate the falsehood of an assertion.

6. Expanding: Stating more comprehensively an idea or assertion already expressed.

7. Analyzing: Breaking an assertion down into its constituent parts in order to clarify or evaluate it.

8. Describing: Naming one or more features of an object or concept, to help the reader imagine it precisely or understand it fully.

9. Comparing and contrasting: Examining objects alongside each other for the purpose of clarifying their features, evaluating them or noting differences and similarities.

10. Evaluating: Making judgment about something discussed previously

11. Synthesizing: Combining elements of previous paragraphs into a coherent whole; often this includes presenting a new perspective on the subject.

12. Summarizing: Restating the principal idea of an argument or point already introduced.

13. Transitioning: Moving from one aspect of the argument to another by connecting the points for the reader.

Wow, right? The point here is,

every paragraph you write should serve one of these purposes.

After a paragraph serves the #1 purpose (stating, making an assertion, e.g., the allure of underage alcohol drinking entices 20 percent of girls aged 12–13), you then move on to write paragraphs that serve one or more of the other purposes (e.g., supporting, concurring, or expanding). Yes, this can be an exhaustive and time-consuming process. If you have written a statement paragraph and you write another paragraph that simply repeats the statement, or if you can’t identify the paragraph as clearly serving any of the other twelve purposes, delete it or rewrite it to serve a clear purpose.

Is this process easy? It is not. Will it make you a better writer? Yes. Is it worth the time and effort? That is totally up to you.

Write with Purpose

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT. Marion Roach Smith’s sister, published author Margaret Roach, calls a first draft the vomit draft. (I warned you!) That’s some harsh imagery. But the point is, of course, all first drafts stink, no matter who you are. Write, write, write. Get it all out. Throw in everything including the proverbial kitchen sink. But then, edit. Edit as furiously as you wrote, maybe more so. Keep two things in mind as you self-edit and rewrite: your purpose and your ideal reader. My business motto is Every word of every sentence matters. Please feel free to adopt it as your own!

In addition to working as a nonfiction and creative nonfiction editor and writing coach, I am co-author, with Dr. Terri Lyon, of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism: No activism degree required—use your unique skills to change the world. Visit my website page Make a Difference and Dr. Lyon’s activism website Life At The Intersection to learn more about Make a Difference, including how to place bulk orders.