Types of Professional Editing

Professional Editing services I can provide

Broadly speaking, there are three different services an editor can provide. You may require just one or any combination of these services.

Copy Editing

Copy editing is what you are probably thinking of when you think about editing. A copy editor will read through your manuscript and polish the writing. The editor might rewrite long-winded sentences, remove or reword repetitive phrases, make your writing clearer and concise, and make sure your ideas are visible and easy to understand. Copy editing is typically done with a Word document and track changes on. I will provide you with a copy of your manuscript with all changes visible and with a clean copy, with all the changes accepted. You can then go through the manuscript and approve the changes, or request that some edits be altered. Typically, a manuscript will go though this process up to three times for a long and complex text like a novel, but maybe only once for a short text.

The copy editing process should begin when the manuscript is already in fairly good shape. Ideally your manuscript should already be well-structured, and complete. It should not be in need of major rewriting or re-structuring, as this makes the copy editing less effective – imagine paying for several pages to be edited, only to cut them out later on! In addition, you would have read through it yourself several times, and run the spell-checker through it. If your book has footnotes or endnotes, these should be properly formatted according to your chosen style-guide. The fewer mistakes you leave for the editor to fix, the quicker and more cost-effective the exercise will be.

Structural Editing

Structural editing is also known as developmental editing and is an important phase of editing for book-length manuscripts. Structural editing occurs before copy editing. Structural editing is all about the structure of the manuscript, how well it clings together, and how well it flows. In fiction, the structural edit will evaluate whether the plot moves at an appropriate pace, how well the characters work together and so on. For non-fiction, the structural edit will look at the aim and scope of the book. The aim of a non-fiction book needs to be clear. For example, if you have written a manuscript about personal finance, you need to decide whether the book promotes one particular approach to growing personal wealth, or whether it is going to provide an overview of a few different approaches. The scope of a book concerns what the book will cover. Using the example of personal finance again, you will need to decide which aspects of personal finance your book is going to explore, and how this will be structured. You might want three parts – how to save and invest when you are young, what strategies to employ in middle-age, and how to manage your wealth after retirement. Alternatively, you might want to write a chapter about each type of investing – superannuation, the stock market, real estate, cryptocurrencies and so on. You need to decide this before you start writing, otherwise you will find the writing process very difficult and you will end up needing to make a lot of labour-intensive revisions.

Structural editing is an important phase of writing your book, but in this phase it’s all about the big picture, and your actual phrasing and spelling won’t be the focus.

Book Planning

If you have a basic idea for a book, but you don’t know how to start the writing process, you can hire someone to help you plan your book. This is probably more useful for writers of non-fiction, than fiction, although some fiction writers may also find this process useful. Book planning is generally completed in one or two sessions, with some ‘homework’ in between.

At this phase you will not have completed your manuscript – you may very well not have even started. I can help you plan your book, by exploring the different approaches you can take. For example, if you wanted to write a book about personal finance, you could engage in a book planning session. I would discuss with you the different options for structuring the book and for the scope of the book – that is what aspects of personal finance you will cover. I will also undertake research to see what other books are on the market, and what your book’s point of difference will be. Finally, we would discuss your intended readership, and ensure that your book’s message is tailored to meet the needs of this audience.

Planning the scope and structure of your book in advance will be very useful to you, as it will make the writing process easier, faster and will result in a better draft that needs less rewriting. Having a firm picture of your end-product in mind will assist your research, and keep your writing on target for your audience.