What Type of Editing Does Your Novel Need?

Ensuring your novel is enjoyable to read is almost every author’s goal, and editing can help you achieve that. Self-editing is a valuable skill to have, but there’s a point where you can’t see the forest for the trees anymore, and hiring a professional editor will bring your manuscript to the next level.

If you are self-publishing, I highly recommend hiring an editor to give your book that extra level of polish. Some manuscripts need more help with big-picture stuff (a manuscript critique or developmental edit). Others could benefit from line-level feedback or attention to grammar and typos (line editing, copy editing, or proofreading). Read on for an overview of each of these editing types and how they can benefit your story.

If you are planning on querying literary agents to pursue traditional publishing, I generally only recommend considering a manuscript critique, if that—mainly because you will be working with editors at the publishing house once your novel is acquired by an agent and then a publisher. I want to emphasize that querying writers don’t have to pay to play. There are plenty of ways to learn how to become a better writer; hiring an editor is one of them, but you can also learn through books on craft, podcasts, classes, beta readers, etc. Many editors also offer query, synopsis, and first pages critiques, which you might find especially useful, since writing a query is a completely different skill from writing a novel, one you probably won’t need again after getting an agent. 

To be clear, I love working with querying authors, you may learn a lot from my feedback if you’re willing to put in the work, and I am happy to do any kind of editing for you, but don’t bankrupt yourself because you feel you have to hire an editor to get published. It is not mandatory; agents don’t require it or even expect it.

What Are the Types of Editing?

Editing is like a pyramid; you start at the bottom with the big-picture stuff and then slowly build on that. If you start at the top of the pyramid, you will waste your time and have to rebuild with a solid base, so making sure things are structurally sound before moving to the next level is key.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the various types of editing and how to tell what your manuscript needs most! Note that some editors define these services differently, so it’s best to make sure you understand exactly what the service means when you hire them.

Manuscript Critique

If you’re not sure what kind of editing your novel needs, you’re new to writing, you’re new to working with an editor, you have a small budget, and/or you’re planning to query rather than self-publish, a manuscript critique can be a great place to start. It’s (usually) the least expensive of the editing services.

Also referred to as a manuscript assessment or novel evaluation, this service offers big-picture feedback on your manuscript. When I do a critique, I read the novel and write a feedback letter evaluating areas like plot, structure, tone, point(s) of view, worldbuilding, pacing, consistency, and character arcs.

A developmental edit (see below) also focuses on big-picture issues. But if you know that your novel has entire sections that may be removed or rewritten, a manuscript critique will serve you better than a developmental edit, because focusing on specifics isn’t helpful when you will be deleting and reworking large sections.

Developmental Edit

A developmental edit, like a manuscript critique, focuses on big-picture areas like plot, structure, tone, point(s) of view, worldbuilding, pacing, consistency, and character arcs. When I do a developmental edit, I provide comments in the margins of the manuscript in addition to a feedback letter. This allows me to expand on the edit letter, pointing out precise places in the manuscript that could be improved. 

For example, in the edit letter, I might say that your protagonist’s personality isn’t coming out as much as it could be. You’ve told me they’re supposed to be stubborn and headstrong, but there are several points in the novel where they acquiesce to someone else’s desires over their own without complaint. In the manuscript itself, I will add a comment whenever I see a place where the protagonist seems to be acting out of character and suggest ideas for how they might act instead.

A developmental edit is useful if you need more direction than what a manuscript critique will provide, and if there are many smaller, scene-level issues that need attention as opposed to larger, structural issues.

Line Edit

Line editing is a service that has become fairly popular with indie authors. In traditional publishing, there isn’t a separate line editing stage, though a developmental editor may do a line editing pass or a copy editor may be asked to do a heavier edit that includes sentence-level suggestions.

Some freelancers will combine line editing with another service. However, I would only hire an editor to do a combined dev/line edit if you are absolutely sure you don’t have a lot of structural changes to make. A line/copy edit, which some freelancers may call a “heavy copy edit” or something similar, can be helpful if you’re on a budget, though it may not be as effective as separate services. Your line editor may inspire you to rewrite sections of the book, and then you’ll need another copy editing pass anyway.

Line editing and copy editing are both concerned with prose at a sentence level, but copy editors focus on whether sentences are grammatically correct and stylistically consistent, while line editors focus on whether sentences are effective. Consider the following passage:

Margot ran quickly to the house, shouting for Pete. Was he even home yet? This was the pressing question.

She felt sweat trickle down her back.

In the house, Pete thought he heard something.

Margot rang the doorbell, pressing again and again, the cheerful rhythm of the chimes at odds with her frantic heartbeat.

A copy editor would have nothing to do here beyond making sure the names are spelled properly, because everything is grammatically correct. But a line editor might suggest something like the following (deletions in red, additions in bold):

Margot ran quickly raced to the house, shouting for Pete. Was he even home yet? This was the pressing question.

She felt sweat trickle Sweat trickled down her back.

In the house, Pete thought he heard something.

Margot rang the doorbell, pressing again and again, the cheerful rhythm of the chimes at odds with her frantic heartbeat.

Both developmental editing and line editing are about effective storytelling, which is why, in the pyramid diagram above, I have line editing tagged as "sentence-level editing" and "big-picture editing." When I line edit, I’m making sure character voices are consistent; use of rhetorical devices like alliteration and personification are effective; unnecessary thoughts, actions, and descriptions are trimmed; repetition is avoided; dialogue is moving the plot or character development forward; info-dumping and head-hopping are reworked; and awkward phrasing is smoothed out. I will correct grammar and typos as I go as well, though that’s not my primary concern, and I don’t create a style sheet like a copy editor would.

If you think your manuscript could use work in any of the above areas, a line edit might be just the thing.

Copy Edit

As I mentioned earlier, copy editing is about consistency and grammatical correctness, though good copy editors understand that fiction writers make stylistic decisions that purposefully break the rules—such as sentence fragments or run-on sentences—and won't try to correct those.

Copy editors will fix typos, adjust wayward commas, correct spelling errors and misused words (did you mean affect or effect?), correct capitalization errors (it’s the queen, not the Queen, but Queen Victoria, not queen Victoria), make sure quotation marks in dialogue are formatted properly, and point out unclear wording. They will flag consistency errors, like if Pete’s eyes are blue in chapter one but brown in chapter fourteen.

Copy editors also use or create an invaluable document called a style sheet, where they record stylistic decisions that don’t necessarily have a “right” or “wrong” answers—like whether your manuscript uses Canadian, American, or British spelling (color or colour?), whether a word is hyphenated (caregiver or care-giver?) and when to spell out numbers (21 or twenty-one?).

Large publishing companies will have a house style sheet for their copy editors (though it may require additions or tweaks depending on the manuscript), so getting a copy edit from a freelancer is unnecessary if traditional publishing is your goal. As an indie author, you’ll want to hire a copy editor or do it yourself, making a style sheet from scratch. You may or may not use the same style sheet across all your books, but should at least use the same one across a series for consistency’s sake.

If you know that grammar and spotting inconsistencies isn’t your strength, hiring a professional to do a copy edit might be the way to go.

Proofread

Proofreading is the final step before publishing. A proofreader looks at the manuscript that is typeset and formatted for printing, usually as a PDF document. They keep an eye out for any last typos or grammatical errors the copy editor missed and formatting issues like widows and orphans, extra spaces that shouldn’t be there, quotation marks that should be curly instead of straight, etc.

In traditional publishing, you may not even be involved in this step. In indie publishing, you’ll want to do this yourself or hire a proofreader. If you’ve been doing rounds and rounds of edits on your book yourself, a proofreader is handy, because they are a new set of eyes that can give your manuscript a final once-over. They are also trained to catch formatting errors that you may miss.

How to Decide

Hiring editing professionals to go through all of these stages would be the dream, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, a good editor isn't cheap, so you will likely have to choose one or two types of editing to contract out and do the rest yourself. Which area is your weak point? You may already know after reading this article, or you may have a suspicion. One way to confirm this is to ask your editor to do a sample edit; this way, you can see exactly what kind of suggestions they will make and whether you think that will benefit your book the most.

If you have already built some trust with an editor, you can also ask them their opinion on what your manuscript needs. I was recently hired for a developmental edit, but I ended up recommending a manuscript critique instead after reading the novel, since I thought that would benefit the author more. After staring at your manuscript for months or years, it's sometimes hard to find objectivity, and an expert opinion can help.

Whether you decide to go it alone or hire a professional, make sure you build your novel with a solid foundation, doing your structural, big-picture work first before tackling sentence-level tweaks. Good luck, and happy editing!