A comprehensive guide to my editorial services

If you’re not sure what’s meant by “editorial read” or “developmental edit” then you’re not alone. If you search the web for definitions, you’ll get a lot of conflicting information, and in my experience different publishers use different descriptions for the same thing.

Here is what I, Ruby Allen-Cadman, mean. If we work together, you might need me to do only one or two of these things, or it might be that I just do a quick copy edit and proofread before you send your work out to agents or publishers. Maybe we just have a chat about how publishing works. But I’ve ordered this from initial to final stages in the editorial process, as if we’re doing all of it together.

*Bat Girl* by John Brophy
or, me and you working on a manuscript together

Happy reading!

Editorial consultation

First, I’ll ask you for a synopsis of your work, a sample of up to 5,000 words (or a certain no. of pages if it’s not long-form), plus the answer to some other questions such as: who’s your target audience? Which authors and/or what content inspires you? What are your overall goals? Do you like cats?

Once I’ve read through everything, I’ll schedule in an in-person meeting or video call for us to talk through next steps: whether that’s redrafting, looking at querying an agent, or getting your work ready to self-publish. I’ll provide a summary letter and any helpful resources after our meeting.

EDITORIAL READ

Reading the whole thing and making notes for a…

Structural/DEVELOPMENTAL edit

These are the big-sweeping changes I’ll suggest for a piece of work, such as telling you to reorder whole chunks of text, punch-up action or dialogue, scrap a character, introduce a character earlier, add an extra love-interest, put a donkey in it.

Luckily, I’m a one woman band with no sales force behind me, so if I’m suggesting these things you can tell me to shove it. But when editors advise you on these things we have your best interests at heart, dear authors. Sometimes we’re wrong and you should always feel comfortable challenging our opinions, but sometimes it really is 20,000 words too long, or you have gone a tad overboard with the nautical imagery.

These edits will be provided with light in-text mark ups, as queries rather than actual text changes. They will be accompanied by a nice long letter bullet-pointing the suggested changes and why I think you should consider them, and will be filled with lots of nice compliments because I, too, am a delicate artist just trying to bear my soul to the world, and now I’m taking your proverbial baby and telling you it’s got a third act problem.

From Charlie, The Mighty Boosh, SE1 E04 first released 22nd June 2004 BBC

REWRITES/REDRAFTING

I leave you to take in those changes I suggested. Weeks, months, sometimes years pass. You start to live in fear of my gentle chasing emails. You curse my name. You abandon the project and write 20,000 words of something else. You take up crocheting. Eventually, after endless, sleepless nights and sudden stabs of panic, you get it done.

I take months to get back to you, and when I do, I suggest some more rewrites, some of which probably backtrack on my last edits. The cycle begins again.

From I Mean, Not This at All, But, That Mitchell and Webb Look, SE1 E05 first released 6th October 2006 BBC

Line edit

Overall, the piece is in good shape. You’re happy with it, I’m happy with it, we’re no longer fantasising about printing the whole thing out just to burn it. Now, we line edit.

This is going through line by line, paragraph by paragraph, and making suggested text edits where necessary. This means me writing in new text or amending existing text slightly in order to better match the tone and voice of the piece overall. It might also include inserting or removing text to improve narrative flow. It will all be for you to review. You can either accept my edits, reject them, or amend the text yourself based on my queries or prompts.

Sensitivity read

I think this is an essential piece of any editorial process, especially for novels or novellas but pertaining to all forms of writing. I can recommend some good readers for you to consider, relevant to your work’s content.

It’s a complex form of editing, but the fundamental role of a sensitivity reader is to provide feedback on how to improve upon the diversity, equity and inclusion of your work.

TYPESETTING

Not my specialty (although I do have some experience in this); this is formatting your work for print/online publication. Often, publishers have a designer in-house or freelance who will do this, using a briefing form for different fonts and styles etc.

For picture books and illustrated works, this is a much, much bigger job and a designer is typically involved in the process from the outset.

COPY EDITING

If the work is being typeset or formatted, this process can be a back-and-forth between the author, editor and typesetter. Or, sometimes, you’ll have a copy edit before and after typesetting, depending on the cost of getting the text formatted.

But a copy edit in and of itself is a thorough read through checking consistency, making final (small) text changes, fixing typos, flagging formatting problems, and amending any spelling and grammatical errors.

If at the copy editing stage, I’ve been with your work from the beginning and provided structural and/or line-edits, I’ll usually recommend that a different editor does the copy edit. This is because its incredibly helpful having a fresh pair of eyes on the project to pick up on anything you and I might have overlooked.

PROOFREADING

The final stages before something goes to print or live online: a thorough check for consistency, spelling & grammar errors, formatting hiccups, typooos and a triple-check of things like ISBNs, references or links.

The Wicked movie doll saga was a proofreading mishap. Editors and authors should always have at least two people proofreading something, because when you something over and over again you ten to miss detials.

And that’s pretty much it…

Have I missed anything? Do you have questions ? Do you think you might have some work for me? Comment below, or reach out here. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for more blog posts about editorial tips, tricks and resources.