Editing Services
So you've written a book. First of all, congratulations! Take a moment to celebrate. Alright, that’s enough. Because now it’s time to find someone to edit your manuscript. Which is a horrible part of the process. Just awful. If only you already knew of someone who could edit your manuscript. If only. What? Me? Oh, alright. I’ll do it. Stop yelling at me. Stop.
When I say that I can edit your manuscript, what exactly does that entail? Thank you for asking me that. I will explain once you stop yelling.
Developmental Editing
Simply put, development editing is the cruising altitude view of your story. Here, we’re looking at overall structure, economy and flow, the strength and clarity of your themes, all of those things that make a story one the reader can’t put down. This is where the big, sweeping changes can happen. Think rearranging scenes and reordering reveals of information, ensuring your characters are rich and effectively realized, cutting or expanding sequences as needed to maximize emotional impact, that sort of foundational story work.
Though this would ideally be done working through your manuscript, this phase technically doesn’t even require the text be complete - if you’ve got an outline you want to beef up, or if you’ve gotten stuck with a story and need to workshop where it might go next, this service could still be of use to you.
Line Editing
This is just classic editing right here. Real red pen stuff. The goal in this part of the process is to go through your manuscript sentence by sentence, word by word, not to look at the grammar and syntax, but instead to pump up the more numinous bits. Theme, tone, the beauty of the language itself. A sentence you’ve written may make sense, but does it most effectively convey the emotion you’re after? Are your big ideas coming through as clearly as they could? Or, more simply, how tight can we get everything, without losing anything? That’s what we hit with line editing.
Copyediting
In the copyediting phase, we’re looking at the mechanics of the writing. Spelling, grammar, syntax, internal consistency, all that good stuff. Fact-checking, too (I don’t believe all stories have to adhere to reality, though I think the author should always be aware of when theirs doesn’t). Critically, my goal here is to understand your personal writing style and check the work against that. Maybe you want seventy-five percent of the words in your novel to be adverbs. That would actually be insane. If you send me a manuscript with 48,000 adverbs in it, I’ll sue you. And guess what? I’ll lose.
Self-Publishing
If you decide you want to go down the self-publishing route, I can also prepare your manuscript for physical printing at Amazon KDP, Blurb, Lulu, or any other print-on-demand shingle, as well as eBook publication. If you prefer a more DIY approach, I can also just help walk you through the process.
Get A Quote
All of the above can be one big package deal, or individual services, based on the needs of your manuscript. So whether you’re interested in everything up there, or feel your book only really needs one or two of them, or even if you aren’t exactly sure what your manuscript needs, shoot me an email and let's talk! Just include the word count of your manuscript’s most recent draft. We can schedule a free Zoom consultation, discuss what would make the most sense for your story, and go from there.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Testimonials
“Not only are Jud’s notes thorough and thoughtful, but most importantly he shapes his feedback in a way that asks questions driving towards your specific goals. Anything I write can be made better with Jud’s careful digging. I also cannot possibly go without mentioning this guy’s notes are incredibly entertaining and funny. I don’t know how he does it but never has constructive criticism on my writing been so fun to read.”
“I’ve been lucky enough to work with Jud on multiple writing projects over the years. He is a pleasure to work with, and his painstaking notes have always improved my writing.”
“Jud has a fantastic character insight and knows how to get to the heart of a story. His collaboration and feedback has been essential to revising my work.”