What is a Developmental Editor?
The different levels of editing can be quite confusing for someone who is new to the publishing world. If you’re like most new authors that just finished your first manuscript, you’re probably wondering what’s next.
Typically, the first round of editing that you’ll want done is a Developmental edit. A Developmental Edit is when a professional editor is looking at the entire manuscript and looking for ways to improve the story as a whole. Here are some key ways that they’ll do that:
Looking for Plot Holes
When you spend days, weeks, and months looking at your manuscript you’re going to become blind to plot holes. They sneak in when we least expect them.
Watching Character Development
Sometimes, we know our characters so well that we forget to put the same details about them in our heads on paper. We’ve spent months or years getting to know them, but our reader hasn’t. Oftentimes, this can lead to a character that’s not really well developed on paper.
World building and well developed Lore
If you’re writing a fictional novel, a developmental editor is going to look at the world you’ve created and see if there are any places there where it could be improved, doesn’t make sense, or needs to be a little more realistic.
These are just a few things that a Developmental Editor will be looking for throughout your manuscript. There’s plenty more that your editor will look out for, especially in nonfiction, but hopefully these things give you a sense of what to expect from your developmental editor.
