Need Editing? Get Smart!

The Approach

My approach to editing comes from a “Smart” perspective—that of your potential audience. As I move through each line of your work, I edit as I go. I don’t review the entire submission, then return to the beginning and start the process. That way you get my first impression as a “reader,” which enables me to help you identify some of the troublesome areas early on.

The Process

My editing process encompasses many aspects of editing in a concise and easy to follow Microsoft® WORD TRACKING format:
Copy/Line Editing—I’ll identify often overlooked first-round catches such as: sentence structure, word usage, and basic grammar, spelling & punctuation errors.
Developmental—As I read through, you’ll find sidebar comments on overall impressions on scene/sentence/paragraph motivations such as: Did the scene make sense? Are the characters interesting and does their motivation make sense? Are there plot holes, emotional or tension voids? Is there too much or too little description?
Structural—Sometimes I will juxtapose or eliminate a word(s), sentence, paragraph or entire scene and give you the reasoning behind my motivation.

The Definition

You can call me a type of Substantive Editor, as defined by Kindlepreneur:
A substantive edit is an all-around editing process. For this reason, it’s also often called a content edit. Substantive editing deals with sentence structure, grammar, content, word usage, and overall writing style. A content editor is kind of like each different editing type above all rolled into one.
When you bring your manuscript to a substantive editor, you can expect sentence-level critiques, overall structure critiques, and everything in between. This is one editing service that covers all the manuscript editing bases.
When Do You Need a Substantive Edit?
If you’re not sure what type of editing you’ll need for your manuscript, keep this type of editor in mind during the writing process. A substantive editor will charge more overall for the service, but it’s also likely to be cheaper than going to each different editing service separately. So if you know you may need multiple editing types, contact an editor that does it all!