If only it were practical to hire an editor to “give everything a quick once-over—and let me know if you spot any plot holes along the way.” The problem is that different types of editing zero in on entirely different areas of your book. Asking an editor to combine edits and multitask their way through an entire manuscript is probably asking for trouble.
But isn’t there some way you can combine editing services to get more bang for your editing buck? Editing comes in three basic flavors: feedback on the story, editing for the writing itself, and a final cleanup of the edited manuscript. There are only certain ways you can fit these very different services together into a single compatible process.
My article on combining editorial services, posted at the website of my colleague Jami Gold, shows you when it makes sense to combine services and when you’re simply diluting the value of the work you’re paying to have done. Jami’s site is a gold mine of resources for authors, and her name will be familiar to many of my clients from links and recommendations I’ve included in my editorial reports.
“Like I mentioned to Lisa when she first proposed this post topic, as an occasional freelance developmental editor, I often hear from potential clients who think my story-level edit is all they’ll need, or they try to schedule a story edit with me after line or copy edits—and that’s just not how the editing process works,” Jami writes.
Let’s make sure you don’t fall into the trap of trying to squeeze so much out of the editorial process that you squeeze the focus right out of your editor.
Read: Can you combine types of editing?
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