You may see developmental editing referred to as substantive editing, structural editing, story editing, macro editing, or content editing by some editors. These all refer to the same process of fixing the skeleton of the story, rather than the skin-level of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Developmental editing works to fix the global plot structure and character arcs, and scene-level issues like momentum, genre-satisfaction, emotions and interest, and everything else that makes for a story readers gush about after reading. In a nutshell, It helps make your story work, satisfy readers, and be memorable.  

If you want to see a longer list of the sort of things I watch for and help authors with in a developmental edit, check out that FAQ below! 

When you get a developmental edit from me, you do not get formulaic, cookie-cutter feedback. I will diagnose, closely assess, and provide feedback on YOUR individual greatest strengths and weaknesses. Not a short list of the most common across all fiction. Below is a list of the sort of things I watch for, pulling out the most relevant elements to address with your individual piece. 

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-Structure: scene length, structure, and placements. Act length, placement, and structure/contents. Global rise and fall. If applicable; if flash-forwards, flashbacks, or multiple timelines are working well. Adherence to genre, subgenre, and niche conventions, plot holes, how the primary plot and any subplots are working together, continuity errors, and more. 

-Setting; where the story takes place, geography and choreography/blocking issues, how the characters interact with the setting, world building, and more.  

-Characters: if they are likable, if they develop over the story (character arcs), if they are well-rounded and three-dimensional, if they are believable, if they act from consistent motives and essential tactics, unique voices and good dialogue, and more. 

-Pacing; is the story too slow or too fast in some places, is there variety and good use of ups and downs, does it keep the reader engaged, where chapter breaks and scene breaks are used, if they work well, and the like. 

-Hooks; is there incentive for the reader to keep reading, are the chapter openers and closers working to pull the reader forward, are the elements of mystery, intrigue, excitement, anxiety, and dramatic irony being used well and effectively, is the reader given too much or too little information, and the like. 

-Style; POV, tense, person, narrative voice, authorial voice, narrative device choices, tension (Goals, Motives, Conflicts), theme/message, emotional landscape, parting impression, clarity, readability, fluidity, and more. 

-Show vs Tell; checking that scenes are presented in a captivating manner, and that both showing and telling are used in effective, appropriate, and balanced manners. 

-Other: what you need to work on in your next draft, suggestions to help with revisions, addressing any specific concerns you express about the piece from your own familiarity with it, and such. 

-Metadata and viability: assessment of the appropriate next steps for your manuscript, my professional opinion on the overall viability of your manuscript, suitability for target audience and the like, tailored to your stated goals. 

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-Steam level (All) 

-Title fit for the piece (All) 

-Trigger warnings (As needed) 

-Categories (With that service/add-on) 

-Keywords (With that service/add-on)

-Subgenres (With that service/add-on)

-Tropes (With that service/add-on) 

-Top blurb/synopsis elements (With that service/add-on)

-Title fit for your subgenres (With that service/add-on) 

That depends! All developmental editing is best used after alpha readers, and before beta readers, if you plan to use either, and all can be used for a rough draft. The primary differences between the different developmental services I offer are their respective price points, the amount of time and attention that goes into them, and how much feedback you get out of it. One other consideration in choosing the right service for you is just how much help your story needs. This can be difficult to judge for yourself as a newer author, but generally, if it needs a lot of work because it really isn’t working and you can’t figure out why, the more intense Gold service is the best choice for you. If you know your story is really mostly working as-is and you are mostly looking for a beefed up beta read, then the Copper service might be all you need. I offer the Silver service specifically as a solid middle ground between the two for folks who aren’t looking for or don’t need either extreme, or aren’t sure what they need. 

Yes! You can download the 31-page Example Edit Letter (PDF) quickly and easily through BookFunnel here: https://BookHip.com/TRAASTW

That’s something you can decide for yourself, or I can help you decide in a free 15-minute video call! Here’s what I personally recommend. You absolutely CAN get a developmental edit done on a rough first draft, but I suggest doing as much structural self-editing as you can first, to make sure you aren’t paying me for something you could have noticed or figured out yourself, first. I also recommend that if you are using alpha and beta readers, that you do a developmental edit after the alpha stage for the reasons I just mentioned, but before the beta readers so that you can use them as a check for any major changes you made after the developmental edit. You should always plan to get a manuscript copy edited or line edited AFTER a developmental edit, but it is both appreciated and recommended that you do polish it a bit for spelling, grammar, and punctuation yourself before a developmental edit using any word processing software like Microsoft Word, or an AI copy editing tool like ProWritingAid (my personal highest recommendation). At the end of the day, if you have a story written that you need help reshaping so it works, you are ready for a developmental edit. 

Also called subject-matter expert, topic expert, research consultant, fact-checker, or consulting specialist beta reading, the purpose is to check a specific set of details in your story with someone who has expert and/or experiential knowledge on the topic. Some people might have a retired cop check their police procedural, a nurse check their hospital romance, or a friend in culinary school check their fancy restaurant horror short. I am personally able to offer my expertise from a lifetime of riding, training, and showing horses, and fifteen years of historical, reenactment, LARP, and theater costuming to help people writing stories where they want to get all of the horse-related or historical clothing details are spot-on and immersive. 

In a Microsoft Word Document (preferred) or a Google Doc, formatted as Times New Roman, 12pt font, double-spaced. Optional but requested is having NO headers or footers with the author name, book title, or chapter title, but WITH page numbers please. This is all to make my process of reading, including a text-to-speech audio pass for the Gold developmental editing service, as easy and clear as possible, and allowing for in-line comments on the applicable services. 

For Google Docs, please create a new document for the purpose, copy and paste your manuscript in, and make sure that I will have Editor access through your security/share settings. This is to allow me to fix any formatting I need to, and leave in-line comments in the most helpful manner for any given situation, all while making sure you retain an untouched copy for your records, and for you to compare or revert to as needed. 

You will send it to me as an attachment in the email chain we will already have established during the booking process. I will return my feedback to you in the same manner. 

Typically, a project of 75k-150k words is a 2-week turnaround. For projects under 75k or standalone smaller packages, that is a 1-week turnaround. 

For pieces over 150k words, or for some all-inclusive packages, a longer timeline of 3-weeks may be needed, and will be communicated clearly in the booking process and the final contract. 

A priority or rush booking halves the expected turnaround time. For 75k-150k words, a priority or rush turnaround is 1 week. For projects under 75k word, that is an expected turnaround time of 3-4 business days. For larger projects that would normally take three weeks, that may be 1 to 2 weeks on a case-by-case basis. 

All payments will go through PayPall. A non-refundable down payment of 25% of the total price without discounts will be taken at the time of booking to secure your place in my calendar. A second payment of 25% of the total price with discounts will be taken after you have handed off your manuscript to me, before I start reading, adjusted for any changes in the actual word count from the estimated word count at the time of booking. A final payment of the remaining balance will be billed when I have finished with all of the services purchased for that project and have my feedback ready to send you, and you will receive all of your deliverables as soon as that third payment is received.

Yes! I offer a number of discounts, which you can find listed with details on the Packages and Discounts page, listed under Services. I also run occasional sales for reduced price booking slots, and you are welcome to join my email newsletter list (at the bottom of the page) for first dibs at those, or to follow me on social media to see those opportunities there. Those links are at the very top of every page. 

I focus on just Amazon, as they have a significant majority of the market for books on their single platform. They are also the platform I have experience selling with as an indie author, and the one I have the resources, tips, tricks, and practice getting all the data from to pick the best metadata choices from. This may change in the future, so please feel free to inquire if you are interested in a different sales platform being centered in the categories and keywords service I offer. 

If only there was one universal metric we could all use for measuring the steam level or spice level of a book! As it is, that is sadly not the case. If you have a solid metric or set of definitions you are familiar with or prefer, I am more than happy to use that in my assessment. Otherwise, I will be grading on a 1-5 scale, attuned to the broad romance reader groups I stay active in, and choosing one of the following categories I feel it best falls into, with a brief explanation of why: Sweet, closed-door, low steam, fade to black, high steam, spicy, and erotica. 

Essentially, because I am already reading your manuscript critically for the larger service. As an add-on, it is adding on another layer of elements I am watching for while reading, and another set of notes to polish up for you with the delivery of the edit letter for the developmental edit or premium topic-expert beta reading service. As a standalone, I am not otherwise reading the manuscript through, so the time alone which that takes incurs additional charges.

Absolutely! Name a well-known story structure book, course, or resource, and chances are REALLY good I am intimately familiar with it. This is absolutely something you are encouraged to bring up in your initial contact around a project, in our free 15 minute introductory call if you avail yourself of the option, or when you hand off your manuscript to me. If you manage to request a story structure vocabulary I am NOT familiar with, I will take it as an imminently relevant recommendation and opportunity to expand my toolkit, and do my best to read the book (courses may be outside my budget) before I get to editing your piece.

Word Count: I will need to know your estimated total word count for the manuscript, as shown in either Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I have procedures in place for adjusting if the final delivered word count doesn’t match exactly, just give me your best guess rounded up to the nearest 5,000 when booking with me.

~Genre: Please be as clear as you can with me ahead of time what genres you have chosen so that I can properly assess how well your story fits those genres, and what may need to be strengthened or dialed back to best satisfy the readers in that genre without compromising the unique beauty of your story. Ideally, I would love to know both what structural genre you consider your primary one (action, romance, thriller, maturation plot, etc.), as well as your primary marketing genre (literary YA, romantic fantasy, police procedural, etc.) 

~Narration style: What tense (past, present, future), person (first, second, third), and narrative style (deep POV, limited POV, head-hopping, omniscient) are you aiming for with your writing style? 

~Triggers: I am prepared to read just about anything if I know it’s coming. I will always be happy to get a list of every trigger warning you can think of for your story, but here are the big ones I MUST be warned of before starting to read a piece: Sexual assault (aka non-consent, dubious-consent, consenting non-consent, rape, etc.), domestic violence (partner abuse of any kind, including psychological, emotional, physical, financial, or sexual), intentionally triggering someone’s PTSD, and graphic murder or a minor or animal. Bonus points if you also flag those particular triggers at the beginnings of the chapters where they come up, or provide me with the chapter numbers where each appears upfront. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: If I encounter one of these short-listed triggers and was NOT warned, I will stop reading immediately, and you will be given the choice to either end the contract completely for a refund of the second 25% payment, or pay for a portion of the remaining contract in alignment with the percentage of the book I did get through in exchange for the feedback I had collected up to that point. 

 ~Placement in series, if applicable. Please let me know if you expect readers to have read previous books in the series to understand this one, if you planning to be further books in the series after this one, and any other series-relevant information that may help me to assess the expected reader experience, expectations for resolution or not, etc. A brief 1-page per book synopsis of previous books in the series would he helpful, but is not a requirement. 

~Goals for the piece: Are you writing for your own pleasure and enjoyment? Hoping to win a prestigious award? Want to sell thousands of copies to whale-reader genre audiences? These things really matter in shaping a story! I would love to know any details you care to share with me about your goals with the story, your target audience, and where you want the series, your writing skills, or your career as an author to get to in the near future.

As applicable:

~The time and place your story is taking place in. 

~What social class your protagonists belong to (in whatever terms you can guess at). 

~What purpose the horse elements are designed to serve in your story (central, peripheral, plot-element, worldbuilding, etc.)

~Tone (fantasy or reality). 

Because it forces me to set everything else in my life aside to make sure you get the same excellent quality of feedback I give everyone, only in a shorter period of time than normal. I also have to do the same rushed work with intense focus to ensure quality and attention to detail is not compromised for the other author(s) who had already booked me for the dates months beforehand. I do not bump back everyone else in the queue when someone pays for a priority booking, as that would not be fair to all of them. So the extra time, energy, and quality control to make sure that no one receives anything less than the excellent feedback they are paying for is what the extra cost covers.

Typically, 3-6 months. It is easy for me to book slots further out than that, but before and during that time frame depends on my availability. I do offer priority/rush options if you need dates I have already filled, and you can follow me on social media or join my mailing list to see whenever I have cancellation openings. 

The total price, or final price, is the non-discount agreed-upon price for the service, with any add-ons or packages. 25% of that will be the non-refundable down payment at the time of booking. All discounts are calculated and subtracted from the total price, not from the remaining 75%, but are limited to an accumulated value equal to, but not exceeding, the remaining 75%. For example, a 100,000 word standard developmental edit total price is $3000. The 25% booking payment is $750. If you then apply a 10% referral discount, that takes $300 off, reducing the remaining $2,250 to $1,950. If you have a 10% next-in-series discount and six 10% referral discounts, that would reduce the remaining payment after the booking payment from $2,250 down to $150. However, if you tried to stack another 10% referral discount on top of that, it would only save you the remaining $150 instead of $300, reducing the remaining payment after the booking payment to $0. The non-refundable down payment at the time of booking will always be 25% of the total/final price before discounts.

Not really. I absolutely will ask what genre you see your story as, and what you want it to be, and will do everything I can to both help you strengthen the genre you want it to be. And, if you add on my ‘subgenre and tropes assessment’ service, I will help you sort out what genre you have actually written if it’s not an exact match. The one exception is my historical clothing Fact-Checking Expert Beta Reading service, which is primarily for historical fiction, but absolutely can also be useful for any fantasy or romance which is grounded in a specific historical fashion era you want to stay true to. 

I have a knack for looking at the macro, big picture elements of a story. Line editing, copyediting, and proofreading aren’t where my strengths lie, so I am happy to let editors who are more practiced and can deliver a higher quality product cover those aspects for authors. I strongly believe that having a fresh set of eyes on each step of the editing process is invaluable in catching as many things that need fixing as possible. This is why I am delighted to offer a discounted package deal with other editors who offer the services which I don't to save you time, money, and hastle while making sure you get multiple perspectives and a fresh set of eyes on your manuscript. 

No. I do not work with GENERATIVE AI stories in entirety or in part. I support existing authors whose work was stolen illegally to feed generative AI models as they currently exist. I believe it my moral and ethical obligation to not play any part in producing work based on that theft, copyright infringement, and exploitation. There is some level of honor-system here, but if any story I start to work on is so rough that I check, and it comes back as AI generated, I will be canceling the project on my end as per the terms of the contract. 

To clarify: Generative AI like Chat GPT is not the same as assistive AI like ProWritingAid. I am not willing to help with stories generated in any part by the former. I am entirely wiling to work with stories polished by the latter.