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What is developmental editing
Most writers can’t afford their hiring so many rounds of editors or don’t have the proper budget to pay for each. Thus, how do you know which kind of editing to get for your novel? And what on earth is developmental editing? A developmental edit also referred to as a structural edit, conceptual editing, and manuscript appraisal is a careful and in-depth edit of your entire manuscript. Developmental editing analyzes all aspects of your writing, ranging from separate words to the overall configuration and style of your sentences. A developmental editor will most likely be very perceptive and very experienced to be able to find those structural errors of a novel.
How do you know you should hire a developmental editor?
You should probably look into a developmental editing budget if you notice you have a lot of structural errors. Structural errors are any kinds of sentence fragments, comma splices, run-on sentences, or any missing areas or gaps in your work. These errors can make your writing hard to read, and your point has the tenancy to get lost. Other signals of structural errors include incomplete plots, plot holes, timing errors, or areas where there is too much or not enough description. When hiring a developmental editor, they have to check all of that in-depth, along with examining the tone of your novel and general writing style. Developmental editing is so thorough because it dives deep into line editing and most editors will offer rewrite suggestions. Some like to consider hiring a developmental editor is the first step before sending your manuscript to a proofreader, copyeditor, or beta reader and if you’re on a budget, it could be your only step. Hiring a developmental editor is most beneficial in fiction because this edit will highlight any issues to plot or characterization. A thorough developmental editing session will keep your target audience in mind and evaluate your work in correlation to industry criteria and anticipations. Authors should go into this process prepared to rewrite as it is common for a developmental editor to come and change a lot about the groundwork of your manuscript.
How to decide on an editor, and when do you begin searching for one?
When choosing an editor to get this hefty job done, do your research. Try looking up the editor to some of your favorite books or choosing a few editors and reading the books they have on their portfolio. Commonly, some authors aren’t willing to make the changes that come along with a thorough developmental edit, and this is a good way to avoid thinking your editor doesn’t get your vision. Knowing the work of the person you want to hire, and then crafting the budget and things you want them to focus on could make this bumpy ride a bit smoother for both parties. This step of hiring a developmental editor should be done when the author feels like the manuscript is the best it can be. If you hand your editor a swept manuscript, it can leave them to focus more on big ideas. Developmental editing is less affordable because it is very time-consuming and may be one of the most worthwhile edits you’ll pay for.
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Many authors consider copyediting to be an important component of their business model, and for good reason. Copyediting allows an author to present their best work to publishers and helps to increase the chances of their works being a success. If you're an author that's never hired a copyeditor, then now's a good time to consider just how your work would benefit from this service. Let's take a look at what copyediting is, how to tell if you need a copyeditor, and why it's so useful.
What is Copyediting?
As its name implies, copyediting is the editing of copy. However, there are many ways to edit copy such as simple proofreading, formatting, fact-checking, and line editing. Copyediting is a little different from these, and in some cases, may have some overlap with them, especially proof-reading.
Copyediting is going over a work and not only checking for grammatical and spelling errors, but also other factors such as flow, tone, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and sometimes even fact-checking if the copyeditor is knowledgeable enough on the subject matter. Most of the time this will drastically improve the work.
In some cases a copyeditor may also make suggestions that could improve the work that fall outside of their scope. For example, if a copyeditor is editing a work of fiction and notices a plot hole or some other inconsistency, they may bring it to the author's attention. Likewise, in works of nonfiction copyeditors can spot contradictions or anything else that could undermine the work.
Do You Actually Need a Copyeditor?
As an author, you likely go over your own work many times to get everything just right, and in doing so you basically function as your own copyeditor. However, an author being their own editor is not optimal for several reasons including the fact that since you're so familiar your own writing your brain tends to read it less carefully, almost like you're on autopilot. This can lead to missing both errors, and opportunities for improvement.
On the other hand, a professional copyeditor is a brand new set of eyes, allowing for a fresh look at your work. And since two brains are better than one, they will in most cases pick up on things that you would miss if you were to copyedit your work yourself. On top of this is the fact that copyeditors specialize in edition, not writing. This means that they look at a work much differently than you the author would, and bring a more analytical approach to editing your drafts.
So, to answer the initial question, copyediting is not mandatory, but highly encouraged if you want your work to be the absolute best that it can be. Don't underestimate just how much a copyeditor can improve the quality of your work.
When Should You Hire a Copyeditor?
In most cases an author should hire a copyeditor when they've gone over their work and feel that they've done all they can to make it the very best that it can possibly be. While this may make hiring a copyeditor feel redundant to those who have never done so before, there is still a ton of value in hiring one. That said, there may be exceptions to this rule in some cases.
For example, if your publisher has given you a very tight deadline, and the work you're writing is relatively lengthy, you may be better off hiring a copyeditor early so that they can go over your work as you complete it. While this strategy can save time, it does have the disadvantage of your copyeditor not being able to review the work as a whole. This can lead to them missing some inconsistencies that might be present across chapters.
Copyediting is an Investment
Authors who have never hired a copyeditor before may balk when considering whether or not the investment is worth it. The thing is, a document that has been copyedited by someone other than the author is almost certain to be of much higher quality than one that isn't. If an author isn't concerned about the quality of their work, then hiring a copyeditor may not be something they'd want to bother with. However, if an author does want their work to be of the highest quality to impress publishers and readers alike, then hiring a copyeditor is one of the smartest decisions they can make for their business.
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Do you write too much description in your fiction? While adding description can help give your reader a clearer picture of the events and everything in the particular scenes, it’s important not to add too much description. In this article, we’ll look at the drawbacks of adding too much description in your work.
Read more: 7 Drawbacks of Writing Too Much Description in Your Fiction Book
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A passage about descriptive writing should be able to have an appeal on all five senses. Writing with all the five senses is quite a brilliant rule, when you are working on descriptive writing. This is so because you need all the simple details, in order to help bring your fictional world to life. Each of these five senses is quite a powerful tool on its own. When they are therefore combined together, they help to offer the reader a full experience, that is immersive to the reader. This way, the readers are able to understand better, how words have been used to describe how things smell, feel and even taste.
More Details on Sensory Description
There are quite a number of things that you may decide to use while describing a character while writing. For instance, you can decide to talk about the color of his hair, the fact that he has fingernails that have been chewed, some scar he has on his face, that is visible in a certain light, the color of trousers he is wearing and so forth.
In the example given above, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving either one or even more of such descriptions. However, the aforementioned details about the character is only one-dimensional descriptive writing. This is because it has only engaged on the sight sense. However, you could give the description as shown below:
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He has hair that has a wiry feel (sense of touch)
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His lips have a ripe fruit taste (use of sense of taste)
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He wears quite a considerable amount of perfume (smell sense)
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He has laughter that is quite high pitched (use of sound sense)
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He was casually dressed (use of the sense of sight)
The above description is now multi-dimensional since it takes into account all the five senses. This is how detailed descriptive writing is supposed to be done. When you use all the five senses altogether in giving descriptions regarding your characters, it becomes a lot much easier to know more details about the characters, and hence making the whole story much more interesting and the readers entertained more.
1.Descriptive Writing using the Sense of Sight
Sight is actually the most important sense to engage in, when you are looking to give a good sensory description. This is mostly because, when writing, in the absence of cameras, like is the case in movies; you can only use the sense of sight to describe to your readers using words, the things you would wish for them to envision.
In as much as you cannot be able to give every description of every building, trees, things in sight and everything else, you are still well able to give descriptions of sight in the following ways:
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Have your focus on only a handful of the details you want to give. Allow your readers to have the opportunity to paint the rest of the picture by themselves. This makes it more intriguing for the reader actually.
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Ensure that the few details you are giving to the readers are the very best that you are able to come across.
2.Using the Sense of Smell in Descriptive Writing
Among all the five senses that can be used in descriptive writing, smell is the most nostalgic among them. Ideally, smell can be used as a tool in descriptive writing in trying to have the characters be able to have a remembrance of an event from the past.
It is also safe to say that the sense is smell is an easy way for you as a writer to be able to put across so much, using words that are quite few. For example, you could use the following examples:
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The smell of the woodland after rains in the summer season
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Smell of cheap liquor from the breath of drunkards
In as much as the words are very few, they are able to stir up so much imagination in the reader, and help them start thinking about the exact setup in which the events were taking place. This way, using just the sense of smell, can evoke so much descriptions that will go a long way in writing.
3.Using the Sense of Taste in Descriptive Writing
You are most likely to evoke the sense of taste in different ways while writing. First, you can use this sense when the characters are either drinking or eating. Additionally, you are able to use it in romantic writing when the characters are actively using their tongues and mouths, for example when kissing.
You should always look for ways by which you are able to incorporate the descriptions of taste in your writing. For example, if you are writing about a character that is visiting the coast, you can have them taste the breeze salt, in a fictional way.
It is important to note that even in the event that you are not exactly having a taste described, you are able to have it passed across by just a mention of the tongue that is used for tasting. This is often quite powerful in fictional writing.
4.Descriptive Writing using the Sense of Sound
Using the sense of sound is often quite important, especially in helping in a way to bring some soundtrack to a scene. You can, for instance, use the sense of sound to bring so much description to the characters and the settings around them.
You can have the speakers banging things in anger, for example, speaking, singing or even coughing. All these add an effect to the storyline by giving them a vision of what the setting appears to be like.
If you are giving a description of the seaside, for example, you are able to mention the sounds of waves breaking on the seashore pebbles; as a way of adding extra details to the description.
5.Use of Sense of Touch in Descriptive Writing
When using the sense of touch in descriptive writing, it can be displayed in two different ways. It can be used to depict pleasure or pain. For pleasure, you can describe to the readers, the nice pleasurable cool feel of cotton sheets on a warm summer night. This way, the readers are able to have an experience of the pleasure, together with the character.
You can also make it painful, by for instance talking about a character having their nose head-butted. This may make the readers wince, even because they can imagine the pain.
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Are you wondering if you’d benefit by printing your current novel in progress and editing it by hand? The truth is that there are a lot of benefits to looking at your work in a different format, especially if you do all your writing on a computer.
What You’ll Need
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A red pen or any color pen that isn’t black or the color of your printer ink. You want your edits to stand out on the page. I prefer the Pilot Precise V5.
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Printer paper. I prefer the cheapest stuff I can find that doesn’t have 100 reviews of ‘it jams’ or ‘feels nasty’. I typically use Hammermill and that’s because as of the writing of this article, I can get 8, 500-page reams for $29, which is $3.63 a pack.
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A cheap laser printer. I’m currently using a Brother HL-L2300D Monochrome Laser Printer because it prints 27 pages per minute, and the tray holds up to 250 sheets. The toner cartridges also print 1800+ sheets, which means you aren’t going to switching out your ink mid-novel-print, like with an inkjet. I don’t know about you, but when I owned an inkjet, I got real tired of constantly feeding it more paper and spending $30+ on ink for every single draft.