63. Unraveling the 3 Main Types of Editors: How They Support Writers

Have you ever started writing a story, and the words rush onto the page. But then you start worrying that your writing or your ideas aren’t good enough.

You start rewriting chapters over and over again. You can’t shake that voice in the back of your head that says you’re doing this wrong. Something isn’t right, but you can’t pinpoint what that is.

Or worse—you scrap the whole project and give up.

In today’s episode, Erin shares how finding the right editor can help you avoid or blow through all of that confusion and doubt. You’ll also learn the major differences between development editors, inline editors, and proofreaders.

Erin also shares when beta readers fall into the picture and what type of feedback to watch out for. You’ll also get the answers to what these editors do, when’s the right time to use their services, how much they cost, and what you should look for in order to find a quality editor.

So stay tuned to find out which editor you might need right now and how you can find your right editor.

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Resources discussed during the show: 

• Reedsy.com 

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Transcript

Erin P.T. Canning: 0:00

Does this sound familiar? You have this great idea for a story. You start working on it. The words and creativity are flowing fast. You get 15, 000, maybe even 40, 000 words into your story. Maybe you even finish the whole book. But then you start worrying that your writing isn't good enough, or your ideas aren't good enough. You start rewriting chapters over and over again. You can't shake that voice in the back of your head that says you're doing this all wrong. Something isn't right, but you can't pinpoint what that is. Or worse, you scrap the whole project and give up. I can relate. I started and stopped writing the same series for ten years, and that was while I was working as an editor for other authors. I just couldn't shake my own self doubt. I didn't know how to move past certain chapters. I got lost in the backstory. And then I found my first developmental editor. And everything clicked into place. Now I have two books out in my first fantasy romance series, The Aerytol Saga. It's not the same series I worked on for those ten years, but I've overcome those same hurdles. And I'm living my dream of being an author while still editing novels for other authors. Today's episode is about helping you understand how finding the right editor can help you avoid or blow through all of that confusion and doubt. Because professional editors know how to help you strengthen your writing and how to make your prose concrete and enthralling. What's more, excellent editors can also teach you why they make certain changes, so that you learn how to avoid similar issues in the future, and grow your skills as a writer. But I know finding those editors can be confusing. You might have heard the terms developmental vs. inline vs. copy editors, and you wonder, what's the difference between them? What do they each offer? When's the right time to use their services? How much do they cost? And what do you look for in order to find a quality editor? I'm going to answer those very questions and more for you today. Real quick, before we get started, if you want personal support with your manuscript, stick around after the episode and I'll let you know what to do next. But for now, let's get to the show. You're listening to Parents Who Write, the podcast that helps you pursue your writing dreams. I'm your host, Erin P. T. Canning. I'm an author, editor, writing coach, and mom of two young boys. And my mission is to help you prioritize your writing, strengthen your voice, and gain confidence and direction so that you can own your identity as a writer and thrive as an author. Hi, friend! Welcome to another episode of Parents Who Write. Today I am talking about the three main different types of editors and what it is that they offer, what they provide, what they do for authors, what they should do for authors, I should say. The first one is a developmental editor. A developmental editor is going to be looking at the big picture of your book, story structure, character development, timeline issues. They're going to be looking for plot holes and character arcs. Think about if you're building a house, you want to make sure that you have a solid foundation for that house before you start filling in the walls and the flooring and the decorating and all that pretty stuff that goes into the house. So, they're going to make sure that you have that solid foundation. What does that mean, or when does that happen? A lot of times, writers think that they have to finish their manuscript, and then they go looking for a developmental editor, but believe it or not, I've spoken to other writers, and they said that they wish that they had their developmental editor working with them sooner. Because they were then able to point out those big plot hole issues or, you know, if you're just struggling to get through that middle of your book and you can't quite figure out why, again, that's where a developmental editor is really going to shine through for you. Writers that I've spoken with in the past lamented not having a developmental editor with them sooner so that they didn't have to then go back and rewrite so much of their story. So you can pull in a developmental editor when you are in the process of writing your novel. It's up to you how you want to do that, but that's what a developmental editor focuses on. The other thing to keep in mind is that when you're getting feedback from your developmental editor, usually that feedback is in the form of a separate Word document with maybe one to two pages worth of notes, because again, they're looking at those big picture issues. For me, for Ruins and Redemption, that was my friend slash developmental editor who pointed out that I had a character who just kind of disappeared halfway through the novel. That would be Mercia. She just vanished. And I was like, because I don't know what to do with her character. And then my developmental editor pointed out a plot hole in my story. And I was like, yeah, that is a plot hole. And she's like, you know, Mercia could solve that for you. And I was like, oh, oh, Another thing that was phenomenal for me, my personal experience of working with a developmental editor was that, I originally had a character in my novel that I deleted because, again, I wasn't sure what to do with her when I thought long term with the series. So I removed her from my book. That's the character that's Seira. And my developmental editor, again, was able to point out that I had this really nice balance between characters in the city, but there was an imbalance in the castle. And so I told her that I had deleted Seira's character, and she was like, no, what? Like, we need her. That hole is very evident. So thanks to her, I wound up putting that character back into my book. And I've had more than one person tell me that they're extremely fascinated with Seira's story, and that she steals a lot of scenes. That she's that interesting. That never would have happened if I hadn't worked with a developmental editor for my first book. Technically my second book, because my first book got to be so big I had to cut it in half. So, you know, there's that too. And my developmental editor was also able to help me make the decision to cut that first draft in half and figure out how to make my first book come to a satisfactory ending, even though it ends on a cliffhanger, to get my main characters on the same page emotionally before they launched into the second half of their adventure. So, again, those are all the benefits that you get working with a developmental editor. My advice, always, is that if you're trying to find a developmental editor, make sure that they are knowledgeable about your genre. You don't want to ask an electrician for advice on how to fix the plumbing in your house. Likewise, you don't want someone who specializes in horror to be advising you how to write a romance novel. So, when you're reaching out for those developmental editors, number one advice is to always ask them what genres do they specialize in and what books have they worked on. And just clarify for them what type of feedback do you provide. You always want to ask that. Don't make the assumption. I'm saying what a developmental editor should be looking at, but if you want to be able to weed through and make sure that you're finding yourself a good one, you should still ask these questions to make sure that you're getting what you expect. Another thing to keep in mind is the cost. Developmental editors are usually around the same price as inline editors. The standard rate that should also help guarantee that you're getting the quality feedback that you want is three cents a word. So that means if you have an 80, 000 word manuscript, you're looking at 2,400 dollars for a solid developmental editor. I know that that price tag can be really scary. Reach out to any friends that you have who are also English teachers. They're a great resource. They'll still be able to provide feedback that will be able to help you. Just know that that's not their profession, right? Like you, it's always that thing you get what you pay for. I also get that people can't pay 2,400 dollars necessarily for a developmental editor. If you can, that's awesome. Enjoy it. It'll be a wonderful experience. If you can't, try to reach out again to any English teachers that you had, anybody who went to school for creative writing, something along those lines that you'll be able to get that kind of feedback. A second type editor who's next in the queue, I should say, is your inline editor. Hello, that's me! We're called an inline editor because we are putting the edits inside your document. So we are actually making changes inside your document. We should be using Track Changes to record everything. Again, talk with your editor to make sure that they are going to do this. Never make assumptions. But we should use Track Changes to record all of those edits. We're looking for sentence flow, consistency, so that your character doesn't go from red hair to blonde hair halfway through the manuscript and then back to red hair again. Uh, we're looking at timelines also, I mean, hopefully your developmental editor would get that because if it's a bigger issue, that's a bigger fix, but we will still be keeping an eye on the timeline. There's times where I've said to clients like, so you said this was 2 days later. That would mean that today's Friday, but you just said it's Thursday. So just double check your dates. Those kind of a thing. So we're looking at flow, consistency, word choice. We'll comment on it and be like, Hey, is this really the best word that you meant here? Maybe you mean this. Definitely grammar. We are not the same thing as a proofreader, but we will be looking at your sentences for grammar and trying to clean them up as much as possible. I've heard people express their concerns with inline editors rewriting sentences. So let's talk about that. Inline editors shouldn't be rewriting your sentences as in changing the imagery or the ideas you're trying to convey or the point that you're trying to make. Definitely not. But there are plenty of times where we're restructuring a sentence because it's part of that flow. You know, for example, if you have all of your sentences start with he, he, he, he, he, we're going to make a note of that. We're going to swap some things around within a sentence just so that you have that undulation. So that you have a, a more natural flow to your sentences rather than just a hard repeat of the same structure over and over again. Another example where we might be restructuring a sentence is if we're changing passive voice to active voice. So instead of saying, she was seduced, it's he seduced her or whoever did the seducing, right? So we're gonna, we're gonna be looking for all of that stuff. And then okay, what the heck is the difference between an inline editor and a copy editor? So far, that's pretty much the same thing. Inline editor, copy editor, they're interchangeable. But the big difference with your inline editor is that they should be able to look at your chapter and say, okay, what is the author's goal with this chapter or this scene? The author is trying to do X, and then they can look at your chapter or your scene and say, these are all the things that are working really great to that. So I don't, I don't have to comment on that. In fact, maybe I'll leave a comment, be like, this is really well done. Great job. But they're also then going to note, these are the things that are distracting from your goal. These are the things that are distracting from the purpose or the point that you're trying to make. Or, Hey! I noticed that you already achieved this goal. I feel like all of this is just kind of extra. So maybe you want to cut it out and save it for another book. Or maybe we can shrink this down because now it's just slowing down the pace of your story. You know, or we'll notice, hey, you spent four paragraphs talking about dinner with her family, but then in two sentences, you mentioned that she has a life threatening illness. I really recommend swapping that. Nothing significant is happening in this dinner scene. There's, there's no character reveal in this scene. I think you could shrink that down to, Hey, after dinner, dot, dot, dot. Please now expand upon this life threatening illness. We need several more paragraphs to dive into how this impacts the character. Another trademark of what I think is, or what makes an excellent inline editor is we should be asking you guys a lot of questions. Your editor should never tell you how to write your story. They should never say, I think you should do this, right? If they do, hopefully it's more so in the context of them saying, I see that you're trying to achieve X, Y, Z with your character, and I think this thing would help you get there more directly. And you can sit there and be like, no, I really don't want that to happen. But maybe they've pointed out something that's not quite right with your book, and you can think about it and be like, uh, okay, I'm not achieving my goal. Thanks for the suggestion. You know what? This is how I really want to get there. Really what I try to do with my clients is ask them tons of questions. If something doesn't feel right, if I think they've gotten distracted, or I've noticed a scene or a paragraph that just is distracting from that purpose of that chapter or that goal, I ask them tons of questions to get them to start thinking through so they can realize how me as a reader, what it is that I'm interpreting what they've written. And then that helps the writer to realize like, oh, I didn't realize I was coming across that way. And then they can fix it, and then I'll ask a bunch of questions like, did you mean this? Or did you mean that? Or, you know, if you did mean this, what about all these things that come into question with this? So now you know that you need to address all of those things. So, I ask tons of questions with the intention of being able to help my writer think through what it is that they are trying to do. Again, not with the purpose of telling them what they should be doing, or what I would do if I was writing their story. Because, if that's the case, then I should just go write my own book. Which I have, yay! But, you should never have an editor say I want you to do this, or I would do it this way. So avoid that, okay? So, that's the big difference with an inline editor versus a copy editor. The standard rate for an inline editor is three cents a word. So again, you're looking about 2,400 dollars for an 80,000 word manuscript. I will say that if I'm editing an 80,000 word manuscript to even 100, 000 words, I'm spending three to four weeks working on that. I am spending hours checking for the flow of your sentences and that consistency and word choices and making sure that the grammar is there and making all of those suggestions to help your story shine as brightly as possible. There are, of course, less expensive editors out there. When you are interviewing editors or you're asking them what it is that they offer, list those things and be like, hey, do you provide this? Do you track all of the changes in the document? Another thing to keep in mind is when I take on clients, right, I set myself up that I am working on their manuscript a bit each day to be able to do that in a reasonable time frame. Pay attention to the timestamps on those documents. I had somebody once tell me that they got a much less expensive inline editor. And when they looked at the document, they could see that they had opened up their document and left comments for a couple of days, and then all of a sudden there was nothing for weeks, and then all of a sudden the inline editor opened up the document with like four days to go, and went through the entire manuscript and kind of like left comments where they could, and made a couple changes where they could to make it look like they had spent time on this document, but really they hadn't. And that, that is devastating to me. I don't ever want anybody to have that experience. Readsy is another great place to find inline editors. You're still going to be looking at that roughly three cents per word as your, as your industry standard. Might actually be a bit more because of the fact that they have such great reputations and they have, everybody who's on Readsy, I believe has worked for publishing houses. So they have that, that additional background. I don't have to say between Fiverr and Upwork. I've heard that Upwork has more professional clientele on there. So I would say if you're gonna try to find a less expensive inline editor, I would recommend Upwork over Fiverr. You want to make sure that whatever editor you're working with, that English is their first language. It makes a huge difference to have that mastery of the language, especially when you have somebody who's being your inline editor, to be able to pick up on, just the, the nuances of the way language should sound, um, to a, to a native speaker. So when you're chatting with an inline editor and, want to ask them to work on your project, ask them to verify, do you track all changes in the Word document? Do you work on it throughout the duration of the time that you have my project? What kinds of things do you look for? Ask them that. Ask them if they look at what contributes to your purpose or your goal, or if something distracts from it. Ask them if they're going to make those kinds of recommendations. Ask them if they're only looking at flow and sentence structure and grammar, okay? So this way you just know what level of editing you're going to be getting from them. I could say yes, if you also wanted to try another route would be to ask like an English teacher to help you. I love English teachers. They were my favorite teachers throughout school. But I will say that they're not grammarians. They don't have a passion for commas and you know, just, just keep that in mind. I certainly don't want to say anything negative about English teachers. Like I said, I just, I love them. But it's, it's not their profession, right? So, keep that in mind. okay, last one up is a proofreader. Your proofreader should be the very last set of eyes on your publication. Basically, like you have finished everything in your document. Nobody's touching it. You send it to your proofreader and they are checking simply for typos, grammar, punctuation, spelling. Those, those kinds of things. Very simple, very light edit, hopefully. And I cannot stress enough the fact that when it comes back from them, you want to touch that document as little as possible so that you don't introduce any new errors to your document. So I am an indie author. I lay out my document using Atticus. I love using Atticus. So I lay out my document using Atticus, and I just got book two, Treachery and Truths, back from my proofreader. I went through the edits, and that's it. And then I am dropping it into Atticus and laying it out, and I am not touching it again. So your proofreader is your very last contact with that document. They are usually half, at least half the price of your inline editor. So you're looking at around one and a half cents per word. It's simply a matter of fact of wherever you go to find your proofreader, just double check with them, do you track all changes? Will you send to the document back with track changes? Or you can even specify I want the document back with track changes. One more thing I wanted to say is beta readers. Where do beta readers fit into all of this? A lot of times, authors will choose to use beta readers instead of inline editors. Again, I understand that. I'm not here to judge anybody with which means that they use. I just want you to understand the difference. A lot of times, with your beta readers, the difference of feedback between that and an inline editor would be your beta reader might say this feels off to me, or I'm confused about this. Or honestly a lot of times with beta readers, you do get comments like I wish this had happened, or I would have done this, or I wanted this to happen. So just be careful because again a lot of that is more opinion based feedback rather than, the type of feedback that I was mentioning with your inline editor about I can see what the author's trying to do and this is working and this is not working. Okay? The big difference with the feedback is also going to be, I'm confused from your beta reader versus an inline editor who says, Hey, this is confusing. Here's the reason why. You're conveying this instead. But I think based on what I see your character is doing, you actually mean to do this. And if that's not the case, then here are some ways you might be able to clear that up. And then again, I would ask like a bunch of questions to help the author think that through and make sure that they could clearly convey what they are trying to do. So that's it in a nutshell. I hope you found this helpful. As I mentioned, I am an inline editor, so if you have any questions, always feel free to go to parentswhewrite. com slash editing. You can see everything that I offer. I just talked about it. And you can also book a 30 minute discovery call with me. It's free. You can express your concerns to me or what it is that you're looking for, and I can make recommendations. And we can talk about me working on your book if that feels like a good fit. And, if you feel like you need other help or assistance, we can also talk about that too because I'm there to make sure that you get where you want to go, so you don't keep circling around in confusion over and over again. Okay? So that's it for now. As always, keep writing, my friend!