Working with a skilled reader and editor can save you weeks, months, even years of languishing in the doubt, confusion, and despair that are natural to any writing endeavor.
Especially when your work is rich and risky enough.
You might be stuck in a quagmire of revisions and need a mentor to guide you through.
Or maybe you’ve just completed your first novel and want to take it to the next level.
Maybe you just want to put a professional polish on your manuscript before you send it out for publication.
Either way, you’ve reached an impasse. And it’s time to have a skilled reader guide you through the process of transforming your work into a story readers cannot resist.
I offer 3 levels of editorial services, so wherever you’re at in your writing, I’ve got you covered.
Story Development
This is ideal if you…
- Have a draft of a story, memoir, novel, or chapter ready to go, and want to deepen and enhance character development, structure, narrative viewpoint, and voice.
- Feel your work is well written sentence by sentence, but want to master more nuanced storytelling techniques, i.e. rendering rich, complex characters, conveying authentic emotional moments, creating atmosphere, suspense and compelling scenes.
- Are in the early stages of a draft and want direction in navigating it now, so you don’t spend months, maybe years spinning your wheels in a frustrating cycle of revisions, with a manuscript that never gets finished.
I look at a multitude of your story’s elements separately and in-depth. I then discuss how they might all coalesce into a unified, compelling, and powerful story.
To learn how, read about it here.
Line Editing
Line editing is about flow, readability, and impact.
I comb your work for the vague, the abstract, the extraneous. I trim the fat, fine tune sentences, re-orchestrate scenes and passages. So you walk away with a manuscript that’s more muscular, vivid, rhythmic, and powerful.
Line Editing is ideal if you want to turn strong writing into superb writing.
You feel pretty certain that you have a firm grasp of your story’s structure, point of view, voice, and characterization, but want a hand in tightening and polishing your prose until it sparkles, making it uber attractive to potential agents and publishers.
Want to know more? Read about it here.
The Full Treatment Edit
Story Development +Line Editing + Email Support + Skype discussion.
The Full Treatment is for you if you want to bring your work to the very best version of itself it can possibly be.
Here I dig into every aspect of your manuscript, both on the macro and micro level. You get a series of in- depth story development letters over the course of 4 to 10 weeks. We discuss the larger, more evolving aspects of your story such as character development, structure, cause and effect, viewpoint, tone, theme, and voice. And you get detailed line and copy editing directly on your manuscript, where I trim, expand, compress, and tighten your prose.
What you get
- A series of story development letters via email.
- Line and text editing, in-line. You get edits directly on your manuscript, with comments in the margins; you not only get substantive, dramatic changes, you get my play-by-play thought process driving those changes.
- Reading suggestions and exercises tailored to the needs of your story and your needs as a writer.
- Ongoing discussion. We’ll talk via email about your work over a period of 4- 10 weeks. This is a dialogue between you and me, and between you and your story.
- A phone or Skype follow-up session where you ask questions, or have me clarify or expand on my feedback. You get crystal clear on your intentions and vision for your work, with a clear path towards realizing them.
How much?
$19/page (based on 250 words per page)
For an average book-length manuscript of 75,000 words, ( about 300 pages) this comes to $5,700.
For an average short story of 8,000 words (about 32 double-spaced pages) that’s $608.
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What Our Work Together Looks Like
- We start with a preliminary discussion of your work via email or Skype.
- You send me a double-spaced attachment of your manuscript via email, or if you prefer, in hard copy via post. (Please don’t mail me your only copy! Make sure you have your own master copy.)
- I go to work on your manuscript. On my first read, I give you my initial, gut-level response to your work as I encounter on the page. On subsequent reads, I give you a more detailed response.
- I email my edit back to you. Or if it’s a hard copy, mail it back to you in a pre-paid return envelope.
- You read and contemplate my feedback, gathering any questions you may have.
- We follow up either by email or Skype.
- You go on your way to revise, re-envision, and create a knockout story.
Scheduling Your Edit
I’m accepting new clients starting May 21, 2012. Once I’ve received your payment, your manuscript goes straight to my queue.
Payment
I send you an email invoice. You pay via my secure PayPal server.
Fees are based on the word and page count of your original manuscript, not the edited version.
I ask for 50% payment upfront, 50% upon completion of my edit. For larger projects, you can request to break payments up into monthly installments.
Getting Started
If we’ve never worked together before, the best way for us to get started is to talk. Using the contact form below, tell me me about your writing project. I’ll email you to arrange a chat about your work over a few emails or a Skype call. I might ask you to send me a brief 2 – 3 pg. sample of your work so that I can give you some initial feedback.
