Scott R. Welvaert

Developmental editing. For some, the term comes with great unease, the occasional fingernail chew, and bouts of indigestion. Others often see it as an eye-opening experience. It was a bit of both for me. The first time is always the hardest. All your hard work. A passion project. Your baby being picked apart by some evil-eyed third party with a freshly sharpened pencil. But after the initial cold-water bath, it really isn’t that bad. It really gives a wonderful insight into the process.

Before we get to it, just a quick story. On my second ever middle grade novel, when I got the dev edits back I read through the notes and the one that shocked me the most was something to the effect of this: “There were way too many side characters that were drawing time away from the main characters, so we want to merge them all into one.”

My first reaction, to be honest, was pain. And WTH? They want to trash all those characters and replace them with one?! That’ll never work. And then I read through the manuscript and looked at where they made some of those changes and holy shirtballs. It worked! More than that, it improved the story so much. So, take it with a grain of salt. Editors know what they’re doing and I’d have to say my experience so far has reflected that. Editors are not your enemies. They’re at least your BFF—best frenemy forever.

What is Developmental Editing?

It’s editing the “big picture” or story element issues in your manuscript like story structure, setting, themes, tone, plot holes, character development, general dialogue, overall sentence phrasing or repetitions, and other similar story elements. Editing, like any other work process, works best in the right order. Dev editing happens before copy editing as these “big picture” elements need to be fixed prior to focusing on the intimate line-by-line copy editing phase, which would move from the bigger elements to fixing the nuances of the prose.

Now that we have that definition out of the way, let’s get into the fun stuff! The second book in my Lost Zenith series—Escape from Atlantis City—just came out of dev editing, so I can use fresh examples.

What I learned from the dev edits for Escape from Atlantis City

I love the dev editing process. I got some expert advice on Book 1: The Ghost of the Wicked Crow (available for preorder RIGHT NOW!). And I got the same for Book 2. I’ll bullet out the highlights:

• Lack of world-building detail
• Clarity-clarity-clarity
• Remove filler
• Correct technical/logical issues or inconsistencies

Lack of world-building detail

This note was a surprise and not a surprise at the same time. My Lost Zenith books are about traveling to alternate realities in a multiverse, so I ground each book in different genre settings and require world-building to set the stage for the story. For Book 1, I had been dabbling on that one for ten years, so I had the setting and world-building fleshed out well. But with Book 2 on timeline, I sped through the drafting and got dinged on the dev edit for the world being too empty and static. And since Book 2 takes place in an alternate New York City called Atlantis City in the 1940s, that setting needs to scream off the page. But when I read through the manuscript, I instantly saw it. My characters interacted in this city and despite a handful of NPCs being there, this fictionalized city had no other citizens. When my characters walked down a street, I literally had nothing else going on. I created the city just fine, but not the souls that bustled about it to make it feel real. So, I must flesh that out A LOT MORE. Crowd the streets. Show the people. Make it alive!

Clarity-clarity-clarity

This one I always get dinged on and perhaps you do too. But when your story is uncovering the plot and dripping out clues for the reader as they venture onward, be careful to not be TOO cryptic. For this book, there were a variety of clarity issues to resolve. One of the more memorable is one character gets “Freaky Fridayed.” And how I presented it was to throw in a few “clues” to describe what was going on. And while I was trying to get the reader to riddle through it, the editor said just make it clear. Be clear about the things that are happening and the feelings your characters are experiencing. Make your audience experience them as well, rather than hiding them. I mean, don’t blow the big twist or reveal right away. Just make sure what you put on the page is clear, concise, and easily understood by your audience. They can’t crawl in your head and understand the source—you have to put it on the page.

Remove filler

Sometimes during drafting, there may be points or sections in your narrative that have gone off the path, don’t have a direction, don’t advance the plot, or enrich your characters. That’s filler. And sometimes, as the writer, when the words are flowing, you don’t want to stop. But that doesn’t mean all that content is helping your story. Dev editors can snuff that out pretty quickly. For Book 2, I had a “valley” in the narrative, where I just had a major action/plot beat previously, so the idea was to rest and learn from that event. However, the scene went nowhere. It didn’t advance the plot or enrich my character. It was small talk, so the dev editor sliced it out.

Correct technical/logical issues or inconsistencies

This is another area that—even though I do thorough research and study on things showing up in my stories—I seem to still miss something. Dev editors can help suss out these aspects as well. For Book 2, the prime example of this was a long scene I had written between the local police and the group home where my main character is seeking treatment. It was a very engaging scene and one where the detective was going to pin my protagonist to the wall to develop tension. However, in my zeal, I missed several logical nuances of how police and detectives interact and reveal info to potential suspects. And honestly, I was glad for that callout, because I had fun writing that scene, but now I know I need to patch it up so it rings more true to how things shape out in the real world.

Is dev editing worth it?

IMO, 100% worth it. I have yet to experience worthless dev editing feedback. So, I’ll continue to do that because I’m always open to getting feedback on my drafts to make them better. I would encourage others to try dev editing too.

Hope this helped.