Developmental Editing

What it is

An academic developmental edit includes an initial round of reading, during which I take careful notes on all the big-picture elements that are helping or hindering your work. That includes attention to argument, narrative flow, organization of evidence, cohesion, voice, and overall satisfaction as a scholar. I also consider your chosen readership and your goals for the text, to see if you are on track to successfully meet them.

Then, in a second round of reading, I will go into the text and leave you questions, comments, suggestions, and generative challenges in the margins, to help you along the path to revision. Depending on your preferences, I may also relocate text to fix issues with organization or tweak topic/transitional sentences that are key to your argument’s flow.

Finally, I will draft an editorial report detailing all my findings and revision suggestions. When appropriate, I also provide a proposed new outline for the text.

When it’s helpful

I most often provide this service to authors who have a rough draft of their whole text–whether that’s an article, book chapter, or whole book–and are looking for detailed feedback on whether or not that text is working. It can be really hard to tell close up! So, I provide advice on what’s successful, and what could be even more successful with the right tweaks.

However, this service is also useful to folks who are just getting started on something new and looking for generative advice on what to do with their ideas, or for folks who are totally lost somewhere in the midst of their manuscript and looking for a smoother path forward.

How much it costs

$250 + $.05-$.09/wd after 5k words

The range per word reflects the variety of texts I look at, whether or not they use my particular fields of expertise, what shape they’re in, and whether an author is paying out of pocket or through their institution. I also use that range to affect a sliding scale based on academic rank and access to research pools.

Let’s work Together