How can a developmental editor help me?

Let's start by first answering: Why do you, as a nonfiction author, want to write a book?

You have a novel idea or original insights. You have extensive experience in your field of expertise that comes with valuable learnings. After investing months, or even years, in researching a topic you are passionate about, you have discovered eye-opening facts, formulated transformative concepts, or drawn enlightening conclusions. You have had a successful career: business, science and technology, education, healthcare, performing arts, public service... You have established a niche for yourself. Your multifaceted experience has enabled you to uncover patterns or themes that no one else has. 

You are passionate about your ideas and believe they deserve a wider audience. You have anecdotes, data, case studies, and results that build a compelling case for sharing those ideas and insights. Their depth and appeal are beyond social media posts, blogs, or even speeches. You are ready to write a book. Your book is the vehicle to reach and grow that audience. It will inform, teach, guide, inspire, influence, and entertain. You may want to use the book to reach more followers and clients, be recognized for your work, establish your authority, or be remembered for your vision. In turn, the book may help you get consulting, speaking, and teaching opportunities. 

So you write it all down—section by section, chapter by chapter. You compile what you may have once written already, refresh your research, revisit your notes, tap into your past experience, reorganize the content... You may go over this process a few times and finally have a manuscript draft you are happy with. You have taken it as far as you can and are ready to step back to assess how far you have come.

It is time to find out if it is serving the goals you had in mind for the readers you have in mind. If it is clear in its intention, development of ideas, and results. You are ready to collaborate with a developmental editor. 

A dev editor, short for developmental editor, will help you by answering questions such as: Is the manuscript conveying your core message effectively? Are the ideas and insights coming through consistently? Will they resonate from the reader's perspective? Is the narration crisp and the exposition convincing? Are the arguments, evidence, and conclusions balanced? Are the paragraphs, sections, and chapters organized in the most optimal way to build the arguments progressively? Will the readers come away with insights so compelling that they can’t wait to share them with others? A development editor will not only answer these questions but also uncover ways to turn the answers into a resounding Yes!

A dev editor will offer a fresh perspective—reading every word you wrote. But more importantly, they will systematically analyze your manuscript, keeping the overall goals in focus: clarity, conviction, and impact. They will help you see where readers might be impressed or delighted, and overwhelmed, confused, or lost; and more importantly, why. The underlying reasons vary depending on the topic and your treatment of the subject matter. A dev editor will uncover the patterns behind the whys so they can identify opportunities to address them.

To enhance your overall manuscript, a dev editor will propose solutions such as adding, removing, consolidating, streamlining, or rethreading content. This may result into reorganizing paragraphs, sections, or even chapters to provide more compelling scaffolding for your ideas. Some chapters may be split into two (or more), and some may be consolidated. Sections may be reordered for coherence, logical clarity, and consistency across chapters. This is why developmental editing is sometimes referred to as structural editing, although restructuring content is a result of developmental editing, not the goal; certainly it is not the only result. A dev editor may also suggest new titles and headings and draft new content as needed for an engaging experience for readers. Most dev editors will annotate and add comments in your manuscript to provide more context to their recommendations and call out key instances of patterns of problems. 

Dev editors have their own process of analyzing your manuscript, identifying improvement opportunities, and formulating recommendations. Most will read your manuscript thoroughly at least once, followed by another reading and re-reading as needed, while taking notes and going back and forth between analysis, re-reading, and discussing incremental findings with you, compiling recommendations along the way. You will receive a detailed report with these and inline comments to support the recommendations.

Collaboration with the author is an important part of developmental editing and one I personally enjoy very much. Learning new topics from the experts in their field is the most satisfying aspect of the work I do, and indeed one of the primary reasons I am a nonfiction developmental editor. I explain my process to my author partners and customize it for the collaboration that works for us both. Look out for key aspects for the process in future blog posts.