Think of your manuscript as a house.
Developmental editing is like hiring a contractor to inspect a house for any issues before you commit to making it your home. Copyediting is like remodeling the kitchen: you install marble countertops, paint the cabinets, and add some nice backsplash to really make everything come together. Proofreading is like giving your house a very deep clean from top to bottom. Polishing the wood furniture, waxing the hardwood floors, reorganizing the pantry, and finally getting around to dealing with the red wine stain on your couch (no judgement) are all part of the process.
There is a reason you don’t remodel the kitchen before having an inspector make sure termites aren’t feasting on the wood. There’s a reason you wouldn’t waste your time reorganizing the pantry when you know you’re going to have to empty everything out for the kitchen remodel. The same goes for your manuscript. Don’t waste time, effort, and money paying for someone to proofread your first draft when you haven’t checked to make sure the actual structure of your story is working.
While there are many online programs and software that can perform proofreading and even some, albeit limited, copyediting, there really is no good replacement for developmental editing. As wonderful as technology is it simply can’t
Part of this is because story structure is more than just a list of elements to check off. There are so many things that create endless variables: genre, pacing, the plot of your story, the pacing of the plot, your characters, your voice as an author, the setting, and on and on and on.
Humans tell stories. It is integral to the core of who we are as a species. And, much like grammar structure, it is a craft that children pick up on innately as they grow and mentally develop. If you read a child their favorite bedtime story and rush through thinking you can skip a “boring” part, you’ll learn very quickly that they will call you on that dirty trick and tell you exactly what part of the story you are skipping. Some of this is memorization, but some of this is understanding that stories have
There really is no good substitution
story you’re telling genre, your voice as an author, pacing, the characters, the setting and
polishing the hardwood floors, reorganizing the closets,
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