Developmental Editing: A Peek Behind the Curtain
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit on both sides of the developmental editing relationship. I thought it might be helpful to describe my experience both as an editor and author to give others a sense of what they might expect if they seek out this kind of support for their writing.
To begin, both experiences are connected to a book project I am involved in as a chapter contributor and editor. In late September, we received feedback on the manuscript from reviewers—not all of it glowing and not all of it particularly illuminating as to how we might improve the manuscript. To address some of the feedback, one of my co-editors and another contributor drafted a conclusion for the volume. I agreed to edit the draft.
In the meantime, I reached out to my good friend (and former editing colleague) Jean to help me figure out how to respond to this feedback from Reviewer 2: “Chapter 2 needs substantial review and revision. The chronology is hard to follow. … There also needs to be some tightening of the connection between assertions and evidence: what is the point being made?” Jean is good at diagnosing problems, and I knew she would help me find where I had buried my lead.
Below, I offer some insights into how I tackled each revision process.
Rewriting the Conclusion
I began by doing an initial read and quickly determined that the chapter needed a developmental edit. At more than 9,400 words, it was really too long and out of proportion with earlier chapters. It also lacked a clear organizational structure, and the many headers in the piece didn’t have a clear hierarchy. In short, I needed to create a structure that would help the piece hang together while cutting 2,000 - 3,000 words. One final concern was some overlap with earlier chapters. Reframing these instances by pointing readers to earlier chapters or cutting them would help with the length issue.
I started by creating a headline outline that represented the current organization of the piece. For each section, I added a quick note about the main idea. Once I had the outline constructed, I saved a copy and started moving sections around and revising headers, so they were more telegraphic, less stream of consciousness, and parallel grammatically. I cut some sections and combined others. In several places, I suggested a new take on the ideas in the section (that is, approaching the topic from a slightly different angle).
I asked the lead author to review the proposed outline, and he recommended taking out one section that he had not been entirely comfortable with from the start. Then, using the final outline as a road map, I began reorganizing the text. The first pass was very crude—copying and pasting large sections of text from the original version into the appropriate place in the outline. In the second pass, I line edited the document, incorporating necessary transitions and cutting ideas that were established elsewhere in the book or that didn’t advance the chapter. I also noted a couple of places where additional support or citation to the literature was needed. I let the manuscript sit for a day before doing another read. At that point, I did some additional tightening and added in the necessary citations before sending the revised manuscript back to the authors for review and approval. The final version was just over 6,300 words.
Revising My Own Chapter
A developmental editor (DE) can make recommendations about restructuring a manuscript and implement those revisions, as I did with the conclusion for our book. In other cases, they might simply offer the roadmap and let you tackle it on your own. That was the case with my chapter. Jean sent me an email with a high-level analysis of what she saw as the main story of my chapter, which included a graphic organizer for how to reshape it. She also attached a marked-up version of my chapter, where she had color-coded portions of the text that corresponded with the different strands of my story. Using the comment feature of Microsoft Word, Jean included additional comments and queries to help guide my revision.
After reading through the manuscript with Jean’s comments, I made some additional notes about how to tackle her suggestions. Then I made a rough reorganization of the chapter, moving sections from their current positions into their proposed positions. I also reworked the connective tissue holding the pieces together, so that they made sense in their new places. After the first pass, I did another read where I finally hit on my central argument, which I jotted in the margin. This allowed me to rework the chapter opening and helped me ensure that what followed supported my newfound argument.
Revising this chapter was a bit like remodeling a kitchen. I knew the same basic pieces were going back in, though they might be in different places. Major shifts in content would call for larger foundational changes (e.g., moving the plumbing or electrical). But once these structural changes were decided on, I could focus on the finishing or detail work.
The only problem was that I couldn’t quite figure out how to make Jean’s plan work. Like all remodeling projects, you invariable hit a snag along the way (you can’t move the plumbing where you intended) and so you make some modifications to the plan. The changes to the manuscript were probably less dramatic than Jean envisioned, but the revised chapter had a stronger thesis (clearly stated at the end of my introduction) and did a better job supporting that thesis throughout. In the end, the kitchen might not look like the original plan, but it is more functional than where we started.
In most cases, I would recommend a conversation with the DE to talk about where you think you are heading and whether that fits with their suggested plan. That conversation would also give you the opportunity to clarify any feedback about which you are unsure. But, I was on a deadline that didn’t allow for back and forth with my DE. I also knew that I would get additional feedback on the chapter from the publisher and that I would have another opportunity to tweak things if needed.
Elsewhere, I have talked about what a developmental editor does, but I hope this post has given you a little more insight into what that work may look like. If you’d like to know more about how a developmental editor might help you restructure a current writing project or respond to reviewer feedback, please reach out to me at hello@tracylskipper.com.
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