The word “editing” encompasses many different kinds of work. If you’re looking to hire an editor, it’s helpful to know what each service entails and where it usually comes in the writing process. When I thought about how to describe the different levels of editing, gardening came to mind.
Proofreading
Picture your garden in July–or, look out your window! Neat rows of tomatoes, beans, and basil thrive. The paths are mulched, and the garden is fully blooming, but a few weeds inevitably peek through. In the proofreading stage, the manuscript is all but ready for its day in the sun, and the proofreader weeds out the small inconsistencies.
Copy editing
Take a step back to May and June. You’ve planted the tomato and pepper starts, and a few rounds of lettuce have already come and gone. Most of the hard labor is behind you, but the garden hasn’t reached its full potential yet. At the copy editing stage, the book or article still has room to grow and change at the sentence level, and the editor might trim some passages. But the roots of the narrative are in the ground.
Developmental editing
In the spring, you know what you want to grow, you choose the seeds, and you plant them–some indoors, some outdoors. Most of them sprout. With a developmental edit, you’ve written your book, and you have a strong sense of what you want your audience to harvest from reading it, but it’s not producing yet. A developmental editor studies your manuscript and reflects back to you the big-picture concept that unites your ideas. To center that concept for the reader, chapters might shift and change. You might build up some areas of the argument or narrative, and pare down others.
Writing coaching
January. You know it’s time to think about ordering seeds, but spring feels far away. Maybe you want to start a garden for the first time, or you’ve moved to a different zone and are ready to figure out what thrives in this climate. Maybe you just don’t want to garden on your own! After all, it’s a lot to learn, and more fun with company. Same goes for starting a big new writing project. Writing coaching involves conversations, descriptive feedback on your writing, and guided practice using resources, like the APA manual and search engines, that define writing norms in your discipline or genre. We’re taught that we’re either born with a green thumb, born a good writer, or not. But these are practices we can learn.