I often see more established writers telling new writers to wait until they’ve written a polished, late-stage manuscript before hiring a developmental editor.
I mean, sure, it sounds logical to do as much as you possibly can on your own, before hiring paid help to get you across the finish line.
But what if waiting so long is actually making the entire writing process slower and harder than it needs to be?
What if hiring a developmental editor earlier in the process could save you time, and money?
Believe it or not — and you really should, I have a lot of experience working in this field — hiring a developmental editor earlier in your process will:
- help you spend less time spinning your wheels,
- help you save time making effective, robust writing choices, sooner,
- help you ready your manuscript for sale faster
My Dessert First! Developmental Editing process is built to do all that.
But don’t just take my word for it!
Let’s dig into why you believe you need to struggle through the process alone.
Why You Believe You Need to Wait to Hire Help
You are not the only writer who thinks it makes more sense to go it solo as long as humanly possible, to do everything you can to make your work as good as it can be, before you hire help.
Most writers feel this way. We all battle our own perfectionism. We don’t want people to see the mess, we want them to see our best work, all the time.
And lots of writers believe they can maximize their investment in a developmental editor if they provide a nice shiny late-stage manuscript for that editor to read. We assume a developmental editor will do deeper, more powerful work if we give them a nearly finished product to work with.
I mean, how many of us tidy up before the housekeeper arrives?
However, there is a fundamental difference between your housekeeper and your developmental editor. Your housekeeper charges by the hour, while most working editors, including me, charge by the word.
In my Dessert First! Developmental Editing program, I put the same time and energy into investigating structure issues, character development, worldbuilding problems, and scene mechanics in a messy draft as I do in a more polished draft – and the work I do at that stage pays dividends that save you time and money down the road.
Here’s how.
Why You Should Hire Help Earlier
YOU CAN SOLVE SIGNIFICANT STORY PROBLEMS BEFORE YOU STALL OUT
One thing I’ve noticed in my years working in this space is that the writers who believe they need to wait until they’re near the end of their drafting process to hire me, may have spent years struggling to bring that late stage draft to fruition.
They may even have invested in workshops, classes, and paid beta readers while they tried to make their story work.
You could do all that great work faster, in a more efficient, and affordable manner, by skipping the middle men and hiring a one-to-one developmental editor earlier in your process.
When working with earlier drafts, I can make notes and suggestions on structure, character, world building and scene work closer to the start of your process. The brainstorming work we do collaboratively with these materials will save you months in the discovery process, grant you the clarity you need to attack future drafts with way more precision and momentum.
YOU CAN STAY FOCUSED ON CHANGES THAT COUNT
Another problem I often see is that some writers spend a lot of time and energy polishing their manuscript into a really pretty package before they bring it to me. Every sentence sings.
And hey, I like beautiful prose as much as anybody, but despite your lovely language, polishing your work prose before a developmental edit is premature.
I may still find difficulties with structure, world, characters and scene mechanics that need to be resolved to improve your book. Those changes may undo a lot of the work you did, polishing your prose until it sparkled.
That’s a lot of time wasted, that could have been spent making the structural, character, world building, and scene work changes that would truly elevate your story.
Despite the myth that you can get more for your money when you wait to hire an editor towards the end of your process, I can do much more effective work if you trust me to look at your manuscript when it’s still a little messy, flexible enough to make powerful changes that don’t erase months of end-stage polishing.
Writing is a Team Sport
Despite the romantic images we have from movies and television about the lonely solitary writer, holed up in her attic room, spitting out stories that go out into the world perfectly formed without any outside intervention …
The reality couldn’t be more different.
In fact, published authors have enormous creative support. Right from the ideation stage of the process, they may be sending early pages to their agent, and getting feedback on how to proceed forward before they even really get to work on their manuscript.
Emerging writers don’t have the same built-in creative teams. You may have trusted readers, or a strong critique group, and that’s great. They can be a real help to your work.
But your trusted readers are doing you a favor, and you can’t always rush them along or ask them to work as deeply as you would a paid professional.
And your critique group probably works on a rotating basis – workshopping your novel every three months, twenty pages at a time, could take years and years!
Adding a developmental editor to your team early will speed that work along.
You Deserve a Great Team, Just Like the Big Name Writers
I encourage my clients to act with the same confidence as big name writers. By sharing their earlier drafts with me, just like the established writers do with their teams, we can head off big problems at the beginning of their writing process, and get them organized to do more robust, effective work going forward.
When you bring your work to me, we will start work with your Quasi Query. The Quasi Query is a letter you will write to an imaginary agent, describing the book in your head, the fully formed novel or memoir (or screenplay, or stage play!) that you are working toward.
I’ll use that information to leverage changes in structure, character development, world building, and scene work, that will take the work you’ve done to date, and get you to that finish line.
And I’ll do it fast.
My Dessert First! Process guarantees that I will return your Edit Binder, with my edit memo and revision tools, within thirty days (for manuscripts under 100,000 words).
Dessert First! Developmental Edits saves you time – and money – and pays dividends for all your future work
There is no denying that the publishing industry moves at a really slow pace.
Writing the sort of layered work that makes a memorable book takes time.
Querying agents takes time.
Submitting to publishers takes time.
Even after your book is purchased by a publisher, their own timeline is glacially slow as they work through their own editorial and marketing processes!
Why not control the only part of this story you can actually control?
Dessert First! Developmental Edits saves you time by helping you see problems with structure, character, world building, and scene work earlier in your process, before you get too deeply in the weeds of your story.
Plus I guarantee a thirty day turnaround for manuscripts under 100,000 words.
And Dessert First! will save you money you might invest in other paid services like classes or beta reads, by offering 1:1 wraparound service that will teach you skills you can use on every draft, of every book you write over what I hope is your long and successful career.
Ready to get some momentum behind your manuscript? Book a Power Hour with me. We’ll look at where you are now, where you want the book to go, and why you’re not quite there yet. Then we’ll figure out how to get you moving forward with more clarity, more confidence, and a less painful squealing of your brakes. You don’t have to spend years mapping all the twists and turns of your story, solo. Let’s get you and your book into the future, faster.
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