If one of your projects needs editing, please email me at jamessingeriii@jamessingeriii.com!
I do several types of editing, each meant for different stages of the writing process. For those who don't know or aren't sure what type they need, I've listed some below. My personal favorite to do is developmental editing, though I'm most experienced at copyediting.
Also referred to as conceptual editing, this stage happens very early in the writing process, often before any actual writing has been done. Perhaps you have an outline or a well-developed idea that you'd like to turn into a novel, but you're not quite sure how to piece all the elements together. That's where developmental editing comes in.
Commonly called a manuscript evaluation, structural editing is a high-level critique of a story once it's been written. Similar to developmental editing, it primarily deals with issues of structure, but it also assesses story flow, characters, large plot holes, and other big picture issues. It's great for when you're working on a story and want feedback before putting too much effort into smaller details that may need to be changed later.
Substantive editing, or content editing, deals with a story's tone and voice and the general flow of the writing. It often involves moving sections around within a chapter and providing specific comments and feedback at a paragraph level.
Line editing or style editing is the stage that finally starts to look at individual words on a page. It focuses on specifics like word choice and syntax to improve the quality of writing, and works on fixing clunky sentences and getting rid of cliches to clarify meaning and make your writing sound as good as possible.
Typically copyediting is done on a finished manuscript, but can coincide with line editing. Copyediting involves finding and fixing spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, and also making sure spelling and descriptions are consistent throughout a story.
Proofreading is very similar to copyediting, and the terms are often used interchangeably, but are slightly different. While copyediting is done on a finished or nearly-finished manuscript, proofreading is done after formatting to search for typos and misused punctuation, but also layout issues like page numbers, chapter titles, consistent positioning and bad line or page breaks. It doesn't involve changing any content, only correcting errors.