Nuances of editing

I’m reading through some books on editing (and watching videos.) I thought I understood the difference between developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing, but it turns out there’s more nuance.

What I knew before

The typical advice is to start with developmental edits, then line edits, and finally copy editing. Just like when remodeling a house, you first tear down and build walls; then paint or hang wallpaper; finally, the furniture can be set in place.

• Developmental edits make major changes to the story structure for the story’s overall coherence and impact.
• Line edits focus in on things like sentence structure and word choice for readability and elegance.
• Copy editing zeroes in on things like spelling and punctuation, for accuracy and consistency.

More nuance, abandonment

Writers often say a manuscript is never finished, only abandoned. Likewise, with the different levels of editing, each stage is usually a discrete phase that at some point must be abandoned. The editors try not to step back into an earlier phase, especially in a professional setting where there’s a hard deadline. If a copy editor sees a better word choice, as long as the original is spelled right, they might not suggest changes.

If editing your own work, you can make those kinds of changes at any stage, but keep in mind those changes cost time. Best practice might be to let it go if you need to hit a deadline.

More nuance, drilling down

Interestingly, a developmental editor might drill down into the same things that a line editor or copy editor would. But, it seems they do it more broadly.

A developmental editor might point out that you are not using contractions in your dialogue, which makes it sound unnatural. This advice would help the author start making the many small changes needed to fix the problem. Rather than wait, the editor passes on this note.

This confused me greatly in the past when I would hear developmental editors talk about sentence structure or punctuation. They were drilling down in the way a decorator might consider the location of the refrigerator when planning to add a door to the kitchen.