So you finally finish that novel you’ve been working on for a while now. Congratulations on getting around to telling your story! Now what?

Whether you’re self-publishing or submitting to a publishing house, the most logical (and advantageous) step is to get your work edited. Editing helps shape a manuscript—an editor’s job is not unlike a carver chipping away at a block of wood to completely reveal the work of art underneath all the extra material. Proper editing makes a book not only highly readable and engaging, it also highlights the strengths, the value, and the message of any work. Finding an editor for your work is imperative, especially for self-publishing authors. Traditional publishers usually have their own team of editors, but those looking to self-publish do not always have that readily available. Maximizing the potential of your manuscript is key to the success of any storyteller, and the right editor (or editors) can help you achieve that.

Usually, when people speak of editing, they think of copy editing, or the type of editing where grammar, word usage, spelling, and even punctuation are corrected or improved. But editing is a layered process that actually has a number of particularly different aspects. This means that there are different types of editing and editors, each one suited for a particular purpose in a writer’s journey toward being published. There’s content editing, also known as developmental editing, where the editor looks at the bigger picture and makes suggestions on plot and plot structure, characters and character development, and everything else that’s relevant to what the story is about. Then there’s line editing. If you started with content editing, once that is completed and the suggested revisions are made, a line editor will look at the manuscript to make recommendations on the use of language—the goal is to make the flow of the storytelling as smooth as possible. This type of editing eliminates unwieldy chunks of text, repetitions, redundancies, stilted phrasing, and disorganized thoughts, whittling down the material to further refine it.

Copy editing, as mentioned above, deals with grammar, spelling, etc. It also deals with fact-checking and formatting. Another important aspect of copy editing is making sure that spelling conventions, capitalizations (such as those used for brand names and trademarks), and other pertinent details are used consistently throughout the manuscript. There’s also proofreading, which is the last stage of editing before publication. A proofreader checks the accuracy of the printed version of the text as it should appear, making sure that the text follows its source material faithfully. This is also the part where typographical errors, whether they were missed in the manuscript editing or introduced during the production of the printed copy, are corrected. Editing may seem like a daunting prospect for writers, but it is essential to properly telling your story. Editors are here to suggest changes and provide recommendations to help you communicate better, not change your message. Even the best of writers need a fresh set of eyes to look over their work. Being close to the material and having worked on the manuscript for quite some time, you may not be able to spot errors and inconsistencies. An editor is an impartial party whose only goal is to help the material become the best it can possibly be.

For the best and most reliable editing services, you can rely on the skill and experience of inWrite's team of experts. You can view the full list of services offered on the online thesis writing services.

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