First, let me congratulate you; finishing a novel, even in first draft, is a spectacular achievement.
The next possible steps are varied and depend on your work and what you want from it.
There are many types of editing that a book could go through, but not all of them are essential and many depend on how you had envisioned publishing your book.
If you want to get it into the public domain rather than keep it for family and friends, you might want to consider whether you would rather try to:
For the first two options, it can pay to get it into reasonable shape so that it garners as much interest as possible, but your work would inevitably undergo further editing at the behest of the publisher, so it’s not essential to get it to a ready-to-publish standard.
If you are planning to self-publish, then you would need the editing to polish your work to a standard which makes it ready for the public to read (and pay for).
If you’re not intending to send it out into the world, you can probably skip right through to the last stages and just get it checked for errors.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of the next steps you could take:
• Manuscript analysis. This is where an editor reads your whole manuscript and produces a report that tells you where your story is strong in terms of things like plot development and characterisation, and where it needs improvement. They do not, however, tell you how to do this; this is the work of a developmental editor.
• Developmental edit. This is support from an editor who takes a manuscript and advises, sometimes in considerable depth, how to make your story better mechanically, for things like plot, characters, style and flow, and provides techniques to use to achieve good results.
Not all novels will necessarily need these first two steps, but to get an idea of whether they are necessary you could use:
• Beta readers. These are widely available from various social-media book groups and are often free of charge – although you will get better quality feedback if you pay somebody. You might also find beta readers in a local writing circle – check your local library for contacts.
When you are happy with your story and you feel that it’s as good as it’s going to get, you need to focus on the language, and next would be:
• Line-edit or copyedit. This type of edit looks at sentence level and focuses on correcting grammar, punctuation, and the sense of your sentences. They may also look at reducing things like repetition and clichés. A line-editor invariably makes in-depth interventions, but a copyeditor would work as deeply or as lightly as you request them to.
A copyeditor would also be able to make the book ready for a typesetter, although if you are aiming for a traditional publishing route you don’t need to worry about preparing it to this level because that is something the publisher would do.
The work you need to do to get your manuscript ready to send to traditional publishers or agents ends at a light copyedit. If a publisher is interested but thinks the book needs further work, they would most likely commission further editing work themselves.
If you are planning to self-publish, check out the hybrid service, proofediting, which I offer. It combines the work done in a traditional copyedit with a proofread, which is described next.
And last of all:
• Proofread. This is the last stage and is there as a fail-safe, to pick up errors that everybody else involved has missed. This is traditionally done after a book has been typeset and before it is printed, whether that be in paper or e-book format.
There are others, but these are the main types you should be considering as your next steps.
Every editor of any worth, including me, will ask you to provide a sample – just a couple of chapters will do – before they quote.
For friendly supportive proofreading, you can send me your sample by filling in the enquiry form here or emailing me direct at Sharon@CluedUpEditing.co.uk
Clued Up Editing 