Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
[...] As one of the "non-pros," I'll say that some of Cin's comments, particularly concerning character introduction, sounded more in the realm of what you called "developmental editing." And while it would indeed usually be the author choosing to take or reject any such advice, and executing any changes, isn't the roll of the typical editor who works with authors at a BPH, to give just that sort of advise to an author, based on their experience with the market and similar works? [...]
You, gmw, as an indie author, apparently had that role filled by the experienced reviewer.
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Well, the different stages of editing are not completely clean cut, especially when you are looking at a work that we might say escaped early from the process
. The nature of that particular problem is partly dependent on the author's intention, which was unclear.
With development editing in traditional publishing (from what I've read, my only actual experience with them is in being rejected) I would describe the publisher/editor as acting in the role that I described as "trusted readers of an early draft" - albeit ones with more than usual influence with the author. For me the distinction here is not so much where the suggested issues have come from, but the fact that the author is the one trying to work out how to solve them - and the solutions could conceivably span the entire novel.
This is quite different to copy editing and proof-reading where the instructions from the editor are usually quite localised and explicit. I guess we might argue that the author still has to accept/execute the changes, and may sometimes choose some alternative solution, but if the editor is good then most changes along these lines would be accepted as given.
Also, some (many?/most?) writers do a lot of (what I would call) development editing long before their traditional publisher sees it. It can be difficult to really nail down the line between writing the story and development editing - I'm not sure it exists.
I have not seen much evidence of indie authors taking on professional development editors, but maybe it happens more than I've seen.
As you say, I tried something like that with a paid professional reviewer, but the experience left something of a bad taste in my mouth (a separate story that I've shared here previously). However I did get some good out of it, because the reviewer did manage to highlight parts of the novel that were excessively drawn out, and so good targets for severe cutting. It was not so much that I was unaware of the problems, but having the review did give me more confidence in where to put the scissors.