All In On Developmental Editing

I spent five and a half months doing developmental edits on my next novel—The Chameleon Killer. I got rid of scenes I refer to as sugar. They might be sweet, but they were worthless in the book. I also reorganized the book, trying to pair up scenes in a chapter structure. I think little of chapters in novels, so I just use them for organization. The point-of-view (POV) character is at the top of my organization. Every scene in the chapter has to be the same POV.

I wish I had a developmental editor for my first novel. I didn’t realize how many mistakes I made in that one until I entered it into the North Street Book Prize contest. Part of my entry was an editorial review. That review showed me I had too much dialogue and too much expository dialogue.

For this novel, I chose Atmosphere Press as my publisher. The package I purchased included two rounds of developmental editing. With all the developmental editing I did on my own, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I learned a valuable lesson in January 2025.

In that month, I was dealing with the loss of my mother and was told my developmental editor wanted a call near the end of the month. I accepted the invite and waited by the phone on the day he was calling me. My editor, Mike, couldn’t have been nicer. I filled a few paper pad pages during the call, as he mentioned so many things to fix. A day later, Mike sent me an electronic document with everything we discussed.

Here are the highlights of what he wanted.

· He wanted the first scene changed to the Him POV. He is the killer.

· Mike wanted more emotion and personality for my protagonist, Detective Alma Rossi.

· He requested more character descriptions as the story introduced characters. Not a lot, but some physical description.

· Mike also wanted Alma’s reaction to different characters. How did she feel about them?

· He wanted more atmosphere as the locations were being introduced. He asked me to paint a picture of the location so the readers would remember it.

· Mike wanted the following for the dialogue:

o Less dialogue.

o More organic, less formal, dialogue.

o Differentiate the dialogue from character to character.

o More dialogue tags.

· He wanted more tension in the story.

· Mike asked for more changes for the killer to support the title of the book.

o Performing each murder differently wasn’t enough.

o The way he dressed needed to change from one murder to the next.

o My use of one mask for the killer needed to change to different masks for the entire story.

· He wanted more investigation by Alma.

· Mike wanted the four POVs cutdown to two of them. Alma and Him.

· He wanted additional Him scenes and Alma scenes as needed.

The requested changes overwhelmed me at first. Once I converted them to a Word document with tables to break the tasks down, I felt better about it. I asked Mike if there was a deadline for these changes. He told me to take whatever time I needed.

It took me nine weeks to finish everything off. Of course, some fixes were deeper than others. The nice thing is we have a second round of developmental edits coming soon. I suspect some of these will come back for further edits.

The version of the novel I returned to Mike was drastically different from the original version we started with. It strengthened the book in so many ways, I couldn’t believe it. I can’t wait to see what he wants for the next iteration.

Developmental edits might not be for everyone. For me, I saw them as ways to make the book better. My goal is to entertain my readers, so I want the best book possible. This taught me my own developmental edits were less effective than the professional edits I just completed. I plan to use a developmental editor from now on.

I am sure Mike would have caught the problems in my first novel, which would have made that one much better. Knowing the level of work we are doing on The Chameleon Killer book makes me feel better about entering that one into the next North Street Book Prize contest.

I understand the developmental edits are probably the most expensive ones at most editing companies. However, Mike has taught me that this is a necessary step for my novels. Of course, I love the fact that Atmosphere Press includes two rounds of these edits in every package. If two rounds aren’t sufficient, I can buy another.