Welp, I finished a big project last week.
As many of you know, last year I signed a contract with Vine Leaves Press to publish MFA Thesis Novel, my comic novel about grad school life in the Midwest. After that, I did a lot of waiting.
That’s because prepping a novel for publication takes a LONG time—most presses schedule their release dates 1-2 years (or more!) in advance, and MFA Thesis Novel is slated for publication in April 2022.
There’s a lot of things to be done before next April: designing the cover (VLP editor Jessica Bell’s bringing her expertise to that!), proofreading the manuscript, formatting the pages, obtaining permissions, and a bunch of other stuff. And one of those things is a developmental edit.
What’s a Developmental Edit?
Every writer knows that nobody’s perfect: we all make mistakes, miss things, and explain parts of the novel in ways that aren’t clear. The developmental editor’s job is to go through and catch all the writer’s goof-ups—not the you’re/your type stuff (that’s the proofreader’s job!), but more like “This scene goes on a bit too long” or “I don’t really understand the character’s motivation”-type stuff that requires more work to fix.
My developmental editor for MFA Thesis Novel is Melanie Faith—who’s also a poet, novelist, short story writer, photographer, writing teacher, and author of three craft books on writing. I interviewed her for my Interviews With Cool People series a while back (which you should totally check out if you haven’t already), where she shared a lot of great insights about the writing life. She’s also a proud Gen-Xer whose books are full of ‘90s references, and the two of us bonded over our shared love of the MTV cartoon Daria.
When Vine Leaves Press first sent me my publishing offer they also included Melanie’s notes. Said notes came in the form of a letter, and she mentioned things she liked about the book, parts she found funny, literary and pop culture references she enjoyed, and a few places she thought needed work. It was really helpful to get her feedback right away, since it gave me a taste of what it would be like to work with the press, and specifically her as an editor.
Melanie also emailed to introduce herself that same week, which was another really good sign—I could tell that she was friendly, down to earth, and easy to work with, which was a big reassurance.
When I signed the contract, Vine Leaves also sent me a publishing schedule. That schedule said that my developmental edit would take place between June 15th and September 15th, so I should plan on sending Melanie a polished version of my book before June.
You Didn’t Quite Answer My Question—You Just Talked About How Awesome Your Editor Is. How Does a Developmental Edit Work?
When I got Melanie’s feedback about things that could use some fixing, I knew right away that she was right. Two chapters in particular (Chapters 3 and 10), were too long and unfocused, and she smartly pointed out that they could use some trimming. I knew these were key areas to focus on, and I asked Melanie if she’d be willing to look at revised versions of just these two chapters before June to get us off on the right foot, and she said sure.
It was really nice to have extra time to work on those trouble chapters—I didn’t want to feel rushed, so I made edits (and lots of cuts!) to them over the winter, and sent them to Melanie in February. She had a few notes, but gave a thumbs up to them overall, which made me feel ready to move on and polish the entire manuscript.
…which is what I did in May and the beginning of June. I printed off the entire manuscript one more time, then went through it with a blue pen cutting unnecessary words, dropping unnecessary sentences, and adding some words of explanation where scenes felt confusing. Some of the bigger changes included:
- Clarifying that Kendall (the main bad guy) cheated on his ex-girlfriend before the novel begins. This was unclear in earlier drafts, and something I felt was important for his character.
- Clarifying that Derzen (the main female character) is feeling anxious about whether she’ll ever get married. This was alluded to in the previous draft, but I wanted to spell it out more specifically.
- Adding more metafictional references. I wanted to make this book draw attention to itself as a made-up story about made-up characters, and I found some more ways of dropping those in :-)
- Adding a reference to my all-time favorite movie, The Graduate, because it suit the story.
I also tend to use a lot of “said”s when I write, some of which were clearly unnecessary and slowed the dialogue down, so I cut some of those as well.
Here’s an example of a moment where I trimmed some unnecessary words to make a tighter scene. The sentence comes right after the main character, Flip, has a pivotal encounter:
Original:
He slept until one the next day, partly because he was exhausted from the week and the semester and the two hours he’d spent lying awake on the sagging air mattress not quite believing what had happened, but mostly because he needed the dim silence of the bed to reflect without the presence of people and distractions pulling him even further from the previous night’s events.
Revision:
He slept until one o’clock the next afternoon, partly because he was exhausted from the week and the semester and the two hours he’d spent lying awake on the sagging air mattress the previous night not quite believing what had happened, but mostly because he needed the silence of the bed to calm himself without people and distractions pulling him further from what had happened.
As you can see, I added a few words, took out others, and changed some phrases (the previous night’s events” became “what had happened,” etc.), and changed a phrase that didn’t make sense (“dim” silence??). These aren’t major changes, just tweaks to make the sentences sound better.
I did most of the editing at home, though last Saturday I also brought the manuscript to the library and then the local ramen shop (where this post’s cover photo was taken!) to get myself out of the apartment for a change of scenery.
Thanks also to my Toyama Writing Group (Will, Lindsey, and Leilani) for looking at some of the earlier chapters and giving their input, which was a big help in fine-tuning the opening section.
Where Do You Go From Here?
From here, Melanie’s going to look at the polished draft and send it back to me with comments (both good, and constructive) that I’ll use to fine-tune the final-final draft. We’ll probably exchange the draft one or two more times before September to double- and triple-check everything, because I definitely want this book to be the best it can possibly be before it goes to press.
So that’s how a developmental edit works. I’ll for sure be sharing more updates before the book comes out in April, hopefully with a few more behind-the-scenes peeks as well ;-)