Line edits (also called substantive or content edits) are where we do our most detailed work. At this point, your story structure should be set and it’s time to dig into things like intent versus impact in word choice, realistic and effective dialogue, character alignment, deep point of view, and more. We’ll also review your writing for overuse of adverbs or fillers, clunky or confusing passages, and bad habits like repetition of words or sentence structure.
We’ll request a sample of pages from the manuscript to determine the depth of work involved in the line edit. All edits are made within the Word document with Track Changes on.
For a manuscript up to 100,000 words, we generally need 2-3 weeks to complete the edit.
Please note that a line edit does not address grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Those details are covered in a copy edit or proofread. Your line editor may make some corrections, but that’s not our main focus.
What’s the submission process?
When you’re ready to schedule your edit, hit that “Book My Edit” button!
Once we’ve confirmed your project is a good fit for us – and you’ve confirmed that we’re a good fit for you – we’ll send you an editing agreement to review and sign digitally.
After the agreement is signed, we’ll request a $150 nonrefundable deposit to save your project dates on our calendar. The cost of the edit is based on exact word count, so we’ll invoice you once we receive the document. Full payment is due when we begin work, and of course, the deposit will go toward that final total.
We work in Microsoft Word. If you write in another program, like Google Docs or Scrivener, just be sure to save your manuscript as a Word doc in order to send it to us.