What Are the Different Levels of Editing? (for text)

A majority of my clients, who are newer or unpublished authors, are unfamiliar with the different types of editing that their narrative can, and often should, undergo. So here's a crash course!

But first, the basics.

Editing is "the process of preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material with the intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete final product. Modifications can include correcting, condensing, or reorganizing the original material." This is Wikipedia's definition that borrows from one of my favourite work-related books, What Editors Do: The Art, Craft & Business of Book Editing. For this post, I'm only talking about editing written material.

As the definition says, editing is a process. It is not a one-and-done step and is always something that must be done in a big picture → structure → style → fine detail order to get the best results. The big picture starts with a developmental edit.

A developmental edit is the furthest out you can zoom to begin a writing project. It deals with the approach or framing taken to write a book, a PhD thesis, or the 'About' page on a website. In true developmental editing, an editor works with the author to create an outline that structures how the information will be delivered to the reader. Reorganization, deciding what to keep and what to delete, and even coming up with topics or themes that need to be added to the work is part of the job.

Think of a dev edit as deciding what pages to include in a website, what content each page will display, and what format or medium would be best for the different content pieces. This kind of edit is most useful for academic or larger non-fiction projects, or for a longer fiction series, and takes place more in the planning or research stage, before the writing really begins.

The next step in the process is a structural edit. Because of their overlap, a structural edit is often confused for a developmental edit, especially in creative writing where the goal is not to deliver specific/educational information. However, the difference is that a structural edit is done after a majority of the writing is completed and the whole narrative or all the information is already on the page. During a structural edit, an editor looks at the organization of the text, chapter or section structure, and will reorganize and move larger text chunks around if necessary. The goal of this is to create a cohesive narrative, fiction or non-fiction, that flows logically so that the reader is never confused by the way it is progressing.

Deleting chunks of text is very normal during a structural edit, too. For example, a structural edit in a historical fiction story I completed involved deleting an entire minor character, who though he showed up and was mentioned a few times throughout, didn't do much to drive the main character's journey, and thus the plot and/or theme, forward. It can be hard to accept that words so painstakingly written must be axed from a draft, but in the end, it is all in service of the narrative and of the reader who will ultimately be reading it.

After a structural edit, the next editing level in the process is stylistic editing, which, I will say with some pride, I am particularly good at. Stylistic editing is sometimes called line editing or language editing and focuses on removing any repetition, cliche, redundancy, or awkward phrasing from sentences. The goal is to make the writing more clear, elegant, and smooth for the reader, without changing the author's voice or tone. Example:

• Pre-stylistic edit: The Admiral barely heard it as his focus was on the oval shape. He watched as the ripples forming the oval became more stable until the oval solidified into a kaleidoscope of colors, like an oval rainbow, around the edges.

• Post-stylistic edit: The Admiral barely heard it as his focus was on the oval. He watched as the ripples became more stable until the oval formed a kaleidoscope of colors, like a rainbow, around the edges.

The next types of editing focus on the finer details of the text, and will likely be the types of editing you are more familiar with—copy editing and proofreading. Copy editing not only edits for proper grammar, punctuation, and accuracy, but it also helps to ensure that the larger body of text is consistent. For example, when working across a fantasy trilogy, a copy editor would ensure "Dark Elf" is always capitalized in book one, and books two and three. Or, when editing a corporate report, a copy editor would check that all the percentages in a pie chart actually add up to 100%.

Finally, proofreading is the last level of editing that goes over all the text in its final form and flags or corrects any errors, typos, or inconsistencies that the copy edit missed. Since it is the last step before the written material is published, and assuming everything in the steps previously was done conscientiously, proofreading will result in the most minimal of changes. But it is an important step, and should never be skipped! Sub-headers, image captions, and bibliographies are just some spots where errors are often overlooked.

Those are the basic levels in the process of editing. Be warned! If you skip a structural edit, no amount of copy editing is going to help any jumbled concepts you're trying to communicate become a cohesive piece of writing.