One of the most critical aspects of planning your publishing budget as a self published author is allocating funds appropriately for editing services. Hiring an editor who isn’t in the right tier at the wrong stage could result in wasted thousands trying to correct structural flaws that should have been identified months prior or releasing a product littered with typos.
The solution is recognizing that editing is a sequential process consisting of multiple stages – Developmental Editing, Copyediting & Proofreading. Each stage focuses on specific challenges within the writing process from the big picture (e.g., plotting) down to micro level details (e.g., grammar).
To save money while still getting a quality edit done without overspending, here are some creative ways I’ve used tactile paper crafting techniques to successfully tackle development editing tasks myself.
Developmental editors focus on big-picture concerns about narrative construction such as plot holes, character development and pacing. One way you can tackle these kinds of problems yourself is creating physical representation of scenes/subplots/character arc relationships through colorful index card collages. This hands-on activity forces us to confront things visually which might otherwise go unnoticed if we’re just staring at paragraphs on a computer monitor.
For those interested in working through their copyediting processes manually there are also many ways one can leverage traditional media tools creatively during the more involved phases like line editing or even just doing general proofs later in production cycle once everything else has been settled upon properly.
