The Introductory Edit

A fixed-price taster edit on your first 10,000 words

An Introductory Edit analyses and polishes your first 10,000 words, using selected features of a Stage 1 structural edit and a Stage 2 copy-edit. It reviews your novel’s opening hook as well as the pace and voice of the initial chapters, and it corrects mistakes in punctuation, grammar, spelling and styling.

In a nutshell: A foundation edit that gives you practical tools you can use on the rest of your novel.

Best for: Discovering how an edit can help you improve your novel; preparing your first few chapters for submission to an agent or publisher.

Bonus: Entitles you to a 10 per cent discount on a Full-Works Edit.

An Introductory Edit focuses on:

• The power of your opening chapter. Does it engage the reader as you’d hoped? Does it make us want to find out more? How do your main characters come across?
• The voice and style of your first 10,000 words. Are the point of view (first or third person) and tenses (past or present) of your storytelling effective and consistent? Do you tend to summarise too many scenes and dramatise too few? Are there sections that slow the pace unhelpfully? Do you have any stylistic tics you’re unaware of?
• The clarity, consistency and accuracy of your first 10,000 words. I’ll correct punctuation, grammar, syntax and spelling mistakes and explain relevant publishing conventions, for example regarding the styling of dialogue.

What you’ll get: 

• A professional copy-edit of your first 10,000 words, a detailed structural analysis of your opening chapter, and a list of useful editing tools you can use when revising the rest of your novel.
• An edited file in which all my corrections and suggested amendments are visible, using Word’s Track Changes facility. This means you can review each edit in turn and see how you might apply similar changes elsewhere.
• Editorial notes and in-manuscript annotations detailing the strengths and weaknesses of your opening hook and the pace and style of your first 10,000 words.
• A list of spellings and styles that are particular to your book: for example, do you prefer ‘recognise’ or ‘recognize’ and do you italicise a character’s thoughts? You can use this list to ensure consistency in the spellings and styles you use throughout the rest of your novel.

Price: £350.

Find out more: Please contact me to find out more and book a slot.

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