Developmental Editing &
Early-Stage Book Consultations
“This is giving some much-needed clarity and a motivational boost!”
-Client at Duke University, after receiving her full-book developmental edit
Developmental Editing
In my developmental edits, I provide concrete suggestions at both the macro and micro level to help you revise your work with renewed energy, purpose, and confidence.
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Feedback on the manuscript as a whole, with a special focus on your book’s argument and throughline. I help you identify and refine the book's central thesis and the arguments of individual chapters, with an eye to making sure that each chapter both builds on the others and advances your central thesis. And I provide concrete suggestions for resolving broad issues of organization, analysis, pacing, tone, or style in order to make your manuscript clearer and more compelling for your target readership. I include recommendations about how to prioritize and sequence the suggested revisions.
I offer basic, standard, and in-depth versions of the service. I can also provide follow-up developmental editing for individual chapters following a DE of a full book manuscript (if you’d like more intensive support for a given chapter or would like me to review your revisions).
My full-book DEs typically include a detailed revision letter, light in-text comments, and an hour-long call after you’ve read through my feedback. Depending on your editorial needs, I can also shift the balance within my written feedback to provide more extensive in-text comments and a somewhat shorter revision letter. For the standard and in-depth versions of this service, I offer a “developmental consultation” option that includes a second Zoom call: a lively and wide-ranging conversation (around 2 hours in length) in which we collaboratively build on my recommendations.
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If you are confident in your book’s overarching structure and argument, or if you want my eyes on your chapters as you are writing them, you can skip the full-book DE and instead have me offer feedback one chapter at a time (or just on a particular chapter or chapters that feel especially tricky). I can also provide follow-up developmental edits on individual chapters as a form of iterative developmental editing after first doing a full-book DE.
See the following description for additional information.
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Big-picture comments on organization, argument, core concepts, or recurring stylistic issues provided either in a revision letter or in a set of notes at the top of the document. Micro-level feedback offered through in-text comments and queries as well as light in-text edits.
If needed, I can also suggest new section headings or identify points where you might cut or condense material. And if needed, I can provide structural editing (hands-on editing to help you reorganize your article or chapter, where I actually move material to new points, make suggestions about new transitional passages you might draft, and make cuts to help with pacing).
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Line-by-line edits to help you communicate your points effectively and keep your readers engaged. I tighten and shape your prose, paying close attention to sentence and paragraph structure, tone, pacing, and transitions. And I edit for clarity, noting any gaps in the argument or points where your readers might need additional context.
Schedule permitting, I can provide line editing upon request once you have completed your revisions based on the DE. For articles, essays, or standalone chapters, I may be able to line edit your full draft. For books, I generally provide targeted line editing, focusing just on the most “high-impact” sections of your manuscript (such as your book’s opening pages and conclusion or chapter-level intros and conclusions).
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I review your proposal with an eye to helping you make effective use of a scholarly book proposal’s standard sections—including sections that often cause writers consternation, such as the “competing or comparable works” section. I pay special attention to how you convey your argument and its stakes.
By default, I provide developmental feedback through in-text comments and queries and edit your prose for clarity, tightness, and flow. I provide a 30-minute follow-up call after you’ve reviewed my edits. If your proposal is not yet ready for line editing, then instead of editing your prose I can offer additional developmental support through more extensive comments and queries and/or a revision letter. I can also provide a longer follow-up call. (Schedule permitting, I can then line edit your proposal after you’ve revised it based on my developmental feedback.)
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If you don’t think your proposal is ready for any line editing, you could consider this option (rather than “book proposal editing”) for developmental feedback on the proposal.
I carefully read and think about your proposal and provide detailed developmental feedback through a 60–75-minute Zoom consultation. (Although I don’t prepare a formal revision letter, after the consultation I can share the written notes that I created in preparation for the call.)
Schedule permitting, I can line edit your proposal after you’ve revised it based on the feedback provided through the consultation. (Upon request, I can provide a custom estimate for line editing after the consultation.)
If you created a book proposal early on in your book revision process and are not yet polishing it for submission, you could instead choose the “Early-Stage Book Proposal Consultation” listed at the bottom of this page.
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Macro- and micro-level revision recommendations for your sample chapters and proposal (prospectus). Feedback provided through a revision letter, comments and queries added directly to your Word document, and occasional in-text edits. If the macro-level developmental feedback I’m offering is relatively light, then I can provide more extensive line edits. Service includes an hour-long follow-up call.
I recommend this service 1) if you want detailed feedback on your sample chapters and proposal but don’t need a DE of the full manuscript or 2) if you need developmental feedback on your proposal package before you’ve completed the full manuscript.
Book Consultations for Early Stages of Drafting or Revision
In my developmental edits, I usually work with complete or nearly complete drafts of books, chapters, and articles. If you’re still at the very early stages of drafting or revising your book, I offer the following consultations. If you’d like additional support following the Early-Stage Book Proposal Consultation, please see this page for additional editorial consultations that you might find helpful.
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This consultation is for those of you who are just getting started on thinking through what your dissertation-to-book revision might look like and the different directions you might pursue. This session is much less fine-grained than the Early-Stage Book Proposal Consultation: we won’t be thinking in any sort of detailed way about your structure, main argument, or chapter arguments.
In this hour-long call, we will talk through your “why” for writing this particular book, who your target readers are, what excites you about the various directions you are contemplating, and what you see the challenges as being for each path. We can discuss the logistics of what it would take to research and draft any new chapters you may be envisioning and talk through any relevant external timelines. And I can provide an overview of how a book differs from a dissertation, and what the process of shaping your chapters with an eye to crafting a cohesive book typically involves (aside from the work of doing any new research and drafting any new chapters or sections).
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If you’re preparing your proposal for submission, I recommend book proposal editing. But if you’ve written a preliminary version of the book proposal early in the drafting or dissertation-to-book revision process to help articulate your vision for the book, I can offer developmental feedback on your project based on the window into your project that the proposal provides. After I’ve reviewed your proposal draft, we will hold a 2–3-hour Zoom call. I’ll ask you probing questions about your project and introduce my two go-to strategies for thinking through how each chapter can make a distinct chapter-argument that still contributes to one overarching thesis for the book as a whole. And then we can engage in collaborative brainstorming to begin refining your argument, chapter contributions, organization, or key concepts.
Note: your draft doesn’t need to include all (or even most) of the standard components of an academic book proposal, though it’s just great if it does. But at a minimum, it would be helpful for me to see a rough project description and chapter summaries, so that I can begin to get my head into your vision for the book.
Follow-Up Consultations & Writing Coaching
I offer the editorial consultations and writing coaching sessions described below to clients looking for targeted follow-up support after a Developmental Edit or Early-Stage Book Proposal Consultation and to alumni of my book development workshop (Crafting Your Scholarly Book). If I’ve already done a Developmental Edit for you, then you would probably benefit most from the first two services below.
In my editorial consultations, I’m helping you figure out solutions to issues you’re working through in your writing rather than developing potential solutions for you (as I do in my developmental edits). Instead of reading a full chapter draft or book manuscript draft so that I can enter into deep “puzzle-solving” mode myself, I engage with targeted elements of your project so that I can help provide some direction for your puzzle-solving process.
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A hybrid of editorial consulting and sustainable productivity coaching. We can talk about both the writing process and about your writing itself. I will review and lightly annotate 2500 words of text (about 5 single-spaced pages) prior to each call. This is similar to the “micro-macro” session described below, except that we can also discuss process. (You could even decide on the spot whether you want to just focus on your manuscript and on any conceptual challenges you’re navigating, or whether you also want to talk about process and any emotional or logistical challenges.)
Each call is held on Zoom and is 60 minutes long. You can also purchase a Writing Momentum of five sessions, to be scheduled within a 12-month period.
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Is there a particular part of a chapter or some newly drafted material that you’d like my eyes on? Or a thorny idea you are trying to work out in writing? In this consultation, I read and lightly annotate 2500 words of text (about 5 single-spaced pages) before our call. We can discuss both micro-level details in that text and larger aspects of your argument related to that text that you are working on figuring out. Time permitting, we can also discuss other aspects of your writing project that you wish to talk through with me.
Each call is held on Zoom and is 60 minutes long. You can also purchase a Writing Momentum of five sessions, to be scheduled within a 12-month period.
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Have you been told that a key concept in your work is underdeveloped or confusing, or do you yourself feel like there is some important nuance that you are struggling to articulate? Are you having difficulty elucidating the precise relationship between two or three interrelated concepts? Is there a term you’ve coined or adopted for a core concept that doesn’t feel quite right? Are you having trouble figuring out what the role of a concept is in your larger argument, but also having trouble letting it go?
I’ll have you fill out a questionnaire to briefly describe your conceptual struggle(s) and list any key terms that regularly appear in your manuscript’s discussions about the concept (or concepts) in question. Before our call, I’ll do a search in your full draft for those terms to trace the ways that the concepts play out in your manuscript. During our session, I’ll ask probing questions to help you clarify for yourself what you are trying to say and how the ideas in question are important to your larger project.
Then we can do some collaborative brainstorming about ways to frame or communicate the concepts more effectively or clarify their role in your work.
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Your full table of contents (section headings included) offers a window into your book’s architecture. I’ll review your full table of contents (and the word counts for your chapters and sections) before the call, also looking briefly at the manuscript itself.
During the call, you might walk me through the progression of ideas that your section headings and chapter titles reflect, so that we can discuss whether that progression is serving your book or whether adjustments might be helpful. I’ll also ask you questions about sections or chapters that are particularly short or long and about headings or titles that feel cryptic without additional context.
By examining your table of contents and section-level word counts, I can often diagnose potential structural issues and offer broad-strokes revision suggestions. And by drawing you out about your vision for your larger narrative arc, I can talk with you about whether there are components you might expand, condense, cut, move, or add to support this vision.
If you haven’t yet put intensive thought into your book’s narrative arc and the role of each chapter within the larger book, then you might start with my summer workshop or the Early-Stage Book Proposal Consultation.
The hour-long call will allow for a relatively broad, “birds-eye-view” discussion of your chapters and sub-arguments. If you’d like to discuss multiple chapters in some depth, we can talk for longer than an hour (with additional time charged at my hourly rate), or you could opt for multiple sessions of the chapter revision strategy session. And if you need feedback that I’d only be able to provide after reading your chapters, then you might opt for developmental editing.
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The nature of this session will differ depending on where you are in the revision process. If your draft is fairly developed but you’re rethinking various aspects of your organization, this session might look like a chapter version of the “table of contents” audit. After you talk me through the role of each section in the chapter as a whole and the problems or limitations you see with the current structure, we can think together about various other possibilities.
If you need to bring together pieces of writing from multiple drafts, I can give you some broad suggestions for navigating common steps in this process. (These steps may include examining your existing drafts; clarifying your argument, sub-arguments, and nesting logic; strategically moving text from the existing drafts to your new draft; identifying any “holes” you need to fill in; and “stitching together” your text in its new sequence.) Because this is a complicated and high-context process, we would probably talk in general terms rather than delving into the details of your draft. And so we could hold this version of the call as a 30-minute mini-session.
If you’re just beginning to contemplate revisions for a dissertation chapter, we can have a conversation about the directions you’re considering and how each version would fit within your larger book. (If needed, I can share my go-to strategies for making sure that each chapter in a book is distinct while still contributing to a larger argument.) This version of the call could also be a mini-session!
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Five writing coaching sessions or editorial consultations, to be scheduled within a 12-month period. You can mix and match writing coaching sessions and any of the consultations listed above. (If you opt for a version of this package with just editorial consultations, the package will probably include multiple micro-macro sessions.)
Client Comments
“Ellen Tilton-Cantrell is a brilliant editor on multiple fronts. As a line editor, she is an elegant and efficient prose stylist. When tackling structural editing, she is an incisive reader who excels at separating the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’ across complex chapters. As a developmental editor, she has the uncanny ability to discern the most promising contours of an emerging argument—in my case, across a ponderous manuscript—to excellent effect. When working on complex monographs on these fronts, she is also a gracious taskmaster, an insightful editorial guide, and a terrific interlocutor (even beyond her field of scholarly training).
Ellen saw my first book through multiple stages of the drafting and revision process (amidst the COVID pandemic, no less) and she was an incredibly generous editor and resource for me as a first-time author. I cannot recommend her services enough, and I liberally mention her name to fellow colleagues preparing their first monographs.”
“I was a bit nervous about letting someone ‘into’ my text, but it was amazing to have Ellen do work that I know would have cost me blood, sweat, and tears. Ellen was not ‘attached’ to the material in the way that I was, but just wanted to figure out what was necessary to the argument. Working with her made it much easier to let go of some material that wasn’t serving the book. After Ellen helped me to reorganize the overall argument, write a book proposal, and prepare sample chapters, my book was swiftly contracted by Johns Hopkins University Press. One of the peer reviewers noted that the book (based on my PhD dissertation) is accessible to ‘an informed wider audience.’ I think this is to a large extent due to Ellen’s contribution.
Ellen is clear and easy to communicate with, efficient, and thorough—and she was genuinely interested in the content of my book in a way I really appreciated. I particularly liked how easy and fun the process of working together was. ”
“I worked with Ellen during the final stages of revisions to my book manuscript. By then, I had already received reader reports and completed six months of editing. What I needed was an outside perspective to guide me through a series of challenging, yet crucial, organizational decisions. I was simply too deep in the weeds to make those calls confidently. Some of these choices also involved making major cuts.
Ellen is exceedingly generous and supportive of authors...In our developmental consultation, we had a conversation about the core themes and explored strategies to highlight them. She also integrated my written reflections and feedback during the editing process, providing an opportunity for me to be in dialogue with her during editing, and, in turn, refining my analysis. I highly valued the cooperative aspects of her editing style. I am profoundly grateful for her contributions to this manuscript; it is considerably strengthened by her dedicated work.”
“Ellen’s combined skills as an incredibly sensitive reader and literary critic made her the perfect editor for my book manuscript. I needed someone to help streamline prose, but to also suss out any potential gaps in argument. Ellen helped retain my voice while consistently improving the text’s tightness and clarity. Her professionalism, prompt and substantive communication, and probing questions about any unclear sections were all welcome...The book is unequivocally better as a direct result of her thoughtful suggestions for revision and her precise proofreader’s eye.
Based on the superb work she did for the first project, I immediately sought her services for my next book and would happily keep her on retainer if I could! Simply put, Ellen has become my go-to editor for all serious academic publishing projects moving forward. I’m grateful for all her conscientious efforts and feel lucky to have the benefit of her editorial expertise.”
“I have been immensely impressed by Ellen’s professionalism and expertise. Ellen’s comments on my manuscript are incisive, thoughtful, and help me to ‘see the forest’ again instead of the trees. No one has read my work with such care and generosity of spirit since my days as a student. The experience has been so different from the academic peer review process where people offer all sorts of advice on one’s work but not always with the intention of making the project better. I had a deep sense from Ellen’s comments that she wanted to help make the project better and that has made all the difference (plus her formidable editorial skills as well!).”
“Working with Ellen was my first time working with a developmental editor. My scholarship benefited greatly from her insightful and razor-sharp close reads. I worked with her over the course of 8 months. During this time, her comments arrived in my inbox in a timely manner and she always made herself available for follow-up questions. In addition, the advice she gave enhanced various aspects of my academic writing life, including rethinking the book proposal, drafting a conclusion, and honing my argument. I couldn’t have kept up the pace and stamina needed to complete my writing project without Ellen’s partnership each step of the way.”
“I was blown away by Ellen’s manuscript assessment—I don’t think my work has ever been read so carefully before. She showed me multiple potential ways to articulate central arguments both for individual chapters and for the book as a whole, finding coherent threads and a narrative arc where I had been afraid I had none. She pointed out the gaps between my stated aims and what the book and its chapters actually achieved, and gave great, concrete suggestions about what it would take for the book to do what I said it would do, or—even better—to accomplish something on a wider scale, with a more coherent intervention and a broader potential readership.
Ellen pointed towards places throughout the manuscript where I’d been engaging with the same issue, something I wouldn’t have realized just reading through it myself. And along with extensive comments on the book’s central thesis, ways to frame my broader project, and which key concepts made sense to center, she also gave thorough consideration to each individual chapter and the best way to shape the argument of each. I was definitely stuck looking at the trees; with Ellen’s help, I can not only see the forest, but a path through it that has already been making my revisions more focused and efficient—the project is progressing far more quickly than I expected!”
“Thank you so much, Ellen. Your thoughtful notes have been extraordinarily helpful, and I’m looking forward to digging into the work as soon as I can.
And that in itself is a gift. ”
“Thank you so much for this thorough, insightful, and helpful manuscript assessment! I greatly appreciate how detailed your feedback is, and how much time and care you invested in assessing the manuscript. This is giving some much-needed clarity and a motivational boost/push!”
“I had to trim my contracted manuscript, but didn’t know what [to cut] or how to begin pruning. Ellen’s manuscript assessment offered extremely useful advice in this regard. With a keen eye to making the future book more inviting to all readers, her in-depth review identified the manuscript’s essential concepts and related areas that require clarification. It also offered concrete formulations—from thesis presentation and chapter structure to word choice and writing style—that I could work on to launch my revisions. Most importantly, the assessment helped me discover the big-picture edits I needed to implement & the chapters that would benefit from structural editing.
For the chapters on which Ellen performed structural editing, I particularly appreciated her incisive suggestions on re-organizing sections within the chapters. Identifying alternatives I could not have diagnosed on my own, Ellen helped me to streamline content and foreground key ideas. Her personable working style was also very reassuring. Attentive to mutually agreed schedules without being inflexible, she checked in whenever necessary to discuss schedule adjustments or major structural revisions and always made herself available for follow-up questions. These traits testify to her impeccable professionalism. Thanks to Ellen’s expert editing skills and insights, I am confident that my manuscript is thoroughly and carefully processed in the most ideal manner for the next stage of publication.”
“Working with Ellen saved me six months of confusion on the revision of my dissertation. What she was able to identify—with clarity and precision—as my manuscript’s over-arching argument is something that would have taken me, on my own, several drafts and a lot of frustration to see my way to. After I got back my assessment, I kept joking to my friends that my manuscript felt ‘seen,’ but truly, that’s how it felt! As I continue to revise, her notes, chapter title suggestions, and questions to provoke more thinking are my foundational guides. I wish everyone could have this experience!”