What does a developmental editor do?

There is some basic information on the homepage about what a developmental editor does but the best way to get more information is to see my first blog post here. As a developmental editor, I want to help support a manuscript and enhance it. Sometimes that means re-arranging a scenes, sometimes it’s working on the prose so the story flows better. Sometimes it’s even me reading a section and asking what the heck is happening and how can we make that clearly.

How do I work?

An example of my though process when I approach a book is also on the blog but sometimes my system looks different. If I’m reviewing a query package, I always read the excerpt first. I want to see if I can discern what the story might be about before reading the synopsis. When I’m doing a full developmental review, I often read the book twice. The first time, I want to get a feel for the story and what I think about it. The second time, I get down into the nitty gritty such as the rules of the fantasy world or the personality of a character.

What are my qualifications?

I started working in publishing in 2022 when I interned for the marketing department at Warren Publishing, a hybrid publisher. After that, I was a reader intern and then an agency assistant at Red Fox Literary. Red Fox Literary is a well known boutique children’s book agency that has been in business for almost 15 years. When my time at Red Fox came to an end, I went to work for one of my mentors Lori Steel after she launched her own boutique literary agency, SteelWorks Literary. I was the agency assistant there, doing data entry, reading submissions, administrating the reader interns and more. At the beginning of 2025, I found that my passion lie not so much in agenting but in editorial work. In the spring of 2025, I launched my freelance editorial business.

My qualifications from these jobs comes from the in depth work I did as a reviewer of manuscripts. As a front line reader, I would evaluate incoming queries and make suggestions or comments to agents about what I thought. After they provided their decision on the query, I would go on to do a preliminary read of the manuscript. The agent and I would discuss the manuscript, it’s strengths, weaknesses, market possibilities, and more. These reading and analyzing experiences provided me with an improvement on my critical thinking skills and pushed my the boundaries of my knowledge.

A significant part of my qualifications also comes from my education. I have been reading since before I can remember and I am lucky to enjoy a variety of genres and age ranges, but my time studying Great Texts at Baylor University is what elevated my reading to higher levels. I participated in classes that discussed authors from the 1700’s to today, debated with fellow students about whether female mystics made the lasting impact that they hoped for, I wrote papers analyzing some of my favorite authors like Shakespeare and I almost turned into a Panera Bread bread bowl writing my thesis on C.S. Lewis’ Four Loves and the Harry Potter series.

After I finished my undergraduate degree, I spent time tutoring children in english and history. I also attempted to start writing a book of my own, which to this day has not come to fruition! In the fall of 2019 I started my Masters degree in Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University Of North Carolina - Charlotte. I took a class all about picture books, studied why we often love the retelling of a fairy tale, and reread books I read as a child which had a completely new meaning to me as an adult. While my focus was on children’s and young adult literature, included in my education were classes about english theory, fellow students and I explored what role The Bible plays throughout the history of the english language, and I presented a paper on Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Michel Foucault’s ideas about the panopticon. Almost the entirety of my Masters degree was done virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic but I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot, even about myself. I graduated in December of 2021 after defending my thesis on the theme of friendship in Tamora Pierce’s novels and started working in publishing the following year.

What do I charge?

The pricing for my services varies depending on the work I am looking at and what the author is looking for in terms of feedback. I provide multiple services, including a query review, an editorial assessment, or a full developmental edit. The query review is a flat fee and the editorial assessment and developmental edits depend on the length of the work. The best way to get more information about pricing is to email me at Charlotte@CraneCritiques.com. If you include what service(s) you are interested in, as well as a summary of the project and approximate word count, I can give you more detailed information.