How I Have Made My Developmental Rewrite Most Effective for Me (And Tips That May Help You)

As many of you know, I am currently chipping away at my developmental rewrite for the final installment in the Bound Trilogy, Fated. I was recently talking with another writer about our processes for editing our books, and I thought it would be cool to share with you some of the things I do to get the most out of my developmental rewrite with limited time.

This process has been developed over the course of writing and editing my last several books, and I find this is what works best (most effectively) for me. 

Here are three things I do that make all the difference during this part of my process:

1. Write myself notes.
This first thing actually starts way back when I'm writing my first draft. I find that the best way I'm able to keep my momentum going is by NOT stopping when I get stuck on a scene or a detail. Instead, I write myself a quick note with as much detail I need to remember what I WANT the scene to do, then I move on. 

Before I send my draft to a developmental editor, I try to address most of these notes. But as many of you writers out there know, it doesn't always come on the first, second, or even third pass. This refinement happens over several passes through your book. For any notes that still remain (or any areas that I still feel need work), I make myself a list in a separate document of all the notes I have that still need to be addressed. 

This list is something that I keep handy as I work through my developmental re-write, alongside my developmental editor's notes. I find that having all of my feedback together as I work through it allows me to take a deeper look at the scenes that need work, as well as find areas that are a commonly noticed problem. 

2. Have a developmental editor take a careful read through my story.
This one may seem obvious to you, as in, yes, it's important to have someone else's eyes on your story before it comes out. However, a lot of people still ask me what a developmental editor is for, and I've had some people offer to developmentally edit my books without really knowing fully what that means. 

A developmental editor is someone who should read through your full story and edit it. They are NOT there to point out wording issues, punctuation issues, or anything related to grammar or formatting. The job of a developmental editor is to look at the story itself to see what needs to be improved. They look at the overall plot, character development and motivation, world building, and so on. Their job is to help you develop and smooth out your story, and they should be paying close attention to these things. 

3. Send my book to beta readers. 
Now, this part may work differently for many of you. For me, I find that I work most effectively if I can gather all my feedback together and address it at the same time, while I work on completely rewriting (yes, totally retyping everything) the whole story. Because of this, I like to send my book out to beta readers at the same time that my book is with my developmental editor. 

Beta readers are regular people (as in, not typically highly trained editors focused on their craft) who look at the story as a regular reader would. But the beautiful thing about this opportunity is that they then get to tell me what they liked, didn't like, what felt slow or confusing, etc. so I can address those things. 

When I send my work out to beta readers, I remind them that I am not looking for grammatical feedback, just what they think of the story. I also send out a list of questions that I would like them to answer when they are finished reading. I have posted that list before, but I'll share it again on this blog very soon.



When I work through my developmental rewrite with all of these various notes from various sources, I find that I'm able to make much better changes and more easily catch points of confusion. I also often have people ask my why I do a full retyping of the story. I find that this is much more effective for me, even though it certainly takes a lot more time. The reason I retype the story is it allows me to re-immerse myself into the scenes and get really into the story while I'm addressing the notes, so I can add or change things throughout the entire story as I go. 

What are some things you do to improve your process?