Discover in this post …

• an error I made in my early days of editing.

• how I transitioned into my favorite way to help writers.

• the difference between editing and book coaching—and how to tell which fits your needs best.

Best of Luck, Susan

Years ago, when I was fully focusing on editing rather than book coaching, I made a huge mistake.

I took on a manuscript evaluation for a fantasy writer (let’s call her Susan) and tried to help her in the most effective way I could. My manuscript evaluation service included a full reading of her draft, along with a comprehensive editorial letter of what was working in her story and what could be strengthened on a developmental level.

My editorial letter to Susan ended up a whopping total of … wait for it … forty pages long.

Forty single-spaced pages (double-spaced between paragraphs for ease of reading).

Whew.

How would you react if an editor sent you a forty-page letter detailing the strengths and weaknesses of your work?

I’d expect you to be overwhelmed at the very least.

With Susan’s letter, I started with the strengths, as I always do, then moved to the areas of improvement to ensure she would satisfy her target reader. I pointed out specific areas in her work that were likely to be problematic for readers expecting one thing but receiving another. I brought up character believability issues, inconsistencies, and plot holes.

I provided detailed examples, organized everything by category, and made sure to explain myself so that Susan would understand my thought process. I wanted to help trigger her own ideas about the changes to be made. She was welcome to use my ideas or decide upon her own.

The letter was beautiful. The letter was thorough. There was nothing outwardly wrong with my letter.

But it was as if I was trying to teach her—to cram all my thoughts about her story into a single piece of communication and hope she would “get it” after reading it, even feel empowered to make the necessary changes to connect with readers.

What I didn’t understand at that point was that as an editor, teaching her wasn’t my responsibility. And “teaching” through a letter is far from ideal.

I had the vague sensation that something seemed off as I emailed her my feedback. She received it and emailed back to thank me and tell me she was “blown away” by the amount of detail I included. Her response was positive … but something within me felt strange. As if there was something else I was supposed to do for her that I hadn’t provided her.

As I mulled over the situation in the following weeks, I thought to myself, How much easier would this be if I had worked with her from the start?

But that wasn’t my job as an editor—so I let that thought float to the back of my mind, and I moved on.

Eureka!

A few months later, I figured it out: not only what was wrong, but how to fix it.

First, here’s some quick background information about me to help my “eureka moment” make sense.

Prior to editing, I was a full-time teacher for six years. I taught middle school and high school English, creative writing, and Spanish. I loved many aspects of teaching, but I switched careers partly for the same reason I mentioned above: I had that nagging feeling I wasn’t helping students as effectively as I could.

Fast forward to my editing years and my interaction with Susan, and I realized that the question that kept bothering me ... well, it was the solution.

The solution was to work with the writer from the start.

That way, they wouldn’t write an entire manuscript purely from their instincts (as I did many times in my teens and twenties) but would have a roadmap to follow so that they were hitting the basic plot points readers expected. Yes, they would still have plenty to do in their second draft, but it would be less, and they would have the confidence their story worked from the brainstorming stage.

I would help writers not only through written feedback (which is still a vital component in my work for writers to this day) but also through personal interactions (aka brainstorming and support calls each week to help the writer through anything they were facing and answer all their questions).

I’m not saying a manuscript evaluation isn’t a helpful service, but it wasn’t the best way to help Susan, someone who needed extra guidance and less floundering. Let’s be honest—isn’t that most of us?

One forty-page letter, followed by many weeks of contemplation (plus months of working with coaching and business mentors, leading critique groups, continuing to give and receive feedback) … and my book coaching services were born.

What I Do Now

At first, I didn’t have a solid understanding of what a book coach does. I thought I would critique a writer’s pages, then send them feedback each week and answer any follow-up questions. I thought it was important to make sure I read every word the writer wrote, annotated every chapter, understood every minute detail of the story.

And that’s certainly one way to do it.

But in the years since I started coaching, I’ve found that reading every word of the entire manuscript, a little at a time, and providing written feedback alone is not the most effective way to help writers.

Let’s break it down to the basics:

The best way to help someone is to provide the opportunity and tools for them to achieve their personal goal. In other words, give them what they want.

But what they think they want might be different from what they actually need to meet their goal. (Just like the characters in your story, right? They want something external, but in order to get it, they need to undergo an internal transformation, and only once they’ve emerged on the other side can they potentially get what they want.)

The writers who come to me want to finish their drafts. They’ve been dreaming about their characters and ideas for ages, worldbuilding for months (sometimes years), fantasizing about writing “The End” and getting their novel into the hands of someone who will love their story as much as they do. 

But it slows them down immensely when they think they need feedback on every word they write before moving on. It makes them think they need to apply my suggested changes and even edit their future chapters before sending them to me. Suddenly, they’re crawling on their hands and knees as they move forward in their first draft rather than sprinting for the finish line—and that’s counterproductive to the goal they initially described to me.

My job as a book coach, then, is to help writers keep their momentum in the drafting stage and apply my feedback from the scenes they submit to other parts of their story.

For example, I’ve helped writers increase tension at any given moment in their manuscript. I’ve helped them check to make sure the obstacles in their protagonist’s way seem insurmountable. I’ve helped them heighten the conflict and relate that conflict to the character’s internal growth. More than anything (both my clients and my in-person critique group will attest to this!), I’ve helped them get inside their protagonist’s head and convey how their protagonist is thinking, feeling, and reacting to events on the page to build that all-important character–reader connection.

Once writers identify their main areas of improvement based on my feedback (items that tend to crop up in most of the chapters they submit to me), they can then go about strengthening these issues in the rest of their draft—and keep them in mind as they write additional chapters.

My book coaching services have grown more and more organized over the years. Because I’ve taken the time to sort through what works and what doesn’t work, I’m now able to identify and provide three specific items fantasy writers need to finish their drafts:

1. A solid roadmap to measure their ideas and story structure against (so they can be sure their particular story will connect with their target readers on an emotional level)

2. Mindset work (so they can confront and move past common roadblocks that would otherwise prevent them from finishing their draft, such as imposter syndrome, fear, and self-doubt)

3. Support, accountability, and personal feedback on their writing and story structure (so they can bounce ideas off me, know someone is there to check on their progress, and understand exactly what’s connecting or not connecting with readers and why) 

Book coaching is the perfect combination of my background in teaching and my background in editing, and it’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

Yesterday, a writer in my book coaching program told me that my feedback on his story changed his life. Not just his ideas and his approach to writing, but his entire life!

For many of us, our writing is closely tied to our identity, and seizing the chance to improve our craft so that we can find an engaged target readership that’s constantly begging us for our next book … well, that’s the dream, isn’t it?

It’s why I created Fantasy Footsteps, and it’s why I stopped focusing on editing and dove headfirst into book coaching: because I wanted to build lasting relationships with writers while giving them the best possible chance of success.

I wanted to tag along for the full journey, not just show up for that one little leg at the end.

A Final Clarification

I want to be clear: there’s a time to hire a book coach, and there’s a time to hire an editor. In no way am I suggesting that editors aren’t essential to the writing process—I’m simply stating that for me, coaching has been the most rewarding, and it’s what I’ve chosen to focus on in recent years.

But is it the best choice for you? To help determine what will best suit your needs, either now or down the road, here’s what you should keep in mind:

Coaching

• Works best if you’re in the brainstorming stage, in a relatively early part of your draft, or stuck in the middle

• Can help you break free from constantly rewriting your opening chapters

• Focuses on supporting you as you complete your first (and often second) draft

• Provides you with thorough feedback on sample chapters that you can then apply to other areas of your draft

• Teaches you specific skills that give you a reliable framework every time you begin a new story (such as what beats to include in your outline to satisfy readers, what to focus on and when, and how to hook readers from the start)

• Includes mindset work that directly confronts your inner demons so that you know exactly how to face your fears, self-doubts, and occasional loss of momentum—and move forward despite them

• Often outlines the path toward publication so you understand what to do after completing your draft

• Creates a lasting bond between writer and coach to help you feel comfortable asking for help and support anytime you need it

Overall, coaching is the best fit for you if you’re stuck in your current draft OR you’re a relatively new writer OR you want personal support along your journey OR you’d like a repeatable process you can follow for every new novel you write.

Editing

• Works best if your manuscript is complete

• Can help you after you’ve revised your manuscript multiple times on your own (and, ideally, according to the feedback of some early readers as well), and you don’t know how to improve your story further by yourself

• Includes what’s working and not working in your manuscript as a whole, along with a breakdown of your scenes

• Provides you with an editorial letter that gives an overview of the editor’s findings (which can be difficult for writers to process in its entirety, especially if it’s a first novel!)

• Often includes a Zoom session to go over the feedback or allows a round or two of questions for the editor, but doesn’t include regular support sessions

Overall, developmental editing is the best fit for you if you already have a writing process that works well for you, you’ve finished multiple drafts of your manuscript, and you know exactly how to make changes based on an editor’s feedback.

Editing vs. coaching isn’t an either/or dilemma, by the way. Once you’ve completed multiple drafts of your manuscript, depending on its state, I often recommend hiring an editor to point out any remaining issues—items that we’ve worked on together but that you’d like to make sure are in “final draft condition.” Just be sure you know how to address the problems your editor mentions so you don’t “fix” them without deeply understanding how to do so—and then make similar mistakes all over again with a new novel.

If your goal is simply to finish your draft, start by hiring a book coach. They’ll keep you on track, help you work through all your roadblocks, give you confidence that your story works on a fundamental level, and provide you with the tools you need to repeat the process.

For me, there’s nothing more rewarding than helping writers finish the story they’re meant to write. Our stories are part of us, but they’re also meant to travel beyond us—to be shared with the world. And it’s a privilege and an honor to be part of that.

Where are you in your novel? Stuck in the drafting stage? Finished with multiple rounds of revision? Unsure where to go from here? I’d love for you to email me at [email protected] to update me on your writing journey!

Do you want to learn how to write a story that makes your target readers stand up and cheer? If you’d like support from A to Z (from brainstorming to drafting to revising to publication), book a Discovery Call with me to see if you’re a good fit to join my book coaching program, Fantasy Footsteps: Road to Publication. And if you haven’t done so already, grab your Free Guide on how to hook readers from your story’s start!