Jim Newcomer, Ph.D., Freelance Editor
Support, Improvement, and Certainty for writers at all stages
Memoirs
Novels
Non-Fiction
Developmental Editing
I can take a close look at your plot from inciting incident to climax, your characters and how they change over the story, your pacing, your scene structures, and especially your voice. At the end of that process, I normally provide an editorial letter of several pages that suggests way to improve your work along with my marked-up copy of your manuscript with comments added throughout, occasionally including grammatical or mechanical issues if they're indicated.
Line editing
I can help you sharpen your manuscript line by line, while maintaining your voice as you create it, with a focus on style, clarity, strong sentences, grammar, and word choice.
from first draft to -- as far a you can go
Support for Writers – What Do You Need, When Do You Need It?
Email me<jim@newcomeredits.com> to set up a free conversation about your book, whether it’s a novel or a memoir,where you are in your journey, and your purpose in writing it — the vision that guides you. We may also arrange a free sample edit so you can see what you will get.
You may also want to talk about Coaching –
Before your draft is finished, a reader who is in conversation with you as you try one thing and then another, a source of support who is on your side and can give you a nudge once in awhile, can provide real benefit.
Whether you are preparing to query agents and seek a publisher or plan to publish on your own, you can do better if you can share drafts of your basic query or your final manuscript as you prepare to format it as a book.
A central concern in editing: maintaining your voice –
your style, yes, but more than that. If you are a writer, you probably know what I mean. Whether you are a beginning writer or a veteran, your voice is what gains and holds your readers’ interest – authoritarian, urgent, comic – or sassy?
I provide support to ensure that your style is consistent, that your story’s pacing is right, that your voice shines through, that your characters are vivid, and that readers can follow your MC through the whole journey and understand why they change in the end.
And I can promise to remind you every day
that to be a truly great writer, you’ll need to take us readers to places in our hearts where we see into deep parts of life that speak to all of us.
Remember what William Faulkner said in his speech when he accepted the Nobel Prize? He said it is always about one thing:
“. . . the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself, which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
Oh, and did I mention complete, grammatical, coherent, and significant?
On the practical side, I offer a few other benefits that you may not have anticipated, but nearly all my clients have rejoiced in:
- speeding up the process – You may have what it takes to write a brilliant work, but revising can be confusing. It’s complicated. How do you know if you spent too much time explaining your MC’s motives and stakes? Or describing the scene? Or if you skipped over your setting so quickly that your reader can’t understand your MC’s choices?
- Bringing to you back to BIC (butt in chair), the sine qua non quality of every writer. When things begin to drag and people gain your attention to other things, a note from your editor works like magic to regain your attention, maybe even to provide a deadline.
- Avoiding wrong advice from someone who tells you they know it all. It’s important that the suggestions you receive point you in the right direction. Wrong advice may mean you spend valuable time discovering the path back to the main road – if you discover it at all. Like many of us, I wish I had worked harder in college, but at Princeton, where I was an English major, even I learned to distinguish good writing from not-so-good. My promise is that I will share that with you – unflinching.
- Above All – Getting it Right so you achieve what you started out to do: writing a good, perhaps even great, book that you are proud of, that may attract an agent and publisher, and that in the end, readers want to read.
If you want to reach readers I invite you to work with me. I am a professional who will be on your side – demanding high standards, but encouraging you always as well as challenging you.
I’ll ask you what your purpose is in writing. I won’t be satisfied until you are writing your best. Along the way I’ll point out unneeded words and suggest ways to remodel awkward sentences. I’ll suggest aspects of the story that may be missing, leading you deeper into self-discovery, and I’ll respect your true voice.
Who am ?
If you look at my Portfolio page, you’ll see that I have a range of interests and experience. In addition to memoirs, these include:
- Literary and Historical Fiction
- Non-fiction, focused on sustainability and environmental issues, politics, and history (My Ph.D. from Stanford, is in Political Science.)
- Academic – Social Sciences (with experience editing texts by Chinese scholars in English)
I also work in the fields of the practical – newsletters that need editing, web copy that isn’t quite right – yet – and reports that you want to organize so that recipients get your message and respond.
If you are writing, and you this seems right to you, we might be a good fit. The probability is high enough that it’s worth exploring further.
So go ahead, start by exploring. Scroll down to the Contact Me button next to my photo toward the bottom. Use it and let’s see where it leads.
And just so you know what my motivation is, the bare truth is that in the long run I succeed when you succeed. That’s the only way it can work.
SERVICES INCLUDE
Developmental Editing
Read Your Draft for the big structural issues, raising questions that include, first, is it significant? Does it matter? Do you make your reader care?
Then: Is it coherent? What Makes it Work (or Not)?
Are your characters and story arc clear? Will you readers fall in love with your main character (MC)? Does your MC face a challenge and act to overcome it – and change in the process? Are the Stakes high enough to matter?
Taking it scene by scene –does each scene do what’s needed? The pacing – does the narrative slow down or lose its way? How could you strengthen it (or rescue it)?
That’s what we do at the stage of Developmental Editing.
Line Editing
Are your chapters and scenes placed in the right order? Does each scene have a structure that makes sense to your readers and transitions to the next?
Your paragraphs and sentences – are they clear and readable, and have you placed them in the right order so the trajectory is clear to your reader as it unfolds?
When Richard Simon was an editor at Simon and Schuster, they say he gave every staff member a bronze paperweight that read:
“GIVE THE READER A BREAK.”
This is when the first red pencil work begins
Copy editing
This is the stage that gets us down to honing individual sentences and paragraphs, the kind of editing we usually associate with the red pencil and the squiggles between lines.
While I do not claim to be a copyeditor, I can seldom restrain my urges to fix sentences and catch spelling and grammar errors as I go.
It’s the traffic cop in me. I won’t apologize, because my persnickety reading helps you improve your writing.
I often find sentences that would work better if you shortened or combined them. Or if you shifted from the passive to active voice. Or put the subject of the sentence where it belongs. The point is to make your reader want to read more.
Coaching
Some of my clients have relied on me to support them along the path, and I do it with ongoing conversations, mostly for free. I ask questions, dig for information, encourage by pointing out the good parts, and suggest things that keep their BICs, and therefore their projects alive and moving ahead.
This has been for me the most rewarding aspect of the work, but it seldom starts as a coaching engagement. Usually we start with developmental editing, and it just turns into coaching as we go along working together on an interesting and significant book.
Isn’t that what you want to write?
My Promises to You, the Writer
I promise quick responses and a close, supportive relationship.
When you write a memoir, especially, editor and writer need to build mutual trust. You are, after all, revealing deep issues, the fundamental values of your life, Your editor must respect your process as well as respecting you. I promise that respect, and I also promise that while I will point out your triumphs, the places where your genius shines, I will maintain an unwavering standard of professional quality that will guide you toward producing great writing.
I have an idol, a great editor, the late Robert Gottlieb, and in Avid Reader, his autobiography, he set out the rules he followed, which I emulate. He wrote what he considered the basics of editing:
- ‘Get back to your writers right away.’
- ‘It’s the writer’s book, not yours.’
- ‘Try to help make the book a better version of what it is, not into something that it isn’t.’
- ‘Spend your strength and your ego in the service of the writer, not for their own sake – or yours.’ And
- ‘It’s a service job.’”
Those are the promises I make to my writers, and I do my best to keep them.
Member:
For a free sample edit and consultation (500-1,000 words or so), email me at <jim@newcomeredits> and tell me about what you are writing and what you might want support on. Let’s begin a conversation.
A Word About Rates
Getting real for a moment: a note about my rates: I base my rate on EFA averages. So they are reasonable – more than a carpenter, less than a software engineer. No surprise there.
Normally I work fast, and for some projects I ]charge by the hour, for others by the word – since editing is different for every client, every draft.
To make that decision, I’ll ask for a sample (1000- 2500 words) to edit and calculate the speed at which I might work – and then give you an estimate.
Then we can generate together a scope of the work you want and a general range of cost.