Nonfiction Developmental Editing

Nonfiction developmental editing is normally the first step an author takes after they’ve finished the first drafts of their manuscript. When I do a developmental edit, I am primarily concerned with the following three tasks:

1. Is the book structured in an intuitive way?
2. Did the author put enough information in their book?
3. What information can we cut to make the book more concise?

This doesn’t mean every single book is full of issues related to these three tasks; however, these are the most common concerns that most developmental editing tasks fall into. So, I thought it could be helpful to go over these three categories.

Developmental editors look at the overall structure of your nonfiction manuscript.

Structure in a nonfiction book—whether it’s a memoir, self-help, or business book—comes in several forms. There is not one structure that fits every book, so the one you choose will always depend on the type of book you’re writing. Below, I’ve outlined three popular nonfiction book structures, though there are more options out there for authors.

Nonfiction Book Structure: Timeline

This type of book structure is best for memoir authors because they’re typically writing about an event or a series of events. It’s important to note here that simply because we speak of time, we don’t necessarily means it has to be linear. Timelines in a memoir—exactly like in fiction—can jump around as you dive deeper into the story. What we need to understand about time in a book is that it’s arranged in a specific way.

The most straightforward way to do this is to order events by date and time. So, let’s say someone is writing a memoir about pregnancy and childbirth, specifically about high-risk situations. They’ll likely talk about things in this order if they’re using a straightforward timeline format:

1. Life before the pregnancy
2. Finding out about the pregnancy
3. A series of symptoms that lead to a diagnosis
4. The struggle over the remaining months of the pregnancy
5. The delivery
6. Life post-partum
7. Insights about the entire journey and their future

With this simple structure as a guide, the developmental editor can arrange the story in an intuitive way that takes the reader through the same journey the author took—from conception to birth. (Though, hopefully the details on conception aren’t a play-by-play.)

Nonfiction Book Structure: Problem Solving

Many books start as an answer to a problem the author experienced in their lives and couldn’t easily find the solution to it. This is a great way to start a book, especially when the problem likely affects hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. In this structure, the beginning of the book typically tells the story of how the author encountered a problem.

Perhaps a self-help author is writing a book about caregiving for elderly parents on limited resources. Here is how one such book might be structured:

1. Detail the background of the family dynamics and how this affects caregiving
2. Life of the caregiver before their parents’ health deteriorated and how they transitioned to caregiving
3. The diagnosis or series of events that led to their awareness of the problem and how they coped with this new information
4. The many struggles and obstacles the author experienced and how they solved these challenges
5. The end of their caregiving journey (through death or some other major event) and how it affected them
6. How this experienced shaped their mindset and future

Nonfiction Book Structure: Narrative

This is another structure that works well for memoir, biography, autobiography, and true crime because it deals with telling a story, much like a fiction author might. The way these stories are structured are much more complex because they deal with the following elements:

• Characters
• Setting
• Plot
• Conflict

With this structure, a developmental editor analyzes how all these elements work together to tell the overall story and makes suggestions for improvements when something doesn’t seem to fit.

Developmental editors help you identify where any content might be missing.

When you’re writing your nonfiction book, it can be hard to strike a balance between putting too much information or not enough. While having too much information can feel overwhelming to some readers, not having enough can be a bit more detrimental because it can affect their understanding of your content.

Since we don’t want to create that divide between you and your readers, we work to supplement through the following ways:

• Adding information from expert sources that support your theories
• Identifying content that leaves us with more questions than answers
• Clarifying content that doesn’t make sense
• Adding context to complex theories and ideas

Once all those blanks are filled in, you’ll create a much more intuitive reading experience for the people who need your book the most.

Developmental editors help you identify where you’ve got too much content.

On the surface, it sounds like having too much content wouldn’t be so detrimental because it would offer more value to your readers. But sometimes that “extra” content can add more confusion to your nonfiction narrative.

A great developmental editor can help you identify and tighten up those loose areas, making your content as concise and targeted as it can be.

Because, at the end of the day, that’s the job of the nonfiction developmental editor: to make sure you have the right amount of content, context, and support to make their lives easier.

When combined with the work your editor does on your book’s structure, your book becomes much closer to being the exact thing your reader has been looking for. It’s not cheap. It’s not easy. It’s not quick. But in the end, it’s worth it.