You’ve finished your draft. Poured your heart into your characters, built entire worlds, and untangled plots that kept you up at night. Now it’s time to send your baby to a professional developmental editor to ensure your hard work is ready for publication.
But wait—before you hit “send” and hand your manuscript over to a developmental editor, a little preparation can make a huge difference. The better shape your draft is in, the more meaningful and actionable your feedback will be.
Here’s how to set yourself—and your story—up for success.
1. Understand What a Developmental Edit Really Is
A developmental edit focuses on the big picture. This includes:
Plot structure and pacing
Character development and arcs
World-building consistency
Themes and narrative cohesion
Point of view, tone, and voice
This is not the stage for fixing typos or comma splices. (That’s for copyediting or proofreading.) The goal here is to refine the foundation of your story.
2. Finish Your Draft (Really Finish It)
Don’t send a half-finished manuscript or one where the final chapters are still “in your head.” Editors need to see the full arc to provide meaningful insights on structure and resolution. So, don’t hit send until you have a fully finished, fleshed out manuscript.
Your editor will thank you!
3. Revise Before You Submit
This isn’t about perfection—it’s about effort.
Run through your manuscript at least once with your own critical eye. Tighten obvious plot holes, trim scenes that drag, and flag anything that doesn’t feel “right.” A developmental editor can help fix bigger issues, but your work will benefit if you’ve already done some heavy lifting.
Ask yourself:
Does every scene move the story forward?
Are my character motivations clear and believable?
Are there any subplots that fizzle out?
Also, mark places where you know something is off or doesn’t feel right, so your editor knows you really need help in those areas.
4. Prepare a Brief Synopsis
It doesn’t have to be beautiful, but give your editor a 1–2 page summary of the main plot, subplots, and character arcs. This helps them see your intent, which is crucial when recommending changes.
Let your editor know what genre you plan to publish in. This step helps the editor make sure you are hitting all the marks needed to make a book stand out in the market.
5. Include a Note About Your Goals
Are you planning to query agents? Self-publish? Do you want this story to be a series starter? Let your editor know. They’ll tailor their feedback accordingly.
You can also mention:
What you’re most concerned about (e.g., pacing, character likability, opening hook)
What kind of feedback isn’t helpful for you (e.g., grammar nitpicks)
Your ideal reader (age, genre expectations, etc.)
6. Format It for Readability
Make your manuscript easy on the eyes:
Double-spaced
12 pt. font (Times New Roman or similar)
One-inch margins
Page numbers included
A title page with your name and contact info
I have had clients send me manuscripts in some odd formats that are not really conducive with tracking changes and leaving decent comments, I almost always ask for a word document or end up importing it into word myself.
7. Be Emotionally Prepared
This might be the hardest part.
A developmental edit is in-depth, honest, and sometimes brutal. But it’s not personal. Your editor wants your story to succeed, and the best feedback will challenge you to rethink, revise, and reimagine.
Approach it with curiosity, not defensiveness.
Conclusion
A developmental edit can transform your manuscript from “almost there” to “absolutely unputdownable.” With the right prep, you’ll make the most of the process—and come out of it a stronger writer with a sharper story.
Your editor is your ally. So show up ready to work—and ready to grow.
Do you have any questions about developmental editing that you would like to ask an editor? If so, leave them in the comments, and I will answer them all!
About Jenn
Jenn Windrow is an Award winning author, developmental editor, and illustrator.
She loves characters who have a pinch of spunk, a dash of attitude, and a large dollop of sex appeal. Top it all off with a huge heaping helping of snark, and you’ve got the ingredients for the kind of fast-paced stories she loves to read and write. Home is a suburb of it’s-so-hot-my-shoes-have-melted-to-the-pavement Phoenix. Where she lives with her husband, two teenagers, and a slew of animals that seem to keep following her home, at least that’s what she claims.
If you're like me and chasing the indie-author dream of selling your work online and watching the dollars roll in, you may have noticed your writing time has been replaced with website woes. Things you never planned for like broken pages, clunky checkout processes, and costly plugins just to keep the site functional, wear away at creativity.
WordPress worries began sucking up my time, my money, and my mojo.
Every aspect of the WordPress universe started eating up a ton of my writing minutes. For example, my sales process (which is necessary) required research, installation, and testing before running it live for my audience. In recent months, when I'd commit to a version of my website, it was a gamble whether it would work. I found myself trying to squeeze in sales after installing new plugins and before the next big update hit.
My marketing strategies felt like an ongoing series of "throwing something in front of my audience and hoping for the best." Hoping they had the patience to stick with me through a business model that never seemed to stabilize.
This was not the way I wanted to run a business.
Taking a Risk
So, I made a switch, from the accepted norm and online author WordPress standard, and I moved my entire author site to Payhip. There is an entire section on Payhip below, I promise. But here are the differences that made me switch:
This platform is different in that it has a cost structure I can grow into as my sales expand. This makes it easy to keep costs within my margins.
It's a store-forward platform, ideal for selling digital books and physical items.
The process for building the new site was easy.
The flexibility to modify their templates to fit my branding worked well for me.
All of the above is included with their regular fees.
Not only did I reclaim hours of writing time each week, but I also simplified how I connect with readers and sell my books.
The risk of moving my site was also lessened when I backed up my WordPress files. If I need or want to, I can reconstruct my old site again.
Whether you’re an indie author or just toying with the idea, this post walks through why I made the switch, my experience so far, and why you might want to, too.
What was my WordPress setup?
For clarity, it’s important to understand my experience with WordPress. As a blogging host with Writers in the Storm Blog for many years, I consider myself proficient behind the scenes on the platform.
My own site was hosted by Bluehost, and I stayed longer than I should have because of a great multi-year “deal.” This led to many frustrations while planning book launches. I suffered through poor customer service and irregular ghost problems that caused chunks of my website to randomly disappear. I followed that up with a year of the much-more-stable Site Ground.
Bottom line: Everything was costly and took up way too much of my creative energy to run. So, I started to look into other options.
There were several considerations I needed to address to move my site to a different type of platform.
I have a designated domain and emails, which I worried would disappear.
I have an active blog with years of archives.
My presence and footprint in the analytics. I was concerned that if I switched to a new website, I'd lose all that hard work of driving traffic to my site.
The Problem with WordPress for Solo Author-Entrepreneurs
Let’s be real for a second here. WordPress is powerful. But for many authors, it’s overkill.
Here’s what I struggled with:
Plugin overload
If you’ve played with WordPress, you understand the layers of plugins you need. It quickly becomes a daisy chain of technology—one for blogging, one for security, several to make the checkout process work, especially for taxes and shipping. And others to keep everything compliant with changing rules and laws.
Security fears
Having a WordPress site is like owning a piece of internet real estate. And if your digital storefront isn’t protected properly, your site is vulnerable to hackers and overwhelming levels of spam. One missed update and your site is wide open to a whole host of problems.
Hidden costs
Hosting, themes, plugins, and developer help add up quickly. There was a time when free versions were viable options, but as WordPress evolved, so did the costs for each plugin. Many are now yearly subscriptions, adding up to hundreds of dollars more. Other essential costs, like having an email service to deliver your blog and ads, and paying for domain names and emails each year, also contribute to the rising cost of owning your own website.
Distraction from writing
Ultimately, I spent more time fine-tuning the store than creating. Content creation for marketing and incentives for my audience took over my creative writing time. This eroded my energy, and my manuscript word count suffered.
The final straw...
During a launch week, one plugin conflict broke my cart system entirely. That’s when I knew I needed out.
What is PayHip? (And Why I Tried It)
PayHip is an online platform that lets you sell digital or physical products directly to customers with no monthly fee. There are many platforms available now, and many have tiered pay structures. Here is why PayHip made sense for my author website switch.
Easy-to-use Storefront Templates
My store setup was easy. I chose one of their templates and added my brand kit to it. It was fairly stress-free. I was able to set up my payments, products, and email service within a weekend.
No Monthly Cost
The monthly fees are simple. For a 0.5% transaction fee, I can use all of their features, with unlimited products and unlimited revenue. There is also a monthly fee option of $29.00 if I want to have a 0.2% transaction fee in the future. This pay-as-I-go and grow model offers me the flexibility to maintain a lower overhead for my business.
Automatic EU/UK VAT Handling
This feature is a relief, knowing that I don’t have to research the legalities of selling to European countries. The stress of keeping up with ever-changing tax rules can take a lot of an indie author’s energy.
Built-in Checkout and Delivery
The selling process is seamless, and my test products were delivered smoothly. This platform accommodates selling physical products as well. I have had no issues with payments.
Integration with Email Marketing Platforms
The system easily integrated with my email program. It offers integration with most commonly used platforms including MailerLite and ConvertKit. I am using SendFox and have had no problems with email delivery.
It’s like having Shopify or Gumroad and a basic website in one dashboard, but more affordable and tailored for creatives. My writing has become the focus again.
Want to see my storefront? Take a look around HERE.
What I Gave Up (And Why It Was Worth It)
Of course, no tool is perfect. Here’s what I gave up:
Deep customization – PayHip has a limited number of themes and layout blocks.
Advanced SEO tools – No Yoast or keyword analysis dashboards.
Traditional blogging features – You can post updates, but PayHip isn’t a blog-first platform.
But I gained peace of mind and writing time. And honestly? That was the trade I needed to make.
How I Made the Switch (in One Weekend)
It’s easier than you think. Here’s what my transition looked like:
Backed up my WordPress site and exported my email list.
Chose what to keep (ebooks, about page, newsletter opt-in).
Created my free PayHip account and selected a storefront template.
Added my brand kit and modified the site for my brand.
Uploaded my products with descriptions, covers, and pricing.
Set up my domain (you can use PayHip’s free subdomain or your own).
Redirected key links from my old site to my new store.
Need help? PayHip has step-by-step guides for everything. I reached out to customer service and got a human response in both chat and email. The response time was less than 24 hours for each question.
SEO, Email, and Branding
I was worried about visibility, but PayHip plays surprisingly well with:
Email platforms – Easy newsletter signup buttons and delivery for lead magnets
Search engines – Custom meta titles and SEO slugs for each product
Consistent branding – Upload your logo, custom banner, button colors, and fonts
And since I now share links from social media and my newsletter, most of my traffic lands exactly where it should: on the product page, not lost in blog archives.
One disclosure: Unpairing my emails was a little more complicated than I wanted to try on my own. I used the services of our in-house technology maven, Lisa Norman. She offers one-on-one time, custom built websites, and many classes like this one on website basics.
Final Thoughts: Less Tech, More Time to Write
As authors, our job is to write, connect, and create, not to wrestle with broken pages and plugin updates.
PayHip gave me back creative control, without the stress of website management. And for the first time in a long time, I feel like my website is working for me, not the other way around.
If you’ve been itching to simplify, don’t wait for a meltdown. Explore PayHip. You might find, like I did, that it’s more than enough.
What has your experience been with your author website? Share one recommendation or writer-beware moment for our readers in the comments below.
About Kris
Kris Maze a speculative fiction author who writes at the intersection of science fiction, psychological horror, and emotional realism. She’s a longtime classroom educator and contributor to Writers in the Storm Blog, where she helps fellow authors elevate their craft. Her work leans into dark wit and layered characters navigating extraordinary situations with flawed, human hearts. To see her book collections (also under the pen name Krissy Knoxx) visit her website.
And sometimes, she babysits her daughter’s kitties.
"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don't put it there."…Anton Chekhov
Chekhov, the Russian playwright, also wrote short stories, essays, and instructions for young writers. The above admonition is probably his most famous writerly advice. It’s aimed at playwrights, but it’s true of all fiction writing.
His rule is telling us to remove everything that has no relevance to the story.
If chapter one says your heroine won a bunch of trophies for archery which she displays prominently alongside her replica of a medieval English longbow, she’d better darn well shoot an arrow before the story is done.
But Don’t Details Give Insight into Character?
What if that longbow is only there to show us what her apartment looks like? It’s very different from shadow boxes displaying a Barbie collection, or garish lampshades that would make a decorator cry. Décor gives important insight into a character, doesn’t it?
It depends. Yes, we do want to use details to set tone and give depth to our characters, but the key is how you stressthose details when you first present them.
If there's a whole page about those archery trophies, or the characters have a conversation about the importance of the longbow in English history, eventually you need to shoot some arrows.
Now, not every lampshade the author mentions has to show up two chapters later on the head of a drunken ex-boyfriend, but you need to be careful how much emphasis you put on that lampshade.
If you lovingly describe a terrible lampshade in several paragraphs and the lampshade never appears again, you have a forgotten “gun.”
Mysteries Need Red Herrings, Don’t They?
What if you write mysteries? Mysteries need irrelevant clues and red herrings. Otherwise, the story will be over before chapter seven.
But mystery writers need to manage their herrings. If the deceased met his demise via arrow, probably shot by a medieval English longbow, then our heroine is going to look like a viable suspect to the local constabulary.
Only we're sure she didn't do it because she's our hero! Okay, that means the longbow and the trophies are red herrings.
But they still need to be dealt with. Maybe not fired like Chekhov's gun, but they need to come back into the story and be reckoned with. Like maybe the real killer visited her apartment earlier when delivering Grubhub, then broke in later to "borrow" the longbow in order to make our heroine look like the murderous archer.
Is Your Subplot a Chekhov's Gun?
I've been running into the “forgotten gun” problem in a lot of fiction lately — both indie and traditionally published.
I sometimes find myself flipping through whole chapters that have nothing to do with the main story. That's because the subplot isn't hooked in with the main plot. It's just hanging there, not doing anything, like a pistol on the wall.
The subplot has become the unfired Chekhov's gun.
For instance, one mystery had the protagonist go through endless chapters of police academy training after the discovery of the body. The mysterious murder wasn't even mentioned for a good six chapters. I kept trying to figure out how her crush on a fellow aspiring law enforcement officer was going to solve the mystery.
I slowly realized it wasn't going to.
None of the romance stuff had to do with the mystery. When I finally flipped through to a place where the main plot resumed, the hot fellow student didn't even make an appearance. He'd already gone off with a hotter female recruit.
It's fine to have a romance subplot in a mystery — in fact, that's my favorite kind. But that romance has to take place while some mystery-solving is going on. And hopefully it will provide some hindrances to the proceedings, and maybe some comic relief.
But if that romance doesn't "trigger" a new plot twist or reveal a clue, then it's an unfired gun on the wall. It's just hanging there, annoying your reader, who expects it to be relevant.
Don’t Create a Chekhov's Gun with Too Many Named Characters
Another "unfired Chekov's gun" situation often comes up with the introduction of minor characters and "spear-carriers."
You don't want to introduce the Grubhub guy by telling us how he got the nickname "Green Arrow" — followed by two paragraphs about his archery expertise — unless he's going to reappear later in the story. And he’d better be doing something more archery-related than delivering egg rolls and moo goo gai pan.
This is a common problem with newbie fiction. In creative writing courses we're taught to make characters vivid and alive. So every time we introduce a new character, no matter how minor, we want to make them memorable. We want to give them names and create great backstories for them.
But you should fight the urge, no matter what the creative writing teacher in your head is saying.
If the character is not going to reappear or be involved with the plot or subplot, don't give him a name. Don't even give him a quirky outfit. Just call him "the Grubhub guy" or "the Uber driver" or "the barista."
A named character becomes a Chekhov's gun. The reader will remember the name and expect the character to come back and do something explosive.
Research Can Create Lots of Unfired Guns
Many unfired guns come from what I call research-itis. That's when the author did a ton of research, and dammit, they're going to tell you every single fact they dug up.
You'll get three chapters on the importance of the English longbow in the Hundred Years War, and how it was quicker and more lethal than the crossbows of the French army. Then there’s a chapter on the vital role of the longbow in the battle of Agincourt, and a study of the Robin Hood ballads and the part the longbow played in the Robin Hood myth.
None of which has anything to do with the dead guy in the living room with the arrow in his back.
If the reader doesn't need to know something to solve the mystery and it's not a red herring, keep it to yourself.
Although a lot of that research will come in very handy for blogposts and newsletters when you're marketing the book, so don't delete a word of those research notes!
What about you, writers? Do you ever have a problem with an unfired Chekhov’s gun?
About Anne
Anne R. Allen is an award-winning blogger and the author of 13 funny mysteries and 2 how-to books for writers. She’s currently published by Thalia Press. Her bestselling Camilla Randall Mysteries are a mash-up of mystery, rom-com, and satire. They feature perennially down-on-her-luck former socialite Camilla Randall — who is a magnet for murder, mayhem, and Mr. Wrong. But she always solves the mystery in her quirky, but oh-so-polite way. Anne is a contributor to Writer’s Digest and The Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market. She’s the former artistic director of the Patio Playhouse in Escondido, CA and now lives on the foggy Central Coast of California.
The Hour of the Moth
When Camilla Randall allows a neighboring business to hold a “Moth Hour” storytelling event in the courtyard of her beachy California bookstore, she finds an inconvenient corpse left in the audience after the event. The deceased, a storyteller famous for his appearances on NPR, turns out to have a shady past — and a lot of enemies. Unfortunately, Camilla’s boyfriend Ronzo is one of them. When it turns out the famous storyteller has been murdered, Ronzo becomes a “person of interest,” and goes into hiding.
It’s up to Camilla — and her cat Buckingham — to find out which of the quirky storytellers who attended the Moth event is the real killer. Each of their stories contains a clue to the mystery. It seems one of the storytellers is in possession of some stolen diamonds, and another, who first appears to be a helpful friend, is anything but.
Meanwhile Ronzo is incommunicado, the bodies pile up, and a series of mysterious catastrophes makes Camilla fear she’s losing her mind. Then, with the help of her drag queen friend Marva, Camilla has to save her best friends from the murderer before it’s too late.
