At the very beginning of creating a worthy publication, it is very important to get input and feedback about the overarching themes and thoughts you have in mind. It is natural and healthy to get excited and be passionate about the writing you do. An evaluation from an experienced editor, however, will help you consider things in a practical light and get a realistic appraisal of your manuscript.

This is sometimes called conceptual editing. In other words, I can help you work on the foundational issues in a number of ways: organizationally, thematically, biblically and theologically, story elements, characters, or overall emphasis. This does not involve making changes to the wording. It is a general critique of your rough draft that leads to a fantastic 2nd draft. 

This is sometimes called substantive editing or a full edit. In other words, it is getting down to working with the paragraphs. Is this section clear and does it have all the information it should? Does this paragraph belong at the end of the chapter? Are there better ways to bring your ideas across to the reader? We want to fill every page with quality thoughts. These are the kinds of issues to be considered at this stage.

How do you transfer your ideas to the readers' minds? Obviously the specific words you use are significant, but so is the tone, the logic, and the quality of your phrasing. In line editing, as the name implies, we will consider the impact of the words on each line.

At this stage nearly all the structural and conceptual issues as well as the major wording changes have been worked through. We can now focus on the final touches and polishing all the hard work you have done. Proofreading is the final stretch, but with copy editing, your final goal is in sight!

When you have your material nearly ready to show to publishers, you still want to be sure that any problems of grammar, spelling, and punctuation have been caught and corrected. This is the quickest type of editing, since it does not involve consideration of the concepts and content of your work, and yet, it is extremely important! (Proofreading can often be done along with copy editing.)