Follow along with an editing project

Louise first learned to ride a motorbike at the age of 50 and spent her retirement riding across Europe. She asked Word Dragon to edit her collection of travel notes and emails into a book, that she could sell at the end of talks about her experiences. Having discussed her requirements, we decided on a narrative and pulled the files into a roughly chronological order before the project began in earnest.

Following an initial read-through to evaluate how much work was required, I sent a summary of recommendations and a quotation based on a developmental edit of around 85,000 words.

Here's how a small piece of the writing progressed.

The original copy

In the first chapter, Louise passes her motorbike test and goes to buy some kit to wear on her new bike. This was her draft:

The ideas were there, but the text needed tidying up in terms of punctuation, readability and tone.

The edit

I made some minor changes directly in the text, highlighted in yellow on this example. This ensured that the punctuation was accurate and the voice and approach was consistent with the rest of the book. I also made some more substantial changes at sentence level, to improve the readability.

Louise had asked me to keep her voice and phrasing throughout, so I also added some comments. This showed clearly where she needed to provide more input and outlined what was necessary, enabling her to retain control.