Services for creative writers

Is it your dream to write a book, but you’re stuck?

Not sure it’s ready?

Totally over it and can’t look at it one more time?

You’re in the perfect place.

I work with fiction, creative nonfiction and memoir. I am especially excited about middle grade and young adult manuscripts.

I like to imagine a rough draft of a manuscript as a lump of clay. As your editor, I get to inspect it from all angles and then get my hands dirty: identifying any structural flaws and underlying gems, lopping off anything unnecessary, and polishing, polishing, polishing to reveal the stunning sculpture hidden underneath.

My services are listed below. If your project is somewhere between stages, or you’re not quite sure what it needs, please contact me for a chat.

Manuscript assessment
(Big picture)

peachy solid.png — “I came to Jessica for a manuscript assessment for a novel I had been working on for a few years. I wish I had done it earlier! She
was able to offer carefully considered suggestions for character arc and plot issues I had been struggling with.”

Hannah Forrest, writer

Send me your Word document. I’ll bring my fresh eyes to it – and I’ll be gentle, but honest.

I’ll look at the ‘big picture’ of the work and write you a report assessing the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of narrative arc, character development, plot, voice, pace and style, and where to from here.

At the end of this stage you’ll get to see your draft with fresh eyes again. There may be new possibilities you hadn’t thought of before – a spark of inspiration. You will have clear recommendations of what to do next to make this book the best it can be.

Investment: Up to 50,000 words: $600
Each additional block of up to 10,000 words: $50 (max 120,000 words).

As a guide, the average adult fiction novel is about 80,000 words, depending on your genre (often lower for YA, romance, crime/thriller, and higher for epic fantasies and historical fiction).

Copyedit
(Line by line)

If your draft is structurally sound, it’s ready for me to dive in. I’ll edit line by line for consistency, accuracy and ease of reading.

By the end of this stage you’ll have a solid draft that reads like a book and that’s ready to be typeset (how exciting!)

Investment: In order to give you a quote that is fair for both of us, I need to see the manuscript first.

Please contact me to discuss your project.

Proofread
(Final polish)

Your manuscript is back from the designer and looks like a book! It has a stunning cover, an enticing blurb and nicely typeset pages in the font of your dreams.

It’s now ready for a final check, because little errors can slip through the copyedit stage and can even be introduced during design. As well as running a fine-tooth comb through the text, I’ll check your contents, page numbers, headers and footers, and I’ll triple-check the spelling on the front cover (you’d be amazed…)

At the end of this stage – guess what – it’s ready to be sent to the printer. Get pumped for that heart-stopping ‘press print’ moment.

Investment: Just like the copyedit, I really need to see the manuscript first to give you a fair quote. Please contact me.

Popular package:

Manuscript assessment + first 10 pages copyedit

This is a great value package to start getting your book shipshape.

Inclusions:

‘Big-picture’ manuscript assessment of your draft with recommendations
Copyedit of first 10 pages to bring sentence-level suggestions to your attention and give you an understanding of craft issues and how to correct them. You can then apply this knowledge to the rest of your draft.

Investment: I’ll need to know the total word count and see the first 10 pages before I can put this quote together for you. Please contact me.