So, you show your manuscript to a well meaning friend/colleague/family member, and they say, “I like it, but, um, don’t get me wrong, but I think you need an editor.” Or you are correcting a news story [raises paw] or internet article, and someone says, “You should be an editor!”

What sort of editor? In the second instance, they probably mean copy editing. This is what most of us think of, and mean, when we talk about “It’s being edited/I hired an editor.” Copy editors go through your work and correct typos, excessive comma use or lack thereof, spilling arrears, hyphenation problems, homophone/homonym confusion, and so on. Think of all the things your English teachers flagged and red-penned back in the day, and you have what copy editors look for. Some will also point out usage problems, like British-English vs American-English, or turns of phrase that are not felicitous. However, that is not their primary job.

A style editor, sometimes called line editor, is somewhat different. He will flag some typos and major errors, but what he’s really looking at is tone and language at the sentence-by-sentence level. He will catch tics and overused phrases, cliches if they don’t fit the character’s voice and genre of the novel, and things like run on sentences or fragments. If a term or phrase has taken on a specific slang meaning that might not work with your story, a style editor will flag it. As you can guess, this is the most detailed kind of edit, and generally the most expensive. I had a style editor for three of my books, and for two of them, the style editor caught a lot of possible problems. His recommendations improved the books considerably.

The other major kinds of editor are … less helpful if you have finished the manuscript. A developmental editor is the person you hire when you have a vague idea and some characters, or you have an outline but are not sure which direction to take it. The developmental editor doesn’t worry about typos, grammar, and so on. She’s concerned with overall plot arc, if your characters have room for development, and if the idea is even workable. Some are not, at least not at your current skill level, and she will help you sort that out. A structural edit is when someone goes through and says, “where’s the girlfriend the hero is supposed to rescue?” or “there seem to be steps missing between the arrival of the villain and the big party after … a battle? Cut-throat poker tournament?” They can also peg some genre-specific problems, but not always.