Working with a critique partner is a time honored tradition of the writing community when you’re first ready to share your novel with other. And critique partners can do a lot to help you improve your manuscript! But they can’t do everything. Here are a few things that a developmental edit can include that just aren’t feasible for a critique partner:

A Story Structure Checkpoint Analysis

Getting the essential story structure checkpoints down is the key to large-scale pacing for your novel. While you may be able to look up generalized information for these online, it’s uncommon to find something immediately applicable about them beyond working with a professional. For many critique partners, this kind of feedback is more likely to come in the form of them having gotten bored or finding a particular section difficult to get through. It will require a lot more leg work for you to uncover exactly how the structure affects that section of the text and how to re-arrange it.

A Breakdown of Genre Conventions

There are many reasons you should be thinking about conventions of your genre, and you probably already are! This can become complex, however, if you’re working on a novel that falls between genres like an action adventure with elements of thriller and fantasy or a crime novel set in a dystopian land with a romance subplot. It’s not possible to cover every obligatory scene laid out for all of these genres at once, and sussing out which apply to your particular novel can be complex. The most you’re likely to get from a critique partner, if they’re really good, is that it feels like there’s something missing. It’s possible they’re an expert at writing their preferred genre, but that isn’t going to apply unless you’ve got a lot of similarities including age range and length.

A Scene-by-Scene Polarity Shift Analysis

Sometimes when you get feedback from a beta reader or critique partner, a lack of polarity shift for two or three scenes in a row can be the culprit that leads to a boring or difficult section as well. This is how pacing works on a scene-by-scene level, but it can make a huge impact of the reader experience overall when a few abnormal shifts happen throughout a novel. A developmental editor will track polarity shifts from scene to scene while doing their initial analysis to later find patterns that need adjusting to keep readers turning pages. Then they use these disruptions as spaces to insert editorial direction including reordering scenes, making cuts, or adding in missing pieces.

A Style Sheet for Editing Out Inconsistencies

Though a developmental editor generally focuses on edits with a big-picture implication, these same editors work as copyeditors and line editors as well. So, it’s commonplace for them to keep a running list of inconsistencies they notice while reviewing your manuscript to give you as part of your editorial letter. It’s a great jumping off point to help you develop a style guide that helps simplify your copy edit later. You may get one or two pet peeves from a critique partner, but a list of styles is very uncommon for that level of review.

A Dissection of Literary Trend Growth Opportunities

Critique partners can be some of the most advanced readers you’ll come across in the early stages of editing your novel, but what they often don’t have a wide breadth of is industry knowledge. They might have some insight from a few agents they follow on twitter or a sense of what they need to know for their own work, but that’s not always going to be immediately applicable to your story. By contrast, it’s a professional editor’s job to keep up with literary trends and have a sense of what’s coming next for the market. If you have opportunities in your text that can be expanded upon to help snag an agent, they’re going to know. Though future trends are always a bit of guess work, having a good sense of the market today can make a big difference when it comes time to query.

Don’t get us wrong. We love working with critique partners. But there is more you can get when working with a developmental editor if you decide that you’re not getting as far with a critique partner as you had hoped. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting a little extra help!