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Stage 1 of 6 · Editorial Review

Manuscript Analysis: Your Whole Novel Read, Not Scored

A manuscript analysis should leave you knowing what your book is doing and what to change first, in words you can act on. Edith's is the Editorial Review, the first of her six stages. She reads your entire novel, up to 150,000 words, in one pass, and writes you an editorial letter on it, with the points behind the letter set out one by one. There are no charts and no grade, because a critique is not a number. It starts free: she reads your first 10,000 words and writes you the letter on your opening, no credit card needed. The whole-book analysis is $15.

In short

Manuscript analysis is a whole-book read of a draft that reports what is working, what is not, and why. Software does it in two ways: by measuring the text, or by reading it and writing a report. An editor does it by reading the book and writing to the author. Edith works the editor's way: she reads your whole novel at once and writes you an editorial letter, then talks each point through with you. Your first 10,000 words are free, the whole book is $15, and the $15 is credited toward the $249 complete edit.

Read my first 10,000 words, freeSee how it works

Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you an editorial letter, no credit card needed. The whole book, with every point open to discuss, is $15. Never used to train anything, and yours to delete.

What manuscript analysis is

The phrase covers two different jobs, and it helps to know which one you are buying. The first is measurement. A program counts things in your text: sentence lengths, repeated words, how much of a chapter is dialogue, how the pace rises and falls. The result is a set of figures and charts. They are useful for prose habits. They do not report on whether the middle of your story holds.

The second is a read. Something, or someone, reads the manuscript the way an editor does and reports on the story itself: whether the arc lands, whether the characters stay themselves, whether the book is built in the right order. Editors have always done this, and they call the result an editorial letter. What an editorial letter is, and the other names it goes by, is set out on the Editorial Review page.

Edith does the second job. Her analysis is a letter addressed to you, in prose, about your whole book. It names the strengths worth protecting, what is holding the book back and why, and where she would start. With the whole-book Review, every point in it is then open to discuss, so the analysis ends in decisions you have made, not a document you were handed.

If you are comparing tools, the difference that matters most is whether the whole book is read at once. An analysis that works through a manuscript in pieces never sees a setup in chapter three beside its payoff in chapter thirty. We explain why in why AI forgets the middle of your book, and list which tools read everything in editing software that reads your whole manuscript.

Who it is for, and when

Novelists with a finished draft who want to know where the book stands before they revise again or pay anyone. It is the first thing to do with a complete manuscript, ahead of line work, because there is no point polishing sentences in a chapter the analysis may tell you to move or cut. What order to edit your novel sets out the full sequence.

A manuscript analysis is the right next step when:

  • You have finished the draft and cannot tell what is wrong with it, only that something is.
  • You want the big problems named before you spend on a human editor.
  • You have run a tool that returned figures and still do not know what to change.
  • You want to see how Edith reads before you decide on the complete edit.
  1. Before

    Your finished draft

  2. This stage

    Editorial Review

  3. After

    Developmental Editing

What the analysis looks like

Dear author,

Your best scenes are the ones you seem most afraid of. The confrontation in chapter nine is two pages long and it should be ten. You rush the moments that cost your characters something, as if lingering would be indulgent. It isn't. That's the book.

Edith

Overview point · to talk through

You rush the scenes that cost the most. Your instinct for restraint is a gift, but the confrontation in chapter nine needs room to hurt. The expensive moments, the ones your characters would rather avoid, are where readers actually live. Give them the space.

AgreeDisagreeDiscuss
An excerpt from the sample letter on The Salt Road, an invented literary novel written for the sample, with its second overview point. Not a real author's book. The whole letter and its four points are on the sample page.

What Edith analyses

An analysis is only as good as what it keeps track of. Edith reads the whole manuscript before she writes anything, and as she reads she builds a set of working notes on your book, the way an editor fills a notebook. The letter is written from those notes, which is why it can point at a chapter and not only at a feeling. She tracks:

  • Each character, and what they want. Followed from their first scene to their last, so a want that goes quiet in the middle shows up as a gap with a place in the book. Keeping characters consistent across chapters is about why that is hard to check by hand.
  • Every chapter, in order. What happens in it, what it changes, and what it is there to do. A chapter that changes nothing is easy to see once they are set side by side.
  • Setups and payoffs. What the book promises early, and where, or whether, it delivers.
  • Where the weight falls. Which scenes are given room and which are hurried, set against how much each one matters to the story.
  • How the book sounds. Its voice, written down, so that the later stages work with it and never against it.

How the analysis reaches you

First as a letter. It is honest and it is kind, in that order: strengths first because they are real, then the problems in plain language with the reason for each, then where to start. It does not grade the book and it does not comment on how the draft was written.

Beside the letter sit its overview points, one for each argument the letter makes, each labelled by the kind of edit it belongs to. With the whole-book Review you open them one at a time and talk them through with her, up to 10 replies on each. Agree, disagree, or settle it somewhere she did not suggest. She goes back to the manuscript before she answers, and she changes her position when you are right.

The letter is yours to download and keep. If you carry on to the complete six-stage edit, which is $249 per book, the positions you agreed become the starting notes for the stages that follow, so nothing has to be argued twice. A full sample letter, with its points and one discussion, is on the sample page.

Three ways to have a manuscript analysed

Described by shape, not by quality. Analysis software differs a great deal from one product to the next, so we compare the named ones, with sources, on their own pages: Edith vs ProWritingAid, Edith vs AutoCrit, Edith vs Marlowe and Edith vs Inkshift.

  • How it works

    With a human editor
    An editor reads the manuscript
    Analysis software
    Measures the text, or reads it and writes a report, depending on the tool
    With Edith
    Reads the whole manuscript, up to 150,000 words, in one pass

  • What you get

    With a human editor
    An editorial letter, several pages
    Analysis software
    Figures and charts, or a report you read alone
    With Edith
    An editorial letter plus overview points you discuss one at a time

  • Talk it through

    With a human editor
    Sometimes, a call or an email exchange
    Analysis software
    Usually not
    With Edith
    Yes, up to 10 replies on each point

  • What comes next

    With a human editor
    A separate edit, quoted separately
    Analysis software
    Run it again on the next draft
    With Edith
    The agreed positions become the notes the next stages work from

  • Turnaround

    With a human editor
    Weeks, after a wait for a slot
    Analysis software
    Minutes
    With Edith
    Minutes

  • Cost

    With a human editor
    Quoted per project or per word; varies widely by editor
    Analysis software
    A subscription, or a fee per report
    With Edith
    $15 per book, credited toward the $249 complete edit

What it costs

The first step costs nothing. Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you the letter on your opening, with the points she would raise. It is one free read per account, with no credit card.

The analysis of the whole book is $15: the full read, the editorial letter, and the discussion of its points. You can have a full refund any time until the letter is delivered. After that it is not refundable, because the letter is the product.

If the letter earns your trust and you go on, the $15 is credited toward the complete six-stage edit at $249, so the rest costs $234 more. That price is per book, with two revision rounds per stage and no subscription. The detail is on the pricing page.

For scale: a human editorial assessment is quoted per project or per word and varies widely, and the developmental edit that usually follows one commonly runs $2,000 to $4,000 for a novel. How much a book editor costs breaks the figures down by kind of edit.

Sources:Editorial Freelancers Association, editorial rates (opens in a new tab)Reedsy, how much editing costs (opens in a new tab)

The guarantee. If you buy the complete edit upfront and the editorial letter does not give you something you can act on, tell us within 14 days and before Stage 2 begins, and we refund you in full. The details are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

A whole-book read of a draft that reports what is working, what is not, and why. Some software analyses a manuscript by measuring it, and some by reading it and writing a report. Edith reads your entire novel, up to 150,000 words, and writes you an editorial letter, then discusses each of its points with you.

Start with an honest read of your whole book

Every edit begins at Stage 1, the Editorial Review: Edith reads the whole manuscript and writes you an editorial letter. You decide what happens next.

Read my first 10,000 words, freeSee pricing

Edith reads your first 10,000 words and writes you an editorial letter, no credit card needed. The whole book, with every point open to discuss, is $15. Never used to train anything, and yours to delete.

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