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A sample Stage 1 read on a made-up novel, shown the way it looks inside Edith: the editorial letter, and the points you’d talk through together. Deliberately brief. On your own book, Edith reads the whole thing, and the letter runs much longer.

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Stage 1 · Editorial Review

The Salt Road

Literary fiction

Dear author,

I've read The Salt Road twice now, once quickly and once slowly, and I want to be honest with you the way a good editor should: this is a real book, with a real writer behind it, and it is not yet the book it wants to be. Both of those things are true, and the second one is good news, because the gap between them is craft, and craft is fixable.

Here's what's working, and I mean working: your sentences trust the reader. You rarely over-explain, and when Mara stands at the harbour in chapter two and says nothing at all, I understood everything. That restraint is the spine of the book. Protect it.

Now the harder truth. For the first hundred pages I knew exactly what Mara wanted. Somewhere around the midpoint, I stopped knowing. The plot keeps moving, but her wanting goes quiet, and a novel can survive almost anything except a protagonist who stops wanting on the page. I don't think you lost the thread; I think you buried it under event. We'll dig it back out together.

The other thing, and it's related: 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.

None of this is fatal. The fact that the quiet scenes land as hard as they do tells me you already know how to write the loud ones. Here's where I'd start.

— Edith

An abbreviated sample. Your editorial letter is a full read of your whole manuscript, and runs considerably longer.

This is the letter Edith writes for every book.

A short sample on a fictional novel. Yours is a full read of your whole manuscript: longer, more thorough, honest, and yours to keep.

Honest
Never rewrites your voice
Private

The points you’d talk through

developmental
For a hundred pages her goal is the engine of the book. After the midpoint it goes quiet under plot. Let's find the exact page it slips and put her wanting back on the page, so the second half pulls as hard as the first.
Talking it through
- Edith
  Here's what I mean, concretely. In chapter seven Mara turns down the harbourmaster's offer, and I couldn't tell whether it was fear or pride. Do you know which it is?
- You
  Fear, mostly. She's afraid that taking it would mean admitting she's staying.
- Edith
  Good, that's the thing to put on the page. Right now the scene shows the refusal but not the fear underneath it. One line of her noticing what she's afraid of would carry the whole middle. You don't need more plot; you need that.

Four points here, to give you the idea. A full read of your book surfaces many more, across every stage of the edit.

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Your manuscript is locked to your account. It is never shared, sold, or shown to anyone else.

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Notes and suggestions only, exactly like a human editor. No word of hers ever ends up in your book.

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This is Stage 1. There are five more.

Stage 1 is your complete editorial letter, an honest read of your whole book. It is normally $15, and free for founding members. From there, structure, scenes, and the line edit follow, one stage at a time. You choose a package after you’ve seen the letter.

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