Writing a historical novel—writing any novel—is a huge challenge. It can be particularly hard to see your book as a whole, whether you’re just starting, stuck in the middle, or one or two or three drafts in and starting a revise. The Historical Fiction Story Audit can help you get clarity on the big picture, on whether all the fundamental elements of your story fit together and form a viable framework for your historical novel: characters, plot, conflict, story arc, and more.

Here’s how it works:

Once you sign up, you’ll receive a workbook with deep-dive questions about your project and exercises that will push you to take a new look at your story. After you’ve completed the workbook, you’ll send it to me, and I’ll give it a thorough review and write up an evaluation. I’ll send you my evaluation, and we’ll schedule a half-hour coaching call to talk about it together and discuss next steps. This process is designed to get you started on figuring out what’s working, what needs more thought, and what you need to do to take your project to the next level—whatever stage you’re at! It’s a great way to get a comprehensive view of your story as a whole, and sample what it’s like to be coached by an expert.

Writing a historical novel—writing any novel—is a huge challenge. It can be particularly hard to see your book as a whole, whether you’re just starting, stuck in the middle, or one or two or three drafts in and starting a revise. The Historical Fiction Story Audit can help you get clarity on the big picture, on whether all the fundamental elements of your story fit together and form a viable framework for your historical novel: characters, plot, conflict, story arc, and more.

Here’s how it works:

Once you sign up, you’ll receive a workbook with deep-dive questions about your project and exercises that will push you to take a new look at your story. After you’ve completed the workbook, you’ll send it to me, and I’ll give it a thorough review and write up an evaluation. I’ll send you my evaluation, and we’ll schedule a half-hour coaching call to talk about it together and discuss next steps. This process is designed to get you started on figuring out what’s working, what needs more thought, and what you need to do to take your project to the next level—whatever stage you’re at! It’s a great way to get a comprehensive view of your story as a whole, and sample what it’s like to be coached by an expert.

Line editing differs from a full manuscript review in that in addition to an editorial letter, you also receive your manuscript with detailed edits and comments. The line edit includes top-line comments and suggestions (plot, pacing, characters) as well as more specific feedback line-by-line, on dialogue, style, balance of scene and summary, grammatical mistakes, etc. This includes a half-hour Zoom consultation at the end to discuss the edit. My rate is $.06 a word. For an 80,000 word manuscript, that would be around $4,800. Manuscripts that involve fact-checking or include bibliographies incur an additional charge.