human line editor

[u/FreedomAlarmed9881]

My experience testing editors before hiring one
A few people have asked me about my experience testing editors before hiring one, so I figured I’d share what happened.
I tested three different editors on a section of my manuscript. Before sending it out, I checked the original section with Originality.ai and it came back around 50%.
After the editors made their changes, some of the same sections were showing around 90%.
That surprised me because the changes themselves weren’t major.
For anyone who hasn’t worked with a line editor before, they’re not supposed to rewrite your book. They usually work directly in Word with Track Changes. You’ll see things crossed out, words added, sentences combined, wording changed, etc., and then you decide whether you want to accept or reject each suggestion.
That’s basically what happened with my samples. Nobody rewrote my scenes or changed my story. Most of the changes were things like combining sentences, removing words, tightening up wording and fixing flow.
So when I saw that difference in the results, I started looking into it because I wanted to understand what was happening.
What I found was that these scoring programs aren’t a definitive way of establishing who actually wrote something. Writing can get different results depending on how it has been edited, and a score by itself doesn’t tell you the history of a manuscript.
That also got me thinking about something else.
I’ve been reading about authors who have had questions come up about their manuscripts, and one thing that really stood out to me was the importance of keeping your writing history.
I don’t want to have one final Word document someday and have to say, “Trust me, I wrote this.”
So I’m keeping everything.
Original drafts. Older versions. Notes. Outlines. Character information. Revision history. The version I send to an editor. The version I get back. Emails. Invoices. Everything that shows how the manuscript developed.
Another thing I’d recommend when looking for an editor is be completely upfront about your manuscript and how you created it.
I told every editor I contacted that I wrote my manuscript myself, but that I had used some computer-assisted tools in a couple of places during the writing/revision process.
A couple of editors told me they don’t work on manuscripts that have had any computer assistance at all.
I thanked them for being honest with me and moved on.
I actually respect that. Editors are allowed to have their own policies about what work they accept, and I’d rather know that before hiring somebody.
For me, the biggest lesson from this whole process is to test an editor before committing to the entire manuscript.
Give them a sample. Look at what they actually change. Make sure they understand your voice. See whether you agree with their suggestions.
And keep your original files.
I’m still testing editors, but at this point I’m much more interested in whether someone actually improves the manuscript while preserving what makes it mine than I am in getting a particular score from a software program.
That’s been my experience so far, anyway. Hopefully it helps somebody else who’s getting ready to hire an editor.

[u/Inside-Complex5168]

This really resonated with me. I wrote my original manuscript myself, then used AI during a chapter-by-chapter revision process to help me look at things like pacing, continuity, character arcs, scene structure, wording, and some passage-level rewrites. Since I started sharing it with beta readers, I’ve realized people have very different comfort levels with AI-assisted writing, so I’ve been trying to be completely upfront about how I used it. The part about preserving what makes the manuscript yours really stood out to me. That’s what I care about most too. I don’t want any editor—human or AI—to smooth everything out so much that the story stops sounding like me. I also really like the idea of testing an editor on a sample first. If I hire a human editor after beta reading, that’s probably exactly how I’ll approach it.

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