Line Editing
Writers often come to line editing when their ideas and structure are solid but the execution feels uneven, wordy, or flat. Through careful, stylistic attention, I help you refine your language, strengthen your narrative voice, and create smoother, more resonant prose—all while ensuring your writing still sounds like you.
What to expect from line editing.
Each line editing project begins with a discussion of your goals and audience. I then read closely, line by line, focusing on:
Pacing and flow — ensuring the rhythm of your writing carries the reader naturally.
Tone and consistency — aligning voice, mood, and message across the manuscript.
Clarity and precision — reducing wordiness, improving syntax, and strengthening transitions.
Engagement — identifying where energy lags or language can be made more vivid.
Voice preservation — maintaining your natural style while elevating its clarity and polish.
Throughout, I provide margin comments that explain not just what to change, but why—so you build long-term confidence in your own revision process.
Line Editing Packages
Line editing is available in tiered pricing options to suit your needs and stage of writing. You may begin with a light edit for clarity and flow, or select a deeper stylistic edit that hones every line for voice, balance, and readability.
Insight
A careful pass focused on tightening phrasing, improving readability, and smoothing transitions while keeping the voice and structure intact.
Ideal for near-final drafts or polished professional writing.
Momentum
A deep stylistic edit addressing rhythm, tone, pacing, and expression. Includes extensive margin feedback and in-text revisions to bring the prose to its fullest expression.
Perfect for authors preparing a manuscript for submission or publication.
Elevate
A comprehensive line edit plus a 60-minute follow-up session to discuss revisions, voice development, and strategies for self-editing.
Best for writers who want to refine their craft as well as the text itself.
FAQs
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Developmental editing focuses on the big picture—structure, argument, and the logic of your ideas. Line editing, by contrast, is concerned with style: how each sentence reads, flows, and carries tone and emotion. It’s where craft meets clarity.
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Absolutely. A line edit refines your prose without replacing your voice. My goal is for your writing to sound unmistakably like you—only sharper, clearer, and more confident.
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Yes. Many writers choose to begin with developmental editing and follow with a line edit once structure and content are solidified. Together, these two stages bring both coherence and polish to your work.
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Line editing focuses on refining the writing itself—language, rhythm, and clarity at the sentence level. One-on-one workshopping also engages closely with text but on a broader scale, helping you strengthen structure, flow, and argument while developing your craft and confidence. Coaching, by contrast, centers on mindset, process, and creative momentum.
Case Study: When Voice Finds Its Shape
Through deep line editing and guidance, an author learned to trust his instincts—and his prose.
When this author came to me, he had a strong concept and a clear sense of purpose—but his proposal and sample pages weren’t connecting with agents. He’d been told repeatedly that the idea was compelling, but the writing itself needed to resonate more deeply.
After comparing edits from several editors, he chose to work with me for a comprehensive editorial partnership that combined developmental and line editing. Our focus was twofold: first, to refine structure and pacing, and then to elevate his prose at the sentence level—clarifying rhythm, sharpening tone, and adding the emotional tension that keeps a reader engaged.
Together, we worked through areas where attachment to early drafts had created resistance to change. Through a patient, collaborative process, he learned to see revision not as loss, but as transformation.
By the end of our work, his manuscript not only read with greater clarity and authority, but he had developed the tools to self-edit with confidence—a process se affectionately dubbed “the Natalie method.” When he queried the revised version, she immediately received interest from a major literary agent.
“She took my writing to the next level and showed me what I didn’t even realize was missing... When I queried my new material, I immediately got a large agent interested in my manuscript. It worked.”
Book a free call.
Ready to make every sentence count? Discover how line editing can bring focus, balance, and confidence to your voice.