The Big Edit
Edit to submission standard.
Thirty-five lessons, two editorial sessions with a Big Five editor, and a manuscript ready for literary agents.
The final chapter of your writing journey
Finished a first draft? Congratulations. Now it’s time to edit. Revision is what separates amateurs from published authors. In The Big Edit you’ll work one-to-one with professional editors of bestselling and award-winning books to review, revise and refine your manuscript to the standard literary agents expect.
By the end you’ll have:
- A manuscript revised to submission standard
- A query package reviewed by your editor
- Where your manuscript is ready, an invitation to our submission service to leading literary agencies
The course
Four phases. Thirty-five lessons. Structural edit, line edit, then the submission package with a year to work through them.
Welcome to The Big Edit
Go from writer to author with a clear, strategic roadmap, practical tools, smart systems, and a new publishing-ready mindset shift. Get a clear editorial roadmap and a structured revision process designed to take a manuscript to submission standard. The Big Edit is designed to save you drafts by front-loading editorial expertise for strategic story development before you move to line edits.
- Lesson 1: Welcome
Commit to working in long, focused sessions as you begin the structural edit phase of your novel. Learn the four-phase roadmap ahead, from Structural Development through the Line Edit to your Submission Process, and discover when to book your Big Edit sessions with editors who’ve acquired, edited, and published books at Big Five houses. Set your first draft aside and start raising your standards — this is where you stop writing for yourself and start shaping a novel for publication. - Lesson 2: Preparation Guide
Learn to read your own work like a professional editor, using the formatting standards publishing houses expect — fonts, margins, indentation, and dialogue conventions, US and UK covered side by side. This lesson shows you how to build the critical distance you’ll need to edit with a reader’s eye.
Structural Development
You’ll develop your elevator pitch, story theme, structure, narrative arc, character development, midpoint, and more to work toward a chapter outline and a (pain-free) synopsis. Then it’s time for your first review session with a professional editor.
- Lesson 3: The Structural Edit
Understand the difference between a structural edit and a line edit, and why you must get your story’s big-picture elements right before you touch a single sentence. Expect bold, sweeping changes at this early stage for the very best version of your book. - Lesson 4: The Hook
Distill your novel’s premise into a single sentence: the hook that gets an agent excited. Learn the one-line pitch equation drawn from novels that sold for six and seven figures, and what your particular genre demands of its pitch. Pressure-test it until it’s sharp enough to pin to your wall. - Lesson 5: The Genre
Nail the genre your novel belongs to, and the promise it makes to readers before they’ve read a word. Explore the key genres and their subgenres, how blending and mashups work when they’re done well. Your genre decides which shelf your book sits on and every editorial choice that follows. - Lesson 6: The Title
Find the title that works as a statement of intent. Use the “walk your title” method to identify your story’s agent of change, the event after which nothing can be the same, and compare candidates with popular examples. - Lesson 7: The Storyline
Get to grips with the driver of every story: change. Identify your agent of change, and combine theme, conflict, and character into your plot. Nail your inciting incident, midpoint, and ending before you rewrite your working synopsis. - Lesson 8: Story Structure with The Five Fs©
Develop your best story structure and chart your character’s moral journey using The Novelry’s Five Fs©. Learn how to apply this story spine identifying the turning points that expose your protagonist’s arc from first flaw to final reckoning. - Lesson 9: The Synopsis
Turn your story into a snappy one-pager that proves your plot delivers with this diagnostic tool to reveal whether your story’s structure is actually working. Use our “steps up, steps down” model to shape your synopsis and practice the professional potted version agents expect. - Lesson 10: The Chapter Outline
Build a chapter-by-chapter account of your novel that turns your story structure and synopsis into a concrete plan of action. Learn what Big Five editors look for. This document becomes your guide for the redraft, and, alongside your synopsis, what you’ll submit ahead of your Big Edit First Session. - Lesson 11: Casting
Make sure every character earns their place on the page by mapping the main players along our “rope of theme.” Try our Four Types framework and learn to root each major player in circumstances, associations, and distinguishing detail. - Lesson 12: Character
Give characters agency by anchoring their actions in desire. Explore how deprivation creates compulsion, and how to empower the most disempowered characters. Use practical tools like our “Character Agency Ladder” to drive agency and story. - Lesson 13: Character Mapping & Relationships
Identify your core team of around five to fifteen players and make sure each earns their place in the story. Study the web of relationships through their reciprocal wants and needs. Finish by building a visual character map to guide your scene-building. - Lesson 14: The Big Edit 1st Session
Time to hand over your story for expert review: lets meet your Big Five publishing editor! Complete the one-page document covering your genre, title, hook, synopsis, central reader question, theme, word count, and deadline, and prepare your optional chapter outline to submit alongside it. This is your first opportunity to see your story the way a publishing editor wou - Lesson 15: After Your BE1 Session
Your first session is done and the notes have arrived. Learn how to take structural feedback on board and turn it into the next draft of your novel.
The Line Edit
You’ll interrogate your pacing, perspective, and treatment, to rework chapters, drilling down into sentence structure and word choice, eliminating overwriting line-by-line. Learn how to apply The Lucid Compression Technique© for outstanding prose from the first chapter. Then, it’s time for feedback on your writing from beta readers in our online community.
- Lesson 16: The Line Edit
Learn what a line edit involves, and how to read your writing the way an editor reads it on a sentence level. - Lesson 17: Pacing
Condense any slack in your timeline, and test every chapter against three essentials: a reminder of the stakes, new information, and a reason to turn the page. Master the domino effect and foreshadow with intent. - Lesson 18: Voice & Perspective
Find the voice that’s authentically yours, then choose the vantage point that best serves your story. Work through the real differences between first, second, third, and omniscient perspective, and apply some useful rules of thumb to finalize the best POV for your story. - Lesson 19: Show, Don’t Tell
Learn to recognize the hiding places of “telling” from adverb-heavy dialogue tags to backstory and the legitimate tools (exposition, flashback, interiority, dialogue) for feeding readers information without an info-dump. - Lesson 20: Dialogue
Craft true-to-life dialogue that drives drama, reveals conflict, and sounds natural. For conversations that serve the story, give every character their own agenda to break the “ping-pong” rhythm of question-and-answer and cut exposition dumps. - Lesson 21: Setting & Scenes
Decide who’s present, whose point of view we follow, and where each scene is best set to bring the drama. Learn why the problem of your world should be the problem of your character, and how to create atmosphere. Master your set-pieces with detail that grounds a scene. - Lesson 22: Overwriting
Strip your prose of clutter. Diagnose and treat overwriting — the most common weakness in early drafts. Spot symptoms like didactic prose, clichéd expressions, overuse of adverbs, and redundant descriptions. Use our editorial checklist to trim sentence length, cut the fluff, and refine your style. - Lesson 23: Sentence Structure
Master logic flow, active versus passive voice, and the word order that keeps meaning clear. Vary your sentence length to create rhythm. Try our compression drills for pithy, natural sentences. Learn why shorter sentences land harder. - Lesson 24: The Word
Study how repetition, sound, and subliminal patterning shape a story word by word to create your novel’s DNA. Learn how to replace the “weasel” words that dull your prose. Explore word choice as a tool of seduction. - Lesson 25: The Lucid Compression Technique©
Refine your prose with The Novelry's own technique for high-resolution openings: Lucid Compression©. Edit your opening for maximum sensory impact with our secret sauce for award-winning writing. - Lesson 26: Punctuation
Use punctuation to clue the reader into your behind-the-scenes game. Learn how line-level choices operate as instructions to the reader as to what to think and feel and when. - Lesson 27: Copy Editing & Proofreading
Understand the final polish the professionals apply, how to work with tracked changes, and how to sweep your manuscript for errors of grammar, spelling, consistency, and continuity line by line, with fresh eyes. - Lesson 28: The First Sentence & the First Chapter
Craft a first sentence that establishes the voice, signals change, and primes the reader for what’s to come. Use our unique “Thing One/Thing Two” structure to plan your all-important early paragraphs. - Lesson 29: The Prologue
Test your opening against the five ingredients of a prologue, and practice urgency and theme in motion. - Lesson 30: Get Feedback
Get feedback on your writing now with peer critique, a one-on-one editorial session, or a full report.
The Submission Process
Your second session with a professional book editor will involve reviewing your pitch letter, synopsis, and first three chapters, and making a plan to enter the publishing process via literary agency representation.
- Lesson 31: The Query Package
Assemble the three documents that will win a full-manuscript request: the query letter, the synopsis, and a polished sample of your first three chapters. Master the five elements of a strong query letter — the hook, the story, the market, the agent, the author. Choose great comparison titles, format your manuscript to industry standard, and steer clear of the red flags. - Lesson 32: The Market
Position your novel the way the industry does: on the commercial-to-literary spectrum and within the word-count range expected of your genre. - Lesson 33: Literary Agents
Apply for The Novelry's submission service or query independently. Build a longlist and shortlist of agents. From tracking responses to interpreting feedback and handling rejection, discover how to assess offers, meet agents, and make the best decisions for your writing career. - Lesson 34: Author Career Advice
Follow the deal from acquisition to publication day: how editors pitch a book internally, how an advance is actually paid out, and why a small advance doesn't mean a small career. Get practical guidance on starting book two, building income beyond royalties, and handling social media and reviews. - Lesson 35: The Big Edit 2nd Session
Guidance to prepare your first three chapters, query letter, and synopsis, formatted to industry standard, and book your Big Edit Second Session with your editor to get your next steps toward publishing.
Two sessions with an editor from a Big Five publisher
Every editor on our team has acquired and edited novels at Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster or Macmillan. Your first session reviews your storyline, the synopsis and chapter outline, before you revise. Your second session reviews your finished query package: first three chapters, synopsis and pitch letter. And because we meet as a team every week to discuss our writers’ work, you get the combined judgment of the whole editorial team, not one reader’s taste.
Submissions to the top global literary agencies
If your manuscript is a match for one of our trusted literary agents, you’ll be invited to enter our submissions process. There’s no cost and we neither ask for nor accept commission. It is by invitation, on the strength of the work, and it begins at your second editorial session, when your editor reads your opening.
CAA · WME · RCW · The Book Group and more.
Work with Big Five editors
You’ll revise your manuscript to the highest standards with publishing professionals formerly of Penguin Random House and more. Founder Louise Dean explains why this is a game-changer for serious writers.
What The Big Edit writers say
Questions
Anything else? Read the full FAQs.
If your manuscript is a match for one of our trusted literary agents, your editor will invite you into our submission service at your second session. There’s no cost and no commission. If the opening isn’t ready yet, you keep polishing and return it to the team for review later. The course also teaches you to query independently: building your longlist, reading responses, handling rejection and assessing offers.
A single editor brings one publisher’s goals and one person’s taste, and many commissioning editors work in only one genre. At The Novelry, the editorial team meets every week to discuss our writers’ works in progress, so your book gets the combined judgment of editors across the Big Five and across the genres. A broader view that better sets you up for submission.
Former acquiring editors from the Big Five: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan, as well as other genre-expert houses including Walker Books, Titan, and Oneworld.
Yes. The Big Edit is for writers with a complete draft who want to be published. You’ll start the course before you touch the manuscript, learn how to read your own work the way an editor does, then revise in two passes; structure first, then line by line, with an editor reviewing your plan before you begin and your query package when you’re done.
Editing happens in bumper work sessions: two to three hours a session when you can. They needn’t be daily, and the course gives you a working plan to pick up from wherever you left off. Take your time; writing is rewriting.
Self-paced: thirty-five lessons with video and text, each in five parts: what it means, why it matters, how it works, how to apply it, next steps. With tools and downloads. Every lesson is a reference you can return to throughout the edit. You have a year of access, alongside weekly live classes and the community.
Both are one-to-one calls with the editor of your choice. The first comes at the end of the structural phase: you send The Plan — your story on one page, a synopsis of 500 to 750 words, a chapter outline of up to 2,000 words and, if you like, 500 words of prose — and the conversation is diagnostic and big-picture: structure, stakes, character, theme, title, hook, and whether the pitch is distinctive enough for your genre and the market. The second comes toward the end: you send your first three chapters, a one-page query letter and a one-page synopsis, and your editor gives close feedback and, if the opening is ready, invites you to submit the full manuscript.
A notebook, a pen and a decent internet connection. Lessons are written and on video, with a translation app in 99 languages and a read-aloud option.
No. The Finished Novel Course is a single program, not a bundle you can build up to, so it can’t be applied retrospectively. You can buy each later stage on its own as you reach it, but the full journey is only available as The Finished Novel Course from the start: idea, draft, edit, and a full read with the Ultimate Manuscript Assessment from our editorial team, at a saving of over $1,000 on the stages bought separately. If you think you’ll want the whole journey, this is the moment to choose it.
A full, no-questions-asked refund within fourteen days of purchase. Just email us.