Lines and Curves Literary

Lines and Curves Literary

Editing| Proofreading | Cover Design

© 2019

Editorial Services

Completed your first draft and are ready for the next steps? Discover a range of editorial services with Lines and Curves Literary to get your book ready for publishing.

Development Editing

Sculpt and hone the structure of your novel. Let’s take a deep analytical dive, using industry standard methods to discover what makes your story great and where areas to improve.

Line Edit

A rigorous line-by-line polishing up of your prose. Perfect for debut authors, writers with Dyslexia or those for whom English is a second language.

Copy Edit

A thorough weeding out of errors in syntax, spelling, punctuation and grammar. This service is ideal for confident and experienced authors who may have published previously.

Proofreading

The final stage before your book is ready to go to print: an essential part of the publishing process, focusing on finding any missed minor errors in the copy or formatting issues.

Why hire an editor?

Let’s imagine novel writing is like growing a garden.

Now let’s imagine you have prepared a beautiful bit of land, sewn seeds, nurtured new life and you want other people to come and enjoy it too.

You stand back and decide the space is ready for visitors. You throw a welcome party and send out many invitations. On the big day, however, only a handful of close friends and family attend and although they compliment you, in time, no one returns to the garden, and no new visitors arrive either.


So, you hire a professional gardener to come and help you work out why the garden has not proved to be popular place. The gardener points out unruly thorns ready to snag, paths that go nowhere, water features that don’t work, uneven ground, rabbit holes!

Develop your plot

Development Editing

Just as no garden can thrive and be welcoming without careful tending, weeding and tidying, no novel should go to publication without a thorough edit.

Many authors will self-edit as they begin to draft and flesh out their manuscript, rewriting sections as they go. When it comes to structuring a novel, everyone is different in their approach. Some writers will have meticulously planned the story from beginning to end, some may make it up as they go along. Either way, sometimes it can be hard to see the snag points, the dead ends, the broken bits or holes in the plot.

A dedicated, thorough, experienced and qualified editor can help you see where pruning is needed, paths can be rerouted, new seeds planted. They will help you evaluate your overall story arcs? Do they make sense? Are there loose threads or inconsistencies? Is the plot well-paced? Are the characters believable?

Development editing can

Development editing won’t

Copy Editing

Once the lay of the land is right for your plot to take root and flourish, you’ll need to keep the parts you want to bloom from being too cluttered. This means ensuring the body of text contains rich, concise, meaningful sentences, uncluttered with words like weeds, trying to infiltrate the space needlessly.

Writing style and the author voice is an important element of story crafting and no good editor worth their salt would try to alter how you write but work with you to make sure what you write is clear and professionally constructed.

Copy editing is an essential part of a book’s journey on its way to publishing. It’s not just about checking basic spelling and grammar like verb tenses and proper nouns; any writing good software can do the basics for you these days. Copy editing does look deeper into your spelling and grammar to catch those things that many word processors can’t or won’t. For example, sentence fragments and run-on sentences, consistent use of English (UK or US), correct punctuation, standard word hyphenation; character names, world-building, style, and timeline consistency.

Naturally, some authors posses more self-editing skills than some others but still require a copy edit because let’s face it, when we write we become very close to our work. Even the most skilled writer may still not be able to polish their work to a professional standard without a second pair of eyes. It’s easy to miss repeated or overused words, missing words, plurals or letters (a, the, and etc), homophones–sometime we we just can’t see the woulds for the threes so-to-speak.

Line editing aims to strengthen writing on a deeper level. This is ideal for authors who are less confident, especially those with dyslexia or first time writers with minimal writing experience. It is a more rigorous form of editing where you can expect a lot more editorial input. A line edit can help to strengthen dialogue, improve pace and rhythm, highlight and remove overused or filler words and phrases; encourage show don’t tell principle, ensure paragraphs are well constructed and prose flow and word choice is rich and not too flat.

Cultivate your prose

Copy Editing

Focuses on correctness, consistency and clarity. Your manuscript will be polished and professional while your unique voice remains unchanged.
  • Corrects grammar, verb tense, subject–verb agreement, sentence structure, run-on sentences and fragments.
  • Corrects spelling mistakes, typographical errors and capitalisation.
  • Standardises language, style, syntax and punctuation consitently throughout the manuscript (UK or US English, as requested).
  • Makes minor adjustments or suggestions where wording is unclear or sentences are awkward, without changing your writing style.
  • Checks for consistency across character names, place names, timelines, terminology and facts throughout the manuscript.

Line Editing

Focuses on the quality, flow and impact of your writing. Every sentence is examined to strengthen your prose while preserving your unique voice.
  • Improves sentence flow, rhythm and pacing for a smoother, more engaging reading experience.
  • Replaces repetitive or weak wording with stronger, more precise alternatives.
  • Refines ideas, descriptions and emotional beats for greater clarity, depth and resonance.
  • Removes filler words, repetition and unnecessary phrasing to create leaner, more effective prose.
  • Show don’t tell – identifies opportunities to replace exposition with stronger, more immersive storytelling.
  • Improves the naturalness, flow, character voice, dialogue tags and conversational rhythm.
Both Editing Services Include
  • Tracked Changes in Microsoft Word.
    A style sheet to maintain consistency throughout your manuscript.
    A summary of edits and key recommendations.
    Respect for your unique voice, vision and genre.

Our main editor is a CIEP registered member. We also work with freelancers on a regular basis. If you have 2-3 years experience, are a registered CIEP member, and/or have relevant editorial qualifications, to register your interest in working with us please email jobs@lac-literary.com

Lines and Curves Literary was founded in 2025 by Laura Inskip as an author services company.

Our Independent Publishing Imprint followed in 2026.

We are not a vanity publishers but offer comprehensive author services at variable rates and a traditional publishing route for selected authors.

© 2026 Lines & Curves Literary ltd, UK Registered company number: 11520620

© 2026 Lines & Curves Literary LTD