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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚

@editsinthemargins.com

1.4K followers 1.9K following 4.4K posts

I help writers to shape their stories and hone their skills via developmental editing, coaching, beta reading, workshopping, and more. As a writer, I enjoy kid lit and exploring fantastical worlds. 🐉 https://editsinthemargins.com/social

editsinthemargins.com

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · May 27

Now that I have a new service to offer, it’s time to update these slides.

Editing means something different to everyone, and each writer has a different journey from blank page to finished product. I started In the Margins to support fiction authors in their creative journey, and that means . . . ⬇️

Which of my services is best for your needs?

The services I offer:
Developmental editing
Skilled beta reading
Coaching
1:1 workshopping

Which one is right for you? It depends on your needs & budget.

Let's break it down.

Developmental Editing

Goal: Strengthening a completed manuscript

What I do: A manuscript deep dive. I provide detailed feedback and suggestions on big picture elements (i.e. timing, characters, plot lines).

What you get: Detailed marginal notes, light inline edits, and a 10- to 20-page feedback letter.

Time and cost: $$$$
Because it takes about one week per 20,000 words, developmental editing is the most expensive of my services.

Skilled Beta Reading

Goal: Getting general feedback

What I do: A temperature check. I respond to your story as a (skilled) reader, providing my thoughts on strengths and weaknesses, and my overall questions and suggestions.

What you get: Occasional marginal notes and a 2-3 page feedback letter.

Time and cost: $$
Because it requires significantly less time and feedback, skilled beta reading costs far less than developmental editing.

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 13h

"As machine-made books flood online marketplaces, a new UK initiative is introducing an Organic Literature stamp to help readers identify books created by real authors."

Certified organic and AI-free: New stamp for human-written books launches

As machine-made books flood online marketplaces, a new UK initiative is introducing an Organic Literature stamp to help readers identify books created by real authors

www.theguardian.com

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 15h

Really glad I decided to check my email to see if I had preordered Andrea Stewart's THE WAR BEYOND, because apparently during B&N's preorder sale (in April!) I did preorder it. Along with two other books that I'd completely forgotten about which should be arriving soon... 😆

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 20h

This is very true!

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 21h

Why I build buffers into my editing/beta reading delivery estimates:

For days like today when I get a call from a doctor's office that sends me into a full emotional spin and I can't refocus.

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 21h

Sounds like a fun summer!

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 1d

💯💯

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 1d

Haha, I love that part of me was like, "This seems like Jordan." 😂

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 1d

Is this you or Helena?

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 1d

Writers, let’s play Desert Island Top 5—with your characters. 🏝️

If you were to ask your main character, what books would they say are in their Desert Island Top 5? How about your villain?

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 1d

#EditorsTeaClubCommunity, Day 14: What's your favorite genre to edit?

There are many different genres and styles that come across my desk. I enjoy just about all of them, but give me a fantasy with intricate worldbuilding or a dystopian that pulls at all the right threads and I’m a happy camper.

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

😆

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

a man in a suit and tie with banger after banger written on the bottom

Alt: John Oliver saying "Banger after banger after banger after certified banger"

media.tenor.com

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

Blue Virginia @bluevirginia.bsky.social · 2d

John Oliver's segment on Bari Weiss, the Free Press and CBS News was brilliant, thorough, fair - and SHOULD have been devastating to the aforementioned. Bottom line: CBS "News" now goes in air quotes, like Fox "News"... bluevirginia.us/2025/10/mond...

Screenshot from John Oliver report on the egregiously horrible Bari Weiss, the Free Press, CBS News, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gieTx_P6INQ

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

So it’s my memory. My memory is my superpower.

(And as for today’s prompt on our favorite teas: I start my day with Barry’s Irish Breakfast and then usually will have a vanilla chai in the afternoon. I also love a good peppermint or chamomile lavender if I’m feeling stressed.)

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

The small things like pin and hair colors probably seem insignificant. But some of the other items can impact storylines, motivations, and outcomes. And even those pin colors can be enough to make an attentive reader pause and pull out of the story.

⬇️

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

A few recent examples of what “big and small” has meant (apologies for being generic, but I protect my clients by removing identifying details):

– Key event was said to happen on a certain day, but later chapters state it happened later, which would shift understandings and perceptions of characters between those points in the manuscript.
– Side character visited the office of a character who we later learn is actually dead, making that meeting (and the key information obtained from it) impossible.
– A city is noted early on to be full of cameras/listening devices, yet later none of the characters are impacted by the surveillance and move about as if unwatched.
– Two (apparently important) characters appear in book 3 as though they were known to the reader—but they were never actually introduced in the first two books (which I was able to flag with confidence even though I hadn’t read them in 1–2 years).
– An important place in the world was named one thing within the draft manuscript and another in the map. (Yes, I look at maps if they’re available because I love a good map.)
– Character was said to have auburn hair in one place and dark brown hair in another.
– Pins on a map kept changing colors over about 20 pages.
– Characters noted they had “over two hundred” weapons, then a chapter later it was “almost two hundred.”
– Characters were mentioned within a space but forgotten, leading to them being unaffected by a sleeping agent that was released and knocked out the others.
– Character’s last name was X in the early chapters, then much later they are introduced with the last name Y.
– Multiple characters were introduced with the exact same name or with a spelling variation, leading to confusing storylines for the reader.
– Characters were given ID numbers, with the MC's completely different between Ch. 1 and the end of the book.

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

I may forget what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can hit a snag or plot hole in an edit—big or small—and usually remember which chapter (or the approximate area of the book) the conflicting info/detail came from so I can find and flag it.

⬇️

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

I took a deserved break from screens yesterday, so I missed the #EditorsTeaClubCommunity question: What is your editing superpower?

A past client described me as “surgical,” and I’m not sure I’d have earned that compliment without my ability to squirrel away the smallest details into my memory. ⬇️

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 2d

Woo, it's Monday! What are we getting done this week? 🖋️📚📄

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 4d

...so many of us were able to do so because of libraries and other book friends.

Still looking for ways to help? Here are 12 ways you can: editsinthemargins.com/post/ways-yo...

Ways You Can Help Your Library - In the Margins Editing & Writing Services

Next week is National Library Week in the United States. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that now more than ever, our libraries need us to stand with them against defunding and book bans.…

editsinthemargins.com

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 4d

Today is Let Freedom Read Day.

It closes out Banned Books Week and serves as a call to action: to defend books against censorship and to protect library staff (and teachers, writers, publishers, and booksellers) who bring us those books.

So many of us first found ourselves within books, and...⬇️

"Harvey harrumphs, pushes his gold wire-frame glasses up his nose. 'It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be human here, where can you?'"

—from FUNNY STORY by Emily Henry

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 5d

I will... in a few weeks. 🤣

Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 5d

We went from having a string of days in the 80s to a high of 57 yesterday. It was 32 when I woke up this morning. (And I stubbornly refuse to turn on the heat until November 1. 😂)

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 5d

Sir, I had on a pair of thick socks, with a pair of fuzzy socks over them!

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Kayleigh | Developmental Editor ✍🏻📚 @editsinthemargins.com · 5d

I think the second one is out next month! (Now I have to figure out if I pre-ordered it or not... 😆)