How Do Editors Give Feedback?

You've sent your manuscript off. Now you're waiting for the report, the call, whatever form the feedback takes, and you don't quite know what to expect. Will someone rewrite your sentences? Cross out whole chapters? Tell you it's not working and leave you there? If this is new territory for you, that not knowing is its own kind of nerve-wracking.
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Here's what happens on my end, and why I build feedback the way I do.

Two Passes Through the Manuscript

Depending on whether I've been hired for a manuscript evaluation or a full developmental edit, my process starts the same way: I read the entire manuscript once, straight through, as a reader. I'm not marking it up yet. I'm getting a feel for the story, the same way anyone picking up your book would.

Then I go back through and check for the issues that show up again and again in early drafts. Does the story start too early or too late? Is there real conflict on the page? Does the protagonist want something specific, and do they have agency to go after it? Is there a force of antagonism working against them? Is anything at stake? Does the resolution land, or does the central story problem never get solved? I'm also looking at subplots and secondary characters that aren't earning their space, POVs that don't serve the story, and description that's doing more wandering than working.
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For a developmental edit, I go deeper still: a scene-by-scene structural pass, looking at what holds each scene together, what the character's object of desire is in that moment, and whether a value shift happens. That's a more involved analysis, and it's the difference between an evaluation and a developmental edit. One tells you what's happening in your story. The other maps how every scene is built.

The Stoplight Strategy

Once I've done that work, I organize everything using the Stoplight Strategy, a revision framework created by Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator, built around Red, Yellow, and Green Light issues.

Red Light issues are structural. They're fatal to your story if left unaddressed:

• No clear protagonist agency
• Missing forces of antagonism
• A story problem that never gets resolved
• Nothing at stake for the protagonist
• No conflict driving the story forward

Yellow Light issues affect flow and emotional resonance: the point of a scene isn't locked down, dialogue isn't pulling weight, an info dump is standing in for a scene that should be dramatized. Green Light issues are the line-level polish that comes last, once the bigger structural work is settled.

​I sort everything this way for a reason. If you sit down with a straight narrative report, every issue reads with the same weight, and it's easy to walk away overwhelmed, unsure what to fix first. The Stoplight Strategy tells you what to handle now versus what can wait. It turns a pile of feedback into a plan.

What the Report and the Call Look Like

I compile everything into a written report, organized by color, with a plan for what comes next. I ask clients to read it once and let it sit for a bit, so they can process the initial reaction before doing anything else with it. Then I ask them to read it a second time and take notes on their questions. Once they send those questions over, we get on a call together and spend our time reviewing the findings and working through the plan, instead of me watching someone read the report live.
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I've had clients tell me things like, "Nobody understands me the way you do. You were able to identify what wasn't working, and now I know what to do." That reaction is exactly what the Stoplight Strategy is built to produce: a real sense of direction, built straight out of the problems on the page.

What Feedback Is Not

Here's a misconception I run into often: writers think an editor or book coach is going to make the changes for them. That's not the role. I identify what the manuscript needs. As your book coach, I guide you through making those changes and help keep you accountable, motivated, and moving forward. The manuscript stays in the writer's voice. I will never rewrite a client's pages. The writing, and the decisions about how to revise it, belong to you. If you're still sorting out where an editor's role ends and a book coach's begins, I get into that distinction in more detail in Book Coach vs. Editor: Which Do I Need?.

When Feedback Is Hard to Hear

Not every client is ready to hear what the Stoplight Strategy surfaces, and I want to be honest about that. I recently worked with a client who came to me for a manuscript evaluation expecting me to make changes to her manuscript directly. That's never what I do. Her stoplight report showed there wasn't a story on the page yet: no protagonist in real situations, no conflict, no forces of antagonism, no agency. She needed to hear it, but she wasn't ready for a start-from-scratch revision. She decided to end the engagement there. She still left with a full report and a plan for what her story needs. I hope she picks it back up, whether with me or with someone else who can help her get there.
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I don't always hope for that outcome, but it's part of doing this work honestly. My job is to tell you what your story needs.

The Kind of Feedback I Aim to Give

The way I deliver feedback matters as much as the framework behind it. I aim for feedback that's encouraging without slipping into cheerleading. I don't want a client to feel like they don't know anything. I want them to walk away thinking, we just identified this together, and here's what it takes to make your story work.

A few writers have described it in their testimonials as tough love. I won't let something that needs to be addressed slide by unnamed, even when it's a hard note to give. At the same time, I deliver it in a way that's nurturing, so the writer feels well taken care of the whole way through, not exposed or judged for where their draft is right now.

If you're staring down a manuscript that isn't quite working and you're not sure what kind of feedback would move you forward, see how the Pitch-Perfect Pathway works and let's figure out what your story needs next. And if you're still weighing whether now is the right time to bring in a book coach at all, When Should I Hire a Book Coach? walks through how to know.