Dr. Brown has been a writing coach and/or developmental editor for unpublished and prize-winning writers during all stages of development from vague outline to completed manuscript. If you’re seeking a writing coach or developmental editor for a memoir, literary fiction, or a literary blockbuster, contact Susan to determine if your goals and her skills are a fit. In a complimentary consult, you and Susan will discuss your project and determine whether one-on-one coaching or developmental editing is the most appropriate option for you and your goals.  

Developmental Editing/Coaching Package 
$2000 for 25 hours
Workshop graduates: 40% discount: $1500 for 25 hours

In a series of 25 coaching sessions (by zoom) over three months, bring your project and your writing skills to the next level with master teacher and professional editor Susan Brown. After a complimentary consultation, you and Dr. Brown will develop a plan to begin, accelerate, or reevaluate a project and establish deadlines, prompts, assignments and a meeting schedule. To insure continuity and progress, Dr. Brown works almost exclusively with writers committed to a coaching package

What Does a Writing Coach and/or Developmental Editor Do?

As a college creative writing professor with 35 years experience teaching, and 30 years experience editing manuscripts, preparing book proposals, running sold-out workshops, and  doctoring projects for submission to agents and publishers, Susan is a master as assessing all literary elements of your project such as:
 

• Have you made the right choice between memoir and fiction to tell your personal story? 

• Does your mastery of sentence variety create prose that reads like butter?

• Does your narrative (memoir or fiction) have a compelling dual plot (external/internal)?

• Have you developed a mesmerizing complex personality and compelling narrative voice for your main character (which in memoir is you).

• Does your project have a unique and timely premise?

• What is the profound and complex theme beating at the heart of your book?

• Does your opening grab the reader by the throat?

• Have you mastered three-part dialogue including internal monologue?

• Is your manuscript unified with a leitmotif?

• Have you chosen the most effective structure: frame, chronological with flashbacks, or medias res?

And that’s just in the first 15 minutes!