Developmental editing is a complex task requiring creativity, strategy, people skills, and a deep understanding of publishing and genre. It’s no wonder we developmental editors tend to think highly of ourselves. When the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) first entered our personal narratives, it made sense that many of us assumed the technology would not be capable of assisting with this demanding, cerebral higher level of editing.

As AI has become entrenched in writing and lower levels of editing, developmental editors now may be starting to squirm and ask: Can a machine truly understand the nuances of a story? Will a bot render my hard-earned expertise into a bunch of algorithms? Is there still a place for me—the human—in this new technological era?

It’s true that AI’s analytical capabilities are well suited to helping developmental editors with many job duties. This article lays out how to use AI for developmental editing in a way that complements your human skills and allows you to improve your editing efficiency without compromising your editorial judgment or integrity, which should never be replaced. When a developmental editor uses AI to quickly identify a manuscript’s flaws, it frees up time to focus on creative solutions, resulting in higher-quality edits completed faster. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. Read on.

What Is AI Developmental Editing?

Developmental editing is a type of editing that focuses on improving the “big picture” elements of a manuscript. It analyzes fundamentals like structure, pacing, plot and character development, and theme and synthesizes the information into suggestions for improvement. This guides the author to create a manuscript that is cohesive and engaging and potentially loved one day by readers and critics alike.

AI developmental editing includes the same pieces as traditional developmental editing but adds AI tools to assist human editors with analysis, brainstorming, and reducing the manual workload. In AI developmental editing, tasks are divided, with the AI doing the tasks it can do best and the human editor doing the tasks they can do best.

Why Use AI for Developmental Editing?

Imagine doing your job but doing it faster and easier. Now imagine doing your job faster, easier, and better. Incorporating AI into your editorial workflow opens the doors to big gains in efficiency and quality when used effectively.

• Speed: You can get back all of the hours you would have spent on your first readthrough by having AI do it for you. Thanks to recent technological improvements, some AI tools can analyze entire book-length manuscripts in one go. Within minutes (or seconds), they can spit out a chapter-by-chapter summary and report of the main weaknesses you would have identified yourself during your first pass. Now you’ll be more prepared when you start page one.
• Quality: AI is excellent at identifying content gaps, recognizing inconsistencies, and brainstorming ideas and solutions. Working together with it means fewer subtle issues slip through the cracks and you will have options to consider that you may not have thought of on your own. (Think of it like a colleague you can bounce ideas off of.)

Now that you know the key benefits, let’s examine how to incorporate AI into your work.

How Can You Use AI in Developmental Editing?

There’s a place for AI at all stages of the developmental editing workflow, from pre-editing tasks to drafting feedback for authors. Here’s an overview of some ways to use AI in your work.

Step 1: Choose the Right AI Tool

The first step is to choose the best AI tool in the toolbox. This depends on the type of content you are working with.

• Shorter Works: If you work on a chapter-by-chapter basis or you’re editing a shorter piece, such as an article or marketing copy, you have more options. Just about any chatbot (ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini) can handle your developmental editing analyses.
• Longer Works: If you work with full-length book manuscripts, until recently, you had to break the document into smaller chunks the AI could take in. Now, there are tools that can do full-length manuscript analysis. One option is Claude, which is a favorite among book editors. The one I’m currently finding to be most accurate and consistent with long documents is Google’s NotebookLM. It also cites which exact page it pulled information from, making it easy to verify its work.

Step 2: Get Pre-editing Support

Use AI to supercharge your prep work so your time spent editing inside the manuscript can be more focused.

Summaries and Synopses: Prompt the AI to generate a detailed synopsis or chapter-by-chapter summaries so you can quickly get an overview of the material.

Example Prompt: Please create a synopsis of this book. Include all main points and key concepts.

Supplementary Documents: Developmental editing involves tracking many different elements, page by page, as you go. The right AI tool can do this tracking for you and create documents both you and the author may find helpful, such as:

• Character Lists
• Setting Lists
• Plot Timelines
• Subtopic Lists
• Glossaries

Example Prompt: Please generate a list of settings in the book. Include a brief description of each setting.

Analyses to Identify Issues: Think of the problem areas authors tend to struggle with and ask the AI to analyze them. You can receive structured analyses while leaving room for your creative editorial influence and decision-making. Here are examples:

• Plot Analysis: If you know the plot’s intended framework, prompt the AI to fit plot points onto the template to see where the plot may be misaligned.
  • Example Prompt: Please map the plot onto the Freytag’s pyramid story structure.
  • Follow-Up Prompt: Explain how well the plot follows the Freytag’s pyramid story structure.
• Character Analysis: Get help determining the overall strengths and weaknesses of specific characters, whether they make quality heroes or villains, whether they’re relatable, and more.
  • Example Prompt: Explain the strengths and weaknesses of the main character's arc and offer suggestions for improvement.
• Content Gap Analysis: When working with nonfiction, you can prompt the AI to look for areas where adding subtopics could make the work feel more complete.
  • Example Prompt: Please review Chapter 3 and list subtopics the author could add or expand to make the book more comprehensive.
• Structural Analysis: This analysis type works with both fiction and nonfiction. Use AI to probe whether the structure fits the expectations of the genre and makes sense.
  • Example Prompt: Please analyze the book's structure and list any places where the sequence of arguments lack logical flow.

Step 3: Fact-Check and Brainstorm During Editing

Wish you could get a quick second opinion or access your own personal fact-checker while editing? Now you’ve got one.

Fact-Checking: If you question whether you’re correctly remembering the detail that seemed unimportant when you read it days ago, you can ask NotebookLM about it. It will review the copy of the manuscript you’ve uploaded and answer.

Example Prompt: Where did Zorak and Zena have the discussion about the magical ring?

Brainstorming: As you edit and come across an element that could be improved, you can ask AI to brainstorm a list of ideas to fix the issue. They won’t all be good, but there will likely be some you had not considered. You can use your experience and editorial judgment to select the best option.

Example Prompt: Please suggest plot events that could take place between chapters 9 and 10 to fill in any gaps in the timeline.

Step 4: Drafting Feedback

Through the analyses the AI conducted at the pre-editing stage, you’ll have pages of helpful insights you could put your touch on and incorporate into your editorial feedback. If there are any topics you may need to use careful wording with, such as suggesting the author cut a beloved character or favorite chapter, you could ask the AI for guidance with explaining your reasoning. You’ll want to be mindful not to have it sound like a robot wrote it, but it can quickly get you 80% of the way to the wording you want.

Example Prompt: Please write a compliment sandwich about why the Zorak character should be cut. The first paragraph should focus on a strength of the Zorak character. The second paragraph should explain why Zorak should be cut. The third paragraph should focus on a positive of the Zorak character while maintaining the recommendation to cut.

What Are the Challenges of Using AI in Developmental Editing?

While AI offers developmental editors many benefits, it also has limitations and should not be used without careful human oversight. One common drawback is AI tends to offer ideas that are generic (overused tropes), cliché (end every chapter on a cliffhanger), or simply misaligned with the author’s style (suggesting against experimentation in literary fiction).

Also, since AI isn’t human, it doesn’t know what it’s like to be human. You do. You can better gauge the manuscript’s emotional resonance than any program can. Your human editorial judgment, emotional intelligence, and experience remain integral to the developmental editing process.

When used well, AI tools like Claude and NotebookLM can be powerful partners to developmental editors. AI can join its analytical skills with your creativity and empathy to conduct edits that are efficient, comprehensive, and creative and that enable authors to create stronger connections with readers, tell better stories, and make their words have a greater impact.

AI Use Disclosure: The author used AI to assist with creating the outline for this article.

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