Example Edit Letter by Naomi Hughes (naomiedits.com)
This is an actual letter written for a client; some names and specific details have been changed or omitted for anonymity.
Hi [client]! First of all, I’m so happy to be working with you on [title]. I really enjoyed the fun banter and fabulous physical chemistry between the two lead characters, and I think this story has so much potential. I did spot some areas that could use more development, particularly the romantic conflict, Emma’s side of the story, character arcs, and scene-level conflicts. The good news is that this manuscript is actually really short by NA standards, so you have plenty of room to bolster these elements and deepen/develop the story as a whole; you could go up to about 80-100k and still be well within the NA contemporary fantasy range. Below are my thoughts on areas that need more development:
Emma’s Side of the Story
Although Alex has a strong goal (find the artifact) backed up by a personal motivation (he wants to kill the man who’s been killing his family, though that could actually be deepened even further, more notes on that in a bit), Emma has no personal goal for the entire length of the plot. This can be a pretty big problem for a main character, because a goal is a cornerstone of her whole side of the story.Without it she has no conflict—because of course, a goal plus an opposing force is the recipe for that. Her lack of a goal is actually an underlying problem of several other “symptoms” that I noticed in your story:
Lack of Agency for Emma. “Agency” is a character’s ability to drive the plot, instead of allowing the plot to drive them. It means they actively make decisions and take actions that causethe plot or at the very least cause it to take turns it wouldn’t have otherwise. Right now, though, Emma has almost no agency and is therefore a passive character. She’s pulled through the story by external events and other people’s decisions instead of taking active steps toward a goal she wants to achieve, and that can distance readers from her as a character—because we want what she wants (since we live the story through the POV characters), and if she doesn’t really want anything enough to overcome obstacles in an attempt to obtain it, then we have a tough time caring about and connecting to her.
Because of this issue, in some swaths of your story Emma actually ended up feeling more like a plot device than a character in and of herself, like the only point of her was to give Alex someone to fall for and protect. But if you give her a strong, definite goal (preferably one that ties into the external plot, and bonus points if early on it could be something that conflicts with Alex’s goal!), this problemwill likely resolve itself.
Lack of a Character Arc.A character arc is the way in which a main character changes, for better or worse, by the end of the story; the plot (and/or other characters) challenges them and forces them to get further and further out of their comfort zone and to confront their internal flaws (usually failing), until at the climax they either finally overcome their flaw (this is always the case in a genre romance novel) or succumb to it with terrible consequences (this is a “negative” or inverse character arc, and is more common for well-drawn villains). And while Alex has the potential for a growth arc—though his could be deepened even further for a stronger payoff, more on that in a bit—Emma has very little in the way of clear, definable personal growth. She does face some challenging things, like her boyfriend problems, but those aren’t rooted in any kind of deep personal flaw of hers and they also don’t have any real effect on the rest of the story beyond determining whether or not she’s available to Alex, so therefore when she finally does overcome that issue it’s a bit anticlimactic and unrewarding. Once Emma has a goal and a personal conflict, she’ll have more motivation to get up and do stuff and overcome obstacles, which will then force her to grow and change in a clear and definable way by the end of the story.
Lack of a Personal Link to the Overall Story.Although Alex is inextricably linked to the external conflict of Everett and Genevieve and the faerie war, Emma is mostly just a happenstance bystander. She happens to come to the country, then she happens to be drawn to Alex, then she happens to get caught by the Hunt, then she happens to accidentally smash Everett’s horn and destroy him. Her family does have a connection to Genevieve/Everett, but there are no stakes attached to that—there’s no bad thing that will happen to her or her family specifically if the artifact isn’t destroyed, and she isn’t even aware of the true connection for most of the plot—so that doesn’t provide a meaningful link between her and the overall story either.
So the problem here is that Emma ends up with no personal stake in the conflict, no reason (beyond liking Alex) that she should care how it turns out. That can make her whole character and conflict feel unrelatable and even unnecessary. Is there a way you could ground her in the story, make her more a part of things, give her some personal reason (that has nothing to do with Alex, and that she cares about even before she meets him) to be invested in the conflict/faerie war when she learns about it? And if her goal could stem from that personal link to the story, it would make her conflict feel more resonant and rewarding.
Shallow Characterization. Right now you’re telling us that Emma is special and smart, but we never get to see that in action and it never actually affects the plot. We miss out on seeing how her unique way of thinking pushes the story in an unexpected direction or how she does something that Alex can’t (or perhaps something he wouldn’t have thought of). This is exemplified in one scene that I made notes on in the manuscript—where they’re at Everett’s party and she’s asking Alex a lot of questions about things he can do, and he thinks “she’s really smart,” but in reality she never actually helps the situation or comes up with anything Alex couldn’t have thought of on his own.
This problem ties in a bit with my comments on the romantic conflict and chemistry below (because if she doesn’t have a deeper personality, then it’s hard for her to connect with Alex on a personality-based level), but it’s also a symptom of her not having a goal or personal conflict of her own. Once you give her a goal from very early in the story and allow her to be active in trying to achieve it, that’ll allow you more ways to actively show us who she is, and glimpses of her personality and determination will naturally shine through.
So to sum up this section: what Emma needs is a goal that’s backed up by a personal motivation, plus an opposing force stopping her from achieving that goal (this can be the same opposing force for the external plot, or something/someone that feeds into it somehow). Add to that some sort of personal flaw that the story will force her to overcome (insecurity? Fear? Trust issues? Etc.), a personal link to the overall story, and a more rounded-out personality that affects the trajectory of both the plot and the romance, and Emma will be unstoppable!
The Romance
There are two basic ingredients for most romance plots: the conflict (the thing that’s keeping the lovers from getting together) and the chemistry (the physical and personality-based sparks and bond that pushes them together despite the conflict). Right now, Alex and Emma have some really nice physical chemistry—you’re great at writing sexytime scenes!—but the other departments felt a bit lacking.
Most importantly, right now there’s almost nothing in the way of a romantic conflict. The only true obstacles to them being together are 1. Emma sort of has a not-really boyfriend, and 2. Alex is a faerie and isn’t supposed to be with humans—but that rule isn’t clear until very late in the book and isn’t well defined, plus he wants to leave the Court and live as a human anyway, so it’s not really much of a believable hindrance to their relationship. A true conflict is some ironclad Reason that the lovers can’t and/or shouldn’t get together, and the stronger the reason (within limits, of course), the more your readers will want them to overcome those obstacles and get together. The thing that’s keeping them apart can certainly evolve and change as the story and their understanding of each other progresses, but there always needs to be a strong conflict present, and readers always need to be aware of it.
The good news is that there are some fantastic romance tropes you could use to create a stronger conflict keeping Alex and Emma apart. These include:
-Enemies to lovers. This is when their early goals conflict, until later on they end up uniting to fight a common enemy. This trope creates some of the best organic tension and might feel most natural to the backstory set-up that’s already present.
-Forbidden love. You could use this if you strengthened the faerie rule that they can’t be with humans and made the consequences very clear and something that Alex is genuinely worried about/afraid of. Note: this would be a great thing to keep Alex away from Emma, but you’d still need to give Emma a reason to stay away from Alex, since she doesn’t know he’s a faerie (and therefore wouldn’t be aware of the romantic conflict) until very late in the plot.
-Relationships of convenience. This one would change a lot of your plot, but just for the sake of an example, perhaps Alex needs to date a human in order to draw Everett out of hiding, and Emma is convenient—until he starts falling for her, and maybe she also has a secret motivation of her own.
-Revenge. Maybe Alex hates Emma’s family because of their role in the war or because their descendants are somehow dangerous to the faeries or something, so part of his mission is not only to retrieve the artifact but also to end their family line afterwards, but then he finds himself falling for Emma despite himself. Revenge can also tie in with the “enemies to lovers” trope, too. Note: this is another idea that would also require Emma either learning he’s a faerie much sooner (which might actually give a really nice boost of tension) or else having her own reasons early on to try to not fall for Alex.
A final thought for this section: at times, their romance felt a lot like insta-love. As a reader I wasn’t really seeing why the two of them belonged with each other or why they would be so quickly attracted to each other. Part of this has to do with fleshing out their personalities and goals/motivations, and part of it might be that you need to allow their relationship to progress through stages of trust and friendship before it gets to love—or perhaps even have them start out hating each other or determined to not fall for each other because it would interrupt their progress toward their individual goals, then they start to be drawn together despite that. But one way or the other, readers need to be shown through definite, in-scene moments that these two are better off together than alone or with anyone else.
Alex’s Motivation
Although Alex has the potential for a very strong and personal motivation—after all, Everett killed his aunts and tortured his mother—that never really comes through in the story itself. In the beginning, finding the artifact feels like a somewhat boring job through his POV, and even later on after we find out why it should matter more to him, it still doesn’t feel vital and he never seems truly desperate to get it. And since we can only care if he cares, this is definitely something that needs to be tightened and ramped up.
The good news is the seeds for his motivation are already present and have a ton of potential, so the main thing you need to work on now is bringing that out through the story and through his POV. Doing this would probably change 1. The actions he takes toward his goal, and 2. His mindset/determination/level of focus on that goal. Right now he seems really laid-back and willing to spend a lot of time with Emma just to hang out, but if he were more motivated to achieve his mission, he’d probably only spend time with her when it served his own goals or if circumstances forced him to. This doesn’t mean that the lead characters should be together less, though! It only means that the time they do spend together needs to always be intertwined with their individual motivations and agendas, and/or the external conflict.
One last note for this section; you mentioned a few times that part of Alex’s motivation was that he wanted to leave the Court and live a human life, but that thread was never fully explained or brought to culmination. At the end he seemed to have no qualms about swearing himself after all, and I was never clear on the reasons for him wanting to live as a human in the first place. If you choose to keep this as part of his motivation—and it did give him a nice three-dimensional feeling—then I recommend fleshing it out quite a bit more and tying it up at the end. This desire and his final decision to become Sworn anyway could actually play a role in his character arc, too.
Alex’s Character Arc
I’ve talked about this a little bit already, but while Alex has some really great potential for a character arc, it needs to be deepened and developed further. Right now the only things he seems truly concerned about and therefore challenged by is protecting Emma and, to a lesser degree, not becoming one of the Sworn. But since neither of those things everforces him to face any kind of internal flaw or make some sort of difficult choice, they don’t actually contribute to his character arc at all, so despite the potential for growth he stays pretty much static throughout the story.
Ideally, I’d love to see Alex start off as a more focused and flawed (but still fun, because we only want to sharpen his personality, not change it entirely) character, and then have him be forced to make a progression of choices (ideally ones that involve Emma, because this is a romance first and foremost, so everything that happens needs to affect them both individually and as a couple) that bring about his growth. If you follow the traditional beat sheet—which is an incredibly handy resource!—he’ll hit rock bottom during the “dark night of the soul,” and then he’ll finally overcome his flaws during the climax, which will enable him to win the day (and Emma) and complete his character arc.
Scene-level Conflicts and Stakes
Right now, about half of your scenes don’t move the story forward, or if they do, they only move one part of the story forward at a time. That can risk readers getting bored, because we need to see more depth and different types of conflict going on at once to keep us engaged. This issue hasa three-part solution:
Each scene should have at least one small-scale conflict. A helpful thing to do here is to think of each scene as a sort of mini-story in and of itself: a character wants to achieve a goal because of a motivation, and if they don’t attain it they’ll lose something valuable to them (ie, the stakes). Your character should have an agenda for every scene, every conversation, every action, and whether it’s subtext or explicit, the reader always needs to be aware of what it is. Giving the POV character a goal and having it be opposed by scene-level forces (other characters who have their own scene-level agendas) will instill a strong small scale conflict in each of your scenes, which will give your tension and pacing a huge boost and keep readers turning the pages.
Each scene should do more than one thing at a time. I recommend going through your story and writing down the purpose of each scene: character introduction, plot twist, romantic moment, backstory development, etc. Each scene should serve at least two purposes—for example, romance development and introducing a plot twist for the main conflict. That will make your scenes feel much deeper and better-rounded, and it will also keep readers more invested, because then your scenes will have the complexity and layers we need to stay engaged.