What an editor checks
The 10 things an editor checks in an voice
Voice is the thing a reader stays for once the plot has stopped surprising them. These 10 checks test whether it is consistent, distinct, and actually yours. They are specific to a memoir, because the same element is doing a different job in a thriller and in a textbook.
Score yourself
One point per check. 10 checks, 10 points.
| Score | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 8–10 | Ready to show a reader | Send it to two people who will be honest with you. |
| 6–7 | Sound, needs a pass | The failures here are usually the last three checks — the ones about restraint. |
| 3–5 | The material is there, the execution is not | Usually fixable without rewriting from scratch. Work top to bottom; the early checks unlock the later ones. |
| 0–2 | Start again from the structure | Almost always check 1. This is the most common state of a first draft and it is not a verdict on the book. |
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
Why this list
An editor reading memoir is not asking whether it is good. They are asking 10 specific questions about the voice, mostly without noticing they are asking them. This is that list.
It is worth having because memoir's voice fails in predictable ways. Score yourself honestly — the checks you want to skip are the ones to look at first.
These 10 checks are the same whether you are writing memoir, fiction, business book, non fiction, life story, textbook, travel and poetry — an editor is asking the same questions of the voice in each. What changes is what counts as passing, and the examples below name that where it matters.
1. Consistency
Does the voice hold?
Passes when: The register is the same in chapter one and chapter twenty.
Fails when: Formal opening, casual middle, and a return to formal at the end.
The fix: Find the chapters that sound most like you. Rewrite the others towards them.
2. Distance
Is the narrative distance controlled?
Passes when: The book knows how close it is to the character and moves deliberately.
Fails when: The distance drifts within a paragraph.
The fix: Mark each paragraph close, medium or far. Sudden jumps are usually accidents.
3. Performing
Is the writing showing off?
Passes when: The prose serves the material.
Fails when: Sentences you can feel the author admiring.
The fix: The passages you are proudest of are the first to check.
4. Hedging
Is the voice confident?
Passes when: Statements are made.
Fails when: "Perhaps", "it might be said", "in some sense" throughout.
The fix: Delete every hedge, then reinstate only the ones that were doing real work. Usually one in five.
5. Register match
Does the voice suit the material?
Passes when: The tone fits what the book is about.
Fails when: Jaunty prose covering a bereavement, or ponderous prose covering a comedy.
The fix: Read the hardest passage aloud. If the voice fights it, the voice is wrong.
6. Filler
Are there words that do nothing?
Passes when: Adverbs are rare and chosen.
Fails when: "Just", "really", "actually", "very", "somewhat" everywhere.
The fix: Search each one. Delete on sight unless it changes the meaning.
7. Sentence openings
Do sentences begin the same way?
Passes when: Openings vary.
Fails when: Six consecutive sentences beginning with 'I'.
The fix: Read down the left margin of a page. The pattern shows immediately.
8. Cliché
Is the language yours?
Passes when: Comparisons are specific to this book.
Fails when: At the end of the day, it was a rollercoaster of emotions.
The fix: Every phrase you did not have to think of, someone else wrote first.
9. Who is telling this
Is the narrator's position clear?
Passes when: The reader knows who is speaking and when they are speaking from.
Fails when: A memoir that slips between the child's understanding and the adult's without signalling.
The fix: Choose one and hold it, or make the movement deliberate.
10. The unguarded passage
Is there a moment of real candour?
Passes when: At least once the book says something the writer would rather not have said.
Fails when: Everything is managed and nothing is risked.
The fix: Find what you left out because it was embarrassing. That is probably the book.
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Running these 10 checks on one chapter by hand takes about half an hour and is worth doing. Running them across a whole manuscript is what Detailed Editorial Feedback does — the same checks, applied at once, reported as a diagnosis of where and why.
A human developmental editor adds market judgement on top of the checks: whether this kind of opening is being acquired this year, and what an agent's reader will do with page one. The checks are transferable; that judgement is not.
If you are not writing prose
These checks are written for a book of any form, and most of them hold whatever you are writing. Three do not travel unchanged. In poetry, lineation is the unit, so judge the line and the break rather than the paragraph, and never let a tool reflow the lines. In a script or screenplay, the scene heading and the speech are the structure, so read these checks against scenes rather than chapters. In a picture book or graphic novel, the page turn and the panel carry what prose would narrate, so what looks like a gap in the text is often the image doing the work.
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