SERVICES I AM OFFERING
When you hire me, we’re going to focus on two critical aspects.
Prose: I will help you write tighter prose. We’ll dig into things like Point of View and tense, and how the two interact to flavour your story. We’ll look at word choices, the use of language and sentence structure, and how to hunt for weak and filler words. I will teach you the skills required to hand in a clean manuscript when you’re ready to hire a line editor.
Story: We’ll dig into the meat of your story. We’ll dissect pacing, character voice, motivations, and arc, and dreaded info-dumps (and how to avoid them). We’ll look at world and character building. If it’s fantasy, we’ll examine your magic system (hard vs. soft) and how it impacts the world and characters.
And then there is the ever elusive…
Vague Hand-Waving Insanity: We can also talk about some of the less concrete aspects of writing. How do you choose which idea to pursue? How do you write a query letter or plot synopsis for an agent?
What I Don’t Offer: I am not a line editor. I’m not the person who is going to catch every typo and grammatical error. There are others who do that much better. That said, I will correct any errors I find.
RATES
This is where it gets interesting. I have helped a few friends with their novels, but I have never charged for the service. While I test the waters—decide if this is something I am comfortable doing more often—my initial rate will be half what I plan to charge.
My first few clients will be blood sacrifices test-subjects and are thus getting my services at a much-reduced rate.
Borrowing an idea from a friend (Jed Herne) I’m offering three tiers of service.
Bronze: $1,000 $500 – I will edit up to 10,000 words. This can be a complete story, or part of a novel. Once you have the edits back from me, you also get up to four one-on-one video calls to discuss the work. I would suggest one initial call before I begin editing wherein we discuss your goals and what you most want help with. After the edits are complete and you’ve had a chance to look at them, we can talk about my edits and suggestions in detail. Depending on your goals, I would suggest you save one of these calls for the Vague Hand-Waving Insanity mentioned above. Again, the goal here isn’t to simply edit but also to teach you how to self-edit. This is a learnable skill and one I picked up the hard way (by being eviscerated by editors).
Silver: $3,000 $1,500 – As above, but I will edit up to 100,000k words and we will have up to six one-on-one video calls to discuss the work.
Gold: $6,000 $3,000 – As above, but I will edit up to 200,000k words and we will have up to ten one-on-one video calls to discuss the work.
OTHER SERVICES
One-On-One Sessions ($40/hour)
Feedback ($150): I will read the first fifty pages (~10,000 words) of your novel and offer detailed feedback. This is NOT an edit, though I will likely make some prose-related suggestions. This includes a half hour video chat (after you’ve received your edits).
Interior Design (Starting at $150): I have done text layout and interior design for twelve (and counting) novels. I do interior layout for both ebook and print. You can hire me to do your interior design, or you can hire me to teach you how to do it yourself, so you don’t have to hire anyone for your future books.
About Michael R. Fletcher
I wrote my first book in 2008 while my soon-to-be-wife planned our wedding. She seems to have forgiven me. After dozens of rewrites and revisions that book became 88, which was published in 2013 by Five Rivers, a small Canadian publisher. Everything I learned during the editing process went into my second novel, Beyond Redemption, which was published world-wide in 2015 by Harper Voyager. As of December 2023, I have thirteen published novels (including three completed trilogies), two more books that will be released in 2024, a short story collection, and a novella (written with Anna Smith Spark) due out in 2024. My short fiction has appeared in Grimdark Magazine, Interzone, On Spec, Daily Science Fiction, and several Warhammer anthologies.
I won an r/fantasy STABBY award for best self-published novel, and am the only author to have been an SPFBO finalist two years in a row. I used to keep track of all the Best-of-the-Year lists my books appear on but gave up when it got silly. My books have been translated into a dozen different languages and my daughter once referred to me as “a famous-ish author.” I left my day job in 2021 to write fulltime.
For several years I was one quarter of the Wizards, Warriors, & Words writing advice podcast which has had over one hundred thousand downloads. You’ll find discussions with guests such as Joe Abercrombie, Will Wight, Peter V. Brett, Anthony Ryan, Mike Carey, John Gwynne, Adrian Tchaikovsky, R. J. Barker, Anna Smith Spark, Brian Staveley, Gareth Hanrahan, & many more. It’s all free and there is a ton of fantastic content there.
