Make Your Manuscript Work: A Guide to Developmental Editing for Scholarly Writers

by Laura Portwood-Stacer

Overview

From the bestselling author of The Book Proposal Book, a practical, step-by-step approach to mastering the four pillars of scholarly writing for authors, editors, and publishing professionals

Developmental editing holds the power to make a manuscript connect with publishers and readers, yet few scholarly writers have the training to do it well. Make Your Manuscript Work offers a practical method for assessing and refining the features of their texts that matter most—argument, evidence, structure, and style. This guide shows scholarly writers how to identify what’s been holding their writing back and fix it so they can accomplish their publication goals.

Laura Portwood-Stacer, a writer, editor, and consultant for academic authors, explains how manuscripts move through the publication process and identifies the key stages for authors to improve their texts. She helps writers better understand who they are writing for and why, enabling them to determine what their drafts need most to move forward. Drawing on a decade of experience as a developmental editor of scholarly manuscripts, Portwood-Stacer details the most common opportunities for development she’s encountered and shares practical tips for implementing needed edits. The book also includes a checklist of assessment questions, examples from real scholarly manuscripts, tips on seeking additional help, and advice on offering developmental editing assistance to other writers.

Written with candor, empathy, and a deep awareness of the challenges faced by academic writers who want to publish, Make Your Manuscript Work is an indispensable how-to guide for scholars at all career stages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691257464
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Series:	Skills for Scholars
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Laura Portwood-Stacer, PhD, is a developmental editor and founder of Manuscript Works, a consultancy serving academic authors around the world. She is the author of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton) and Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism and previously taught media and cultural studies at New York University and the University of Southern California.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Laura Portwood-Stacer has done a great service in this book, generously and expertly sharing her innovative manuscript cycle concept for developmental editing. She provides concrete examples and a step-by-step process, all while never losing sight of the human elements at work in the publishing process. Make Your Manuscript Work is a resource that belongs on the bookshelves of libraries, academic editors, and scholarly authors everywhere.”—Dawn Durante, Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director of University of North Carolina Press

“I wish this book had existed years ago. It’s the book I needed to succeed more easily as a scholarly author; and it’s the book you need too. Portwood-Stacer provides a clearly drawn series of steps you can take to improve your own book (or article) manuscript—to hone its arguments, its structure, and its style. If you want your manuscript to be the best it can possibly be, Make Your Manuscript Work is the book for you.”—Stephen B. Heard, author of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing

“Make Your Manuscript Work demonstrates how all good scholarly writing requires the skill of self-editing. This guide shows how to read your writing as an informed editor and provides a clear road map for authors to take charge of their writing process. The book will also help authors approach the academic publishing world with confidence, and show how we can value writing and editing as labor and, at the same time, engage our publications to do the work the world needs.”—Stephanie Y. Evans, author of Black Feminist Writing: A Practical Guide to Publishing Academic Books

“In this gracefully written book, Laura Portwood-Stacer supplies meticulous, actionable recommendations for the developmental editing of scholarly books, articles, and theses, along with an array of useful exercises, examples, templates, and references. The author’s ‘four pillars of scholarly writing’—argument, evidence, structure, and style—provide an indispensable framework for all academic writers.”—Helen Sword, author of Writing with Pleasure

“Most writers, including many scholars, struggle with assessing and revising their own work. While they know a text needs work, they don’t typically have a systematic approach to making the necessary improvements. Make Your Manuscript Work is designed to address this need, offering a detailed, practical, and clear overview of the process of scholarly editing that is grounded in Portwood-Stacer’s extensive professional experience. Drawing on her respectful and sensitive approach to both texts and relationships, Portwood-Stacer has written an essential guide to scholarly editing.”—Rachael Cayley, author of Thriving as a Graduate Writer