Overview
Rochelle Deans is an editor with more than ten years’ experience. She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s in Writing and Literature and began her career immediately following graduation as an editor for an environmental engineering firm.
In 2012, she began editing novels and self-help non-fiction. She focused on line editing at first, and expanded into developmental editing by 2015. She’s studied John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, Dara Marks’ Inside Story, and the structure techniques put forth by K.M. Weiland and Larry Brooks, as well as the line editing and revision techniques discussed by Susan Dennard.
These days, her work covers a variety of specializations, specifically adult fantasy, adult sci-fi, middle grade of all genres, and non-fiction focused on self-help, business, and religion and spirituality. In all cases, her goal is to bring together a cohesive book and present the idea the best it can be done, whether that's re-setting the bones in a deep developmental edit or putting on the final shine.
Her writing about structure and self-editing concepts can be found as guest posts on the writing website Helping Authors Become Writers and in her Medium publication "Building a Novel Layer by Layer."
She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, two children, and a cat that is too big for her own good. Her non-bookish hobbies include playing piano, singing, solitaire, weight lifting, and gymnastics. Her bad habits include mispronouncing words and eating ice cream right before bed.
Services
Non-Fiction
Fiction
Languages
Work experience
Self-employed
Complete developmental editing and line editing for a variety of projects, with a focus in adult fantasy, middle grade/YA in all genres, and self-help non-fiction books. My writing about editing has been featured on the website Helping Writers Become Authors, and I run a publication on Medium, Building a Novel Layer by Layer, focused on intermediate to advanced editing techniques.
I make it my goal to study as many forms of structure as I can, so I can help authors mold a story that works not only to create emotional resonance, but to become a book worth re-reading. When line editing, my focus is on rhythm, clarity, and consistency, and all line edits come with a style sheet. In non-fiction, I pay most attention to the target audience and what they will receive from the book, developing the content anywhere from rearranging chapters, to adding discussion questions, to noting where to add or cut content to benefit the user.
Self-employed
Format and edit doctoral dissertations to Turabian style guide. I line edit dissertations to ensure they're providing the best defense of their thesis, with good sources and free from errors. I ensure every paragraph points toward the thesis and focus on the connective tissue that draws the reader from one sentence to the next.
Apex Companies, LLC
Edit and proofread numerous engineering and geology reports (more than 10 per week), create PDFs. In charge of production and mailing. Expert in formatting in Word and formatting for visual clarity in Excel.
Portfolio
