Case study · Mystery & thriller · 2024
ASIN B0DPRT2WLX
An attorney with 30,000 words and no third act came to us for a developmental edit. Sam read the partial, restructured the second-half outline, and Deborah finished the manuscript in 14 weeks. She signed with an agent at Janklow & Nesbit three months after self-publishing.
Inside the project
Working shots from this engagement — interview sessions, manuscript pages, cover concepts, launch day.
Sam reads the first 30,000 words twice. The first read is for story. The second read is for structure. On read two, the issue is clear: the first 30,000 set up a legal thriller about prosecutorial misconduct. Both of Deborah’s draft endings are courtroom verdicts. But the book she has actually written wants its climax outside the courtroom, in the prosecutor’s private office, in a conversation. Neither verdict ending serves the book.
The developmental letter says this in two paragraphs and then proposes the office scene. Deborah’s first response: a 12-line email saying she disagreed. Her second response, ten days later: a long voice memo agreeing.
She wrote the back half in 14 weeks. Sam line-edited at the end. Marcus’s cover was understated — type-driven, no photograph, the kind of cover Macmillan saw and thought worked for hardcover too.
“Sam's developmental letter told me my two endings were both wrong and then told me the right one. It made me angry for a week. Then I wrote it.”
Cover rounds
The shortlist we presented to the author before round-one revisions. The selected concept is the second in the strip.
Project facts
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