If you have been searching for a writing coach, you will probably have realized that writing coaches come from diverse sources.

Some are published authors who coach from their experience of writing their own books. Some are language teachers or workshop facilitators who teach creative writing to groups. Some are accountability partners who check in on your progress and keep you moving.

Some are editors who feel it is better to strengthen a writer’s craft than to correct similar errors across multiple manuscripts.

These coaches are all effective but they are not interchangeable. The lens they bring to your manuscript makes a significant difference to the outcome. Understanding these differences is important before you commit.

The question nobody asks

Most writers choose a coach based on personality, price, and availability. Does this person seem warm and knowledgeable? Can I afford them? Do they have a (convenient) slot available?

These are reasonable questions. But they miss the most important one:

Which lens does this coach bring to my manuscript?

A client sent me her memoir. She had led a bold and fascinating life, well worth recording. She had done things that would make my hair stand on end. She was utterly fearless—even when she should have been a little cautious. Let me just say that if one of my kids had announced such schemes, my hair would have turned hydrogen yellow in an hour!

She recorded her journey faithfully, chapter after chapter. But none of the chapters were structured so that a reader could learn from her experiences.

Her experiences were recorded in the format, “This happened to me.”

There was no, “This happened to me and this is what I learned… or this is how I handled it.”

I showed her that there was no story without a resolution or conclusion. She reworked the story and it became a far better story. The bones were sound but there was no chiseling to show them off.

That is the developmental lens in action. It highlights what the page could become.

The difference a developmental lens makes

Developmental editing works at the ‘big picture’ level. It asks: is the structure sound? Is the story delivering on the promise it made in the opening chapter? Is each character earning their place? Is the pacing serving the story or fighting it? Does the ending feel inevitable or convenient and arbitrary?

A developmental editor reads a manuscript the way an architect reads a building—not asking whether the paint colour is right, but whether the load is optimally distributed so the structure is sound.

When a coach has spent years doing this work, this becomes their second nature. It is simply how they read.

And when they bring that eye to your work as a coach, the guidance they give you is different in texture and intensity.

What this looks like in practice

A coach without a developmental background will often identify that something isn’t working. They can feel it, the way any careful reader can. But identifying the problem and knowing how to solve it are different skills.

A coach with a developmental editing background knows how a change in chapter three will ripple through chapters eight and twelve.

That precision changes the coaching experience. There are fewer rewrite iterations and less waste of time.

My clients end up with a better story in less time than they expected. That is not a coincidence.

What to look for when choosing

When you are evaluating a writing coach, here are the questions worth asking:

Have they worked with other people’s manuscripts? Do they understand story structure? Can they tell you not just what isn’t working but why and what to do about it?

A coach who can answer yes to all these questions brings a skill that goes beyond encouragement. Their trained eye knows what stories need—and what they don’t.

That eye is the difference between a manuscript that goes in circles and one that becomes what it was always trying to be.

Mother of three adult, opinionated humans. An idealistic, outspoken woman of scrupulous integrity. Editor, coach, ghostwriter and storyteller. And a passionate bibliophile, of course.