The Throughline Critique
A developmental read of up to 12,500 words of your nonfiction, and a letter telling you what the work is truly arguing.
Nonfiction, memoir and essay. Book chapters, a run of essays or a season of your publication.
$397
Each piece works on its own. You’ve read them enough times to be sure of that much. But when you put them next to each other, something stops holding and you can’t find where the seam is.
That’s rarely a sentence problem. Usually the work hasn’t decided what it’s claiming, so every piece makes a slightly different argument and none of them gets all the way there. Sometimes the claim is sitting right there and you keep backing away from it, adding context, adding the other side or adding a paragraph that explains what you already said plainly two pages ago. Sometimes you’ve written the whole thing about a subject, in careful third person, when what the reader needed was you in it.
Twelve thousand words is enough for me to see which one it is. And to tell you what to do about it.
What you get
A full editorial letter. Narrative, honest and written to you. It covers throughline, argument, structure, authority, movement, voice and where the work is arguing with itself. It tells you what the writing is trying to say, which is usually the one thing the writer is too close to hear.
Margin comments on the pages themselves. You see exactly where each pattern shows up, in your own text.
A named next move. One specific thing to do next, and the reason it comes before everything else on the list.
One round of follow-up questions by email, within 30 days of delivery.
Scope and terms
Length: Up to 12,500 words. Roughly 50 manuscript pages, or three to five essays, or a season of your publication.
Form: Nonfiction, memoir and essay. Personal essay, criticism, cultural writing, narrative nonfiction, memoir and Substack practice. Send a set of pieces or a continuous draft. Both work.
Format: Word or Google doc (Note: I make edits in Word only. Sending a Google doc is fine. But understand that I will download your pages in Word and return them to you that way.)
Turnaround: 14 days from the day I receive your pages.
Price: $397, paid in full before I open the file.
Delivery: Editorial letter as a Word doc, plus your pages with margin comments.
Payment plans are only available on full manuscript engagements.
Is this the right move for your work?
Yes, if: the writing’s been accumulating for a while and you want to know whether it is a book, a column or a set of good pieces that belong apart.
Yes, if: you have a memoir or nonfiction draft and the opening isn’t landing, or you’re building a proposal and need the argument to hold before an agent reads it.
Yes, if: you’ve been writing your publication for a year or more and nobody has ever read it as a body of work. You want to know what you’ve built.
No, if: the draft is finished and clean and what you want is sentence-level work. That’s line editing, and it’s a different service.
No, if: you only want me to tell you it is good. I will tell you what’s good, and I’ll be specific about it, because vague praise is useless to a writer. I’ll also tell you the rest.
No, if: the work is fiction. That’s the Opening Chapters Critique, and it’s built differently.
No, if: what you want is for somebody to tell you the subject is worth writing about. I can only read what’s on the page. Come back when there are pages. I would rather turn the work away than take your money for a read that can’t help you yet.
What happens after you pay
You pay. You get a confirmation with submission instructions and three short questions: what the work is, where you are stuck and what you want me to look hardest at.
You send your pages.
Fourteen days later you get the letter and your marked-up pages.
You sit with it. If questions come up in the next thirty days, email me.
Who’s reading your pages
I am a developmental editor and a voice and clarity specialist. I fact-check and copyedit for Custom Content from WSJ through The Writing Company, and I teach for ProWritingAid’s community events, including their invite-only Expert Series.
The Story Temple is my own body of work, essays built one week at a time, which means I know from the inside what it is to write a publication and wonder whether any of it is adding up.
My deepest roots are in the work of Black writers.
What I do in every project, at every altitude, is the same thing: help writers stop writing for approval and start writing from truth. Their truth.
“I was no longer alone with this literary project; my story now had an editor who also cared for it. This helped me to address my fear of sharing my book and letting people in. I was also proud of myself because I was taking this long-term project seriously... My biggest takeaway was that I’m not a loser! Lakeisha knew exactly what I was trying to say. The reflections she shared at the end of our collaboration blew my mind. She understood.” — Stephanie Rebonati, investigative journalist
“Lakeisha provided a comprehensive assessment, which included framework suggestions and grammatical clarity... she gave us the confidence we needed to submit our plan to prospective investors.” — Austin Bradley, founder
“Communicate your needs to Lakeisha and she will take care of you. It was truly a great experience.” — Tara S., self-help author
Book the Throughline Critique · $397
Questions first? Email me at info@thestorytemple.com, subject line: Throughline.
If your work is fiction, the Opening Chapters Critique is where we start. If the whole draft is ready and you want all of it read, ask me about the full manuscript assessment.
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