on Jane Friedman site:

As an independent editor and book coach, I’ve worked with writers at every stage of the writing process, from those first brainstorming exercises all the way through to the polished final draft.

I’d like to think that I’m able to be of service at virtually any stage of this process. But, friends, I have a confession to make: I wish a lot of people came to me (or someone like me) sooner.

Because so often, a writer has spent years of their life working on a novel that runs to 300+ pages before they seek out qualified feedback—which means that I’m the one who has to break the bad news that their 300+ page epic really just does not hang together at all.

Yes, I’m talking about story structure. Not story structure as in Three Act, or Four Act, or Save the Cat or any of those (though I think those are all fine formats to work with, should you find them a fit for your project).

Rather, I’m talking about structure on a deeper level.

The way I see it, it doesn’t matter what higher-level story structure you’re working with, whether it’s as traditional as the Hero’s Journey or as experimental as the story spiral explored by Jane Alison in Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative—there are three levels that your story must hold together on if it’s going to read like a story.