Things I've Learned on my writing journey

Line Editing focuses the way the sentence comes together (flow, readability, word choice, style, etc.)

Copy Editing focuses on grammatical and spelling errors.

The goal of developmental editing focuses on the feeling and vibe of the story. 

• Are certain events/information clear?
• Are there any plot holes? (Note: sometimes what appears to be a plot hole is a lead-up to something for the future)
• How does the story read? Is it rushed/slow, jumpy, repeatitive, ets.?
• Are the characters developed?
• How is the use of dialogue? Is there enough of it or too much? Does a character's voice sound off from what you think it should be?

During this phase, Alpha and Beta Readers are the most beneficial. Here they have the influence to let an author know where in the story event/characters are lacking. Constructive criticism the best way to improve, and without feedback, a story has no way of advancing past the author's view.

Alpha Readers are those special individuals that read a very rough draft of the story to give general feedback. They understand that the story may not have been edited yet and that it overall has not been flushed out.

Beta Readers have a cleaner copy of the story. They have it after the author has done at least one self-editing pass and, ideally, has already received feedback from Alpha Readers. Beta Readers usually get the story right before it going out for the final editing process before publication.