About
I read for whether the feelings land and whether the characters make sense.
EFA member
I’m Ricardo Ruas, a developmental editor based in Portugal, working in English. I’m a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association and I’m enrolled in the University of Washington’s Specialization in Developmental Editing, finishing in December 2026. I’ve also self-published two novels, so I know both sides of the editorial letter.
I edit character-driven fiction, especially the dark stories, the obsessive ones, and the love stories that hurt a little. I know what an unhelpful note feels like from the author’s chair, so my letters are the kind I’d want to get: honest, specific, tied to real pages in your book, and clear that every decision stays yours.
RedRoot comes from where the problems usually are. What a reader feels on the page grows out of what’s underneath it: a character’s motivation, the promises the story makes, and whether it keeps them. That’s where I dig. The red is the pen.
THE PATH
From match footage to manuscripts.
Before books, I earned a degree in Sports Science at the University of Lisbon and spent years as a football coach and performance analyst, watching hours of match footage to find the one pattern behind ten problems. Editing uses the same skill. I notice where a book drags, work out why, and give you the fixes in an order you can revise from.
Fiction came next. Writing my own books taught me craft from the inside, and self-publishing them taught me what readers forgive and what makes them quietly put a book down.
When I read your manuscript, I track what your reader will actually feel: whether each character’s arc holds from the first page to the last, whether the stakes keep rising, where the pacing sags, whether the point of view and voice stay steady, and whether the ending pays off what the opening promised. In a romance, I follow the relationship beat by beat. Your goal for the book becomes my goal for the edit.
Alongside the UW course, I keep EFA coursework on my calendar and a stack of craft books on my desk, starting with Tiffany Yates Martin’s Intuitive Editing.
“If a note doesn’t tell you what to do next, it doesn’t go in the letter.”
Emotional truth · Character logic · Earned payoffs · Honest letters
