Hired by a former student of the university I worked for to conduct structural and publication editing for their lifestyle and self-help novel. Client believed that the project should be low intensity and that the book was nearly publication ready when handed over.
Upon inspection, it became clear that the client had begun to diverge from the overall point of the book in favor of telling an almost autobiographical story about their life. I was able to make structural edits and identify areas within the story where this divergence was occurring and made an effort to explain the issue with including the content in the final draft to the author.
At the completion of our contact I had made major changes to the structure of the novel, given it a thorough polish, and honored the authors wishes to include the items that I believed were distracting from the overall message and goal of the book.