Control. We all fight with it, in some fashion or another, everyday. This doesn't change when you decide to be a writer or editor. Creative freedom is one of the beautiful parts about embracing the arts in your life. You can approach a project with as much, or little, control as you feel like. But what happens when you create something beautiful and insightful without any reigns? If you want to keep it in a drawer and only share it with your closest friends who may or may not pick it up....nothing happens. That piece will stay in that drawer..
Wait, you want to take that work out of the drawer? You wrote a piece and kept your characters on a loose leash and now they want to leave the drawer you stuffed them in? Awesome! This is an amazing feeling. And, yes, by amazing I mean terrifying, thrilling, intimidating, inspiring, and illuminating. This is where the control comes in. How do you take the work out of the drawer with out losing control of your characters' leashes?
Or, perhaps, you are blessed with the control and discipline that others lack. Good for you! Do you tell your characters what to say and where to go? There is no straying from the established path. That manuscript has never been in a drawer. It has been on your desktop with pages and pages being added daily. But now it is time to take it into the next phase. It is time to make sure there aren't any typos, misplaced commas, or incorrectly correctly spelled words. This is just good protocol. It is probably easier to find an editor for the disciplined piece that only needs a fine tuning, but do these pieces exist? I'm not sure they do.
Control is a matter of perspective. Control is a matter of preference. It is critical to find an editing partner that can work in the realm of control that is needed for the piece. Each manuscript is different. Each manuscript needs a different kind of care and control. If you are looking for an editor, talk to different ones, tell them how you control your characters, tell them how controlled you want the finished manuscript to be. There is a fine balance between out of control writing and out of control characters written with intention. Make sure your editor understands that AND is flexible enough to work with you on it.
Control can be hard to balance with creative freedom, editors are here to help.