What you need to know to start offering sentence-level fiction editing
Sentence-level editing is all about fixing spelling and grammar, right? Actually, that’s only scratching the surface. In this course, I’ll teach you the foundations of what you need to know to become a freelance fiction editor.
Course outline
Introduction
Available in
days
days
after you enroll
Module 1: Defining the Job
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days
days
after you enroll
- Introduction
- What do line and copy-editors do?
- Why teach these services together?
- What line and copy-editors DON'T do
- Why should we care about sentence-level editing?
- Who hires line and copy-editors?
- What does the line and copy-editing process look like?
- Where do line and copy-editing services fit in the publishing process?
- Proof-editing: the illegitimate love-child of editorial services
- A few notes on working with historical fiction, translated fiction and children’s fiction
- AI and editing – some speculative thoughts
- Summary
- Test your understanding
Module 2: Manuscript Structure and Marking Up
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days
days
after you enroll
- Introduction
- The word processor you need
- The anatomy of a book
- Manuscript formatting conventions
- Marking up
- Track Changes and Comments
- Commenting and querying
- Preparing the manuscript for the client
- Summary
- Test your understanding
- BONUS: Marking up and typesetter letter examples
- BONUS: Paragraphing terminology
Module 3: Editorial Tools
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days
days
after you enroll
- Introduction
- Useful features of Word
- Saving and backing up your files
- Using styles in Word
- Entering the wonderful world of macros
- Recommended macros for fiction
- Software plug-ins for Word
- Summary
- Test your understanding
- BONUS: Pre-editing check list
- VIDEO: How to install a macro (4:47)
- VIDEO: Setting up styles in Word (13:33)
- BONUS: Confusables
- BONUS: MultiSwitch
Module 4: Style and Stylistic Consistency
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days
days
after you enroll
- Introduction
- Keeping a manuscript consistent with a style sheet
- Using a style guide to help with decision-making
- House style (nothing to do with fancy rugs)
- Choosing your dictionary
- Differences between Englishes – a brief overview
- Hyphenation
- Capitalisation
- Numbers … figures or words?
- Tenses
- How to format thoughts
- Formatting foreign words and phrases
- Formatting displayed text
- Summary
- Test your understanding
- BONUS: Style sheet example and template
- EXERCISE: Stylistic consistency
Module 5: Story-Based Consistency
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days
days
after you enroll
Module 6: Legalities
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days
days
after you enroll
Closing Notes
Available in
days
days
after you enroll