This is the course I wish existed when I was first starting out as a freelance editor.

I knew I wanted to specialise in fiction editing. I also knew that when working directly with sentences, that was called 'copy-editing'. And I later found out that if you wanted to help with more than the technical mechanics of the sentences (i.e. you wanted to help authors make their sentences more effective), that was sometimes (though not always) called 'line editing' – which is often layered on top of copy-editing.

(This was the start of my discovery that editorial service definitions can vary somewhat, which isn't that useful when you're just starting out and trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing!)

So, I sought out copy-editing training. There were no courses geared specifically towards fiction. This made me assume that everything I would learn on these copy-editing courses would be universally applicable to every kind of writing.

But I was wrong.

Instead, I had to slog through units on complex heading systems, tables and references, and even stuff on editing recipe books! There would be a single fiction exercise if I were lucky, and the rest of the time the focus was on making things formal and correct. Allowing for variation in creative authorial style was not discussed, nor were issues of consistency specific to fiction, and nor were strategies specific to editing novels.

I learned a lot that was very useful. I learned about things I didn't expect to learn about, like marking up for the typesetter and creating style sheets. But when it came to applying these lessons to fiction specifically, in the real world, I had to do additional research and adapt what I had learned on those courses, because fiction has its own specific requirements!

After years working as a freelance fiction editor, I knew I'd got the foundations solid. I knew what was useful and what was not and in what situations, and how to set up my work flow, and what tools were most helpful, and so on.

And so I pulled together all my copy-editing and line editing foundational knowledge – geared specifically to fiction – into this course, to help freelance fiction editors just starting out. Budding freelance fiction editors just like you!

By the end of this course, you'll have the foundations you need to become a knowledgeable, confident and capable freelance fiction editor.

Onward to glory!