An editor's guide to editing fiction
You may be at the stage of having edited short passages at work, for publicity or marketing purposes. Or you may want to try your hand at editing longer pieces of writing, to help further your career. Or perhaps you just fancy earning some extra income by editing scripts, freelance at home, and want to take the first step towards that goal.
This module will show you what’s different about editing fiction, and give you the chance to try your hand at it, to help decide whether fiction editing is the right path for you.
Course content
- What's different about editing fiction
- Categories of fiction
- Different stages of editing
- Using timelines and other plot grids
- Recording relationships and characterisation
- Marking up dialogue
- Using a style sheet
- Framing author queries
e-Learning modules are optimised for desktop and laptop devices and not tablets and smartphones.
Learning outcomes
At the end of this module you will:
Have a clear understanding of how to approach issues such as
- copy-editing dialogue
- checking continuity of plot
- creating and using a family (or other relationship) tree
- framing author queries
How does the course work?
An editor's guide to editing fiction has eight units. Across the units there are eight exercises and model answers.
About the authors
Gale Winskill started her career in Hong Kong in 1993, where she worked for Macmillan and a local publishing house, writing and editing English as a Second Language (ESL) textbooks. After a two-year stint as a dive master in Egypt and Thailand, she returned to the UK and worked for Floris Books for 10 years, editing non-fiction and children’s fiction, before going freelance in 2008.
An Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), Gale mentors and tutors on the CIEP’s Proofreading Mentoring Scheme and online Introduction to Fiction Editing course, respectively, and teaches the HarperCollins’ Author Academy (fiction stream).
These days, she specialises in fiction of all kinds, still enjoys editing non-fiction, and provides training for both fiction editors and authors.
Caroline Knight began her career in publishing at Penguin Books in 1989, when she joined Editorial 2, the department dedicated to copy-editing. She has been a PTC tutor since 1996 and a freelancer since 2010.
Caroline became managing editor of Allen Lane The Penguin Press in 1995 before moving to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Illustrated in 1997. She lived in Greece, working freelance and tutoring at the PTC, from 2000 to 2003, when she became managing editorial director at William Heinemann, an imprint of the Random House group. Five years later, she moved to Atlantic Books, where she stayed until 2010 when she moved to rural Kent and rejoined the freelance community.
Among others, she has worked with Alastair Campbell, Vince Cable, David Willetts, Margaret Drabble and the late Herman Leonard, as well as a wide variety of others less famous. She enjoys editing both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular leaning towards history and politics.
Brenda Stones has many years' experience in commissioning, editing, writing, lecturing and training. She started as a graduate trainee at Cambridge University Press and finished as Publishing Director at Oxford University Press, including smaller trade and independent presses in between.
Since then she has been Visiting Lecturer for the Publishing Studies MA at City University and has written 20 home-learning titles for WHSmiths. She has run many training courses for the PTC, and delivered publishing training overseas in Bangladesh and Eritrea. She is currently a freelance editor.
This e-Learning Module was developed with the support of the Unwin Charitable Trust.
Special offer
Buy the full set of e-learning modules for only £120 (usually £199). Click here for more details.
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Five to seven hours with eight months access to the module.
PTC e-Learning Modules are concentrated, online courses that focus on specialist topics relevant to publishing working life. They are designed to build on a foundation of existing skills and experience.