Description
Effective Editing Course: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level. An entire industry is devoted to teaching the art of writing. While there are countless how-to books and seminars that will show you how to rewrite a sentence or draft a novel, one of the most important components of good writing is often overlooked or overlooked: good editing. Editing your own work is difficult, but it’s a very important skill if you want to be a successful writer. After all, writing is about much more than just creating a simple draft—it’s how work goes from rough draft to finished piece that separates the good from the great. And anyone who has ever tried to edit a novel or memoir can tell you that it’s all too easy to get lost in the details, focusing only on the trees and forgetting the forest instead of seeing the big picture. Until it gets hard and overwhelming. , The tendency to focus on the “small picture” instead of the “big picture” during the editing process can be overcome with the right tools and perspective. That’s where Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level comes in. In 13 detailed lessons, trainer and book editor Molly McCowan walks you through the personal editing process, using a step-by-step method designed to reduce overwhelm and confusion, and make the review process as constructive as possible. From the big picture to the small details of your work, Molly shows you how to improve character development, find and fix plot holes, create stronger scenes, focus on smooth pacing and point of view issues, improve your language, and many other things. , The focus of this course is on improving your fiction writing skills, including both fiction and nonfiction such as memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, and personal essays. Molly’s tips and tools throughout the course can help any writer edit their work with skill and confidence.
Planning, plotting, and patience: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to good editing. Before you highlight your sentences or worry about grammar, think ahead. Anyone who’s ever felt intimidated by the prospect of rewriting hundreds of pages of text will surely understand the value of having an action plan. Not only will planning your editing process save you time and energy, but having an idea of what you need to tackle—and in what order—will result in a more meaningful final draft. Truly effective editing happens in layers, so fully understanding these layers—their focus and function for your work—is an essential first step. Here’s a breakdown of the four layers and what they check in your writing:
- Developmental editing involves looking at your work as a whole to make sure the key elements (including characters, plot, structure, and pacing) fit together and work together.
- The focus of line editing is on working at the sentence and paragraph level. Here you deal with things like transitions, run-on sentences, phrasing, redundancy, syntax, rhythm, tense and clichés, and continuity.
- Copy editing is more technical and detailed than developmental and linear editing, and focuses on the mechanics of grammar and usage. One of the main purposes of copywriting is to ensure consistency throughout the work, so a style guide such as the Chicago Style Guide is essential.
- Proofreading is the “clean-up” phase of editing that takes place after your book is entered, where any small errors that remain are corrected. Both proofreading and editing are best done by trained professionals, as these small slip-ups are the ones that are most easily overlooked in your work.
By understanding these levels and tackling them one at a time in the correct order, you can maintain a sense of order and stay on task during the revision process. This layered approach also ensures that no aspect of your work is overlooked. Because this course focuses on editing your own work, it focuses on developmental and linear editing, leaving the text editing and proofreading to an outside editor.
Top to bottom: Effective editing starts with a broad view and gets narrower as the process progresses. The first step is to prepare for editing by training your editor’s eye. That means taking time with your draft and then finding ways to see the vision in a new light. Next, it’s time to review your revisions. When writing fiction, the first elements to examine are introduction, plot, and structure—and if you’re not sure how the three differ, don’t worry, because Molly walks you through each term in detail. Using examples from popular works like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Pride and Prejudice, Molly shows you how to make sure your work is structurally sound and cohesive, and is more than just a series of events happening one after the other. , Characters—whether fictional or fact-based—and their motivations, flaws, and choices are another crucial part of successful narrative writing. To better assess your characters, Molly introduces you to the Protagonist Test, which asks questions such as:
- What does your character want?
- What do they really need?
- Do they take decisive action or react?
- Do they take the lead in solving problems and achieving goals?
- Will they fight alone in the “final battle”?
You’ll learn the importance of external and internal conflict and how to hone your characters to make them dynamic, layered, and engaging for the reader. You’ll also cover many other development topics, such as how to balance plot and plot summary, how to effectively direct your work, how to deal with common point of view problems, how to build stronger scenes, and how to improve dialogue and internal monologue. You’ll really understand the common writing advice to “show, don’t tell”—and when to ignore it.
The Line Editor’s Toolbox and Beyond: Once you’ve worked your way through the broader elements of advanced editing, move on to line editing: reviewing and refining your work at the sentence level. You’ll see how focusing on the three parts of speech—adverbs, adjectives, and verbs—will help you hone your prose to improve the flow and polish of your sentences. You’ll learn how to use best practices to combat verbosity, eliminate hyperbole, and trim your writing like a pro. Molly also lets you uncover the truth about common grammar and usage myths, exploring things like the passive voice, sentence fragments, and split infinitives. Then he explains when to bend or break these so-called rules (and which rules were never useful in the first place). Finally, one of the hardest aspects of editing is knowing when to stop. It’s all too easy to keep tinkering, tinkering, and revising until you end up in an endless cycle that never quite feels complete. With Molly’s guidance, you’ll learn when to stop editing, when and how to collaborate with outside editors on key steps like copyediting and proofreading, and how to move forward to get your work to the finish line. ,
What you’ll learn in Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level
Discover the key to truly great writing by mastering editing skills.
Improve your writing skills by learning the key elements of personal editing
Focus on sentence and paragraph level work
Course Description: Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level
- Editor: thegreatcourses
- Teacher: Molly McCowan
- Training level: beginner to advanced
- Training duration: 5 hours and 19 minutes
- Number of courses: 13
Course Titles Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level
Photos Duration Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level
Sample video from the course “Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level”.
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