Homework and Sample Line-Edits in "An Introduction to the Practical Side and the Mysteries of Line-Editing"
In Kid's Book Revisions webinars, we make a practice of having plenty of handouts and homework, and of giving students an opportunity to get feedback on their writing. "An Introduction to the Practical Side and the Mysteries of Line-Editing" will be no different in that respect. What is different is that we have built the course around line-editing practice, in the first part using examples of specific problems, and then in the second part using samples of actual writing, both from manuscripts that ended up getting published, and from student work.How will we handle the homework and samples? Read on!
Homework
Line-editing is learned by doing. We know that because that's how we learned! So we will give homework after most class sessions to enable you to practice a specific line-editing problem or your approach to line-editing more generally. We will then either review the homework and take questions about it in the following class, or we will provide an answer key that will show you how we, or another editor, would have done the line-editing. Or we will do both. You will not be left wondering about how to handle a particular issue or manuscript.
Student Line-Editing Samples in Class Sessions
A big part of the class involves working on actual samples from manuscripts. Some of those were contributed to the class by editors, writers, and agents we know. We also want to get samples from you! If you would like to have a short sample of your writing line-edited in class, stay tuned for an opportunity to send it in. We will be asking for a paragraph to up to two manuscript pages, plus a short synopsis of the manuscript that puts the sample in context.
We will review the samples in the order we receive them, and use the first 6-10 that work for class purposes.
Student Samples Outside Class
What if you don't want your writing to be line-edited in public, or your sample isn't selected, or you want us to do a longer sample? We have another option. Line-editing is time-consuming, high-focus work, so we must charge an added fee. For a minimum of 5 pages and a maximum of 20, one of us(your choice) will line-edit your writing for $10/page. We settled on these page limits to ensure that we can give everyone the line-editing they want, and not have to schedule the work for months after the class is over.
We hope this works for you, and again, stay tuned for further details as we get closer to the time of the class.