Putting Your Inner Editor to Work – Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)
My genre series will continue next week, but this week I wanted to quickly let you know about a webinar I’m running on Saturday, April 12th, called Putting Your Inner Editor to Work – Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.
When we’re writing our first draft, we look for techniques to silence our inner editor so our creativity is free to play. Once that first draft is done, though, we need to turn our inner editor from our enemy into our ally so that we can decide if our story is worth saving and polish it into a ready-for-publication book.
During this live webinar, you’ll learn how to train your inner editor to decide if your big picture concept is strong enough, identify and fix weaknesses in the structure of your plot, and troubleshoot (or add!) your main character’s arc. We’ll also look at the single biggest secret to a captivating setting, and you’ll walk away with practical quick fixes and a checklist for each scene.
This WANA webinar takes place in an online “classroom” where you’ll be able to listen to the lecture live, watch a PowerPoint presentation, and ask me questions. In other words, it’s audio, visual, and interactive. This webinar will be recorded, and all registrants will receive a link to the recording in case they couldn’t attend live or want to listen again. You’ll also receive a PDF of the slides I used during the session.
If you’d like to attend, I’m offering a special discount code to my blog readers and newsletter subscribers. Enter the code Marcy20 when you register for 20% off.
Click here to register or to find out more!
I hope you’ll check out the books in my Busy Writer’s Guides series, including How to Write Dialogue and my brand new Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction
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Apr 08, 2014 @ 12:28:52
Hi Marcy,
Self-editing is too big a category: I do content editing as I write, copy editing after I finish, and proofreading of my formatted ebook along with my formatter. For the second, I have an extensive list of algorithms tailored to my personal quirks, things for which I know I have bad habits. This is what works for me. I developed the algorithms to simplify my life. I’m glad to see someone is helping other authors do the same –although their hints and rules probably aren’t called algorithms. 😉
Take care,
Steve
Apr 08, 2014 @ 12:35:47
This class focuses on the content/developmental side of self-editing. A class can teach how to make some big positive changes on that level. I think copy editing and proofreading your own work is much more difficult to teach in under two hours.
I love that you use algorithms. Do you actually have macros in Word and other customized goodies that you use or is that just your name for your own personal checklist?
Apr 08, 2014 @ 13:15:12
I consider content editing just part of the writing process–write 6k words, cut 4k and maybe paste 2k elsewhere, etc, etc. For copy editing, no macros in Word for me–more like my old UNIX scripts: if this happens, I should correct, before anyone else sees it and thinks I’m an idiot. Lots of search and/or replaces, tests for POV lapses, etc (some of that I handle in content editing too–I know it’s weird when I get lost myself).
I’ve heard good things about Scribener–maybe that super-writing package does all this for you? I could just hand it my list of characters and tell it to write the novel? 😉
Apr 08, 2014 @ 19:52:55
Marcy, are you talking about me again? 🙂
Apr 09, 2014 @ 02:28:43
I’m hoping it will help many 🙂
Apr 15, 2014 @ 10:07:38
Stephen,
Could you possibly be talking about Scrivener by Literature & Latte?
If so, I wish it did that! But it is an all-in-one as you can possibly get.
Gwen Hernandez wrote an excellent accompanying book & gives classes in it. Required, IMHO.
Learning craft and learning the program Scrivener, good combo if anyone likes to organize their books by sections instead of the Word way.
Apr 17, 2014 @ 15:43:24
Yeah, by being a fluent Spanish speaker, I tend to confuse v and b. My apologies. Maybe I’m better off doing it the old-fashioned way. I know my quirks. Unless Scrivener is AI, it can’t possibly learn them. 😉 Even after fifteen books, I’m still learning: writing, learning, writing, learning…it’s a hoot!