Line Editing: Dialogue (Jan 20 – Feb 2, 2025)

Description

$150 (Members: $135) | How to line edit dialogue| 2 weeks | With Instructor Feedback | Intermediate

Line editors often feel confident about line editing a narrative – removing unnecessary actions, trimming down descriptive info-dumping, brightening up boring prose – but when it comes to dialogue, they feel less sure of what they’re doing.

This class is intended to help you develop a framework for editing dialogue. Using straightforward checklists, you’ll master the minutia of he said, she said.

You’ll learn:

• when to put the brakes on adverbs and when to give them the green flag
• spotting info-dumping in dialogue (and what to do about it)
• how dialogue reflects (or should reflect) character
• when small talk matters (and when to ruthlessly delete it)
• when to move thing out of the narrative and into dialogue (and vice versa)
• why yes/no answers are deadly to dialogue
• how to punctuate for emphasis
• and more!

This intermediate line-editing class is also helpful for copy editors who specialize in fiction.

Each week includes a lesson and an assignment to turn in for instructor feedback.

Intermediate classes are intended for those with some developmental editing experience or who have taken the Beginning + Intermediate DE for Fiction classes or the self-paced DE 1 through 6 classes.

The class is entirely online and asynchronous (you don’t have to be in any particular place at any particular time to participate) but the assignments are due by specific deadlines.