Self-Editing: Do What You Can & Then Pay a Pro to Do the Rest

This is a course about editing your own writing.

Whether you’re just getting starting with writing or you've already published, you’ll get tips that will help you to improve your writing and the quality of your written work and save money on editing. You’ll do short exercises. At the course's halfway mark, you'll be directed to practice further on your own before continuing. This course is better suited for writers of fiction or narrative nonfiction (autobiography, memoir, etc.) than for writers of other types of nonfiction. The punctuation and grammar advice in this course is based on American English.

The course includes videos for every lesson as well as downloadable PDF handouts of the slides, so you can follow along, take notes, and learn at your own pace.

The modules are as follows:

Module 1: Introduction.

Module 2: Journey of a Manuscript. Learn about the stages of a manuscript, from first draft to final draft, and the various types of editing that can help you along the way.

Module 3: Publishing Style. Have you heard of the Chicago Manual of Style? Or AP Style? Find out what they are and why you should care.

Module 4: Point of View. Point of view is the narrator's relationship to the manuscript. Do you know what point of view you've chosen? Do you know the pros and cons of each option?

Module 5: Showing vs. Telling. You may have heard the advice to show, not tell. In this module, learn what showing and telling are and when to use each of them.

Module 6: Dialogue Formatting, Punctuation, and Tags. Learn when to start a new paragraph, how to use quotation marks, what dialogue tags and action tags are and how to use them, how to use other punctuation marks (commas, periods, etc.) with quotation marks and tags, and when to use suspension points (...) vs. an em dash (—).

Module 7: Realistic Dialogue. Get tips for writing realistic dialogue and keeping track of each character's unique voice.

Module 8: Characterization. Get tips for creating fully fledged characters.

Module 9: Proportion & Repetition. Make sure that you're sending your intended messages to your readers.

Module 10: Punctuation & Grammar: Commas. The comma has many uses. This may be the reason it confuses people.

Module 11: Punctuation & Grammar: Confused, Misused, or Ambiguous Words. Learn the difference between which and that, get guidance on when you should omit that, and get a short list of troublesome words.

Module 12: Punctuation & Grammar: Pronouns. Learn about personal pronouns, antecedents, pronoun–preposition pairings, and the difference between that and who.

Module 13: Punctuation & Grammar: Dangling Modifiers & Misplaced Modifiers. Make sure that descriptive phrases are attached to the items they describe.

Module 14: Punctuation & Grammar: Compound Adjectives. Get guidance on when to hyphenate multiword adjectives.

Module 15: Punctuation & Grammar: ing Words in Adverbial Clauses. Have a laugh while learning what these are, when to use them, and when not to use them.

Module 16: Punctuation & Grammar: Parallel Structure. Learn about parallel grammatical structure for lists in sentences, bulleted lists, and numbered lists.

Module 17: Punctuation & Grammar: Active Voice vs. Passive Voice. You may have heard the advice to avoid passive voice. In this module, learn what active voice and passive voice are and when to use each of them.

Module 18: Punctuation & Grammar: Incomplete Sentences. Learn the difference between complete sentences and incomplete sentences and when it's okay to use incomplete sentences.

Module 19: Punctuation & Grammar: Abbreviations. Gets tips on how to make abbreviations plural and how to figure out whether to precede an abbreviation with a or an.

Module 20: Publishing Law. Although Louann is not an attorney, in this module she shares some summary information and resources about defamation/libel/slander, copyright, permissions, right of publicity violation, trademark infringement, and breach of contract.

Module 21: Conclusion. Find out about the self-editing checklist and Louann's copyediting services.