The art of manuscript assessment

Presenter: Kaaren Sutcliffe

Saturday, 13 October 2018
Griffth Neighbourhood Centre, Griffith shops, ACT
Cost: $250 for members; $400 for non-members

About the course

Register at TryBooking: https://www.trybooking.com/429413

An author will often request an edit without being aware of whether the work is ‘ready’. Often the work requires a thorough overall review before the details can be edited.

This workshop will discuss techniques for ascertaining whether a work is ready for a copyedit and suggest ways to proceed if it is not. The workshop will cover the key building blocks of good fiction and how an editor can assess whether these are working, analyse the issues, and provide constructive feedback to the author. It is aimed at conducting an overall review of a manuscript but will also be useful for those wishing to do structural editing as the basic principles are the same.

Workshop learning objectives:

• Appreciate the difference between assessing, editing and proofreading a manuscript.
• Know what questions to ask an author about their manuscript.
• Develop an awareness of a wide range of aspects that you need to consider in your overall assessment.
• Develop a checklist and template for assessing a fiction manuscript.
• Appreciate some of the less tangible writing techniques to check for.
• Appreciate the need to be tactful and constructive in your assessment report in order to build and maintain rapport with your authors — ideally you want the work to come back for a copyedit!

Register at TryBooking: https://www.trybooking.com/429413

About the presenter

Kaaren is a published author and an Accredited Editor. Having learned to write to a publishable standard, to self-edit, and then to edit and review the work of others, Kaaren appreciates the challenges of the journey and respects all authors’ ownership of their work. Kaaren has nine books published, and she has more than thirty years’ experience as a relatively senior public servant in Canberra. She has been a full-time freelance editor and writer for more than a decade, offering support to individual authors as well as a range of government and private agencies.