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Slay Your Manuscript: Self-Editing

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Margaret Hennigar Library
Location:
135 N Park St, Bridgewater. More info
Calendar:
Member event

Congratulations you have a draft of your novel!

It’s time to slash, invigorate, and finesse your words, into a well rounded story before you hire an editor.

N.L. Blandford presents a workshop that will provide you with some tools, and hands on experience, to help you:
– Identify what to filter out of your novel.
– How to show a reader what is happening versus telling them.
– You don’t like to be told what to do, why would a reader?
– Assess your dialogue and emotion mechanics. – For example, are all of those adverbs necessary?
– Use the five senses.
– Analyze your word choice and potential use repetition
– Identify if your exposition is getting in the way of your story.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED: call the Margaret Hennigar Library at 902 543-9222

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Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children and young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca