The Magic of Deep Editing
Most editors can capably fix the spelling, grammar, punctuation and typos in a piece of writing. It takes a different skill set to turn dry, disorganised prose into writing that is beautifully organised and bursting with life and energy.
Imagine you could possess such a superpower.
In this course, instructor Shani Raja acquaints you with a powerful technique he developed—deep editing—that can transform almost any piece of dry, nonfiction writing into magnificently sparkling prose.
The deep editing technique forces you to consider every aspect of a document, ensuring quality gets embedded into each pore of the writing. Discover how in this course to fine-tune the content, structure, style, and presentation of a document so that the final product always shines.
“Inner Circle” Tactics
Deep editing is a powerful tool for systematically transforming almost any type of nonfiction writing into magnificent, sparkling prose.
The method, known to an inner circle of exceptional editors, empowers you to edit other people’s writing, and your own, to an immaculate standard.
The approach works because it forces you to consider all attributes of your writing that impact quality—namely, its content, structure, style and presentation.
Whether you mainly edit others’ writing, or self-edit, the deep editing method will give you a huge advantage over your peers, colleagues and competitors.
Drunk and Disorderly Writing
An editor’s biggest nightmare is to be confronted with a scrappy piece of writing that makes little sense. A skilled editor knows how to see through the mess and focus on the essentials.
Among the few who know how to perform such advanced surgery on writing are senior editors in newspapers such as The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, who spend a lifetime turning raw copy into captivating stories for millions of readers.
In this course, you’ll get to learn their process. You will discover a systematic method for bringing style and structure to hopelessly disorganised writing that you can usefully apply to almost anything you’re editing.
“It takes a genius to make the complex and difficult look exceedingly easy and simple. Even though I spent my life in journalism, I never learned as much from anyone as I did from him.”
GLORIA LINDA ABELL, STUDENT
The Four Stages of Editing
Deep editing has four stages that will lead your writing to look spectacularly polished.
The content edit is where you make sure each point is unique, makes perfect sense, is factually correct and is worth keeping.
The structure edit is where you organise all the points into an orderly narrative that flows gracefully from start to finish.
The style edit is where you make sure all ideas are expressed as simply, clearly, elegantly and evocatively as possible.
The presentation edit is where you fix any flaws and inconsistencies in presentation that create a bad look for professional writing.
Editing Mastery takes you through each stage so the process quickly becomes second nature. It’s hands-on, too. You get the unique opportunity to edit a messy piece of writing alongside the instructor, who will help you transform it to read brilliantly.
Who This Course Is For
- Corporate writers
- Communications professionals
- Marketing executives
- Government and nongovernment agencies
- College and university students
- Blog writers
- Job hunters
- Journalists
- Small, medium and large businesses
- Book writers
- Bloggers
- Authors
The course comes with an editing workbook, lecture summaries, “live” edits and heaps of examples and exercises.
“A remarkably simple and clear process to edit writing…”
JIM CANTONI, STUDENT
