An editor's guide to editing fiction

How to enrol

To enrol, you need to click on the Add to Cart button on this page. You will be asked to register (if you have not already done so). You will, at that point, be asked to pay by credit/debit card.

Important note: You will have access to the course for eight months from the date of your enrolment.

Refunds: Fees for e-Learning Modules are non-refundable, as immediate access is available to all the relevant course material.

What is included?

Course Materials

Full access to the PTC's online learning platform where you will find all the materials you need to complete the course. Where relevant, downloadable materials are provided so you can practise your new skills as many times as you need to feel confident that you have mastered them.

Certificate

Upon successfully completing the course you will receive a completion certificate from PTC.

Who is it for?

This module is for editors who have completed initial training and are looking to go more in depth to this specific topic, but who are not yet very experienced.

About the authors

Gale Winskill started her career in Hong Kong in 1993, where she worked for Macmillan and a local publishing house, writing and editing English as a Second Language (ESL) textbooks. After a two-year stint as a dive master in Egypt and Thailand, she returned to the UK and worked for Floris Books for 10 years, editing non-fiction and children’s fiction, before going freelance in 2008.

An Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), Gale mentors and tutors on the CIEP’s Proofreading Mentoring Scheme and online Introduction to Fiction Editing course, respectively, and teaches the HarperCollins’ Author Academy (fiction stream).

These days, she specialises in fiction of all kinds, still enjoys editing non-fiction, and provides training for both fiction editors and authors.

Caroline Knight began her career in publishing at Penguin Books in 1989, when she joined Editorial 2, the department dedicated to copy-editing. She has been a PTC tutor since 1996 and a freelancer since 2010.

Caroline became managing editor of Allen Lane The Penguin Press in 1995 before moving to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Illustrated in 1997. She lived in Greece, working freelance and tutoring at the PTC, from 2000 to 2003, when she became managing editorial director at William Heinemann, an imprint of the Random House group. Five years later, she moved to Atlantic Books, where she stayed until 2010 when she moved to rural Kent and rejoined the freelance community.

Among others, she has worked with Alastair Campbell, Vince Cable, David Willetts, Margaret Drabble and the late Herman Leonard, as well as a wide variety of others less famous. She enjoys editing both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular leaning towards history and politics. 

Brenda Stones has many years' experience in commissioning, editing, writing, lecturing and training. She started as a graduate trainee at Cambridge University Press and finished as Publishing Director at Oxford University Press, including smaller trade and independent presses in between.

Since then she has been Visiting Lecturer for the Publishing Studies MA at City University and has written 20 home-learning titles for WHSmiths. She has run many training courses for the PTC, and delivered publishing training overseas in Bangladesh and Eritrea. She is currently a freelance editor.