The Nuts and Bolts of Editing | Workshop | £20

About the Workshop

We will look at various ways in which you can edit your writing, tighten the prose,

bring the text to life, avoid common errors and, hopefully, catch the eye of a

commissioning editor or agent.

In the two hours, we will cover the following areas:

• The main types of editing (line edits, sense edits, structural edits)
• Common mistakes and how to avoid them
• Filler/crutch words – e.g. “basically”, “like”, “you know”
• Punctuating dialogue correctly
• Techniques for cutting down word counts
• How to avoid repetition
• Passive versus active sentences
• Spotting “purple prose”
• How technology can help – Grammarly, ProWritingAid, even humble Word.

This will be a highly practical session: feel free to come with samples of your own

writing so that we can work on them as a group. By the end of the session, you should have a better understanding of editing techniques you can use to make your own work stronger.

This session is for all writers, whether working on fiction, non-fiction, plays, essays,

theses or poetry.  Suitable for all stages, from beginners to experienced.

Partial Bursaries for writers who would otherwise be unable to attend are available for this workshop. To enquire about a bursary please email Paul, his email address is contact@outonthepage.co.uk

If there is demand after this workshop, attendees will have the opportunity to enter a small editing group workshop series led by Iqbal, where each writer will work on editing specific pieces of writing whilst sharing in the learning and experience of the group. 

Iqbal Hussain

His 'day-job' is heavily involved in editing. He has also edited stories and poems for the online magazine “Voices: Untitled”

His latest short stories appear in the anthologies “Leicester Writes Short Story

Prize 2021” and “Mainstream”, by Inkandescent. He won gold in the Creative Future

Writers’ Awards 2019 and is a recipient of the inaugural London Writers’ Awards

2018. Iqbal’s novel, “Northern Boy”, is out on submission.

Twitter: ihussainwriter

Website: www.ihussainwriter.com