Journey into the uncharted worlds and arcane magics of science fiction and fantasy editing. These genres have audience expectations that can be opaque to an unindoctrinated editor, but once you get to know them, you'll learn just how much fun editing speculative fiction can be!

In this six-week course, we will empower you to make informed and story-forward edits in science fiction and fantasy works. You'll become well-versed in helping authors fix issues with worldbuilding and exposition, flat character archetypes, and tropey plots, and you'll learn how to strike a balance in hybrid genres like literary science fiction and paranormal romance. Lastly, you will develop your ability to provide deliverables integral to your authors' success.

• Week 1: The hero, the nemesis, the farmer boy with latent magics in his blood: We'll discuss common main and secondary character archetypes in sci-fi and fantasy, and how to help an author create an appropriately matched antagonist when things like time travel and werebears are involved.
• Week 2: Worldbuilding is a supernatural beast in a lot of speculative fiction. We'll be exploring how magic and science systems interact with the logical continuity in a story's plot and how you, the editor, can spot when something isn't working.
• Week 3: The Hero's Journey/Save the Cat beats are ubiquitous in popular science fiction and fantasy. We'll be doing a deep dive into how sci-fi and fantasy authors make this work to their advantage, when they turn it on its head, and when they are right to abandon the beaten path altogether.
• Week 4: The rules for exposition are very different in speculative fiction compared to other genres. We'll build up our acumen for determining if an author is captivating a reader by exploring complex facets of setting and circumstances or bloviating to their story's detriment
• Week 5: Mystery, romance, literary fiction, oh my! Many science fiction and fantasy books are secretly other traditional genres set in speculative worlds. We'll discuss how to evaluate whether these stories are meeting the expectations of both genres and what to do when they're missing the mark.
• Week 6: We'll discuss editorial materials unique to science fiction and fantasy and how your deliverables will differ for these genres. You'll complete a full developmental edit on a fantasy novella and leave with a stronger understanding of the needs of your science fiction and fantasy clients.

This course will be most beneficial to editors who are already familiar with the process of developmental editing or line editing and have worked directly with authors. Copyeditors already familiar with science fiction and fantasy will also benefit greatly from this course.

Our students say...

I enjoyed learning about the nuanced ways to approach editing science fiction and fantasy. As an editor with no professional experience yet, it was great to learn which aspects of worldbuilding, magic and technology were important to focus on during an edit. —C.P.

I loved the focus on actionable feedback and the variety of manuscripts! Overall, I was extremely pleased with the course. —K.T.

The modules were very thorough and gave me a lot of tools to enhance my editing skills in fantasy and science fiction. The feedback on the assignments and the forum discussions were very interesting and helpful. —A.S.

Shannon Winton (she/her) is a developmental editor with over a decade of professional experience. As a serial volunteer, she co-runs the Houston Science Fiction and Fantasy Meetup Group, the oldest social organization for sci-fi/fantasy writers in Houston; has run the Writers Critique Workshop at Comicpalooza for multiple years; and is the co-coordinator for the EFA Houston chapter. Her background in clinical nursing, including trauma care and human research, has given her a unique insight into the importance of advocacy, meeting a person where they're at, and communicating clearly across client populations. Shannon is the continuity editor for Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing and co-founder of the Tomeworks Editing Collective.