Description
Our courses are asynchronous, meaning you never need to be at your computer at any specific hour. More information about how these classes are conducted is available here.
After placing your order, your course will be added to your personal course library on our education site. That site has different login information from the main EFA site. Please check your email for information on how to access the course.
If this session is full or the dates don’t work for you, join the waitlist to be informed of last-minute openings and future sessions.
In this immersive course, you’ll embark on a five-week journey into the heart of short fiction editing, explicitly designed for the bustling world of literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. Each week unfolds with unique activities, from understanding market dynamics and editorial preferences to dissecting the nuances of editing short versus long fiction. The length constraints of short stories will fine-tune your editing skills, enabling you to help authors drill down and say more by saying less.
Week 1: The Short Story Market—What Short Story Publishers Want explores the publishing landscape for short stories, focusing on submission guidelines and editor expectations, highlighted by interviews with literary journal editors.
Week 2: The Building Blocks—Short Stories vs. Novels delves into the craft distinctions between short and long fiction, emphasizing structural and character development differences, guided by insights from industry experts.
Week 3: Editorial Approaches—A Publisher’s Standards and Preferences centers on developing strategies for feedback that align with a publication’s submission standards, including reading short stories and creating an editorial strategy for short fiction submissions.
Week 4: Specialized Editing—Anthologies, Chapbooks, and Novelettes focuses on the specifics of editing for anthologies and chapbooks, culminating in drafting an editorial letter to help an author get accepted into a literary journal.
Week 5: Your Professional Growth and The Future of Short Fiction wraps up the course with a focus on professional development and the future of short fiction editing, including creating an action plan for applying the course’s insights to your professional practice.
Through expert guidance, hands-on activities, and personalized feedback, you’ll explore the different facets of short fiction editing, gain valuable insights, and discover practical tools to help authors polish their short work for publication. You’ll participate in immersive discussions, tackle assignments that mirror real-world editing scenarios, and develop editorial strategies for tailoring a client’s submissions to a literary journal.
After completing this course, students will have a deep understanding of the developmental editing process for short fiction, be equipped with practical strategies for guiding authors toward successful publication, and be ready to navigate the challenges and opportunities in short fiction publishing.
Our students say…
Val’s feedback was extremely useful and clear, accelerating learning without feeling onerous. The examples she gave felt aspirational, and by the end, easier to accomplish. —F.W.
Val’s feedback on the activities and assignments was top notch, truly a way to guide and help her students to grow. It was amazing to have the forum and to be able to chat and learn from your peers. —P.E.
This course assumes that students have a foundation in the craft of fiction as either editors or writers, or have completed “Developmental Editing of Fiction: Beginning.”
As a big-hearted and fun-loving editor, Val M. Mathews (she/her) has garnered 10+ years of proven experience in editing, teaching, and publishing. In the past, she has worked as an editor for The Wild Rose Press, a small traditional publishing house in New York. Currently, she edits for Discover New Art, LLC, publishers of CRAFT Literary and Masters Review, and freelances on the side. She also designs and teaches online courses in structural and developmental editing for Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) in New York City. She’s active in the writing community and regularly presents and conducts workshops at writers’ conferences and organizations. Fun fact about Val: She’s an FAA-certified flight instructor, and in the past, she flew Lear Jets and King Airs for a living.
