A Thank You to Our Contributors
It hasn't taken an entire village to create "An Introduction to the Practical Side and the Mysteries of Line-editing," but it was close. We wanted to show that line-editing is a complex process, done differently by different people, and so we asked different editors to line-edit the same sample material. We also wanted to show how line-editing changed a manuscript on its way to publication, and so we searched for real-world examples. In the end, several editors and writers helped us with that.
The Contributors
We want to acknowledge these contributions of the following editors and agent, who all marked up sample material we sent them, and in some cases did more, as noted:Karen Boss -- Karen is an associate editor at Charlesbridge and teaches workshops and courses in children's book writing. In addition to comments on our samples, she contributed materials that showed the development of a nonfiction picture book through to publication.These writers all sent us samples from the development of one of their published books that showed line-editing of a manuscript and the published result:Emma Dryden -- Emma is an independent editor who runs drydenbks, her editorial and consulting business, and teaches and gives workshops around the country. She did her work on the samples we sent her by hand.
Stephen Fraser -- Stephen is an agent with the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency and previously worked as an editor at a number of trade publishers. He sent us a short sample of line-editing he did on the opening of a YA novel.
Marlo Garnsworthy -- Writer/illustrator, independent editor, and science communicator Marlo runs Wordy Bird Studio, her editorial and consulting business. Like Emma and Stephen, she made her own comments on our samples.
Tiffany Liao -- Tiffany works as an editor at Henry Holt. She commented on a sample from a novel.
Karen Messner -- Kate is the author of Breakout, the Ranger in Time series, and the Fergus and Zeke easy readers, among others, which you can read about on her website.Without the help of these generous people, we would not have been able to show you the richness and power of line-editing, and we lift our hats to them in gratitude. We will update this page as other samples come in.Pat Zietlow Miller -- Pat is the author of a number of picture books, including the recent Be Kind, which has recently been on the NY Times bestseller list. Go to her website to learn more.
Melissa Stewart -- Melissa is the award-winning author of more than 180 nonfiction books for children, including the recent Pipsqueaks, Slowpokes and Stinkers: Celebrating Animal Underdogs. She serves on the board of advisors for the SCBWI. Melissa’s website features educational resources for teaching nonfiction reading and writing.