Oops! Finding and Fixing Bloopers in Fiction | Amy J. Schneider
Copyediting fiction is like being the continuity director for a film, watching for little mistakes that pull readers out of the story. In this session, we’ll discuss (1) language bloopers: pet phrases, sound bloopers, danglers, redundancy; (2) action bloopers: Chekhov’s gun, drop-in characters, bad scene breaks, remembered elements, “As you know, Bob…”; and (3) factual bloopers: physics, body position/parts, anachronisms, geography, deliberate obfuscation, and just generally How Things Work.
Introductory, Students, Freelance editors, Book editors, Editors of fiction, Core Skills
Amy J. Schneider, owner of Featherschneider Editorial Services (featherschneider.com) since 1995, is the author of the forthcoming Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction. She is a full-time copyeditor and proofreader of trade and scholarly nonfiction books and best-selling fiction in a variety of genres. Amy has written articles and presented on a variety of editorial topics for ACES, CIEP, EFA, Editors Canada, IPEd, and the Northwest Editors Guild. When she's not working in the soft glow of her four-monitor desktop, she enjoys running, singing, and teaching her springer spaniels to do silly tricks (not all at the same time).