Fiction editing mentorship: Case study
From the mentee — Over 2019 and 2020, I completed an IPEd mentorship in fiction editing. The mentorship was flexible, allowing me to juggle my day job and family commitments and complete the exercises and schedule discussions at my own pace.
I assessed and then edited short stories and worked on excerpts from a couple of novel manuscripts. I also prepared editing reports outlining the strengths and limitations of the manuscript and its various story elements. My mentor was generous with her time, offering useful feedback about my edits and reports. We had enjoyable debates about what makes good fiction, different approaches to structuring a narrative and alternative story endings.
Before the mentorship, I’d had little experience editing fiction. The exercises gave me the much-needed experience and confidence to assess and form views on an author’s work, as well as valuable frameworks against which to provide feedback.
Since completing the mentorship, I have undertaken several fiction-editing projects and worked with some debut authors. I was keen to further develop my skills, and completed Nicola O’Shea’s fiction-editing workshop. I found the IPEd mentorship had put me in good stead to complete this workshop and received highly favourable comments and feedback about my fiction-editing skills.
As a bonus, my learning from the mentorship benefited my own writing craft. This year, I was successful in attaining writing mentorships through the Australian Society of Authors and the Kill Your Darlings mentoring program. The latter has a highly competitive selection process due to the limited number of places.
From the mentor — it was a delight to work with this enthusiastic mentee who gave a 100 per cent effort to every discussion and each sample piece of fiction. We used several pieces, some sourced by me and some by the mentee, covering a few genres. I particularly enjoyed the challenging questions raised by the mentee, making me think harder about some aspects of editing fiction. We had a lively and insightful discussion about what makes a satisfying ending. I was impressed by the mentee’s growth in vision and confidence during our time working together and am thrilled to hear of his subsequent progress and successes.
From the Co-Chairs IPEd Mentoring Program — we hope this is the first of a series of case studies from our mentees and mentors. The studies will be published anonymously, but if anyone specifically wishes to contact the mentee or mentor for further information, please email us directly and we will pass on your request.
Elizabeth Manning Murphy DE — emmurphy.words@gmail.com
Ted Briggs AE — tedbriggs@grapevine.com.au
Case study coordinated by Kaaren Sutcliffe AE, ACT Area Mentoring Coordinator, from contributions by the participants.