About

While returning to the open file of your novel-in-progress, you find an old pair of eyeglasses. You try them on, glance back at your laptop screen, and OMG! Unnecessary words are evaporating! Generic nouns and verbs fade out while specific word choices replace them! Klunky phrases reshape themselves into sleek lines. Just above the shimmers of a subtext, a perfect metaphor appears and inserts itself. And on and on… These eyeglasses are magic! They contain the wisdom of thousands of hours’ worth of analyzing manuscripts. Put them on, and the wisdom is yours!

Of course, this is a fairy tale. But Jenn Hager, developmental editor, effectively brings those eyeglasses to you in a three-hour class titled “See Your Manuscript through an Editor’s Eyes.”

  This class will be most helpful for those who have completed a draft of a manuscript. You’re welcome to bring your manuscript (in your laptop) and apply the exercises to your own material. Class opens with a questionnaire to examine the inherent strengths and weaknesses of your own writing process. We’ll look at big picture aspects of story and strategize how you can measure or track these in your own manuscript. We’ll go over critical tips for “grounding your reader.” Then we’ll wrestle with over a dozen writing issues—through brief presentations, hands-on exercises, and group interaction. Prepare to have fun and learn a lot.

Jenn Hager partners with authors on stories that capture something deeply true about human experience. As a developmental editor, she does manuscript assessments on book-length projects: analyzing a work's internal structure, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and providing insight for revision. Jenn likes writers and brings good skills to collaborative work. Her editing strengths result in cohesive story-building, increased texture, and emotional reader engagement. Experience: literary fiction, speculative fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, young adult fiction, middle grade fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, self-help, spirituality. Graduate of the University of Washington Editing Certificate program; studied developmental editing under mentorship with the Author-Editor Clinic.