The Editing Blog

Minding our language: How editors can frame questions without judgement

20/9/2021

Words are the professional editor’s business, yet the ones we use in the course of discussing how we apply our craft are all too often prescriptive.

This post looks at problematic language, the messages it might unintentionally convey, and how we can talk about the editorial conundrums we come across without judgement.

Embedding the language of preference in editorial discussion

Most editors, however experienced, encounter conundrums in their work that lead to their seeking advice from colleagues. Too often, the language of prescription is used to frame questions:

‘What’s the correct way to punctuate this sentence?’
‘Is the grammar in this sentence right?’
‘What’s APA’s rule for hyphenating [...]?’

The problem with notions such as ‘right’, ‘correct’ and ‘rule’ is that they’re loaded. The implication is that there’s one way – a best way – to write and to edit.

In reality, there are multiple ways to punctuate a sentence, each of which could alter its flow and rhythm in nuanced ways.

There are multiple Englishes, too, each with grammatical and syntactical structures that vary from region to region within nations as well as from country to country.

And there are multiple style guides that express particular preferences.

All of which means there is no ‘correct’ way to punctuate a sentence, no ‘right’ grammar, and no ‘rule’ on hyphenation. What there are instead are conventions and choices that that can be implemented or ignored.

Instead, we could ask:

‘How can I punctuate this sentence to convey urgency? The author’s used commas but I’m wondering if spaced en dashes would be effective.’
‘Is the grammar in this sentence distracting or is the sense clear? The narrator is from [...] but I’m not.’
‘What’s APA’s preference for hyphenating [...]?’

The artistry of editing lies in helping the client craft prose in which the meaning is clear and interpreted as intended by readers. Embedding that principle – rather than the language of rights and rules – in the way we talk about our work means we’re more likely to think descriptively rather than prescriptively.

Whose standards and conventions are in play?

There are myriad standards and conventions in language, ones that determine the following for example:

How words are spelled in various Englishes
How dialogue is punctuated
Whether a term in hyphenated
How apostrophes convey possession or omission
Whether to place full points after contracted forms
Whether the first paragraph in a section is indented or not
The grammatical structure of a sentence
How verbs are conjugated

When we come across writing that doesn’t conform to these standards and conventions, some of us choose to refer instead to ‘non-standard’ language and ‘breaking from convention’ so as to avoid the judgement embodied in terms such as ‘right’, ‘best’, ‘correct’ and ‘rule’.

It’s been my preference because I felt it was more neutral and framed the issue around reader expectation rather than my own lived experience of language.

And that’s something I’ve been thinking about.

Why? Because these terms, too, need to be used with caution. We need to be aware that while standards and conventions help readers make sense of the written and spoken word, they are created and enforced by those with advantage, those who have the power to deem them as standard and conventional in the first place, and to assert their primacy.

That doesn’t make those standards and conventions better; it just means those who define them are in a position to do so. It also means that prose can be just as rich when those standards and conventions are ignored or flexed.

What about style guides?

Individuals and organizations have preferences. For example, the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), the University of Chicago Press and the American Psychological Association each have style guides that record their preferences for myriad stylistic decisions.

Mindful editing means remembering that these preferences aren’t ‘right’ or ‘better’. They’re certainly not rules. Even Oxford’s New Hart’s Rules isn’t a rulebook! Rather, these are useful guides that help editors and authors bring clarity and consistency to writing.

However, editors – particularly those working on creative texts – need to be ready to bend when character and narrative voice would be damaged by prescriptive application of a style guide.

As for those of us working on texts that deal with identity and representation, we need to be ready to question the advice in a published style guide; it might be behind the curve.

Transferring judgement to the client

If we use the language of ‘right/’wrong’, ‘correct’/’incorrect’ and even ‘standard’/’non-standard’ when we talk to other editors about our work, there’s a risk that this will leak into the way we convey solutions to our clients, even into the way we edit their work.

An author might not write in sentences that follow grammar, spelling and punctuation conventions, but that in no way means they’re a poor crafter of prose. Perhaps the way they lay down words is because they haven’t learned our conventions. Or perhaps they’ve actively chosen to ignore those conventions because that style of language doesn’t suit their character and narrative voices.

The mindful editor needs to recognize and respect both scenarios. Understanding which one is in play is critical because it will determine whether and which amendments are suggested, and why.

‘Wrong’, ‘non-standard’ or authentic voice?

Here’s an example that demonstrates how an author has chosen to craft a narrative that favours voice over ‘standard’ English now and then in order to reduce the distance between the narrator-protagonist and the reader.

These excerpts are from the opening chapter of Imran Mahmood’s You Don’t Know Me (pp 4–5; Penguin, 2017).

I don’t mean it as joke ting, but like as a thing to shake you up. You never knew that I could speak like a professor is it? But I just wanted you to know that there’s more than just that one side to me that you lot saw when I was giving evidence.

[…]

Like I’ll give you an example. You remember when I gave my evidence a couple of days back? Well that was one of them things we had opinions about. He wanted me to tell you what he called ‘plausible story’. ‘Give them what they need to hear,’ he goes to me. So I go to him, ‘Nah bruv, I want to give them what they don’ want to hear from me, the truth.’

[…]

He don’t know what I know. The problem for me was that although I know what I know, I don’t know what he knows. Do I let him speak to you in your language but telling only half the story, or do I do it myself and tell the full story with the risk that you won’t understand none of it?

Are the words I placed in bold ‘incorrect’ or ‘wrong’? That’s a judgemental approach that implies there’s a single perfect, right way to write and speak English. There isn’t.

Are the terms ‘non-standard’? To my ear, yes, some of them are, but that’s because I’m a 54-year-old middle-class white woman raised in Buckinghamshire, England, who was taught how to write and speak according to a standard dreamt up by … actually, I’m not sure who dreamt up the standard but it was probably someone who looked, spoke and was educated quite a lot like me and had the advantages I have.

Rather than thinking about these excerpts in terms of whether some of the words are non-standard or standard, instead we can evaluate them in terms of voice. Rich, evocative voice.

Our first-person narrator has been accused of murder and has elected to defend himself. As the blurb on the back cover says: ‘He now stands in the dock and wants to tell you the truth. He needs you to believe him. Will you?’

Actually, it’s his authentic voice that draws me – a 54-year-old middle-class white woman raised in Buckinghamshire, England – deep into his psyche so that I can see and hear him as if we are one. And that means I can root for him, invest in him, care about him, believe him.

Thinking about that narrative in terms of whether it’s ‘correct’ or ‘right’ would be butchery. To apply a digital red pen to it would be a crime.

And even those of us who might apply the term ‘non-standard’ to the emboldened words must acknowledge that such prescription is based purely on our own lived experience of English – how we write, how we speak, and what we were taught. That doesn’t make our way of speaking and writing better or worthier.

When story and characters drive language, readers will come along for the ride, regardless of their lived experience. When prescriptivism is behind the wheel, readers will disengage and find a different journey to take.

Framing errors in terms of author intention and reader expectation

An error is a mistake. We all make them when we’re writing – because we don’t know what the conventions are, because we’re focusing on meaning rather than mechanics, or because our fingers are typing so fast.

Regardless, the focus here is on intention, and for that reason there are times when it’s appropriate for the editor to use the term ‘error’.

When editors are tasked with finding errors, they’re looking for what wasn’t intended in that particular project. Take a look at these four examples:

“Are the autopsy results in yet?’ Milburn asked.
Xe put xyr pen on the table and frowned. No way was he letting that one pass.
She hears him clearly – banging on again about how their from out of town and don’t know their way around.
‘I wanted to call the police but Johnny ‘One Sock’ Swainston wasn’t having any of it.’

We can say without judgement that there are four ‘errors’ in the above examples because in each case the author likely made a mistake – they meant to use a consistent style of speech marks in the first example, meant the pronouns to be consistent in the second, meant to use ‘they’re' in the third, and meant to use an alternative style for the nested quotation marks in the fourth.

When we’re querying potential errors, however, we can still use the language of intention and reader expectation in our comments, thereby avoiding a more critical tone:

Did you mean to write […] here or is this a typo?
How about [...] instead? This would be less likely to distract the reader, who might be more used to seeing [...] and therefore misinterpret what you've written.
The grammar in this section doesn’t align with your usual narrative voice, and reads more like something Character Y would say. Is this intentional? If not, how about trying [...]?

Summing up

As professional editors, we need to think about the language we use about language!

Saying something’s ‘right’ might imply that all alternatives are wrong when they aren’t.
Defining something as a ‘rule’ might imply that breaking it is non-conformist, eccentric, non-compliant, even disobedient.
Referring to something as ‘standard’ normalizes the preferences of those who have the power to make that decision in the first place.

Instead, we can frame our discussions and queries around meaning, author intention and reader experience. That way, we’re putting the prose where it belongs – front and centre.

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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Romance editing with Sarah Calfee

3/9/2021

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Learn about romance editing with editor Sarah Calfee in this episode of The Editing Podcast!

Listen to find out more about

What's special about romance editing
The size of the market
Tropes, challenges and styles in romance editing
HEAs: Happy ever afters
Romancelandia
Understanding the romance writing and editing via Pride and Prejudice
How to get in touch with Sarah Calfee
Get a free sample of Sarah's book, How To Pride and Prejudice

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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Becoming a non-fiction editor: 4 things you need to know

30/8/2021

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Find out about 4 key things you need to know if you want to become a non-fiction editor. Louise Harnby interviews Denise Cowle!

Listen to find out more about

The main types of non-fiction editing and the kinds of things a non-fic editor needs to look out for
Working on complex materials
The move to digital content and the role of the editor·
Ethical issues the editor or proofreader needs to be aware of
How to Mark Up PDF Page Proofs (course)
How to become a fiction editor (podcast episode)

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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Becoming a fiction editor: 4 things you need to know

18/8/2021

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Find out about 4 key things you need to know if you want to become a fiction editor. Denise Cowle puts Louise Harnby under the microscope!

Listen to find out more about

The main types of fiction editing and the kinds of things a fiction editor needs to look out for
What additional training you might need
The market and client expectations
The need for a flexible hand
Becoming a fiction editor (free booklet)
Switching to Fiction (course)

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More fiction-skills resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you develop your fiction-editing business.

Conscious language resources (free booklet for editors)
Fiction editing learning centre
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
Blog post: How to spell in a novel – wherever your characters are from
Blog post: 3 ways to reduce word count and write a leaner thriller
Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
Book: Making Sense of 'Show, Don't Tell'
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
Switching to Fiction (course for editors)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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Editing with The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

11/8/2021

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Find out more about The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt. Developer Daniel Heuman talks with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle about the union of a 115-year-old style guide and advanced copyediting software technology, and how it will help you edit faster and better.

Listen to find out more about

What The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt is
How much it costs
How the union came about
Full integration of CMOS into PerfectIt 5
Why it's free to subscribers of both products
What PerfectIt can and can't do
Working with the CMOS team
Favourite features that help editors learn
Why CMOS is a style guide rather than a rule book
How users can suggest additions
Customizing the CMOS style sheet
The Mac-user experience
Accessing The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More fiction-skills resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you develop your fiction-editing business.

Skills and training learning centre
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report (course)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Switching to Fiction (course for editors)
The Editing Podcast: The editorial business tips collection

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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How to check a novel with PerfectIt 5 and The Chicago Manual of Style

10/8/2021

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Do you use PerfectIt to find inconsistencies in a novel? Do you follow The Chicago Manual of Style? Now you can use both from a single platform! I might be in love. Here’s why.

What's in this post

What is PerfectIt?
What is The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)?
What is The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt?
Beta testing on a novel
Why the editor retains control
How to customize The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt
Wow factor 1: CMOS learning at the editor’s fingertips
Wow factor 2: Seamless access
Wow factor 3: Shifting the burden of search
What PerfectIt won't do
How much does The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt cost?
How to unlock access to the CMOS style sheet
My beta test: The verdict
Where to get The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

What is PerfectIt?

PerfectIt is software developed by Intelligent Editing. It helps editors and authors check a Word document for:

Consistency: eg spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, acronym definitions.
Adherence to style preferences: eg how numbers are rendered, punctuation of lists, capitalization of titles, ize/ise suffixes.

I’ve been using PerfectIt since its first iteration and, for me, it’s a must-have. Not because the human brain isn’t able to handle the checks it carries out but because software can do it faster.

And that means I can spend more of my time (which is what my clients are paying for) helping authors craft a compelling story rather than hunting down important but small details.

In other words, PerfectIt does the heavy-lifting but lets me retain complete control of the changes being made.

What is The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)?

CMOS is a 115-year-old style guide published by The University of Chicago Press. For many editors, even those beyond US shores, it too is a must-have because of its mindful, sensible advice.

CMOS isn’t a rule book. It’s a manual of style preferences. And given that novel editing requires a flexible approach to grammar, spelling and punctuation – one that serves rhythm and voice first and foremost – many editors choose to customize its guidance, ignore some of it, or blend it with another style guide’s preferences.

CMOS’s strength lies in how comprehensive it is, and the fact that the online version is easy to search.

Even though fifty per cent of my clients write in British English, CMOS is still my go-to style guide because lots of its guidance can be universally applied. The rest I tweak to fit my authors’ needs.

What is The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt?

Until recently, these two editing staples were in my editing studio but sitting at different digital tables. But what if CMOS could be integrated into PerfectIt? Afterall, PerfectIt has lots of built-in style sheets – why not CMOS too?

It was a beautiful dream. Now it’s a beautiful reality.

The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt is a brand-new product that comes free with PerfectIt 5, and I’ve been privileged to play with it. As I said, I might be in love.

Beta testing on a novel

I ran The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt on a 65,000-word test document – a copy of a thriller written in British English.

Here’s what else you also need to know about my setup:

The CMOS style sheet sits within PerfectIt 5
I have an existing subscription to CMOS Online and PerfectIt
I work on a PC and my OS is Windows 10, so I run the Windows version of PerfectIt
I use Microsoft 365, which means I’m always working in the latest edition of Microsoft Word
I’m based in the UK but work for clients all over the world and in a variety of Englishes and styles.

Why the editor retains control

I chose to test a document written in British English style in order to illustrate the control editors and writers have over any changes PerfectIt suggests.

Just because we’re checking against the built-in CMOS style sheet, which has its own set of defined preferences, doesn’t mean we have to adhere to all of them.

For example, PerfectIt flagged up ‘amongst’. At the top of the Spelling Variations window you can see why: In American English, “among” is usually preferred to “amongst.”

Actually, that preference is common in British English too. But the instances flagged up here are dialogue, and the character who’s speaking would be more likely to use ‘amongst’. And so I elected to ignore the suggestion and click on the Next button.

Using The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt therefore doesn’t force us to make inappropriate changes to a client’s work. The editor retains stylistic control.

How to customize The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

I love CMOS’s good-sense guidance, and find much of it helpful for all of the crime fiction, thrillers and mysteries that pass over my desk.

However, half of those books are written in British English style, which means I want to access all the functionality of The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt but tweaked for my own needs.

If spelling is all I’m worried about, a simple workaround is just to turn off PerfectIt’s Spelling Variations check. However, there are other customizations I usually like to do with novels in British English style in addition to spelling.

For me, the ability to customize PerfectIt has always been one of its biggest selling points. That flexibility is fantastic for any editor who regularly uses CMOS’s guidance but just as regularly needs to adapt key aspects of it.

We can’t amend built-in style sheets. What PerfectIt does instead is allow us to create a copy and amend that. Which is why I now have this little gem in the dropdown menu of available style sheets: Chicago Manual of Style LHUK.

This is still CMOS, but CMOS for me and some of my clients! I’ve edited the copied style sheet so that now it has a different set of preferences:

Yze and yse endings: preference set to 'Prefer 's'.
Personal title format: preference set to Mrs, Mx etc.
Hyphens next to spaces: preference set to convert to en dash.
Percent symbol: preference set to open (per cent).
Space around dashes: preference set to en dash with spaces.

I retained the following:

Quotes with punctuation: preference left at 'final before quotation mark' (because in British English fiction dialogue, that’s the convention followed).
Ize and ise endings: preference left at -ize (because -ize suffixes aren’t American English style. They’ve been used in British English for centuries and are favoured by many British publishers).

Wow factor 1: CMOS learning at the editor’s fingertips

With The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt, editors can access the best features of both from one platform, which means we can learn CMOS’s style preferences in tandem with our consistency checking.

Yes, we’re running PerfectIt 5. And, yes, we’re able to set it to work to CMOS’s recommendations. That in itself is a gem.

But the wow factor is the advice that comes with it – that mindful guidance I mentioned above.

In the screenshot below, you can see what The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt has flagged up: ‘long-time’ versus the preferred ‘longtime’. Now look at the comment above. This isn’t prescriptivism in play. Instead, we’re asked to ‘check carefully’ because of what Chicago ‘usually prefers’.

That’s a subtle but important reminder that regardless of whether we’re following CMOS or some other style guide, we’re dealing with preferences, not rules. This concept is foundational to professional editorial practice, and I’m pleased to see it shining through here.

There’s more too. Perhaps we need additional information. Sure, we now know why this issue has been flagged up, but what if we want to verify that, just to be sure?

Perhaps we have to open our print or online dictionary after all. Not so. By clicking on ‘See more from CMOS 7.1 >’, we open another pane.

Within that pane are links not only to more detailed information from CMOS but also to the website of the external source cited, in this case Merriam Webster.com, which allows us to verify and learn if we want to.

Or perhaps we want to explore the issue in more detail via our CMOS Online subscription. It’s right there in a clickable link.

It’s seconds saved, but those seconds add up – fewer keystrokes and zero searching for where the solution to our problem lies. The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt has done the heavy-lifting for us.

Wow factor 2: Seamless access

Editors often want quick access to information that enables us to develop our learning. Impatience and software aren’t always favourite cousins, and clicking through to external resources while a program’s in the middle of doing its thing is usually a no-no.

Would clicking through to CMOS Online or Merriam Webster.com in the middle of a PerfectIt run be too much? Would the software slow down, stall or even crash? Would that instant access to learning be more trouble that it was worth?
I’m delighted to report that the clickthroughs were seamless.

The nub of it is this. CMOS hasn’t been shoehorned in PerfectIt 5. It, and the external links built into it, are fully integrated. So when we want to access external content via those links, we can do so and be assured that the software will remain stable.

That’s a big plus for busy editors who want software that works without clunk

Wow factor 3: Shifting the burden of search

CMOS is comprehensive. Any editor who owns the print version knows just how comprehensive. The online version made finding solutions to problems easier. Integrating some of the core elements of style within PerfectIt 5 has taken things a stage further.

It comes down to who or what bears the burden of search. Ordinarily, the editor does. We spot a style-consistency issue, open up our reference source, check the preference and make a decision.

With this product, the burden shifts. Now The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt is bearing some of the load. It’s spotting potential problems, suggesting the fix, explaining the reasoning behind that suggestion, and taking us to the exact place in one of the world’s premier style guides where deeper learning resides.

That’s a time-saver and a stress-reducer. No editor wants to spend time on searching for anything. Pro editors love to learn but none of us love struggling to find answers. After all, we’re paid to edit, not to search.

And so for those of us working to fixed project fees, time saved means a better hourly rate and a more profitable business.

What PerfectIt 5 won't do

I don’t expect my roofer to comment on the condition of my hair or how well my car’s running. Similarly, we mustn’t expect PerfectIt 5 to check our book files for problems it’s not designed to handle.

CMOS is huge, and there’s a ton of information in it that isn’t related to the kind of checks PerfectIt runs.

PerfectIt is a consistency checker, so if you want guidance on how to cite a reference according to CMOS or any other style guide, you’re still going to have to look it up.

Same thing if you’re wondering whether to place a comma between two independent clauses separated by coordinating conjunctions. CMOS has advice on this, but fiction editors will need to consider context and sentence rhythm too.

How much does it cost?

If you have a subscription to PerfectIt 4 and to CMOS Online, you’ll pay nothing. That’s right. Zero! You’ll automatically be upgraded to PerfectIt 5, which includes the CMOS style guide. Are you falling in love now?

You will have to grab the latest update from the Intelligent Editing website, but that’s always been the case.

So who needs to pay? If you have a subscription to one product but not the other, you’ll need to rectify that if you want to use The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt.

How to unlock access to the CMOS style sheet

Once you’ve downloaded PerfectIt 5, you’ll see that CMOS is available in the dropdown list of styles. However, there’s one more step you’ll need to take before you can use it.

First, link your PerfectIt account to an active CMOS Online subscription. That will give you a new license key that unlocks The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt.

My beta test: The verdict

I love it. So should you buy it? If you already subscribe to PerfectIt and CMOS Online, you don’t need to spend a penny! All you need to do is link both accounts and unlock the features.

If you’re already using CMOS regularly, want to build your knowledge about the guide’s preferences, and check for consistency in line with CMOS within a seamless interface, yes, I recommend you invest in PerfectIt.

PerfectIt and CMOS are both trusted resources. This digital partnership will help all of us edit more confidently and mindfully.

Where to get The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

Here's what to do:

If all you need to do is link your existing subscriptions to PerfectIt and CMOS, sign in to your PerfectIt account and follow the instructions.
If you want to buy PerfectIt for the first time, head over to the Intelligent Editing website.

And if you’ve bought one of my courses, there’s a discount code waiting for you on the course page.

Then let me know if you fall in love too!

Resources

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

4 Comments

Style: What editors and proofreaders need to know

4/8/2021

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Find out what editorial style is, why it’s important, and how editors work to create, evaluate and enforce style.

Listen to find out more about

What is style?
The differences between rules, preferences and conventions
Flexibility in fiction and non-fiction
What is a style guide?
Why style guides aren't rule books
When editors need to respect tone, register, voice and brand identity
What is a style sheet?

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More editorial-skills resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you develop your fiction-editing business.

Skills and training learning centre
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Switching to Fiction (course for editors)
The Editing Podcast: The editorial business tips collection

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

0 Comments

Is professional editing and proofreading training necessary?

27/7/2021

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Learn about why editing and proofreading training is necessary if you want to run a professional editorial practice. Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk skills!

Listen to find out more about

The client's perspective
Doing the job to industry-recognized standards
The marketing benefits for the editor and proofreader
How training forges a healthy business mindset

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More business-skills resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you develop your fiction-editing business.

Skills and training learning centre
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Switching to Fiction (course for editors)
The Editing Podcast: The editorial business tips collection

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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LGBTQ+ editing, with guest Nick Taylor

21/7/2021

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LGBTQ+ editing is the topic. Nick Taylor is the expert! Join Nick, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle on The Editing Podcast.

Listen to find out more about

Poor representation in the traditional publishing model
How self-publishing has driven the publication of more LGBTQ+ inclusive books
Recording collective history
The LGBTQ+ market and subgenres
Tropes that should be avoided
Can we edit and write beyond our own lived experience?

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More fiction-editing resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you develop your fiction-editing business.

Topic-based resource library
Fiction editing learning centre
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Switching to Fiction (course for editors)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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6 months of editorial business marketing: Progress made and lessons learned (by Harriet Power)

16/7/2021

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Editor Harriet Power discusses how moving from in-house to freelance editing meant upping her marketing game. Here's what she achieved in 6 months.

In this post

What kickstarted the marketing focus
Marketing activity #1: Website
Marketing activity #2: Blogging
Marketing activity #3: Creating a Reedsy profile
Marketing activity #4: Social media
Marketing activity #5: CIEP meetings
Marketing activity #6: Emailing former contacts
Marketing activity #7: Cold emails
Marketing activity #8: Write Useful Books Slack group
6 months later: Has the marketing paid off?
The plan for the next 6 months
Lessons learned as a newbie marketer

What kickstarted the marketing focus

I’m not new to freelancing or editing – I spent 8 years working in-house for publishers like OUP and Pearson before going freelance 4 years ago.

However, I am new to marketing, because I spent the first 3 years of my freelance career coasting along on repeat work from a handful of former in-house contacts. That work dropped off in the summer of 2020 thanks to the pandemic.

I was happily distracted for a while by the arrival of our new lockdown puppy, but towards the end of the year I was still limping along on 2 or 3 days’ work a week. That prompted me to get serious for the first time about marketing my business.

At the start of this year I read Louise’s book Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business, which I thought was brilliant. Of course I’m hardly going to say otherwise here, but it’s still true; I skimmed through it again this week and although bits of it feel a little dated now (it was published in 2014), it’s packed full of useful advice and ideas.

The case studies and examples are really helpful, and I love the way it moves from overarching principles (‘put yourself in the customer’s shoes’) through to specific activities (‘cold email publishers’). I’d happily recommend it.

Six months ago my immediate goal was simply to get more work. My longer-term goal is to get better-paid work, and also to carve out a niche for myself in prescriptive nonfiction, which is a fairly new area for me.

After reading Louise’s book I ended up with a 5-page list of ideas. Here’s what I’ve achieved so far.

Marketing activity #1: Website

I did a full revamp of my website at the end of 2019, but after reading Louise’s book I went back and completely redid the Services for authors page in an attempt to make it more useful/persuasive.

There's probably still too much text, but I’m pleased with the ‘editor’s creed’, a summary of the principles that guide my work (in marketing-speak these are my brand values).

I doubt these principles are unique to me, but I think stating them on my website helps fill out who I am as an editor. And at least one author has commented on how they liked my editing philosophy.

Marketing activity #2: Blogging

So far, I’m managing about one blog post a month. Anything more would be too much because blogging is a LOT of work, a point that Louise provides a nice big warning about in her book.

I’ve concentrated on developing two series, both with a target audience of nonfiction writers:

Books that work
Each post focuses on a well-received prescriptive nonfiction book and analyses why it’s done so well. I also invite the author to contribute their thoughts. My aim with this series is twofold:

To gradually expand my network of interesting people.
To hold myself accountable in regard to continuing professional development (CPD)

The first in the series is available here: Books that work #1: Obviously Awesome by April Dunford.

Q&A on the editing process
Each post features an author whom I’ve worked with, but I’m hoping the series will be of interest to writers more generally. You can find the first post here: Q&A on the editing process with Dietmar Sternad.

Marketing activity #3: Creating a Reedsy profile

I was quite leery of Reedsy before I joined, but I’ve come around to it and think it’ll be a useful backstop whenever work quietens down. It’s certainly been a good way to get more work with nonfiction indie authors, particularly while I'm waiting for my website to generate leads.

So far I’ve completed two edits, including one for an author who’s just set up his own publishing company. He's commissioned me to work on two more books.

Marketing activity #4: Social media

I’ve started using social media. I'm here on Twitter; say hello!

I’m also on LinkedIn. I have to admit I struggle with it – it’s very motivational, and a lot of posts (even the more personal ones) are either trying to teach a lesson or sell something. But I’m going to persevere for a bit longer, mainly because I know it’s an excellent place to connect with prescriptive nonfiction (i.e. business and self-help) writers.

Marketing activity #5: CIEP meetings

I’ve also taken part in a few online CIEP meetings. As a complete introvert, I’m not someone who naturally enjoys Zoom meetings with strangers, and I need to make the effort to keep going with these.

However, I do appreciate getting to know fellow editors better because it’s lovely to meet others with the same professional focus as me. Plus, from a marketing perspective, once I’ve earned their trust, they might one day even consider referring work to me.

Marketing activity #6: Emailing former contacts

I’ve emailed old in-house contacts (or contacts of contacts). I appreciate that this is a no-go if you’ve never worked in-house, but if you have then it definitely pays off.

Just one email along the lines of ‘Hey, I used to work at OUP for a different team – hopefully they can put in a good word for me. Can I help you at all?’ has led to a considerable amount of work this year.

Marketing activity #7: Cold emails

I expected the return on my round of cold emailing to be lower. However, I had nothing to lose so I gave it a try. And just a few months after I’d sent an email to a publisher, a new project landed on my desk.

Marketing activity #8: Write Useful Books Slack group

Write Useful Books is a brilliant craft book by Rob Fitzpatrick on how to write prescriptive nonfiction. The book comes with optional access to a Slack group.

I’ve offered free short beta reads for group members. To date, two writers have taken up my offer, and one of those beta reads has led to paid work.

Plus, it’s interesting to hang out with a bunch of nonfiction writers and see what questions they have about self-publishing.

6 months later: Has the marketing paid off?

I have to keep reminding myself that some of my marketing activities probably won’t bear fruit for months, maybe longer. I haven’t had a single person contact me through my website, for example.

But I’m now fully booked for the next 3 months, and starting to turn away work – a novel experience for me. And while some of that work is probably down to publishers getting over their initial pandemic jitters, I think the marketing has made a difference.

Where’s this work coming from? A lot is from the two publishers who gave me most of my work pre-Covid, although this workstream currently feels more secure because there are now three teams at OUP who might pass jobs my way, rather than one.

Most of the rest has is coming from Reedsy authors. I’ve also had some work from a new publisher who found me through the CIEP Directory of Editorial Services.

The plan for the next 6 months

Here’s what I’d like to achieve over the next 6 months, time permitting:

Engage more on Twitter and LinkedIn; connect with more writers, rather than just editors.
Keep blogging, and do more guest blogging.
Learn more about self-publishing and create content to help indie authors with their publishing journey.
Set up a monthly mailing list. The main hurdle here is convincing myself that anyone would actually want to read it.
Add a portfolio/testimonials page to my website. I’ve definitely got better at asking authors for testimonials since reading Louise’s book, and am slowly building up a nice bank of praise.
Do some market research with nonfiction writers to find out how they go about finding an editor, what they look for in an editor, and what they most want help with.
Design and create a PDF that I can send out to potential clients. It will include information on the different types of editing and the blog series I’m developing.
Join an accountability group.
Make more of an effort to join online meetups.
Do another round of cold emailing to nonfiction publishers.

Lessons learned as a newbie marketer

Working through the time-sink
Marketing sometimes feels like a never-ending time-sink and it requires a lot of perseverance. There’s always more to do, and that makes it hard to switch off from it.

When it feels overwhelming (and that’s often the case now that I’m busier), it helps to follow Louise and Denise’s advice to think in ones: one blog post at a time, one LinkedIn post at a time, or even one tweet at a time.

I also try to remind myself that my business isn’t going to collapse just because I didn’t go on Twitter for a week.

On the upside, being proactive about strengthening my business is satisfying. And in the long run, I hope it will lead me to a point where I can charge enough to be able to work a little less.

CPD
I’m also enjoying the creative side of marketing. It’s fun coming up with ideas for content, and I’m enjoying the writing.

I’ve found that marketing goes hand in hand with CPD. It’s forced me to do more professional development so that I have something useful to say, and has helped me get over feelings of imposter syndrome.

Specializing
Specializing definitely helps. This is an idea that Louise promotes and I completely agree with it. Focusing my marketing efforts primarily on prescriptive nonfiction indie authors has given me direction and made the marketing more manageable.

Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.
This is another lesson I learned from Louise’s book. I worked hard on this when tweaking my website, and it’s been a useful guiding principle in deciding what to tweet or post about.

The principle links well to the concept of specializing because you can only put yourself in the customer’s shoes when you’ve identified who that customer is.

Value-based pricing
Another concept from Louise’s book that struck a chord is thinking of how I can add value to my basic service of performing an edit – either in terms of how I market myself or what I can offer to the client.

This approach has helped shift my mindset such that I hope that in the future I’ll garner the confidence to charge more.

Say hi to interesting people
My own humble piece of advice would be to say hi to interesting people that you stumble across, even if this makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, or because it takes time to sit down and write an email, or because it’s just something you’d never normally do. (All of these things apply to me.) You never know where those connections might lead you.

I was very happy to stumble across Rob Fitzpatrick and join his Slack group, for example. Another interesting person I’ve become acquainted with recently is Francis Miller, who’s helping publishers and authors create nonfiction that’s easier to learn from. It’s also been lovely to gradually get to know some fellow editors.

For better or worse, I very much identify at heart with that saying ‘Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence’. This means I struggle with adding to the general noise of social media when much of the time it feels like talking for the sake of talking.

To some extent, it helps to think of the online version of me as a different persona. I try to post things that I believe will be useful or interesting. And, again, the CPD element of this work has helped to mitigate the sense of imposter syndrome.

Summing up

If you want more interesting work, or better-paid work, or just more work, it makes sense to take marketing seriously.

Don’t worry about being late to the party – it took me over 3 years, after all. Instead, read Louise’s book. Think long term and keep chipping away at it. And say hello if you’d like to join me on the journey!

ABOUT HARRIET
Harriet Power edits nonfiction books and educational materials for publishers and indie authors. She spent 8 years working in-house for educational publishers before going freelance in 2017. On the side, she performs in a folk music duo and enjoys walks with the lockdown puppy.

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How to choose a name for your editing or proofreading business

14/7/2021

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Find out how to choose a name for your editing or proofreading business with Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle.

Listen to find out more about

Brainstorming a list of possible business names
Considering your target clients
Identifying your core brand values
Using a business name to tell the client what's on offer
Checking the name is available
Does the name reflect your brand identity?
How findable and SEO-friendly is the name?
Will the name stand the test of time?

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More business-tips resources

Check out these additional resources that will help you make good decisions for your editorial business.

Learn how to build an editing and proofreading business with this topic-based resource library
Business Planning and Marketing Collection (2 ebooks)
Business Skills Collection (6 ebooks)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Editor Website Essentials (course)
Branding for Business Growth (course)
What should I call my editing or proofreading business? (blog)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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Should editors and proofreaders specialize?

7/7/2021

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Even if you don't specialize in your editorial practice, it's still worth using the language of specialism in your marketing. That's what Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle are chatting about in this episode of The Editing Podcast.

Listen to find out more about ...

The different ways in which we might specialize
Helping clients understand how we can help them
What does the client want to know?
Why saying we can edit 'everything' is a weak message
Why the language of specialization is interesting

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More business-growth tools

Discover more ways to get noticed by your ideal clients with this toolbox of resources:

3 ways to make your editing and proofreading website better – fast! (blog)
Branding for Business Growth (multimedia course)
Editor Website Essentials (multimedia course)
How to do Content Marketing (book)
Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
Marketing resource library (books, booklets and blogs and podcasts)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action (blog and booklet)
Using 'show, don't tell' as an editorial business tool (booklet)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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2 more zombie rules we can do without

30/6/2021

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Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk about two more zombie rules that have no place in a professional editor's toolbox.

Listen to find out more about ...

What a zombie rule is
The power of a double negative in rich narrative and dialogue
Why singular 'they' is a grammatically correct gender-neutral pronoun

Mentioned in the show

Welcome, singular “they”: Lee, C. (2019, October 31). Welcome, singular “they”. APA Style. http://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they

Music credit

‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More grammar and line-craft resources

Learn about how to use grammar and punctuation to amplify prose rather than butchering it with a rule book.

Author and editor resources library
Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
Book: Making Sense of 'Show, Don't Tell'
Blog post: How to spell in a novel – wherever your characters are from
Booklet: British English and US English in your fiction, and why you should be consistent
Podcast: Think it’s American? Think again!
Podcast: Linguist Rob Drummond on grammar pedantry, peevery and youth language

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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3 more tips on how editors can beat the marketing blues

23/6/2021

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Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle share 3 more tips about how to beat the overwhelm that can come with making your editing and proofreading business visible.

Listen to find out more about ...

Why everyone has something to shout about, even if they think they don't
Why some editors appear to do more marketing that is humanly possible, and why that shouldn't deter you
The tricks those busy editorial marketers have up their sleeve and how you can mimic them
Managing marketing by thinking in ones

Music Credit

'Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

More help with marketing and being visible

Marketing can be learned! Here are some of my most popular teaching tools, all created specifically for editors and proofreaders working in a global freelance market.

Learn more about marketing with my marketing resources library
Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
Marketing Toolbox for Editors (course)
Editor Website Essentials (course)
Branding for Business Growth (course)
How to do Content Marketing (book)
To Visibility and Beyond (course)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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3 ways to reduce word count and write a leaner thriller

13/6/2021

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Here are three clutter checks you can carry out on your novel. Reviewing, and editing where appropriate, will help keep your crime fiction, thriller or mystery writing tight and engaging.

In this post ...

In this post, I look at the following ways of decluttering prose in commercial fiction:

Clutter check #1: Reviewing filter words
Clutter check #2: Reviewing speech tags
Clutter check #3: Reviewing action beats

Clutter check #1: Review your filter words

Filter words are verbs that focus the reader’s gaze inwards on the senses a character is using to experience action with.

Too many filter words that explain this sensory behaviour in action can make prose feel told rather shown, and increase narrative distance.

Examples include ‘noticed’, ‘seemed’, ‘spotted’, ‘saw’, ‘realized’, ‘felt’, ‘thought’, ‘wondered’, ‘believed’, ‘knew’ and ‘decided’.

Removing them focuses the reader’s gaze outwards on what is being experienced.

Sometimes an author wants an inward focus, but it’s often the case that the reader will assume that an odour is being smelled, a view is being seen, a thought is being thought, and knowledge is being known.

Review your narrative and consider whether the removal of a filter word would make the prose shorter and more immersive.

Here are some examples:

WITH FILTER	FILTER REMOVED
Danni knew there was a door in the back of the hut that led into the woods. She could make her escape there. [Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on Danni’s doing the action of knowing.]	There was a door in the back of the hut that led into the woods. She could make her escape there. [Reader assumes it’s Danni doing the knowing since she’s the viewpoint character, and focuses outwards on the solution – the door.]
The backdoor – it leads to the woods, Danni thought. [Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on Danni’s doing the action of thinking.]	The backdoor – it leads to the woods. [Reader assumes the thought belongs to Danni, and focuses on the substance of the thought.] The backdoor – it led to the woods. [This alternative uses free indirect style; it frames the thought in the novel’s base tense and narrative style – third-person past.]
He flung open the door and saw the gunman standing over by the window, rifle trained on the street below. [Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on the man’s doing the action of seeing.]	He flung open the door. The gunman stood over by the window, rifle trained on the street below. [Reader assumes it’s the man doing the seeing since he’s the viewpoint character, and focuses outwards on the gunman.]

Clutter check #2: Review speech tags

Great speech tags help the reader keep track of who’s speaking without drawing attention away from the dialogue.

Review your dialogue tags and consider the following:

Is the tag necessary?
Is the tag taking centre stage?
Is the tag illogical?

If there are only two characters in a scene, it might be obvious who’s speaking, which gives the author space to introduce reminder nudges only now and then.

ALL THE TAGS!

REDUCED TAGGING

‘There’s a door at the back of the hut,’ Danni said.
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
‘And that’ll get us into the woods?’ I said.
‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish,’ she said.
‘What do you mean was?’ I said.
‘You’re too funny,’ she said, and pulled a face.

‘There’s a door at the back of the hut,’ Danni said.
     ‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’
     ‘No. Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
     ‘And that’ll get us into the woods?’
     ‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
     ‘What do you mean was?’ I said.
     Danny pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’

‘Said’ is often best because it’s used so frequently in novels that it’s almost invisible. ‘Asked’ is also inoffensive when used to tag questions in dialogue. Others like ‘whispered’, ‘yelled’, ‘hissed’, ‘spat’ and ‘barked’ can be useful when used sparingly to convey volume and mood.

Showy speech tags scream their presence from the page, and shift the reader’s attention away from the dialogue and onto the tag. They often tell what the dialogue’s already shown, and indicate a lack of trust in the reader to get the speech. Examples include ‘exclaimed’, ‘opined’, ‘commanded’

TAG TAKES CENTRE STAGE	DIALOGUE TAKES CENTRE STAGE
‘Watch out!’ Danni warned.	‘Watch out!’ Danni said.
‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ I joked.	‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?

Facial expressions used as tags need special care. Examples include ‘laughed’, ‘smiled’, ‘grimaced’ and ‘sneered’. These are best recast as action beats or replaced with simpler speech tags.

EXPRESSION TAG	ACTION BEAT
‘No,’ Danni grimaced. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’	‘No.’ Danni grimaced. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’

EXPRESSION TAG	SPEECH TAG
‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ I laughed.	‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ I said.

Removing redundant tags will reduce your word count. Recasting showy and illogical tags won’t, but your prose will still be more immersive.

Clutter check #3: Review action beats

Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. They ground speech in the characters’ environment and can be effective alternatives to speech tags.

They key to effective use is ensuring they amplify dialogue rather than interrupt it.

Think about movies. On the screen, all the actors movements and gestures are visible. Replicating this detail in a novel can be invasive and pull the reader away from what’s being unveiled through the speech.

While action beats are superb backdoors into the emotional space of non-viewpoint characters, the dialogue should be where the main action is taking place. If it’s not, what might be required is a reworking of the dialogue, not the introduction of more action beats.

Instead of mimicking the screen experience, use action beats to show what the dialogue doesn’t convey. That needn’t mean including them with every turn. Great dialogue doesn’t need to be anchored every time a character opens there mouth. A purposeful nudge now and then will be enough.

Watch out in particular for prose that’s overloaded with mundane action beats – legs stretching, fingers raking through hair, raised eyebrows, arms folding, fingers steepling.

Review your action beats:

Do they tell the reader something the dialogue doesn’t or are they mundane details that a reader could imagine?
Are they infrequent nudges or are they littering the dialogue at every turn of speech?
Could the mood conveyed by the action beat be conveyed better by improving the dialogue?

Getting rid of the dull and redundant ones will reduce your word count. And what’s left on the page will be more engaging.

ACTION BEATS THAT INTERRUPT DIALOGUE

ACTION BEATS THAT AMPLIFY DIALOGUE

Danni pointed at the back of the cellar. ‘Over there. The door. It leads to the woods.’
      ‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ Max rubbed his forehead. ‘Maybe we need a Plan B.’
     ‘No.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
     Max tilted his head. ‘The fire? What happened?’
     ‘It was years ago.’ She waved his question away and jabbed a finger towards the door again. ‘Out back there’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
     ‘What do you mean was?’ he said, and smirked.
     She pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’

Danni pointed at the back of the cellar. ‘Over there. The door. It leads to the woods.’
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ Max said. ‘I dunno, maybe we need a Plan B.’
‘No. Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
‘The fire? What—’
‘It was years ago. Whatever. Focus. Out back there’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
‘What do you mean was?’
She pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’

Summing up

There’s nothing wrong with the filter words, speech tags and actions beats. They’re useful tools when they help a reader make sense of the story.

However, if they’re mundane or interruptive clutter that can be assumed, leave them out so we can focus on the words that really matter.

5 reasons to use one-line paragraphs in fiction writing

5/6/2021

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One-line paragraphs are powerful tools that pull readers into your story and compel them to turn the page. This post explores why they work and offers some examples of smashing shorties that pack a punch!

What’s in this post

In this post, I look at five reasons why it’s worth experimenting with very short paragraphs in commercial fiction writing and editing, including:

to show rather than tell internal experience
to decelerate reading speed
to emphasize key information
to create clutter-free immediacy
to deliver suspenseful chapter finales

Showing rather than telling internal experience

The narrative passages in a novel are often several lines long. This gives the author space for necessary exposition about the environment, the characters and the action. This is where we make sense of a scene and how it relates to the bigger story.

The staccato rhythm of one-line paragraphs is interruptive, both rhythmically and visually. Each short line is its own single beat, one that’s structurally visible on the page. Every time the reader moves onto the next, they take mental breath.

Because the lines are short, the breaths come quickly, and it’s there that the author can show rather than tell a character's internal experience in a way that's rich in mood and voice.

In this excerpt from Recursion by Black Crouch, p. 317 (Pan, 2019), look at how the structure of those two initial short lines in bold mirrors the meaning of the words.

The memories arrive in a blink.
One moment nothing.
The next, he knows exactly where he is, the full trajectory of his life since Helena found him, and exactly what the equations on the blackboard mean.
Because he wrote them.
They're extrapolations of the Schwarzschild solution, an equation that defines what the radius of an object must be, based upon its mass, in order to form a singularity. That singularity then forms an Einstein-Rosen wormhole that can, in theory, instantaneously connect far-flung regions of space and even time.

One minute the memories aren’t there; the next they are. The beat of their arrival is reflected in the way the prose is formatted. We’re therefore shown how the viewpoint character experiences the lightning-speed download of knowledge, and as a result we feel it all the more intensely.

Decelerating reading speed

Those of us who read a lot are used to seeing chunks of ink on a page or pixels on a screen and learn how to zip through them and absorb the content without dissecting each word.

Such speedy reading can lead to skimming because we relax into the flow of the narrative. One-line paragraphs, however, stand out because they contrast so starkly with the longer passages, surrounded as they are by so much white space.

Text that stands out begs for our attention and forces us to slow down and focus on each word. And that means it’s not only the rhythm of the prose that’s changed; so has the rhythm of how we’re interacting with it as readers.

Take a look at this example on p. 470 of The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins, 2017).

There was more tapping, more tracking, and then colours on the screen were almost too much. The blacks were up so far that gray spots bubbled through the midnight fields.
Charlie suggested, “Use the blue on the lockers as a color guide. They’re close to the same blue as Dad’s funeral suit.
Ben opened the color chart. He clicked on random squares.
“That’s it,” Charlie said. “That’s the blue.”
“I can clean it up more.” He sharpened the pixels. Smoothed out the edges. Finally, he zoomed in as close as he could without distorting the image into nothing.
“Holy shit,” Charlie said. She finally got it.
Not a leg, but an arm.
Not one arm, but two.
One black. One red.
A sexual cannibal. A slash of red. A venomous bite.
They had not found Rusty’s unicorn.
They had found a black widow.

The non-bold text is what we’re most used to seeing. It makes for a comfortable, leisurely, skimmable read. But when we get to the bold single-line paragraphs, the contrast is visible on the page. Our reading pace decelerates and our attention zooms in on every word.

Emphasizing key information

Very short paragraphs enable authors to place emphasis on key words and phrases that they want us to pay attention to. Perhaps it’s a clue or a moment of suspense. Maybe it’s to shock us. Maybe it’s to draw our focus towards an aspect of a character’s personality.

Because the one-liner stands out, it’s an opportunity for centre-staging. Here’s a great example from Harlan Coben’s Win, p. 38 (Century, 2021).

Respect, yes. Bow, no. I also don’t use these techniques,
per the platitude, “only for self-defense,” an obvious untruth on the level of “the check is in the mail” or “don’t worry, I’ll pull out.” I use what I learn to defeat my enemies, no matter who the aggressor happens to be (usually: me).
I like violence.
I like it a lot. I don’t condone it for others. I condone it for me. I don’t fight as a last resort. I fight whenever I can. I don’t try to avoid trouble. I actively seek it out.
After I finish with the bag, I bench-press, powerlift, squat. When I was younger, I’d have various lifting days—arm days, chest days, leg days. When I reached my forties, I found it paid to lift less often and with more variety.

Coben wants us to know something about his protagonist Windsor Horne Lockwood III, something we might find distasteful and hard to fathom. Nevertheless, it’s central to the characterization; Win’s actions throughout the novel don’t make sense unless we know this. Coben ensures we don’t miss it.

Creating clutter-free immediacy

Very short paragraphs pull the reader through each moment of the action, second by second, step by step.

This can reduce narrative distance – the space between the reader and the viewpoint character.

Here’s beautiful example from p. 296 of The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty (Serpent’s Tail, 2012)

“You had to stick your fucking neb in, didn’t ya? You had to open your big yapper. Can’t you fucking take a hint? After all them ciggies we give you too,” he said.
He raised the gun.
I closed my eyes.
Held my breath.
A bang.
Silence.
When I opened my eyes again Bobby Cameron was staring at me and shaking his head. Billy White was dead to my left with the back of his head blown off.

The narration is first person, so it’s already immersive. But the one-line paragraphs in bold drive us deeper into Sean Duffy’s experience. There’s no fluff, no filtering, no cluttering description.

Each moment of the action is presented oh so precisely, slamming us into the now of the novel – the weapon being raised, Duffy’s physical response, then what he hears: first a bang, then nothing.

In five lines and fourteen words, McKinty shows us something powerful – that he trusts us to get it. We don’t know for sure what Duffy is feeling. It could be sadness, terror, anger, resignation, or a combination of some or all those things.

The author’s had the courage to leave it to us, to allow us to imagine what this moment means internally for Duffy, rather than forcing us one way or another. In doing so, we get to be Duffy for a while rather than a fly on the wall. The narrative distance is so small, it’s barely perceptible.

Delivering suspenseful chapter finales

A smart one-liner at the end of a chapter can create suspense. Perhaps it’s a question, a shocking statement or a realization. Regardless, it leaves the reader aching for answers.

When that yearning is encapsulated in one line, it stands out and demands that we turn the page.

Here are the final two paragraphs from p. 132 of David Rosenfelt’s Open and Shut (Grand Central Publishing, 2002)

The next morning, to my undying shame, I did not withdraw my request. I had the time of my life at camp that summer, and I know now that my father, so desperate for me to go that he was in terrible pain, had millions of dollars that he refused to touch.
Money that he did not make delivering newspapers.
[Chapter ends]

There is only one question on the reader’s mind as the chapter closes: So how did his father make all that money?

And because the answer lies beyond – maybe in the next chapter, maybe right at the end of the book – we turn the page.

Why less is more

Overdependence on any literary device risks reducing its dramatic effect, and short paragraphs are no exception.

One-liners pack the biggest punch when they’re used now and then as a tool with which to vary the pulse of your prose and deepen your reader’s immersion in the world you’ve created.

Save them for best so that they stand out.

More writing and editing resources

6 ways to improve your novel right now (blog post)
7 ways to write chapter endings that hold readers in suspense (blog post)
Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book – listen to a free audio chapter)
Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ (book – listen to a free audio chapter)
Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions (blog post)
Switching to Fiction (course for new fiction editors)

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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How to avoid repeating ‘I’ in first-person writing

23/5/2021

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Your novel’s written in first person. Here are some tips for how to ensure your narrative doesn’t become overloaded with ‘I’ but remains immersive.

What’s covered in this post

Why reduce the ‘I’
Why ‘I’ still has a place front and centre
Focusing on the exterior rather than the interior
Reducing the use of filter words
Removing speech and thought tags
Applying the principles of free indirect speech
Taking the 'I' out of introspection
Balancing ‘I’ with ‘we’

Why reduce the ‘I’

We might think that the mention of ‘I’ would always make prose more immediate, and draw the reader in closer to the viewpoint character. But sometimes the opposite is true.

Too much ‘I’ is a tap on the shoulder, one that says to the reader, ‘Just in case you’ve forgotten who the narrator is, here are lots of reminders.’

The consequence is that readers are pulled away. And that can actually increase rather than reduce narrative distance.

Why ‘I’ still has a place front and centre

I confess to being a huge fan of first-person narrations. When done well, the pronoun is almost invisible, even if it’s used frequently. Certainly the books I’ve borrowed excerpts from here allow ‘I’ to take centre stage.

However, they don’t rely on a first-person pronoun to convey experience, thought, speech and action. Below, I'll show you some examples – ones that ensure the intimacy of the narration style is left intact.

And so while we don’t want to obliterate ‘I’, because avoiding it completely would render the prose awkward, inauthentic and overworked, too much ‘I’ can be repetitive and interruptive. What’s required is a balance.

This post aims to offer you choice – fitting alternatives that retain intimacy and immediacy when you’re concerned you’ve overdone it.

1. Focus on the exterior rather than the interior

With a first-person narration, what’s reported must be through the lens of the narrator. Since their presence is a given, we don’t always need to be reminded that ‘I’ is involved.

A little peppering in a more objective report will suffice because the reader knows that it’s coming from the narrator, and only the narrator. It has to be.

And while writers can make space to explore the viewpoint character’s emotional behaviour, the exterior world is what grounds their experience in the novel’s physical world. It gives the novel substance, and the reader something to bite into.

Instead of focusing on who’s doing the reporting, shift the prose towards what’s being reported.

What and who else is in the scene? Why are they there? How do they behave? What do they look like? This information can be reported without ‘I’ so that the reader experiences the physical world within which the narrator is operating.

Here’s an example from To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, Pan, 1974, p. 11).

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the court-house sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

Notice the (almost) absence of ‘I’. Scout – our narrator – tells us about the town she lived in: Maycomb. The recollection is hers certainly – ‘when I first knew it’ anchors it as such. It’s therefore intimate.

And yet because there’s only one I-nudge, we’re allowed enough emotional distance to step back and pan, like a roving camera, across Maycomb’s vista. We’re dislocated from Scout’s doing the experiencing and encouraged instead to focus on what she’s experiencing.

What’s happening here is a shift from the subjective to the objective.

Here’s an example of a short excerpt that’s subjective. The focus is on the I-narrator.

SUBJECTIVE FOCUS: 'I ...

I’m stunned by the news. Not that Hatchet has been up since early this morning, but that he has a wife. Someone actually sleeps with the man.

And here’s the real excerpt from David Rosenfelt’s Play Dead (Grand Central, 2009, p. 19). Now the focus is objective, yet in no way does this distance us from the centrality of the first-person narrator’s experience. We’re still deep in his head.

OBJECTIVE FOCUS: NO 'I ...'

This is a stunning piece of news. Not that Hatchet has been up since early this morning, but that he has a wife. Someone actually sleeps with the man.

2. Reduce the use of filter words

Filter words are a clue that an interior rather than exterior focus is in play. They’re verbs that increase the narrative distance, reminding us that what we’re reading is being told by someone rather than experienced, or shown, through the eyes of the character.

Examples include noticed, seemed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, thought, wondered, believed, knew, and decided.

Filter focus the reader’s gaze inwards (interior focus) on the manner through which the viewpoint character experiences the world – the how.

They come with a pronoun: I saw, they believed, we decided, she knew, he noticed.

By removing filter words, the reader’s gaze is shifted outwards (exterior focus) and onto what is being experienced. That can make for a more immersive read. Plus, the omission means we say goodbye to their accompanying pronoun: 'I'.

Here are a few examples to give you a flavour of how you might recast in a way that avoids first-person filtering.

‘I’ plus filter word. Reader’s gaze is inwards, on the how	Recast: Reader’s gaze drawn outwards towards the what
I recall the argument we had last week.	Last week’s argument is still fresh in my mind.
I recognized the man’s face.	The man’s face was familiar.
I saw the guy turn left and dart into the alley.	The guy turned left and darted into the alley.
I spotted the red Chevy from yesterday parked outside the bank.	There, parked outside the bank, was the same red Chevy from yesterday.
I still feel ashamed about the vile words I unleashed even after all these years.	The vile words I unleashed still have the power to bathe me in shame even after all these years.

3. Remove speech and thought tags

Dialogue tags are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. If the reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags.

This will work best if there are no more than two characters. Most writers don’t extend the omission for more than a few back-and-forths before they introduce a reminder tag or an action beat.

Watching out for unnecessary tags is good practice regardless of narration style, but with a first-person narration it’s a particularly efficient way to declutter ‘I’-heavy prose.

Take a look at this excerpt from David Rosenfelt’s Play Dead, pp. 194–5. There are two characters in this scene: Andy Carpenter, the protagonist and narrator, and Sam Willis, the non-POV character on the other end of the phone.

“Great!” he says, making no effort to conceal his delight. He's probably hoping it results in another high-speed highway shooting.
“The woman's name is Donna Banks. She lives in apartment twenty-three-G in Sunset Towers in Fort Lee. I don't have the exact address, but you can get it.”
“Pretty swanky apartment,” he says.
“Right. I want you to find out the source of that swank.”
“What does that mean?”
“I want to know how she can afford it. She doesn't work, and she's the widow of a soldier. Maybe her name is Banks because her family owns a bunch of them, but I want to know for sure.”
“Got it.”
“No problem?” I ask. I'm always amazed at Sam's ability to access any information he needs. “Not so far. Anything else?”
“Yes. I left her apartment at ten thirty-five this morning. I want to know if she called anyone shortly after I left, and if so, who.”
“Gotcha. Which do you want me to get on first? Although neither will take very long.”
“I guess her source of income.”
“Then say it, Andy.”
“Say what?”
“Come on, play the game. You're asking me to find out where she gets her cash. So say it.”
“Sam …”
“Say it.”
“Okay. Show me the money.”
“Thatta boy. I'll get right on it.”

The exchange involves 19 speech elements within the thread, but only 3 speech tags, and only one of those marks our first-person narrator.

At no point do we lose track, and at no point are we distracted by repetitive ‘I said’s.

4. Apply the principles of free indirect speech

If you’ve played with free indirect speech (also called free indirect style/discourse) in third-person narratives, call on your craft for first-person narration.

In a nutshell, free indirect speech offers the essence of first-person dialogue or thought but through a third-person viewpoint. The character’s voice takes the lead, but without the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, italic, or other devices to indicate who’s thinking or saying what.

Here’s an example of third-person narration. Notice the filter words ‘glanced’ and ‘noticed’, the italic present-tense thought, and the thought tag:

Dave glanced at the guy’s hand and noticed that the signature tattoo was missing. Christ, maybe my intel’s been compromised again, he thought.

Let’s change that to a first-person narration. The filter words are still there and there’s a thought tag with the ‘I’ pronoun.

I glanced at the guy’s hand and noticed that the signature tattoo was missing. Christ, maybe my intel’s been compromised again, I thought.

Here’s what the third-person version could look like in free indirect style. The filter words and tags are gone. It feels like a first-person thought but the base tense and third-person narration remain intact.

The signature tattoo on the guy’s hand was missing. Christ, had his intel been compromised again?

And now the first-person version. All I’ve done is swapped out the pronoun ‘his’ for ‘my’.

The signature tattoo on the guy’s hand was missing. Christ, had my intel been compromised again?

5. Take the ‘I’ out of introspection

There’s nothing wrong with contemplation and introspection. Authentic characters ruminate just like real people.

However, when prose is littered rather than peppered with constructions such as I wasn’t sure if, I didn’t know whether, I wondered if, it can feel muddled and be laborious to read. The reader might respond: Well, of course you’re wondering. Who else could it be? You’re the narrator.

Worse, readers might think the narrator’s rather self-absorbed and unsure of themselves. While that might be necessary now and then, it’s problematic if it’s a staple because a narrator who’s always focused on themselves, and who never instils confidence in us, can’t tell the story as effectively.

Look out for ‘I’-centred introspection and experiment with statements and questions that allow the ‘I’ to be assumed.

Here are a few examples to show you how it might work.

‘I’-centred introspection	‘I’-less introspection
I wasn’t sure if Shami was a reliable witness but I couldn’t afford to ignore her, given what she’d divulged.	Was Shami a reliable witness? Maybe, maybe not. She couldn’t be ignored given what she’d divulged.
I still didn’t know who the killer was.	The killer’s identity was still a mystery.
I wondered whether Shami was a reliable witness.	Shami might or might not be a reliable witness. Shami’s reliability as a witness was hardly a given. Shami’s reliability as a witness was questionable.

6. Balance ‘I’ with ‘we’

Another option is to consider whether your narrator’s lived experience at particular points within the novel involves others.

This is an opportunity to frame the narrative around ‘we’ rather than just ‘I’.

Here’s an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird (p. 162) in which Scout, Harper Lee’s first-person narrator, frames the recollection around not just her own experience but those of the people she was hanging out with.

As the county went by us, Jem gave Dill the histories and general attitudes of the more prominent figures: M4 Tensaw Jones voted the straight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private; Mr Byron Waller could play the violin; Mr Jake Slade was cutting his third set of teeth.
A wagonload of unusually stern-faced citizens appeared. When they pointed to Miss Maudie Atkinson's yard, ablaze with summer flowers, Miss Maudie herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thing about Miss Maudie – on her porch she was too far away for us to see her features clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way she stood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping a little, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in the sunlight.

The effect is powerful because we’re shown rather than told a sense of her belonging, of her being in a group, of the togetherness of that experience. And that intensifies our immersion in her world.

Summing up

There’s nothing wrong with ‘I’, but a first-person narrator can tell a story without relying on their pronoun all the time. Since they’re the ones doing the reporting, the ‘I’ can often be assumed.

Try recasting sentences that start with ‘I’ more objectively, so that the focus is on the what – the emotion, the object, the person, the action and so on – rather than the sense being used to experience it or the I-narrator doing the experience.

Use the principles of free indirect speech to reduce your ‘I’ count. It’s a tool that encourages a narrowing of narrative distance to such a degree that the reader feels deeply connected to the viewpoint character – more like we’re reading a thought than straight narrative.

As for speech and thought tags, you might not need as many as you think. The speaker can usually be identified without them if there are only two people in the conversation. Removing redundant tags is worth considering whichever narration style you’re writing in.

Related resources

3 reasons to use free indirect speech
6 ways to improve your novel right now
Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
Filter words in fiction: Purposeful inclusion and dramatic restriction
Making Sense of Point of View: Transform Your Fiction 1
What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?
Switching to Fiction: Course for new fiction editors

Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
Learn: Books and courses
Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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What’s your editorial brand palette and why does it matter?

17/5/2021

1 Comment

Do you know your brand colours? They’re part of what makes you recognizable, so they’re worth paying attention to – and sticking to. Here’s one way to keep track of your choices and enforce consistency.

What is a brand palette?

A brand palette is the group of colours you use across your business materials, including the following:

Advertisements
Brochures
Business cards
Checklists
Directory entries
Emails
Fact sheets

Forum signatures
Publications
Reports
Social media images
Style sheets
Stationery
Website

If we’re communicating in online spaces that we don’t control, we’re limited to a certain extent by the platform’s own brand palette.

For example, we can upload on-brand images to our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn headers, but we can’t change the colour of the links or icons on our posts.

And members of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading who advertise in its Directory of Editorial Services can upload on-brand headshots, videos and images to their listings but must work within the CIEP’s unique brand palette.

Do the best you can in the spaces you don’t control. In those you do, go for consistency. Here’s why it’s important.

Why a consistent brand palette is powerful

Think about brands like Coke, Reese’s Pieces, Cadbury, McDonald’s, IKEA and Aldi. You can probably reel off the colours you associate with those companies, and that means you can identify them from afar or with just a glimpse.

Editorial brand palettes work the same way. They make us recognizable such that our colleagues, clients, friends and business partners can identify us in online spaces before they’ve dug into the detail of our messaging.

If we’ve already built trust with those people, they’re more likely to take the time to engage with our content because they know who it’s from.

Of course, they can also decide not to engage with us when our brand colours pop up in their social feeds or email inboxes because they’re not interested in us. Being recognizable means we don’t waste their time, and they don’t waste ours!

Deciding on your brand-palette rules

Once you’ve decided which colours are in your brand palette, consider your rules.

My brand palette comprises grey, white, grape, maroon and teal. My brand-palette rules include the following:

Brand-colour gradients are allowed on some sections of my website
Tints, shades and tones of my brand colours are allowed if UX will be improved
Buttons on my website must always be solid teal
Linked text must always be maroon with a teal hover
Blog-post images take grape boxes on greyscale images

If you’re the kind of editor who can hold several hex colours in your head, all power to you. I’m not. I need to record them so I can access them quickly and remind myself of the ‘rules’ I’ve created.

That's why I built a brand book.

How to record your brand palette

A brand book isn’t the only way of recording your brand colours, but it’s useful if you want a single space in which to keep track of your brand colours, something you can access every time you create content related to your business. Mine's bookmarked so I can get to it quickly.

It's also a one-stop-shop you can send to creative consultants if you’re commissioning artwork or design services.

Don't stop at colours! Use it record all your editorial business's brand essentials. For example:

Audience
Brand colours
Brand values
Buttons
Colour blocks
Fonts

Headshots
Icons
Language, style and tone
Logo options
Text
Website style settings

Here's what mine looks like. Use the thumbnails to move through the slideshow. If you’d like a free copy to mimic, head over to the branding page in my resource library and select the FREE BOOKLETS icon.

If it’s not something you think you can create for yourself, the Canva template is included free with the following courses:

If you’ve already bought one of them, log in to access the template, then copy it and edit it to create your own brand book quickly.

Summing up

A brand palette ensures your editing business is consistently recognizable across multiple media. That means those who already know and trust you can spot you from afar or with a glimpse. And those just getting to know you understand what to expect.

Pick your colours and stick to them. Then keep a record of your choices. It means you can be sure you’ll be on brand everywhere!

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

FIND OUT MORE
> Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
> Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
> Learn: Books and courses
> Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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How to declutter your dialogue

10/5/2021

3 Comments

Novel dialogue is not like reality, where much of what we say is of little consequence to the bigger picture of our lives. Here’s how to check that all your dialogue needs to be there. Then remove the mundane!

Why speech in a novel is different

Artful dialogue requires balancing realism with engagement and ensuring that every word spoken by a character pushes the novel forward rather than making the reader feel like they’re eavesdropping on a mundane conversation at the bus stop

Every line of dialogue should have a purpose. If it doesn’t, it probably shouldn’t be in your book.

It can take courage to remove words you've spent an age crafting but as I hope to show in the example below, readers don't need every little detail. Less is so often more!

A three-pronged approach to dialogue

My favourite way of assessing whether dialogue is working is to think in terms of voice, mood and intention.

When we focus on those three things, we avoid dull dialogue – conversations about the weather, how someone takes their tea or coffee, and courtesy statements such as ‘Hi, how are you?’

Voice
Voice tells us who characters are, what makes them tick – their fears, frustrations, hopes and dreams, identity, preferences.

Perhaps their speech is abrupt, rude, measured, polite, sweary or seductive.

When we change the way a character speaks, we change their voice. And that means we change them.

Mood
Characters can show us how they’re feeling via their dialogue.

Emotionally evocative speech allows readers to access the internal experience of a non-viewpoint character. And that makes it a powerful tool.

Perhaps their speech is abrupt, assertive, hesitant, forceful, pleading. Using the right words means the speech tags and narrative won’t need to be cluttered with further explanation.

Intention
Intention is another way of framing subtext. How characters speak tells us what they want.

Perhaps they’re asking questions for the purpose of discovery and understanding whodunit (doctors, lawyers, PIs and police officers regularly use dialogue in novels to this end). Dialogue can express a multitude of motivations.

Ask yourself what your character wants every time they open their mouth.

Example: Real but mundane dialogue

Let’s look at an example of dialogue that represents the kind of conversation one would expect to hear in real life. It includes the polite chitchat that people indulge in before they get down to business.

Laurie comes back to the office with me for a meeting with Kevin. These meetings are basically of dubious value, since all we seem to do is list the things we don’t understand in our preparation for a trial we don’t know will even take place.
“Hi, Kevin,” I say.
“Hey, Andy. How you doin’?”
“Not too bad, thanks. Christ, it’s cold out though. I need something to warm me up. Gonna grab a coffee. Want one? Laurie, you?”
Kevin nods.
Laurie says, “Please. Milk and sugar.”
“So Kevin,” I say as I hand around the drinks, “we need to talk about Petrone.”
It’s the first chance I’ve had to tell Kevin about my meeting with the guy. I fill him in. When I get to the part where Petrone denied trying to have me killed, Kevin asks, “And you believed him?”
“I did.”
“Just because that’s what he said?”
I nod. “As stupid as it might sound, yes. I’ve had dealings with him before, and he’s always told me the truth, or nothing at all. And he had nothing to gain by lying.”
“Andy, the guy has had a lot of people murdered. How many confessions has he made?”

Were you enthralled by the welcome and refreshments section, or did you just wish we could get to the point? I think I know the answer!

The slimmed-down version

Now let’s look at how author David Rosenfelt actually wrote this excerpt from Play Dead (Grand Central, 2009, p. 175), and beautifully too:

Laurie comes back to the office with me for a meeting with Kevin.
These meetings are basically of dubious value, since all we seem to do is list the things we don’t understand in our preparation for a trial we don’t know will even take place.
It’s the first chance I’ve had to tell Kevin about my meeting with Petrone. I fill him in. When I get to the part where Petrone denied trying to have me killed, Kevin asks, “And you believed him?”
“I did.”
“Just because that’s what he said?”
I nod. “As stupid as it might sound, yes. I’ve had dealings with him before, and he’s always told me the truth, or nothing at all. And he had nothing to gain by lying.”
“Andy, the guy has had a lot of people murdered. How many confessions has he made?”

What readers don’t care about

Rosenfelt knows that none of his readers care about the weather, the coffee, or whether people say hello to each other or not.

And so he leaves all of that out and lets the reader imagine that this stuff took place. And it’s enough. In the published novel, as opposed to the version I butchered, the first line of speech is “And you believed him.”

With that, we’re straight into Kevin’s incredulity and concern, and his desire to understand what the team is dealing with in regard to Petrone.

Meanwhile, Andy has his lawyer hat on. His initial reply is succinct, so that we are left in no doubt about his belief that Petrone was telling the truth, and that he is determined to reassure Kevin.

This is no-messing dialogue that focuses on story, not whether the speech is what we might actually hear – in its entirety – in real life.

It’s an excellent example of an author ensuring that every word counts and that there’s no bus-stop-talk filler.

Summing up

To declutter dialogue and make every word count, ask yourself the following:

Is every line relevant to the story?
Is the character speaking with purpose or taking up ink/pixels on the page?
Can mundane chitchat be removed without damaging sense and flow?
Could the dull stuff be replaced with speech that deepens character?

Want the booklet version of this post? It's available on my Dialogue resources library. Click on the cover below to hop over to the page. Once you're there, choose the Booklets icon.

More fiction editing resources for authors and editors

Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’
Making Sense of Point of View
Making Sense of Punctuation
How to Write the Perfect Fiction Editorial Report
Switching to Fiction
The Differences Between Developmental Editing, Line Editing, Copyediting and Proofreading (free webinar)
How to Punctuate Dialogue in a Novel (free webinar)
Resource library: Dialogue and thoughts

3 Comments

How to spell in a novel – wherever your characters are from

2/5/2021

3 Comments

Your novel features characters from different countries. Should their dialogue, thoughts or narration be spelled differently just because their voices are regionally distinct and they come from different places? The answer’s no. Here’s why.

What's covered in this post

In this post, I explore the following:

How there are multiple Englishes with different spellings
The difference between spelling style and voice
A case study from the 007 files
Overcoming ‘But it looks wrong’
Adding regional flavour to voice
3 examples of when spelling inconsistency works
A note on suffixes, dashes and quotation marks

Multiple Englishes, different spellings

There are multiple Englishes each with their own spelling conventions: British, Indian, Canadian, American and Australian are just five examples of English.

Most words are spelled the same regardless of which English is in play, though there are many that aren’t, for example ‘color’/’colour’, ‘judgment’/‘judgement’, ‘harmonize’/‘harmonise’, ‘behavior’/‘behaviour’, ‘gray’/‘grey’, 'liter'/'litre'.

None are right or wrong, better or worse, or correct or incorrect. Rather, the way each version of English is spelled is about convention and style.

This post uses examples of American English (AmE) and British English (BrE) style to explain how to approach spelling/voice conundrums in fiction.

The difference between spelling style and voice

Strive for a mindset that separates style and character voice.

How the words in a novel are spelled is for the most part a question of style.
What a character says, thinks, feels, and the words used to report this on the page, is a question of voice. This is the case for dialogue and narrative.

Voice isn’t something that’s spelled. Rather, it’s something the reader experiences, ‘hears’ with their mind’s ear. It therefore follows the base spelling style, regardless of where the character comes from. With that in mind:

If you’re writing fiction, decide on your spelling style and stick to it.
If you’re editing for an author, identify the spelling style and aim for consistency.

The easiest way to illustrate how spelling consistency works is with a case study. Let’s take a peek into the world of 007!

A case study from the 007 files

I’ve chosen Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche, a continuation novel featuring Ian’s Fleming’s British MI6 agent, James Bond.

The version from Hodder & Stoughton (part of Hachette UK), published in 2011, is styled as follows:

BrE spelling
Single quotation marks
BrE punctuation style
-is- suffixes (e.g. organisation, realised)

Here’s are three snippets from Chapter 2.

It was eight forty and the Sunday evening was clear here, near Novi Sad, where the Pannonian Plain rose to a landscape that the Serbs called ‘mountainous’, though Bond guessed the adjective must have been chosen to attract tourists;

‘Now, I’m ninety per cent sure he’ll believe you,’ Bond said. ‘But if not, and he engages, remember that under no circumstances is he to be killed. I need him alive. Aim to wound in the arm he favours, near the elbow, not the shoulder.’ Despite what one saw in the movies, a shoulder wound was usually as fatal as one to the abdomen or chest.

The Night Action alert meant an immediate response was required, at whatever time it was received. The call to his chief of staff had blessedly cut the date short and soon he had been en route to Serbia, under a Level 2 project order, authorising him to identify the Irishman, plant trackers and other surveillance devices and follow him.

The version from Pocket Star Books (a division of Simon and Schuster), published in 2012, is styled as follows:

AmE spelling
Double quotation marks
AmE punctuation style
-iz- suffixes (e.g. organization, realized)

Bond’s words haven’t changed. Bond’s nationality hasn’t changed. Bond’s job hasn’t changed. Bond’s narrative voice hasn’t changed. All that’s changed is the novel’s styling.

It was eight forty and the Sunday evening was clear here, near Novi Sad, where the Pannonian Plain rose to a landscape that the Serbs called “mountainous,” though Bond guessed the adjective must have been chosen to attract tourists;

“Now, I’m ninety percent sure he’ll believe you, Bond said. “But if not, and he engages, remember that under no circumstances is he to be killed. I need him alive. Aim to wound in the arm he favors, near the elbow, not the shoulder.” Despite what one saw in the movies, a shoulder wound was usually as fatal as one to the abdomen or chest.

The Night Action alert meant an immediate response was required, at whatever time it was received. The call to his chief of staff had blessedly cut the date short and soon he had been en route to Serbia, under a Level 2 project order, authorizing him to identify the Irishman, plant trackers and other surveillance devices and follow him.

Later in the novel (Chapter 26), Felix Leiter, an American, joins Bond on his mission. Here’s how Leiter’s dialogue is rendered in the AmE version:

Felix Leiter, a former marine whom Bond had met in the service, was a HUMINT spy. He vastly preferred the role of handler—running local assets, like Yusuf Nasad. “I pulled in a lot of favors and talked to all my key assets. Whatever Hydt and his local contacts’re up to, they’re keeping the lid on really tight. I can’t find any leads. Nobody’s been moving any mysterious shipments of nasty stuff into Dubai. Nobody’s been telling friends and family to avoid this mosque or that shopping center around seven tonight. No bad actors’re slipping in from across the Gulf.”

And here it is in the BrE version. Leiter is still American and still has the same distinct voice, but now the spelling has changed (as has the punctuation; note the spaced en dash and single quotation marks).

Felix Leiter, a former marine whom Bond had met in the service, was a HUMINT spy. He vastly preferred the role of handler – running local assets, like Yusuf Nasad. ‘I pulled in a lot of favours and talked to all my key assets. Whatever Hydt and his local contacts’re up to, they’re keeping the lid on really tight. I can’t find any leads. Nobody’s been moving any mysterious shipments of nasty stuff into Dubai. Nobody’s been telling friends and family to avoid this mosque or that shopping centre around seven tonight. No bad actors’re slipping in from across the Gulf.’

Overcoming ‘But it looks wrong’

Our brains can mess with us when we associate a particular spelling style with a character’s place of birth or residence, particularly if their voice is regionally distinct.

For example, perhaps they use idiomatic phrases that wedge them firmly in a country, state/province/county or even town/city that we’re from.

The British editor working on a book set in Southern California and written by an American author who writes in AmE might well struggle when a viewpoint character from Norfolk (the UK one where I live) turns up in Santa Barbara and mutters the following on seeing a cluster of huge ladybirds:

“Look at the color o’ them bishy barnabees. And big as a thruppence too!”

The spelling of ‘color’ might jar because ‘thruppence’ is so clearly unAmerican, so very British, while ‘bishy barnabees’ is particular to Norfolk. And yet the spelling is (and should be) AmE if that’s how the novel’s been styled overall.

An editor colleague recently reported this kind of problem in a Facebook group discussion. The novel was set in AmE, but the British viewpoint character spoke, thought and talked to herself in a Yorkshire accent. The first-person narration style deepened the voice still further.

‘The character's voice is really strong,’ the editor said, ‘and the US spelling seems at odds.’

The editor slept on it and the next day announced a simple but clever solution that had enabled her to overcome her resistance.

‘I mentally changed the British voice to a South African one so that I'm not so conscious of spelling variations, et voilà! It's suddenly clear as day.’

It’s a neat trick, a way of breaking the false connection between spelling and voice. If you come up against a similar situation, try it!

Adding regional flavour to voice

If you’re still worried that a spelling choice looks odd, remember that voice lies not in how the text is spelled but in what the character is saying, the turns of phrase they use, and the emotions and motivations behind their action (whether that action comes through speech, thought, movement or narration).

It’s worth bearing in mind, too, that language is often borrowed to the extent that some words no longer feel like, say, Britishisms, Americanisms, Canadianisms or Indianisms when they roll out of our mouths, regardless of how we identify or where we live.

Would I, a Brit, ever use the terms ‘cell phone’ and ‘movie’ rather than ‘mobile’ and ‘film’? Yes, I would.

How about ‘elevator’ rather than ‘lift’, ‘sidewalk’ rather than ‘pavement’, ‘aluminum’ rather than ‘aluminium’? Would I refer to ‘my mom’ rather than ‘my mum?’ Not while roaming around Norwich, but on a visit to Chicago, possibly, if I wanted to ensure people understood me. And almost definitely if I'd made my home there for some time.

Perhaps, then, the trick is not to be too precious about it, either when we’re writing or editing. Instead, we can consider the character’s environment and the degree to which the ‘local’ language flavour is something they’re likely to have assimilated into their speech, thoughts and narratives.

Those choices aside, the spelling style will be consistent. Unless …

3 examples of when spelling inconsistency works

There are instances where inconsistent styling will be called for. Here are 3.

The character is spelling a spelling
Imagine a Bond novel is styled in BrE. Bond and Leiter are speaking to each other on the phone and the line is terrible. Bond thinks Leiter has said ‘dissenter’. Leiter’s dialogue might go like this: ‘Not dissenter. The centre. C-E-N-T-E-R. Move to the centre.’

A proper noun is being referenced
Now imagine Bond’s telling Leiter that he’s received intelligence about a heist in the Rockefeller Center. Even if the novel’s styled in BrE, the AmE spelling of ‘Center’ should be retained because it’s referencing the name of a building.

Excerpts from written materials have been transcribed
Excerpts from diaries, newspaper cuttings, reports, letters, texts and so on can be rendered in the spelling style most likely used by whomever in the novel wrote them because they’re supposed to be authentic transcripts.

Imagine that Bond’s reading a document written by an American CIA operative. Even if the novel is styled in BrE, the spelling in the report would be AmE, unless referencing a proper noun that required a BrE spelling.

A note on suffixes, dashes and quotation marks

Finally, a quick note on style and how writers and editors need to consider whether they're being overly prescriptive. I recommend thinking in terms of common conventions rather than rules.

Suffixes
In AmE, it’s standard to spell with -iz- suffixes.

In BrE, both -iz- and -is- are standard. Again, it’s a matter of style.

Thus, in the Night Action alert excerpt above, if Hodder had elected to use ‘authorized’ instead of ‘authorised’, this would not have been a slippage into American spelling but a style choice – an accepted BrE variant that’s been around since the sixteenth century.

Dashes
While most US publishers favour closed-up em dashes and most British publishers favour spaced en dashes when used parenthetically (see the Leiter snippet in the case study), it’s not wrong to used unspaced em dashes when writing in BrE style; it’s Oxford’s preference, for example.

Quotation marks
Again, while it’s more common to see single quotation marks in BrE styling and doubles in AmE, this isn’t an unbreakable rule. Indie authors can choose, for example, BrE spelling and double quotation marks if they wish.

In all three cases, consistency is what counts.

Summing up

Voice can be flavoured by what is said, thought and narrated, and it can show us aspects of a character’s personality, emotions, motivations and background – regardless of how the words that convey it are spelled.

Spelling is about style. The goal is consistency in the main, complemented by good-sense deviation when necessary.

That’s how the mainstream publishing industry approaches it, and editors and writers will do well to follow their lead.

Related resources

Author and editor resources library
Blog post: How do I find spelling inconsistencies when proofreading and editing?
Blog post: How to convey accents in fiction writing: Beyond phonetic spelling
Blog post: What's the difference between a rule and a preference? Advice for new writers
Booklet: British English and US English in your fiction, and why you should be consistent
Podcast: Think it’s American? Think again!
Podcast: Linguist Rob Drummond on grammar pedantry, peevery and youth language

Visit the grammar and spelling page in my resource library to download a free booklet summarizing suffix variations in American and British English.

TAKE ME TO THE BOOKLET

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

FIND OUT MORE
> Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
> Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
> Learn: Books and courses
> Discover: Resources for authors and editors

3 Comments

How long should a novel be? Guidance for fiction authors

19/4/2021

3 Comments

Here’s why it’s worth paying attention to the length of your novel whether you’re publishing independently or submitting to an agent with the aim of securing a publishing contract.

What determines word count?

Guidance on word counts differs according to:

type of book
target age group
genre

The infographic below provides a very rough guide to word counts – lower and upper limits and a midpoint. These align with publishing convention.

And these are conventions rather than rules, which is why the ranges are rather wide for some genres.

Economics: Printing costs

Pages cost money. KDP says: ‘Printing costs vary depending on page count and ink type (black ink or color ink). Trim size, bleed settings, and cover finish don’t affect printing cost.’

Bear in mind, however, that your chosen trim size will affect the number of words you or your designer fits on a page and therefore the page count, which in turn will affect printing costs.

It’s therefore worth experimenting with different trim sizes and interior designs if you’re going down the print-on-demand route.

There’ll be an optimal design that offers the desired aesthetic for your budget. Approximate calculations are available via the KDP print cost calculator.

If you’re printing in bulk with your own printer, there might be economies of scale on offer for larger print runs. Talk to the supplier and your formatter about how to keep costs down by tweaking the interior design without impacting on readability.

Economics: Editing costs

Generally, the more words in a book, the more each stage of editing will cost. Line editing 80K words will take perhaps a week longer than line editing 50K words.

If you’re working with a pro editor, remember to factor your word count into your chosen editor’s fee structure.

Expectations: Audience sweet spots

Readers have expectations. Back when my child was four, I expected the picture books I read for them to be shorter than the thrillers I read to myself.

And I don’t mind digging into 100K words or so for Baldacci because his books are quite detailed. Sue Grafton’s Alphabet mystery series has a different feel to it and I’ve come to expect a quicker read – around the 55–75K-word mark.

And if you're self-publishing, consider this from the IngramSpark blog: ‘With less time available for reading, it makes sense that readers want to get to the last page quicker. The trend for the past few years has been to publish books with less than 200 pages on average, or around 50,000 words’ (Self-publishing Trends 2018–2019).

Expectations: Agents and publishers

Agents want to sell books to publishers, and publishers want to sell books to readers.

Hitting an industry-standard isn’t about word count in itself. It’s about ensuring that the story is told with enough words, and only enough words so that readers are engaged.

Paying attention to word-count conventions reduces an author’s chances of ending up in a slush pile because there aren't red flags indicating overwriting if the novel is huge, and undeveloped story if the book's shorter than standard.

Why word counts help authors focus on quality

If you’re self-publishing, you’re in control. You might decide your thriller needs to be 130K words. If every word drives the story forward and holds the reader’s attention, great.

When the book's too long
If, however, 20K words are cluttering adverbs and adverbial phrases that could be removed or replaced with stronger verbs, the novel’s length isn’t serving the reader.

Or perhaps there are 30K words of laboured stage direction – detail that describes every mundane movement a character makes to remove themselves from a car, climb a flight of stairs, or move from one room to another. Often, nudges that enable the reader to make sense of space and place are enough.

Readers don’t count words, but they will start skimming over them if the prose isn’t tight. And so even if your first draft has X,000 words, use the revision stage to consider what needs to be removed or tweaked.

When the book's too short
If your novel’s word count is substantially lower than industry conventions, consider what might be missing. There could be structural issues such as a too predictable plot, undeveloped character arcs, or too few obstacles.

There could also be opportunities to show rather than tell a scene so that the narrative distance decreases and the reader is drawn deeper into character experience.

The difference between word count and page count

When it comes to novel length, bear in mind that page counts are affected by design (e.g. trim size, margin size, font size, layout) whereas word counts are determined by story alone.

Pro formatters can adjust the page count of a printed book by tweaking the design, though there are limitations.

No reader will be convinced that they’re holding an 80K-work crime novel just because 50K words are set in a Times New Roman 18.

On the other hand, if you’ve written 100K words aimed at the middle-grade market (8–12 years), you’d be wise to reduce the word count considerably rather than asking your designer to make your book look shorter by squeezing more words on each page!

Furthermore, when it comes to ebooks, there’s no such thing as a standard page because the reader controls how much text appears on the screen. Ebooks lengths are therefore measured in kilobytes (KB), not pages.

Summing up

It’s a cliché but a good story is as long as it needs to be. Longer novels shouldn’t be longer because they haven’t been edited, and shorter novels shouldn’t be shorter because the story is insufficiently fleshed out.

Pay attention to word counts as part of an evaluation process that ensures the words that need to be on the page are on the page, and those that needn’t be there are removed. That way, your story will be in the best shape for your readers.

Related resources for authors

Author resources library
Blog post: 6 ways to improve your novel right now
Blog post and video: Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
Blog post: Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
Book: Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’
Blog post: Unveiling your characters: Physical description with style
Blog post: Using adverbs in fiction writing

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

FIND OUT MORE
> Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
> Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
> Learn: Books and courses
> Discover: Resources for authors and editors

3 Comments

Why 'show, don't tell' is a great business-marketing tool for editors and proofreaders

12/4/2021

3 Comments

‘Show, don’t tell’ isn’t just a writing technique. It’s a principle that works for editorial business marketing too!

Visit the Branding page in my resource library to download this free booklet.

I WANT TO DOWNLOAD THE BOOKLET

More marketing resources for editors and proofreaders

If marketing's your Achilles' heel, take a look at the following resources:

3 ways to make your editing and proofreading website better – fast! (blog)
Branding for Business Growth (multimedia course)
Editor Website Essentials (multimedia course)
How to do Content Marketing (book)
Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business (book)
Marketing resource library (books, booklets and blogs and podcasts)
Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action (blog and booklet)

3 Comments

The fiction proofreading and line-editing process

4/4/2021

6 Comments

This outline of the proofreading, copyediting and line-editing process is one way of organizing your editorial workflow rather than bowling straight into a project.

The fiction proofreading and line-editing process

What follows is my process – the steps I take and the order in which I take them. That doesn’t mean it’s THE process! You might prefer to organize yourself differently.

Editorial business parameters

My business model might look very different to yours. Here’s what you need to know about me when considering the process I outline below.

I work on raw-text files in Microsoft Word.
I work directly with crime fiction, thriller and mystery writers. I might be the only editorial person the author’s worked with.
I work only on fiction so my editing projects are straight text.
Most of my projects require line editing rather than proofreading.
Even when hired to proofread, I tend to work on raw-text files rather than designed PDF or hardcopy page proofs.
Unless otherwise agreed (and billed for), a project involves a single pass.

Proofreading designed page proofs

I no longer work on designed page proofs (PDF or hardcopy), but at the point in my career when I did, I used the checklist below.

THE PROOFREADING CHECKLIST

My preference is to carry out each check discretely so that I can focus on the specific task in hand rather than trying to spot different kinds of errors at the same time.

A free copy is available when you sign up to The Editorial Letter.

TAKE ME TO THE CHECKLIST

Step 1. Project legalities

I carry out the project legalities as soon as the author and I have agreed to work together and decided on the project's time frame.

This part of the process protects me and my client, and ensures we have a mutual understanding of the project’s terms and conditions.

WHAT I DO

Ask the client to complete the booking form and agree to the terms and conditions
Issue an invoice for the deposit
Ask the client to fill in an Author Preferences form
Check the signed contract is in order
Add the project details to my schedule

SHOW ME THE FORM

SHOW ME A SCHEDULE TEMPLATE

Step 2. File checking and organization

This work takes place as soon as the book file arrives. The checks ensure I can find the material, and that it’s usable when it’s time for the edit to begin.

WHAT I DO

Create a project folder
Check the book file can be opened and is readable
Check the page count to confirm that all the content is available
Save a copy of the project file with a unique name, eg Smith-LH-Edit-020421-v1
Place the original and the copy in the project folder

Step 3. Template creation

This part of the process helps me get organized. I do it before the edit begins.

WHAT I DO

Customize my style-sheet template and assign a unique name
(eg Smith-LH-style-020421-v1)
Customize my report template and assign a unique name
(eg Smith-LH-report-020421-v1)
Save the templates to the project folder

FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

​Embedding the language of preference in editorial discussion

Whose standards and conventions are in play?

What about style guides?

​Transferring judgement to the client

‘Wrong’, ‘non-standard’ or authentic voice?

​Framing errors in terms of author intention and reader expectation

Summing up

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More fiction-skills resources

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What's in this post

​What is PerfectIt?

​What is The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)?

​​What is The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt?

​​Beta testing on a novel

​Why the editor retains control

How to customize The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

Wow factor 1: CMOS learning at the editor’s fingertips

​Wow factor 2: Seamless access

​Wow factor 3: Shifting the burden of search

​What PerfectIt 5 won't do

​How much does it cost?

How to unlock access to the CMOS style sheet

​My beta test: The verdict

Where to get The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt

​Resources

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More fiction-editing resources

​In this post

​​What kickstarted the marketing focus

Marketing activity #1: Website

Marketing activity #2: Blogging

​​Marketing activity #3: Creating a Reedsy profile

Marketing activity #4: Social media

Marketing activity #5: CIEP meetings

Marketing activity #6: Emailing former contacts

​Marketing activity #7: Cold emails

Marketing activity #8: Write Useful Books Slack group

6 months later: Has the marketing paid off?

The plan for the next 6 months

Lessons learned as a newbie marketer

​Summing up

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More business-growth tools

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​Mentioned in the show

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More grammar and line-craft resources

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​More help with marketing and being visible

​In this post ...

Clutter check #1: Review your filter words

​Clutter check #2: Review speech tags

Clutter check #3: Review action beats

​Summing up

Related reading

​​What’s in this post

Showing rather than telling internal experience

Decelerating reading speed

Emphasizing key information

Embedding the language of preference in editorial discussion

Transferring judgement to the client

Framing errors in terms of author intention and reader expectation

Listen to find out more about

Music credit

Listen to find out more about

Music credit

Listen to find out more about

What is PerfectIt?

What is The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)?

What is The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt?

Beta testing on a novel

Why the editor retains control

Wow factor 2: Seamless access

Wow factor 3: Shifting the burden of search

What PerfectIt 5 won't do

How much does it cost?

My beta test: The verdict

Resources

Listen to find out more about

In this post

What kickstarted the marketing focus

Marketing activity #3: Creating a Reedsy profile

Marketing activity #7: Cold emails

Summing up

Listen to find out more about ...

Mentioned in the show

Music credit

Listen to find out more about ...

Music Credit

More help with marketing and being visible

In this post ...

Clutter check #2: Review speech tags

Summing up

What’s in this post

Creating clutter-free immediacy

Why ‘I’ still has a place front and centre

4. Apply the principles of free indirect speech

6. Balance ‘I’ with ‘we’

What is a brand palette?

Why speech in a novel is different

A three-pronged approach to dialogue

Example: Real but mundane dialogue

The slimmed-down version

Summing up

What's covered in this post

Adding regional flavour to voice

What determines word count?