A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the best posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

My thanks to this month's contributors!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• 6 tips to help you speak in public with confidence by Simon Raybould, published on The Parlour. Simon writes: 'A good presentation will change someone’s mind ... and with it, their world. A good presentation is a form of telepathy – sending ideas from your mind to someone else’s.'
• How to become a better editor while secretly promoting your business by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'If you love learning about how to do your job better, and are prepared to make time in your business schedule for this continued professional development (CPD), you have at your fingertips all the marketing tools you need.'

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​CLIENT FOCUS​: BUSINESS AND OTHER NON-FICTION

• A sound experiment: Writing by voice and ear alone by Howard Walwyn, published on Prism-Clarity. Howard writes: ‘Writing using Voice Recognition software has lots of benefits. It is quick, easy to edit, fluent and conversational. This blog tests the theory.’
• Writing winning proposals, part one by Tanya Preston, published on Engineered Copy. Tanya writes: ‘Writing proposals is something most businesses and freelancers need to do to win more work. Here’s some tips for making your proposals stand out from the competition.’
• Plain English – what are the business benefits? by Laura Ripper, published on Laura’s blog. Laura writes: ‘It’s not just a box you have to tick to show you’re being a responsible company – there are plenty of financial benefits for your business, too.’​​

CLIENT FOCUS​: FICTION

• 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Are you using free indirect speech in your writing? This article provides an overview of what it is and how it can spice up your crime fiction.'
• 12 reasons to learn how to write a brilliant synopsis by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes: 'You can quit holding your nose now—this whole synopsis thing is going to take more than a single held breath. Writing your synopsis is a must-have writing skill for every successful novelist. Consider how many times and how many ways you’re going to have to summarize your novel over the course of the publishing process.'
• ​How to write the best blurb by Aimee Walker, published on Aimee Walker Proofreader & Writer. Aimee writes: 'It is in an author’s best interests to write their blurb early on in the process, to attract their test readers – once it is written it will then be adaptable for other uses.'
• How to write the best opening to your novel by Aimee Walker, published on Aimee Walker Proofreader & Writer. Aimee writes: 'The first lines need to be concise and generally action-heavy; you can elaborate on reasons and details later. If you try to explain the action too much, too early, you risk losing the intrigue and curiosity that you are trying to hook your reader with.'
• Why your first book should not be part of a series by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes: 'Tackling a series is a serious handicap for freshman authors who are still mastering the mechanics of how to craft a story. That’s a ridiculously high difficulty setting, and it’s no wonder many authors crumple before the finish line or produce a series that peters out with a whimper.'

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• Disengage, re-engage: 13 tips for proofreading text you’ve already copy-edited by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘In an ideal world, the copy-editor and proofreader should always be different people; however, reality doesn’t conform to ideals. If you find yourself in this situation, it’s important to be prepared, so that you can mitigate the natural disadvantages and turn everything you can to your advantage.’

LANGUAGE MATTERS

• ​Mental illness and the editorial profession: Erasing the stigma by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘This is one of my most popular blog posts to date and a topic that is important to me as someone who has an anxiety disorder. The language we use when we discuss mental health is important – ​paying attention to small details and valuing consistency, accuracy, and order are important attributes for proofreaders and editors to have, but this doesn’t equate to having OCD or an anxiety disorder.’
• Publishing scientific research: challenges and solutions by Claire Bacon, published on Bacon Editing Blog. Claire writes: ‘Language editors can teach academics a lot about how to write well. This article summarizes valuable insights from the recent SENSE 2018 conference that will help researchers get their work published faster.’

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in supporting self-publishing authors, particularly crime writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) and an Author Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Three questions for you:

1. Do you hate marketing, or at least dislike it?
2. How about editing or proofreading. That’s your job. Do you like it?
3. What about learning how to do your job better? Those courses you take, books you read, and conferences you attend – do you enjoy those?

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​If the answer to all three is yes, you’re in marketing heaven!

I’m not kidding you. If you love learning about how to do your job better, and are prepared to make time in your business schedule for this continued professional development (CPD), you have at your fingertips all the marketing tools you need.

Here’s another question:

Do you think there comes a point when you’ve learned all there is to learn about being a better editor?

If you answered no to that, you’re in even better shape from a marketing point of view because you will never run out of ideas to connect with your target client.

And here’s another question:

Do you think you have no time in your schedule to learn how to become a better editor?

If you answered yes, you need to make time. Every editor needs to continue learning. Our business isn’t static. New tools, resources and methods of working are a feature of our business landscape. Language use changes as society’s values shift. Markets expand and retract, which requires a response from us in terms of how we make ourselves visible.
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If you answered no, that’s great news because it means you have time for marketing. I know – you don’t like marketing. But that’s fine because we’re not calling it marketing. We’re calling it CPD, which you do like!

Making time for business
Everyone who knows me knows I love marketing my editing business. Lucky me – it’s much easier to do something necessary when you enjoy it.

What a lot of people don’t get is how I make time for it and how I get myself in the mindset to devote that time to it.

I don’t have a problem with calling it marketing. But the truth is that so much of the marketing I do is not about marketing; it’s about communicating what I’ve researched and learned.

I love line and copyediting crime fiction. I think I’m really good at it. But I don’t think I’ve learned everything there is to learn. Not for a single minute.

That leaves me with stuff to do. I have to learn.

So off I go to various national editorial societies’ websites. I head for their training pages. I look for courses that will teach me how to be a better crime-fiction editor.
There aren’t any.

I turn to Google. Plenty of help for writers, but not specifically for editors. That’s fine.
And so here’s what I’ve done: read books about crime writing, and attended workshops, author readings, and crime-writing festivals (I live a stone’s throw away from the National Centre for Writing and the annual Noirwich festival). And I’ve continued to read a ton of crime fiction.

And to help me digest what I’ve learned, I’ve taken notes along the way. It’s what I’ve done all my life when I’m learning – O levels (as they were called in my day), A levels, my degree … notes, notes and more notes.
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How much time has it taken? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been having too much fun. I love reading; I don’t count the hours I spend doing it. How long did the author event last? I’ve no clue. My husband and I had dinner afterwards though, so it was like a date. And it would have been rude to look at my watch.

Is it a blog post?
I wrote a blog post recently about planning when writing crime. I couldn’t churn out 2,000 words just like that; I’m not the world’s authority on the subject.

So I referred to my notes from the event with a famous crime writer (the one where I had a dinner date with hubby). Turns out the guy talked about planning, and told us about his and a fellow crime writer’s approach to the matter. I reread a chapter from a book on how to write crime and found additional insights there. More notes. I read 14 online articles about plotting and pantsing too. Yet more notes.

And then I put all those notes together, which really helped me to order my thoughts. I created a draft. Redrafted. Edited it. And sent it to my proofreader. Soon I'll publish it and share it in various online spaces.

It’ll be on my blog and on the dedicated crime writing page of my website. Some people might call it content marketing. And it is, sort of, because it helps beginner self-publishers work out when they will attend to the structure of their crime fiction – either before they start writing, or after.

From that point of view, it is useful, shareable, problem-solving content, which is a perfectly reasonable definition of content marketing.

Or is it CPD?
But look at it another way. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know before. I can use that knowledge to make me a better editor.

I took notes and drafted those notes into an article. This is no different to what I did at least once a week at university. I wasn’t marketing then; I was learning.
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What is different is that no one but my professor was interested in my article. That’s not the case for my planning piece. That article will help some self-publishers on their writing journey. A few might just decide to hire me to line or copyedit for them.
It’s happened before. Maybe it will happen again tomorrow, or next month, or next year. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter – the article will stay on my site for as long as it’s relevant.

Change your language
If the idea of marketing your business leaves you feeling overwhelmed, rethink the language you use to describe what’s required.

You probably don’t consider attending an editorial conference a marketing activity, even though it might lead to referrals. It’s more likely you think of it as a business development and networking opportunity.

You probably don’t consider a training course to be marketing. It’s more likely you think of it as editorial education.

You probably don’t consider reading a book about the craft of writing to be marketing. It’s more likely you consider it knowledge acquisition.
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So how about this?

• Pick up a book, attend a course, watch a webinar, complete a tutorial – whatever you think will teach you how to be a better editor and do a better job for your clients. This is training.
• Make notes based on that research. This is embedding knowledge.
• Turn those notes into something readable, just like when you were at school or uni. This is writing an essay.
• Place that essay somewhere other than your teacher’s in-tray. Like a blog or somewhere on your website where a potential client might learn from it too. This is publishing research.
• Now use social media to drive awareness about that essay. It’s a kind of open-access thing … just like the academics do. This is sharing subject knowledge.

Training, embedding knowledge, writing essays, publishing research, sharing subject knowledge. Smashing stuff. Nicely done.

And between you and me, it’s great content marketing too. But, shh, let’s keep that quiet. I know you don’t like marketing.

Make your marketing about your editing
If you don’t like marketing, maybe that’s because the kind of marketing you’re doing isn’t likeable. In that case, think about what you do like about running your business, and make those things the pivot for your marketing. [Click to tweet]

In other words, it doesn’t need to be about choosing between marketing your editing business and learning to be a better editor, but about the former being a consequence of the latter. Two birds. One stone.

Me? I’m off to read the latest Poirot. Just for fun, mind you!

Are you using free indirect speech in your writing? This article provides an overview of what it is and how it can spice up your crime fiction.

What is free indirect speech?
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.

It’s a useful tool to have in your sentence-level toolbox because:

1. It’s flexible and can add interest
2. It can make for a leaner narrative
3. It can deepen our understanding of a character

The table below shows three contrasting third-person narrative styles in action so you can see how free indirect speech works:

It’s also referred to as free indirect style and free indirect discourse.
 
1. Flexibility and interest
Free indirect speech (FIS) is flexible because it can be blended seamlessly with other third-person narrative styles.
 
Let’s say you want to convey information about a character’s physical description, their experiences, and their thoughts – what they think and delivered in the way they’d say it.
 
You could use third-person objective for the description, third-person limited for the experience, and free indirect speech for some of the thought processes.
 
In other words, you have a single narrative viewpoint but styled in different ways. You’re not changing the viewpoint, but rather shifting the distance between the reader and the character. And that can make your prose more interesting.
 
Here’s an example from Val McDermid’s Insidious Intent (p. 14). She begins with a more distant third-person narrator who reports what had been on Elinor Blessing’s mind, and when. Then she shifts to free indirect speech (the bold text). This gives us temporary access to Blessing’s innermost thoughts – her irritation – and her lightly sweary tone, but still in the third-person:

Philip Prowse employs a similar shift in Hellyer’s Trip (p. 194):

​2. A leaner narrative
FIS is a useful tool when you want to declutter.
 
Direct speech and thoughts are often tagged so that the reader knows who’s speaking/thinking:
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• ‘Blah blah,’ she said.
• Blah blah, she wondered.

 
With regard to thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with a reader being told that a character thought this or wondered that, but tagging can be interruptive and render your prose overworked and laboured if that’s the only device you use.
 
Imagine your viewpoint character’s in a tight spot – a fight scene with an arch enemy. The pace of the action is lightning quick and you want that to be reflected in how your viewpoint character experiences the scene. FIS enables you to ditch the tags, focus on what’s going on in the character’s head, and maintain a cracking pace.
 
The opening chapter of Stephen Lloyd Jones’s The Silenced contains numerous examples of free indirect speech dotted about. Mallory is being hunted by the bad guys. She’s already disarmed one in a violent confrontation and fears more are on the way. Jones keeps the tension high by splintering descriptions of step-by-step action with free-indirect-styled insights into his protagonist’s deepest thought processes as, ridden with terror, she tries to find a way out of her predicament:

​Here’s an excerpt from Lee Child’s The Hard Way (p. 64). Child doesn’t use FIS to close the narrative distance. Instead, he opts to shift into first-person thoughts. Reacher is wondering if he’s been made, and whether it matters:

Some might argue that this is a little clunkier than going down the FIS route, but perhaps he wanted to retain a sense of Reacher’s clinical, military-style dissection of the problem in hand.
 
If Child had elected to use FIS, it might have looked like this:
 
Had they seen him? Of course they had. Close to certainty. The mugger saw him – that’s for damn sure. And those other guys were smarter than any mugger. [...] But had they been worried? No, they’d seen a professional opportunity. That’s all.
 
It’s a good reminder that choice of narrative style isn’t about right or wrong but about intention – what works for your writing and your character in a particular situation.

3. Deeper insight into characters
A third-person narrator is the bridge between the character and the reader. As such, it has its own voice. If there’s more than one viewpoint character in your novel, we can learn what we need to know via a narrator but the voice will not be the same as when the characters are speaking in the first person.
 
FIS allows the reader to stay in third-person but access a character’s intimate world view and their voice. It closes the distance between the reader and the character because the bridging narrator is pushed to the side, but only temporarily.
 
That temporary pushing-aside means the writer isn’t bound to the character’s voice, state of mind and internal processing. When the narrator takes up its role once more, the reader takes a step back.
 
Furthermore, there might be times when we need to hear that character’s voice but the spoken word would seem unnatural:

• Perhaps they don’t have time to verbalize (a high-octane escape scene).
• Maybe they’re on their own and talking to themselves isn’t a known trait.
• Speaking out loud would give them away.
• Dialogue would seem forced because a character wouldn’t give voice to the words in real life.

 
FIS therefore allows a character to speak without speech – a silent voice, if you like.
 
Think about transgressor narratives in particular. If you want to give your readers intimate insights into a perpetrator’s pathology and motivations, but are writing in the third-person, FIS could be just the ticket.
 
Here’s an example from Harlan Coben’s Stay Close (chapter 25). Ken and his partner Barbie are a murderous couple bound together by sadism and psychopathy. Ken is preparing for the capture and torture of a police officer whom he believes is a threat:

This excerpt is from an audiobook. While listening, I could hear how the voice artist, Nick Landrum, used pitch to shift narrative distance.
 
The book’s entire narrative is in the third-person, but Landrum used a higher pitch when presenting the narrator voice. Ken’s dialogue, however, is in a lower pitch, and so is the free indirect speech of this character – we get to hear the essence of Ken even when he’s not speaking out loud.
 
If you’re considering turning your novel into an audiobook, FIS could enrich the emotionality of the telling, and the connection with your listener.
 
A closer look at narrative distance
To decide whether to play with free indirect speech, consider narrative distance and the impact it can have on a scene.
 
Look at these short paragraphs, all of which convey the same information. All are grammatically correct but the reader’s experience is different because of the way in which the information is given, and by whom.

Your choice will depend on your intention. Think about your character, their personality, the situation they’re in, which emotions they’re experiencing, and the degree to which you want your reader to intimately connect with them.
 
Consider the following examples in relation to the table above:

• Is the scene fast-paced and do you want to keep your sentences lean and keen to reflect that pace? The viewpoint character might not have the mental space to articulate fully rounded thoughts or speech because they’re in a fight or trying to escape. In that case, the free indirect style of 5 might suit you. So might 6 if you’re writing in the first person.
• Is the viewpoint character hiding, observing something going on but invisible to those around them? If they feel in command but are taking care to remain unnoticed, 2 might offer you the required tension while enabling you to retain tight control over the narrative via a narrator.
• If your character has the space to think but is panicking, you might prefer 3 or 4. Anxiety can lead people to articulate complex thoughts, even voice them out loud, in the search for clarity.
• If your viewpoint character’s personality is cooler, more detached, you might prefer the emotional disconnectedness of 1.
• And if you’re writing in the third-person, but want the reader to feel intimately connected with the viewpoint character, you might swing back to the free indirect style of 5.

 
Wrapping up
FIS is used across genres, but I think it’s a particularly effective tool in crime writing because of its ability to simultaneously embrace brevity and communicate intimacy.
 
Jon Gingerich sums up as follows: ‘Free Indirect Discourse takes advantage of the biggest asset a first-person P.O.V. has (access) and combines it with the single best benefit of a third-person narrative (reliability). It allows the narrator to dig deep into a character’s thoughts and emotions without being permanently tied to that person’s P.O.V. Done correctly, it can offer the best of both worlds.’
 
If you haven’t yet played with it, give it a go, especially if you’re looking for ways to trim the fat.
 
Further reading

• ‘A beginner’s guide to narrative point of view in crime fiction.’ Louise Harnby, 2018
• ‘The Benefits of Free Indirect Discourse.’ LitReactor, 2012
• Hellyer’s Trip by Philip Prowse. Kernel Books, 2018
• Insidious Intent by Val McDermid. Little, Brown, 2017
• Stay Close by Harlan Coben. Whole Story Audiobooks, 2012
• The Hard Way by Lee Child. Bantam Press, 2006
• The Silenced by Stephen Lloyd Jones. Headline, 2018

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This article shows you what it might cost to get your novel copyedited or proofread. However, the short answer is: it depends ...

• on the individual editor
• on which industry surveys and reports you read
• on the required turnaround time
• on the complexity of the project

I’ll look at each of these points in turn, then offer you some ideas of what you can do to reduce the financial hit.

First of all though, a quick word on whether you should bother and, if you do, what type of service you should invest in.

Do you have to work with a professional editor?
Not at all – it’s your choice. That’s one of the biggest benefits of self-publishing. You get to stay in control and decide where to invest your book budget.

However, I absolutely recommend that your book is edited ... by you at the very least, but ideally by a fresh set of eyes, and even more ideally by a set of eyes belonging to someone who knows what to look out for. And the reason for that recommendation is because 99.99% of the time, editing will make a book better.

We can all dream about first-draft perfection, but it’s pie in the sky for most, even those who edit for a living.

I’m a professional line editor, copyeditor and proofreader, and today I wrote a guest blog post for a writer. I wrote, and then I edited ... first for content, then for flow, then for errors. I found problems with each pass.

That’s not because I can’t write. It’s not because I can’t string a sentence together. It’s not because I didn’t edit properly in the first round. The reason I found problems is because writing is one process – editing is another:

• When we write, we’re focused on the telling of the story – and all writing tells a story of one kind or another, whether it’s fictional, academic, professional, technical or scientific.
• When we edit for content, we’re looking at the big picture – whether the structure works.
• When we edit for flow, we’re looking at the sentences – how they work and feel.
• When we edit for errors, we’re going even more micro – spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency.

And the different types of editing attend to different kinds of problems and have different outcomes. Trying to do everything at once is like trying to mix a cake, bake it, ice it, eat it, and sweep up the crumbs all at the same time.

Breaking down the writing and editing processes into stages is a lot less messy, and the quality of outcomes is much higher.

Still, that has a cost to it, and it’s a cost that the self-publisher will have to bear because there’s no big-name press to bear the burden for them.

Cost of editing: the individual editor
The independent editing market is global and diverse. Editors specialize in carrying out different types of editing. Some specialize by subject or genre. They have different business models and varied costs of living. And that means that despite what you might read in this or that survey, there is no single, universal rate.

Neither is there a universal way of offering that rate:

• Some editors charge by word
• Some editors charge by hour
• Some editors charge by page
• Some editors offer a flat fee

My preference is to charge on a per-1,000 words basis. My 2018 rates are around £17 per 1,000 words for line/copyediting, and £13 per 1,000 words for proofreading, subject to seeing a sample of the novel.

If I’m asked to work on a novel serially, as I’ve recently agreed to, the price goes up to £22 per 1,000 words because of the additional challenges involved and the economies of scale that are lost.

So it depends on the parameters of the project.

Some editors charge more than me, some less, and some the same. My colleagues live all over the world, and fluctuations in the currency-exchange markets mean that comparisons will yield different results from day to day.

Cost of editing: industry surveys and reports
Some professional organizations suggest or report minimum hourly rates for the various levels of editing. They’re ballparks, nothing more, for reasons outlined below the table.

ARE THESE RATES REALISTIC?
​​Do these figures bear any relation to what individual editors charge? Sometimes but not always. Most organizations recognize that these reported prices don’t always reflect market conditions, and they’re right to do so. Many editors and proofreaders, myself included, aim for rates at least 30% higher.

Why? Because that’s what it takes for our businesses to be profitable. Editing and proofreading aren’t activities we do in our spare time. They’re careers that enable us to pay the bills. If we can’t meet our living costs, we become insolvent, just like any other business owner.

The problem with these ballparks is that they don’t reflect the speed at which an individual works, the complexity of each job, the time frame requested, or the editor’s circumstances.

An additional problem is that how these organizations define ‘proofreading’, ‘copyediting’ etc. might not reflect an author’s understanding of what the service involves, or what an editor has elected to include.

And then there’s the age-old issue of currency-exchange rates. What might seem a high rate to you one day could turn into something quite different the next, and not because the editor’s or the author’s life has changed, but because of Trump, or the Bank of England, or a hung parliament here, or a banking crisis there.

Bear in mind that independent editors are professional business owners, and just like any other business owner they are responsible for tax, insurance, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity/paternity entitlements, training and continued professional development, equipment, accounting, promotion, travelling expenses, pension provision, and other business overheads.

Cost of editing: turnaround time
The table below gives you a rough idea of the speed at which an editor can work. Again, we’re dealing with ballpark ranges because the true speed will depend on the complexity of the project and how many hours a day the editor works.

Experienced editors have years’ worth of data that enables them to review a sample of a novel and estimate how long a project will take based on the level of editing requested.

The figures in the table above represent a working day of around 5 hours of actual editing. Additional time will be spent on business administration, marketing and training.
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Here’s how costs might begin to creep up. Imagine you ask your editor to copyedit your 80K-word novel. The editor estimates the job will take 50 hours, or two weeks. You need it in one. If you want to work with that editor, they’re going to have to work 10 hours a day, not 5. That means they have to pull 5 evenings on the trot in addition to their standard working day.
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That evening work is when they spend time with their families, recharge their batteries, catch up with friends, support their dependents, carry out the weekly food shop, help their kids with the homework ... normal stuff that lots of people do.

​If you want them to work during that time, it’s probably going to cost you more. For example, I charge triple my standard rate because my personal time is valuable to me – and to my daughter, who will need bribing!

Cost of editing: the complexity of the project
The more the editor has to do, the longer the job will take and the higher the cost.

Some authors might not be aware of the different levels of editing and what each comprises. And editors don’t help – we define our services variously too!

​For that reason, sometimes it makes sense to move away from the tangled terminology and focus on what each project needs to move it forward. An author might ask for a ‘proofread’ but the editor’s evaluation of the sample could indicate that a deeper level of intervention will be needed ... something more than a prepublication tidy-up.

​I’ve copyedited novels whose authors had nailed narrative point of view at developmental editing stage, so I didn’t have to fix the problem. I’ve also copyedited novels in which POV had become confused. The sample-chapter evaluation highlighted the problem, and I had to adjust my fee to account for the additional complexity.

How to reduce your editing costs
So, there we have it – 1,300 words that tell you not what editing and proofreading will cost, but what they might cost, depending on this, that, and everything else!

Here are some ideas for how to reduce your costs.

GENERAL MONEY-SAVING TIPS

• Do some pre-editing prep. Familiarize yourself with the different levels of editing so you do the right kind of editing at the right time. This booklet offers some guidance: Which Level of Editing Do You Need? 

• Call on friends, family and writer buddies. It goes without saying that you want people on board who have the appropriate language and story-craft skills.
• Plan ahead to avoid premium fees for rush work. Start sourcing your editor several months before you need them – that way you can find the right editor to fit your needs and your budget. Here’s some guidance on how to find editorial professionals: How do I find a proofreader, copyeditor or developmental editor?
• Get quotes along with sample edits. These will enable you to compare how the work of several different editors, and what they're charging, makes you feel. Some editors charge a small fee for samples to cover the couple of hours they devote to the project.

SAVING MONEY ON DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING
Hone your story craft by reading books, taking writing courses, and joining writing groups through which you’ll be able to access fellow scribes! You can critique each other’s work and help each other with self-editing. I recommend these books:

• How Not to Write a Novel (Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman)
• The Magic of Fiction (Beth Hill)
• Write to be Published (Nicola Morgan)

Rather than commissioning a full developmental edit, you could pay for a critique or manuscript evaluation, or a mini edit. Those will help you to identify what works and what doesn’t so that you can make the adjustments yourself.

SAVING MONEY ON LINE EDITING
Hone your sentence-level mastery, again through books, courses and groups.
Some editors offer mini line edits for this stage of editing too.

​Here, the editor offers a line-by-line edit on several chapters and creates a report on the sentence-level problems with the text with recommendations for fixing them. The author can then refer to the mini line edit and mimic the sentence smoothing and tightening.

This kind of service is particularly useful for beginner authors who already know they’re prone to overwriting.

SAVING MONEY ON COPYEDITING
Learn how to use Word’s amazing onboard functionality, and macros and add-ins that flag up potential errors and inconsistencies. Here are some tools you can use:

• Watch this video. Use Word’s styles to format the various elements of your book consistently: Visit my Writing resources page and scroll down to this video: Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles
• Download this booklet and use find/replace to locate and remove a whole bunch of nasties: The Author's Proofreading Companion
• Create a style sheet, so your editor doesn’t have to. This article includes a free style-sheet template: What's a style sheet and how do I create one? Help for indie authors
• Run a spell check
• Hunt out words you often confuse using this macro: Using proofreading macros: Highlighting confusables with CompareWordList
• Check the consistency of your proper nouns with this macro: A nifty little proofreading and editing macro: ProperNounAlyse
• Create a word list and check your spelling consistency using TextSTAT: How do I find spelling inconsistencies when proofreading and editing?

SAVING MONEY ON PROOFREADING
​If you’re working on designed page proofs, there are a series of checks you can take your novel through.
​

• Download this checklist: How to check page proofs like a professional
• Proofreading is the final prepublication tidy-up, but if you’re working in Word you can also use the tools I listed in the copyediting section above.

That’s it! I hope this article has given you a sense of what you might have to spend, and how you might be able to save during the editing process.
​

If you're suffering from yet another dry spell, this free webinar will help you get editing and proofreading work in the next few days and weeks.

I'll show you 10 steps you can take to move out of famine mode quickly.

​Forget theory. This is all about doing ... step-by-step guidance on short-term fixes that will give you peace of mind in the now, and head space to dig deeper in the future.
​

• AUDIENCE: Editors and proofreaders whose cupboards are bare
• ​PRICE: Free
• RUNNING TIME: 46 mins
• ACCESS: Available instantly – no login or sign-up required
• WHAT YOU GET: Webinar and PDF resource sheet
• CAPTIONS: Subtitles/closed captions are included

​
Click on the button below to access the video and the PDF.

PerfectIt is the premier consistency-checking software for many professional editors and proofreaders around the world. Developer Daniel Heuman and I sat down for a chat about what's new!

So Daniel was in New York, and I was in a tiny hamlet in Norfolk called Panxworth. Despite the 6,000 miles between us, the construction works going on outside his apartment, and the internet-connection problems in my somewhat rural neck of the woods, we managed to produce a video of our chinwag!

​For those of you who want to jump to specific parts of the conversation, here are the key themes and associated time stamps:

​▶️ Louise introduces Daniel Heuman, developer of PerfectIt: 00:00:00
▶️ What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful: 00:00:24
▶️ PerfectIt Cloud – the new solution for Mac users: 00:04:08
▶️ Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?: 00:06:12
▶️ The subscription model and a new lower price: 00:09:27
▶️ The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support: 00:12:27
▶️ PerfectIt and Office 2016: 00:14:54
▶️ PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both? 00:18:35
▶️ Features of PerfectIt 4: 00:20:24
▶️ Sign-off: 00:25:44

​And below is the conversation in full. Click on the Play button to begin listening. I've included subtitles in case you need to turn the sound off or can't understand our British accents!

There's a full transcript below. I've edited this for readability but essentially it's the words as they were spoken on the day.

THE VIDEO

​THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Louise introduces Daniel Heuman
LH: My name is Louise Harnby and I’m a fiction editor, and today I’m going to be talking to the founder of Intelligent Editing and the developer of a piece of software beloved by many editors all over the world. And that’s PerfectIt.
 
Before Daniel and I start chatting about all the PerfectIt news, Daniel’s going to tell us a little bit about what PerfectIt does, because some of you might not know. So over to you Daniel!

What PerfectIt does and why it’s useful
DH: Thank you! It’s lovely to speak to you! This is very exciting. I don’t know that they’ve ever done a video interview like this before so thank you! OK. PerfectIt – for the people who have not come across it before (which is probably exactly who won’t be watching this, but hopefully they are!)
 
LH: You never know!
 
DH: You never know! Exactly! So PerfectIt is mostly consistency-checking software, and the key place where it comes in is that when you’re editing work it’s almost always under, you know, time pressure, and with a pressure to produce perfect work.
 
It’s ultimately dealing with the fact that everything is going to be on a budget. So given a limited time, what is the best document you can produce? And PerfectIt really fits in there. It saves time; it helps you edit faster.
 
And the way I was trying to explain it the other day was at the ACES conference. I have new way of explaining it ... I thought a little bit about what gets people into editing. And I think that without delving into the deep psychology of what makes anyone an editor, I think one of the things that does not drive people is the difference between tiny consistency mistakes.
 
So, yes, it’s fun sometimes when you spot ‘e-mail’ with a hyphen in one place and not in another but mostly that’s not what’s driving people. People get into editing because you care about words, you like reading, you care about communication, you want to explain stories, you want to help people connect better with readers.
 
And these little tiny mistakes that take so much time to spot are not the reason. They are a distraction. They’re significant because they jump out at readers but they’re not the reason why we get into this. And they’re certainly not the reason why one should be spending a lot of time on a document.
 
LH: And you’re so right because they take so long to deal with. I’ve had manuscripts before where, actually, particularly if an author’s got a budget, people like me are spending perhaps hours and hours and hours when we’re using just our eyes, dealing with these tiny inconsistencies, which as you say are red flags.
 
And, yet, actually what we want to do is immerse ourselves in the narrative in front of us and to make it better. And the more time we can spend focusing on the flow of the words ... because every time you come across a hyphen that’s inconsistent, or inconsistent capitalization, as an editor, you’re dragged out of the flow of the work as well.
 
And so being able to do that, to save time by having a piece of software like PerfectIt to do that for you is just wonderful. And you still get the pleasure of knowing that you’re bringing this consistency to the work. But it is back-breaking doing that manually. I think that’s the thing that a lot of editors feel. It’s just back-breaking work.
 
And I would rather an author paid me to do other things with my time. I want them to feel that I’m going to do those things but I don’t want to have to spend more time than necessary doing it, and that’s where your software comes in.
 
DH: Absolutely, and we put on the homepage something like: you spend the time on what matters most, which is your words and their meaning.
 
LH: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it.

PerfectIt Cloud – the solution for Mac user
LH: So, Daniel, in the past, PerfectIt’s only been available to Windows users.
 
Well, that’s not quite true. I do have Mac-using friends who have been able to use PerfectIt but they have to be running something like Parallels, or I think it’s called VM Fusion Ware or something. Or they’ve had to go buy a cheap Windows laptop.
 
So I suppose that’s the thing that everybody’s talking about. Like, what’s new for Mac users?
 
DH: That is the news! So first off, it’s been touching and amazing, the extent to which people have been going to use PerfectIt.
 
Like you say, they’ve been installing Parallels. People have been buying computers to run this program, which is touching. I know that buying another computer doesn’t cost as much as it used to but, still. But for Mac users who hate Windows and just run it for one program has been phenomenal to see. But yes, no longer!
 
So we are producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is ... you’re going to have to forgive ... in the background you can probably hear the construction noise! I’ll do my best to speak over it. So we’re producing PerfectIt Cloud, which is an Office Store add-in.
 
And the great thing about Office Store add-ins is that they are compatible in any version of Office 2016. So if you are on a Mac, if you’re on a PC, if you’re on an iPad, even in Word Online (which I don’t know that anyone actually uses), no matter which version you’re on, you see the same add-in. So the functionality is exactly the same across.
 
And we’ve been developing this for ... I mean, you know, the amount of times people have heard me saying, ‘A Mac version is coming soon. It’s just a few months. It’s just a few months.’
 
But, no, as of 26 June we will have PerfectIt Cloud, which brings compatibility to Mac and to iPad for the very first time. So it’s really exciting!

Windows users: Should we buy PerfectIt Cloud?
LH: So what about Windows users? I have PerfectIt 3. I’ve had all the versions since it first launched. I work on a PC. Should I rush out and get PerfectIt Cloud?
 
DH: In a word, no. So the introduction of PerfectIt Cloud is primarily for Mac and iPad users at this stage. So if you’re using PerfectIt 3, if you’ve got a Windows PC, that’s still going to be the best version that we offer.
 
And it’s going to be strange because PerfectIt Cloud looks so much better! The interface is even easier than it was before. It’s a beautiful product, but underneath there are a few things that PerfectIt 3 can do that we haven’t been able to do for Cloud yet.
 
So the most important one of those is customization of styles. That’s still going to take some time to bring into PerfectIt Cloud. The ability to check footnotes – we’re going to be dependent on Microsoft for them to make some changes before we can bring that in.
 
So if you have PerfectIt 3, if you have a PC, in most cases the thing to do is not to rush out, and not to buy this at least until we produce a new version for the PC, which will be PerfectIt 4.
 
There’s one exception, which is, you know, all those people who ... the ones, the amazing wonderful users that you’ve described who have gone and bought VMware, and Parallels, and even separate computers.
 
A bunch of those users are really frustrated with having to turn them on every time, and going through Windows updates, which take forever. And just to get PerfectIt up and running takes two hours. And it’s saving them a lot of time so they do it, but if you’re one of those people who has both a PC and a Mac, in those cases, yes, you would.
 
Not all the options are included but it’s close enough that you may not want to be uploading and updating your Windows computer each time just to run PerfectIt.
 
LH: Yeah, and I suppose also for people perhaps who are, I don’t know ... I was thinking about the increasing number of editors who are location-independent. And, actually, maybe they don’t always have the latest ... you know, they’re don't want to be worried if their computers break ... and the idea perhaps of just knowing that it doesn’t matter which PC you’re on, or which Mac you’re on, that if you’ve got something, a machine in front of you, you can do your work and you can access the core functionality of PerfectIt wherever you are.
 
And that’s an important thing, I guess. I mean, I’m not location- independent. I am very much dependent! I’m in Norfolk with a rubbish broadband speed and so I’m kind of quite keen to keep things offline and local when I can. But knowing that I’ve got the choice – that will be a big issue for me.

The subscription model and a new lower price
LH: Can we talk about price now? Because in the past, once every two or three years, you bring out a new version, and I’ve paid you, I don’t know, $90? I can’t remember the price off the top of my head. So that’s the way it’s worked. But you’re doing things slightly differently now, aren’t you?
 
DH: Yes. So we are switching to a subscription ... sort of a subscription.
 
And I know the minute I use that word people are turning off this video, don’t want to know anything more. because everyone is sick to death of subscriptions with, you know, Netflix and Amazon, and, oh my God, you can get a subscription for your vegetable delivery now, which is bonkers!
 
But I think what we’re doing is really different to that. We switched to a once-a-year payment. At this point at least, there’s no handover-your-credit- card or anything like that. You pay each year if you want to continue using it.
 
And switching to that kind of model means we can drop the price by a lot. So instead of being a $99 one-off purchase, we’ve made it $70 per year.
 
And on top of that, we’ve really dropped the price for, you know, independent editors. So we’ve worked with as many of the editing societies around the world as we can – certainly all the big ones – to have a kind of a discount.
 
And that’s going to be an additional 30%, so the price is going to be just $49 per year for independent editors who are, you know, a member of any of the big editing societies anywhere in the world.
 
So subscriptions mean we can get down the price down a lot, and they mean we can create a really compelling, simple offer, which is that you will buy PerfectIt and then you will get any version you want on any number of devices you want, and not pay a separate charge, which I think is really what bothers a lot of people.
 
So you buy PerfectIt and you can install the PC version on your PC, you can install the Cloud version on your iPad. You only pay once for that and you don’t get stuck with that additional charge you described, which was the upgrade charge.
 
So, yes, we used to have a one-off price but people liked this product and much more than 60% of people paid the upgrade price anyway. So, really, there was a hidden recurring element.
 
And by switching to ... we can call it a subscription, we’ve made everything included in that price very transparent. And you get all the upgrades, you get all the updates, you get support. So I think the way we’ve switched the pricing is really gonna be attractive, and especially attractive for independent editors.
 
The benefits of up-to-date editing kit: Stability and support
LH: I think it’s wonderful because, I mean, I’m a big fan of the subscription model, even with things like Microsoft Office, because I’m a professional, I want the latest software, and I want it to work in an environment that’s stable as well. And so I like having the most up-to-date version of Word.
 
I had a situation a few years back when I first plonked a download of Windows 10 on my Windows 8, or Windows 7 computer or something, and I was trying to get PerfectIt to operate in an environment basically with two operating systems, and guess what? It wasn’t happy.
 
And so at that point ... because PerfectIt was key to my editorial day-to-day working, it was one of the things that triggered me to actually think, ‘You know what? You need to get yourself an up-to-date computer with the latest operating system already installed, so it's not fighting with anything else.’
 
And to know now that I’m always going to be running the latest edition of Word on the latest operating system and that the plugins that fit into that software, like PerfectIt, are going to be the latest editions too ... for me, that’s just one less worry.
 
It means that I can get on doing the business of editing rather than thinking, ‘I want to be able to do X, Y or Z but I can’t because it’s broken.’
 
And so I’m really excited about this because, as you say, it’s upfront, it’s clear, everybody knows what they’re gonna pay and what they’re getting.
 
And you mentioned something there as well, and that was the issue of support. Because in days past, it was the case that if you decided to stick with an older version of PerfectIt you wouldn’t have access to you.
 
And sometimes, you know when you get stuck on things, you just want to be able to ask the person who actually really knows the answer. It’s not guesswork. And knowing that that’s always going to be ... you get the full package. So I’m really excited about it. I think it’s a really good deal.
 
I think the price is a steal as well. And for those of us who are members of professional societies, what a perk of membership to know that you can get one of your core pieces of editing software at such a huge discount! Thank you!
 
DH: Yeah, those societies and the editors within them are absolutely the reason why we are where we are today. That’s been the core of this business so now I absolutely think that it’s important to support them.
 
PerfectIt and Office 2016
DH: And I agree with you completely about thinking about Office and updates that way.
 
I know that a lot of editors have been disappointed when we’ve said that PerfectIt Cloud is only gonna work in Office 2016. And they said, ‘Well, I’m never moving to Office 2016 because I’ve heard all these terrible things about it.’
 
And I just wonder every time I hear that ... I think, I know those stories are true – when you have a piece of software like Microsoft that is installed everywhere then you always are going to have some things that don’t work and that are gonna get on Facebook. And they’re gonna look to seek help. And they’re always going to be the ones who have some kind of problem.
 
You never get someone who installs the latest version of Microsoft and says, ‘Yep, that worked’ and tells all their friends.
 
So our perception of these versions has been really sort of distorted by, I think, the relatively lower number of people who have had problems in perspective to the total, in relation to total.
 
And as you say, when you actually look at the package and what Microsoft are offering, I think it’s really good. And I’m fortunate that I’ve never had any sort of problems with it. I’ve used Word on the iPad, I use Word on the PC. I think they’ve done a really good job of making those two similar and in line. In the past, there’s been big differences between those things.
 
You know, I was able to switch as a long-time PC-user to the iPad version. I had no trouble doing that. And they do it at a low monthly price. And what I’ve sort of been saying to anyone who’s asked about it is something like, yes, there are some users who’ve had problems, and there have doubtless been lots of glitches, and there always are with endless Microsoft updates, but what about trying it for one month? They offer a monthly price. And see if it works for you.
 
And you’ve got your old version and you can always go back, but those old versions, they’re at this point ... you know, Microsoft has stopped supporting Office 2011 anyway, so we’re out of that period really.
 
Yeah, I think I think as you say, the package they’re offering is very good, and especially the kind of value in the monthly offer. It makes a lot of sense.
 
LH: Yeah, and I think the other thing to mention is that, you know, I think sometimes there are people in, well, not just the editing community but all sorts of communities who are trying to run say 2016, or with all the updates, 2018 software but on decade-old computers.
 
And that’s a bit like taking your mobile phone to medieval times and complaining you haven’t got signal!
 
You know, we need as editors to be, I think, working with the latest equipment. Within a budget, of course. Most of us aren’t rich. But I always think, get the best RAM you can ... get the best processor you can for your money.
 
And then things like PerfectIt, within Word, within Microsoft Office, will work the best for you.
 
DH: Absolutely! And we all make these mistakes! I’ve been screaming at my printer all morning and pressing over and over again, and wasting so much time trying to get this printer to work.
 
And I know the reason why it doesn’t work – it’s because it’s really old, and would cost next to nothing to replace.
 
But, you know, we’re old enough to remember that these things used to be very expensive, and it’s so difficult to get rid of them. But, actually, you know, when running a business, to spend my morning yelling at a printer is probably not the best use of my time!
 
PerfectIt 4: Online, in the cloud, or both?
LH: So can I just check something with you? Can we talk then about the next version of PerfectIt that will be also usable locally?
 
So we’ve got PerfectIt Cloud but there’ll come a point I’m assuming when there’ll be the next version, like PerfectIt 4 that will be in the cloud. Will that also be something that someone like me who’s got a little bit of an iffy broadband connection can, if they want to, download to their computer?
 
DH: Oh, so we are NOT moving to the cloud in any way, shape or form. We’re doing very much that kind of approach that Microsoft has gone for where you pay once and you have different parallel versions for different devices.
 
We are not switching to the cloud. There will always be a local version. As I said earlier, it’s still kind of the best version for a number of reasons.
 
And so at the moment, if you get a subscription, you will get PerfectIt 3 and PerfectIt Cloud, and as of the end of this year you’ll get PerfectIt 4 and PerfectIt Cloud.
 
And we’ll keep the two in parallel so that they’re running off ultimately the same code, so that you’ll get the update for PerfectIt 4 locally, and at the same time, almost at the same time, we will update PerfectIt Cloud automatically, and they’ll offer the same checking.
 
LH: OK, great, that’s good. I just wanted to be sure of that because ... just because my broadband is a bit of a nightmare here!
 
DH: No, no, I don’t think we communicated that properly in our in our literature so it’s a really good question to ask. I’m sure a lot of people will be concerned about that.
 
Features of PerfectIt 4
LH: So can we talk about ... do you have any specific plans for what will be new with PerfectIt 4 yet, or can we suggest things?
 
DH: Well, obviously, I’m going to dodge that question because the trouble with that question is that if I start saying we’ve got plans for PerfectIt 4, that we’re working on ... I suspect if I start saying the things that I’m working on, the disappointment that will follow when we say we’ve failed ... [laughing].
 
But I like the idea of suggestions. As I said, this business has very much been built by support from editors, and feedback from editors.
 
So if we wind the clock like all the way back to the first time that I was at SfEP conference, I remember someone mentioning en dashes and and why they could be in the hyphenation-consistency check.
 
And let’s let’s be honest, at that point, which was been ten years ago or so, I didn’t understand the significance of that. Why would we need to be looking for en dashes and hyphenation? What’s the point?
 
And actually it was that feedback which we then took on. And it got quite a few people explaining and saying, well, actually, this is the error that we’re looking for. This is what comes up. It’s really difficult to spot because of this. Is there anything you can do?
 
And I think it was in PerfectIt 2 but certainly in PerfectIt 3. And we’ve built in an en dash versus spaced-hyphen consistency check.
 
LH: And em dashes too.
 
DH: Yes, the way we do the checking for those is a little different but, yeah, it ultimately came down to the same reason, which is editors suggesting that these were the things that they wanted to see.
 
And I’d love to get those suggestions for PerfectIt 4. So, particularly ...
 
LH: I’m thinking legal and medical might be obvious.
 
DH: Yes, legal. I’ve got a long, long list of changes that we want to make for legal, but medical, pharmaceutical scientific ... I know we have a lot of editors working in those kinds of fields and I feel like we haven’t done as much for them as we should and could.
 
So I’d love to get suggestions from every kind of editor, but especially those ones would be really good, because we need to do more in that area.
 
LH: And speaking as a fiction editor as well, I think there are certain functions I’m using ... the possibilities are there but there are certainly things I could think of in terms of the similar-word-find function that maybe even we could put forward some suggestions that might help you to push that stuff further forward, and help us to adapt the style sheets more so that we could get more benefits in that field too.
 
And I’ll certainly be thinking if there’s anything else from a fiction point of view that I can push your way.
 
DH: Definitely. You know, we always get a nonfiction writer saying, ‘Can this be used for nonfiction too?’ We get fiction writers saying, ‘Can it be used for fiction?’ And we hadn’t been quite communicated clear enough that, yes, it’s for all of those things.
 
And, yeah, the similar-words function. Lots of people are using that for character names. Can we improve that? Can we make it clearer that that’s a possibility for character names? Can we look and see if there are ways of improving that?
 
And already you have got me talking about features that I swore just two seconds ago I wouldn’t get into! Some of those things people are really gonna be telling me, ‘But you promised, but you promised!’
 
I will avoid saying more about that but I am excited by that kind of change and by doing things that are specific to different kinds of editing, for sure.
 
LH: I think from my point of view as an editor, and for people who are watching this who haven’t tried PerfectIt yet, knowing that you’re responsive to ways in which you can develop the software is a really important thing to emphasize, because the various iterations that I’ve used over the years have just got better and better. And that means I’ve saved more and more time.

And so I want to say to people that when you invest in this software you are working with a company and a business owner who will listen to you, and that's a good thing.
 
DH: Thank you! And my guess is that at this point in the video, between the dogs barking outside and the helicopter going overhead, anyone who is completely new to this software will probably have stopped watching 20 minutes ago!
 
But, yes, anyone with us longer hopefully has experienced that we are ... it’s actually the other way around. It’s editors who’ve helped build this and made all this stuff possible, so we are absolutely listening, and will continue to iterate and improve.
 
If we improve the product for actual editors, everyone else who uses the software benefits. And, you know, we really have the best people in the world advising us, so I think it’s fantastic.

Sign-off
LH: Daniel, thanks very much! That’s been really, really useful. So I’m excited about ... not just the cloud but also PerfectIt 4 coming out. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to use it on multiple platforms, in different spaces. I’m excited that I’m going to be able to get it cheaper than I did last year!
 
So thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It’s been brilliant.
 
DH: Thank you! And thank you for all the support through all the years.
 
The excitement and enthusiasm is so encouraging after we’ve been telling people, you know, soon, soon just another month, just another couple of months. Now that it’s done, now this here, it’s fantastic! Thank you.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the best posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

My thanks to this month's contributors!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• 2018 goals: Midyear update by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘At the end of 2017, I published my Year in Review and Goals for 2018. I promised I’d post a midyear update to take stock of where I’m at now with my business, so enjoy!’
• 5-minute branding by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘This quick exercise will help you sharpen your written voice and add consistency to all your communications.’
• Compromise or opportunity? How does your editing garden grow? by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Running an editing or proofreading business is a journey, not a moment in time. Some of us will be offered work that’s not ideal. Is accepting this work a compromise or an opportunity?'​
• How to use bubble charts to get a snapshot of your clients' value to your business by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘A bubble chart is a great way to get a snapshot of your clients’ value to your business, both monetarily and in terms of how much you like working with them. It can provide helpful clarity about how you conceptualise your clients’ value to your business, enabling you to set smarter goals for the future.’
• Pricing models II; or why a per-word rate benefits freelance copyeditors by Jeanette Fast Redmond, published on the FastEditing Eye. Jeanette writes: 'I review a common pricing model for copyediting – namely, the per-word rate – and examine how a per-word rate lets freelancers separate money from time in our pricing models.'
• Pricing models IV; or why copyeditors should pitch a flat fee (and why clients should accept) by Jeanette Fast Redmond, published on the FastEditing Eye. Jeanette writes: 'These days I often convert my word rate to a project rate so I can pitch a flat fee to my copyediting clients. In this post I look at project rates, or flat fees: what they are, why to pitch them, when to pitch them, and how to calculate them.'

​CLIENT FOCUS​

• A beginner's guide to narrative point of view in crime writing by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Beginner authors sometimes get in a tangle with narrative POV. This post offers an overview, and features examples from published crime fiction.'
• Author revision time: what should you do after you’ve received your sample edit? by Lesley Jones, published on Perfect the Word. Lesley writes: ‘Authors sometimes have between a few weeks and several months to wait from receiving their sample edit and the substantive work commencing. Should they be thinking of tweaking their manuscript during that time in the light of their editor’s comments?’
• Be irresistible: The secret of good scientific writing by Claire Bacon, published on Bacon Editing blog. Claire writes: ‘Many scientists think that their writing should be dull and complicated. I challenge this view and explain how to liven it up.’
• How to get an agent by Rachel Rowlands, published on The Parlour. Rachel writes: 'If you want to get published traditionally, agent are key. Getting an agent is competitive, and it isn’t easy. I hope my journey and what I’ve learned along the way will inspire you and help you.'
• Theses and dissertations (part 1): An easy way to make sure tense is consistent by Beverley Sykes, published on Superscript Proofreading. Bev writes: ‘Tense is almost always inconsistent in the theses and dissertations I work on, but you can easily avoid this by following the simple guidance I suggest in this blog post.’
• Theses and dissertations (part 2): How to avoid inconsistency of style by Beverley Sykes, published on Superscript Proofreading. Bev writes: ‘Inconsistency of style might seem like a difficult problem to sort out, but there is a really simple way of tackling this early on to save yourself time.’

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• When editorial project managers expect too much by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘When a project manager expects too much of a freelancer – or of themselves – it can introduce the risk of things going awry. This post considers three key ways to mitigate the risks that will inevitably arise in text-based projects of all sizes.’

LANGUAGE MATTERS

• A very sweary dictionary by Kia Thomas, published on Kia Thomas Editing. Kia writes: 'I like to swear, so much so that last year I decided to do daily tweets of my sweary style choices, under the hashtag #TheDailySwear. This post is a compilation of those tweets, resulting in a resource you never knew you needed – a dictionary of compound swearwords.'

• How Star Trek: The Next Generation predicted meme culture by Madeleine Vasaly, published on Twin Cities Geek. Madeleine writes: ‘A comment that editor and linguist James Harbeck made at the ACES conference in April comparing the classic Star Trek episode "Darmok" and how we use memes online inspired me to write a whole article about the subject. I reached out to James and to “Internet linguist” Gretchen McCulloch for insight.’

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

​Are you looking for literary representation? My guest Rachel Rowlands has some helpful advice on how to find an agent, what to submit and to whom, and dealing with rejection professionally.

Literary agents hold the golden ticket that will get you into the chocolate factory. If you want to get published traditionally, they’re essential.
 
Getting an agent is competitive, and it isn’t easy, but if you’re stubbornly passionate about your work and don’t give up, it can be done.
 
I hope my journey and what I’ve learned along the way will inspire you and help you. Buckle up, because it’s a bumpy ride. 

Before submitting
The process starts long before you even think about submitting to agents. Write. Abandon projects. Start new projects. Finish projects. Learn about the craft. This can take years. You may even develop a few grey hairs along the way.
 
I’ll rewind a bit and give you an example: I’ve always written stories. I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was 16. It was about angels of light and darkness and doors to other planets, and it was heavily inspired by Kingdom Hearts, a game I was obsessed with.

​But I had fun, I loved writing it, and it taught me how to plan and finish something. I wrote three other books before writing the one that led to me signing with an agent – at 27. 
 
You need time to develop as a writer, to hone your craft. Your first book most likely won’t be the one that gets you where you need to be. Your second might not either, and that’s okay. No one becomes an expert overnight.
 
Here are some other things that you might want to do before you start hunting for that elusive agent, aside from writing books until your fingers nearly fall off:

• Take creative writing courses. Many have workshop elements, which are super valuable for developing your craft.
• Find beta readers/critique partners. Twitter is great for this – there’s a big community of writers hanging out there (try the #amwriting hashtag). You could also join a local writing group.
• Get involved with the community. Befriending other writers will give you a support network. You’ll need people to share your struggles and successes with!
• Read widely. It goes without saying that reading is essential for a writer. You’ll learn about what’s marketable and what makes a good story … and you’ll be inspired, too.
• Work with an editor. You don’t have to do this but working with an editor can be a great way to learn about storytelling, particularly if you commission a professional critique or developmental edit. 

Finding and submitting to an agent
Do your research
No agent should charge you money – they work on commission. Any agent who wants you to pay upfront is a scammer and you should run far, far away.
 
A great place to hunt for agent details if you’re in the UK is the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook.

QueryTracker is great, too; it lists agents from all over the world (although some UK-based agents are missing from the database). You can even use it to track your submissions and the replies you receive. Otherwise, I recommend doing your own tracking via, say, a spreadsheet.
 
It doesn’t matter where in the world you’re based in terms of who you submit to – many agents work with foreign co-agents. So, for example, if you’re based in the UK it’s perfectly fine to query both UK and US agents.
 
Follow submission guidelines
Every agency has different guidelines ­– some want you to send a cover/query letter and three chapters. Others might just want an initial query letter. Treat these guidelines as law.
 
Also, be professional in your letter (read Query Shark, a blog on writing query letters, like your life depends on it). Get someone to critique your query letter before it goes out. Don’t make it easy for someone to say no!
 
Don’t send your book to everyone at once
Submit to a small batch of agents first, somewhere between 5 and 10.
 
If you get any feedback, rework your manuscript and then send out a new batch. Note, however, that this strategy can be problematic because you won’t always know why an agent rejects a book; it might be purely subjective.
 
Still, you don’t want to exhaust all your options in one go! Try to keep it balanced. Don’t get keyboard-happy and send your book to 200 agents.

After submission 
Be in it for the long haul and be prepared for rejection
I submitted two manuscripts over the course of two years, racking up a couple of hundred rejections. It wasn’t easy.
 
The first book I queried got standard, copy-and-paste rejections almost across the board (also known as ‘form rejections’), although two agents did ask to read it.
 
One asked me to send it back after doing some revisions, sometimes called an R&R or a revise and resubmit (sadly it doesn’t mean rest and relaxation). I never heard from that agent again, even after several polite nudges.
 
As for the second book I sent out, there was a flurry of interest. Suddenly, lots of people wanted to read my book. But then … the standard rejections started rolling in.
 
I even had an agent ask to meet me when she was halfway through my book. Then she called and rejected me after she’d finished reading. A phone call from an agent is generally a sign that they want to work with you, so that was pretty crushing.
 
Some days, I wanted to quit because it felt easier than carrying on. But in the wise words of J.K. Rowling, ‘It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously you might as well not have lived at all.’
 
I kept going. Another agent called me up. We talked revisions. I worked on them for six weeks and we bounced ideas back and forth. She really got my book and what I was trying to do, and she loved my edits.
 
After two and a half years of submitting, five manuscripts, and many I’m-going-to-quit-writing-forever threats, I signed the contract.
 
Don’t reply to rejections
Really, don't, unless the agent personalized your rejection and mentioned your book/characters specifically. In that case, feel free to send them a quick thank-you note.
 
Never send sassy or scathing replies like, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on’ or ‘Your loss, sucker’, even if that’s what you’re thinking. Vent in private. That’s what writer friends/cats/brick walls are for.
 
If an agent sends you a rejection, but invites you to submit future work, do it!
They haven’t slammed the door shut, they’ve left a gap for you – and it means they see potential. Keep their name and email address, and when you have a new project ready, send it to them and remind them who you are.
 
All in all, remember that no project is ever wasted. You’ll learn something from every manuscript, and even if you don’t land an agent straight away, you’ll be making connections and putting your name out there.
 
Treat your rejections as badges of honour because they mean that you’re still in the game, and one day you’ll get to the next level.
 
Good luck!

More resources​

• Online writing courses for self-publishers and independent authors
• Query Shark
• QueryTracker
• Self-publishing resources
• Should a writer hire a freelance editor before submitting to an agent? And should editors accept the work? (Blog post and ebooklet)
• The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)
• Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook

Rachel Rowlands is an independent editor and an author of young adult books. With her editor hat on, she works for a growing list of publisher and author clients on both fiction and trade non-fiction. She has a degree in English and Creative Writing and is represented by Thérèse Coen at Hardman & Swainson. She can be found at www.racheljrowlands.com and on Twitter: @racheljrowlands.

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

If you’re not sure what a narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your crime writing, this post is for you.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #93

This is rather a lengthy article so I've created a free PDF ebook that you can download to your preferred device and read at your leisure. Scroll to the bottom of the post and click on the image to access your copy.
​
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.

There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a character. And to complicate things, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why.

In this article, I’ll review the most-oft-used POVs and show you examples from published crime fiction. I’ll also explain why I think they’re effective.

POV can be tricky – it’s probably the one thing I see beginner authors stumbling over the most. My aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations and build up and out.

Why should you bother nailing POV?
Pro editors and experienced writers agree on one thing: it’s worth the beginner author’s time to understand POV so that they can make decisions about which to use, where, and why. Consider the following:
​

• A better read: The right POV in the right place enriches the reader’s experience; the opposite will mean your book is not as immersive as it might have been. It might even confuse or frustrate your reader. I’m assuming you want your book to be the best it can be, so understanding how narrative POV works, and how to use viewpoint with intent, will help you in that endeavour.
• A better price: If you’re working with a professional editor, whether a story-level editor (developmental, structural editing) or a sentence-level editor (line editing, copyediting, proofreading), there’ll be less to fix if your POV doesn’t jar.
• A better fix: Some beginner authors, for reasons of budget, choose not to work with a developmental editor. This is the shaping stage in which decisions about how POV will be handled are made. If you go straight to working with a line editor or copyeditor, and they encounter major POV problems, it’s likely that their editing will have to be more invasive than either you or the editor would have liked. Plus, the fix might not be as elegant as it would have been if any problems had been attended to before the sentence-level work began.

Narrative point of view in action

I’ve used the following books to explore POV in crime writing:

• Dead Lions by Mick Herron: Herron offers a masterclass in omniscient POV early on.
• I See You by Clare Mackintosh: Interesting mystery-building through use of a first-person transgressor narrative.
• The Fix by David Baldacci: Nice examples of blending third-person limited and objective.
• The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz: First-person viewpoint throughout, made more interesting because the author is a character in his own book!
• Time to Win by Harry Brett: Great example of tight, third-person-limited POV, with several viewpoint characters controlled via chapters.

1. Third person
This viewpoint comes broadly in two forms – limited and objective. I’ve placed it first on the list because:
​

• It’s the one that most writers find easiest to master at the beginning of their journey.
• Readers are used to encountering it in contemporary fiction.
• The limited version provides intimacy – we get to explore a character’s emotions and hear their voice; the objective version offers a more neutral flexibility when we need some distance to look around and beyond.

​THIRD-PERSON LIMITED
This is a deeper POV. We get to sit in a character’s skin – experience what they see, hear, feel and think. That provides an immersive experience for readers. It’s as if we’re them.

The voice is distinctive. The narrative will convey the viewpoint character’s way of speaking and thinking. For example, if character X is sweary, that can be reflected in the narrative rather than just in their contribution to dialogue.

However, it’s called third-person limited for a reason. Strictly speaking, what that character can’t see or know shouldn’t be reported. In the above examples, we’re left with questions – of destination and the origin of a smell.

Third-person limited is effective in crime writing because the author doesn’t want to give everything away at once. The limitations over what can be known, and therefore divulged, allow the writer to control the unveiling of information via the viewpoint character.

Recommendation
I recommend you stick to a single character's POV per chapter or section to avoid confusion or interruption.

That’s worth heeding. It means the reader’s trust has been lost, that they’ve been pulled out of the story rather than drawn further into it.
​
Trickier still is narrative ping pong, where within one section we bounce back and forth between the POVs of Character X and Character Y.

Here’s a made-up example that demonstrates how things can go wrong.

The problem with this kind of setup is that it ‘alienates the reader from both perspectives. She is unable to identify with either because there’s no telling when it will be yanked away’ (Mittelmark and Newman, p. 161).

In other words, the reader has been prevented from immersing themselves in the character's version of the story. Stay in the head of one character per chapter or section and you’ll make your writing life easier.

THIRD-PERSON OBJECTIVE
This is a useful viewpoint for the author who wants to convey descriptive information – height, weight, facial expression, environment. Developmental editor Sophie Playle asks us to imagine ‘a floating camera following the characters around.’
​
Here’s an example from David Baldacci.

The objectivity allows the writer to explore detail what would be unnatural for a character to deliver in their own voice. The narrative voice is neutral.

We’re not accessing thoughts, opinions and emotions with an objective POV, just the stuff that any onlooker could see, hear or smell.

In crime fiction, that can be useful because the reader will be forced to reach their own conclusions as to the reasons for or motivations behind a particular event or behaviour. In other words, it’s mysterious.

However, it can be distancing if overused. We don’t get under a character’s skin. It’s harder to understand what motivates them unless they express it through dialogue.

Dialogue is great as long as it’s not dull. Real-life conversations are sometimes littered with mundanity but we don’t want that cluttering a novel. Furthermore, real conversations don’t usually express emotion in the way that prose does.

Recommendation
Use third-person objective POV to create suspense, to make your reader wonder, and ask their own questions, and to provide scene-setting information, but blend with a limited viewpoint for deeper emotional engagement.
​
In the first paragraph of the example below, Baldacci uses third-person objective to give us background facts. In the second, he switches to limited to explain the character’s feelings. It's a lovely fusion.

2. First person
First-person narrative POVs are the most intimate, the most immediate, and the least flexible. The reader is privy to an individual character’s thoughts, emotions and experiences, all told through a distinctive voice. We can only see, hear, smell and feel what the character sees, hears, smells and feels, and are compelled to move through the story knowing only what they know, and at their pace.

However, used throughout an entire novel, from on character only, it can be draining for the reader. There’s no way of taking a breather, particularly when only one POV is offered.

This POV is particularly effective in crime fiction when an author wants to offer a distinct transgressor narrative that explores the predator’s twisted psyche intimately, and in a way that enables the reader to understand their motivations – what’s making them think and behave so monstrously.
​
Here’s an example from I See You (p. 176).

Mackintosh punctuates her third-person narrative (a police officer’s) with this first-person viewpoint of an anonymous predator, though she keeps the narratives distinct by giving them their own chapters.
 
The chapters given over to the transgressor provide a rich sense of cat and mouse when juxtaposed with the more distanced police-procedural storyline. Note how the predator-narrator in the above example bends their perceptions into a warped reality – there are no maybes here; they’ve decided that this is the way things are and justify their actions accordingly.

And because Mackintosh is using the present tense for her first-person narrative, she’s able to retain tight control over the unveiling. We’re right in the now of the novel. It’s deeply suspenseful, but emotionally demanding to read. For that reason, these chapters are usually shorter.

In The Word is Murder, author Anthony Horowitz is one of the characters! The viewpoint is first person (his), but most of the novel is set in the following two tenses: the past (I did, I saw) and the past perfect (I had been approached, I had first read). We’re not confined to now. That’s important because it means the story doesn’t drag.

The author himself is almost like Playle’s floating camera. We see the protagonist – the detective (Hawthorne) who solves the crime – through Horowitz’s eyes as he accompanies him to interviews with suspects and on visits to crime scenes.

The author-character offers his own theories, even pursues his own lines of investigation, and interjects with stories about his life and career. This adds interest but, ultimately, it’s the detective who grounds the crime story; it’s through him that we access the procedural elements and the answer to whodunnit.

Recommendation
First-person narratives introduce depth and explain motivations, but they can be difficult to sustain when they’re emotionally challenging, as is the case with transgressor and victim viewpoints. Your reader might be given space to breathe if you introduce an alternative, perhaps a detective’s or journalist’s.

Playle points out that the opposite problem can occur when the character isn’t ‘interesting enough to maintain a continuous presence.’ Too much I can be restrictive if it doesn’t allow for the telling of other interpretations. That’s why Horowitz’s approach works so well, because he’s often narrating live from the scene with a detective.

One last thought: if you’re basing your whole novel in the first person, be cautious about using the present tense throughout. The past might give you more flexibility, particularly if you’re writing action-heavy scenes where, in reality, the character wouldn’t have time to give much thought to the consequences and motivations of their behaviour.

3. Omniscient
I’ve given the biggest page space to this because it’s probably the trickiest to master.

Omniscient means all-knowing. It’s the most flexible of narrative viewpoints because it gives the reader potential access to every character’s external and internal experiences. It’s also the least intimate.

Imagine a futuristic news helicopter. Inside, our roving reporter shifts her camera from one person to another, and one setting to another. She’s also got some serious kit, stuff that enables her to tap everyone’s phones, TVs and computers. But that’s not all; the characters’ brains are bugged too; our reporter knows what they’re thinking. She can see, hear and smell it all!

Mick Herron is the author of the Jackson Lamb thrillers, a series about MI5 officers who’ve screwed up and been sent to Slough House to shuffle paper.

Herron offers a masterclass in effective omniscient POV. He doesn’t use a helicopter or a god though; he uses a cat.

He imagines our feline friend sneaking ‘like a rumour’ (p. 9) into Slough House and checking out the various rooms’ occupants.

Of course, a cat doesn’t think or behave with intention like a human. The cat can’t possibly know any of the things that we’re told during its wanderings. Instead, Herron uses it as a cheeky tool to introduce the cast, the environs, and the atmosphere of Slough House ...

INTRODUCTIONS
Dead Lions is book 2 of the series. Herron wants to introduce us to a cast of characters, most of whom appeared in book 1. However, he respects the fact that not all his readers will have read the first book, and that those who have might have forgotten who these people are and why they’re important.
​
The omniscient POV allows him to do the introductions quickly and cleanly, and democratically. None of the characters are explored in depth. Rather, Herron gives us a snapshot of what he wants us to know about them, what makes them tick.

FREEDOM TO ROAM QUICKLY
Through the imaginary cat, we’re given the freedom to roam without intrusion. No single character’s feelings or experiences dominate over the others. It’s a form of speedy literary democracy.
​
That roving feline shows us not only key details about each character, but also how they perceive each other. That’s difficult to do with first-person and third-person narration without offering lengthy and interruptive explanations of how the information was acquired.

TENSION
Finally, take a look at how Herron uses the omniscient to convey a sense of tension that sets up the next scene.
​
The main man, Jackson Lamb, head of ops, is not in residence. And that’s unusual.
Rather than hopping from one internal monologue to another, or cluttering the text with dull dialogue in which the various characters express their confusion about their boss’s absence, the omniscient narrator tells us in only 18 words (‘Simply put ...’) that everyone knows he’s absent, and no one knows why.

The narration throughout this section is distant, devoid of emotion. It’s literally a cat’s-eye view.

WHAT OMNISCIENT IS NOT
So an omniscient viewpoint can be powerful. However, it needs to be controlled and used with purpose.

If we’re accessing one character’s thoughts and experiences, and suddenly we jump to another character’s viewpoint, it can jar the reader.

Imagine you’re listening to your best friend tell you about a difficult experience. Even though it didn’t happen to you, her description of the event helps you to imagine the challenges she faced, the emotions she grappled with. You’re thoroughly immersed and emotionally connected.

Then someone else barges up to you both and tells you what it was like for them. Your friend butts back in to wrestle the telling back to her.

Would the interruption annoy and frustrate you? Would you feel like your efforts to invest in your friend’s story were being thwarted?

The impact is the same when it occurs in a book (unless you're using dialogue). That viewpoint ping pong is not omniscient POV. It’s third-person limited gone awry.

Recommendation
I’d recommend caution. The beauty of crime writing lies in the unveiling, in the immersion, and overuse of an omniscient narrator blocks this.

The all-seeing eye can be an effective tool in the purposeful way Herron’s used it at the start of Dead Lions, but used throughout an entire novel it would destroy the tension, and distance the reader from the characters.

Summary
There’s nothing wrong with experimenting with different narrative viewpoints in crime fiction. Switching can add interest and tension, heighten conflict, and help readers build varying levels of intimacy with different characters.

What is important is that authors choose a POV with intention, and recognize the benefits and limitations of their choices.

Let's finish with the wise words of domestic noir novelist, Julia Crouch:

​Further reading

• For an excellent overview of narrative point of view – including the difference between the author, narrator and viewpoint character, and the pros and cons of each approach – read ‘Slipping into character – understanding the impact of narrative point of view’. Sophie Playle. The Parlour, 2017.
• Dead Lions. Mick Herron. First published by Soho Press in 2013. The edition I used was published by John Murray in 2017.
• 'Five tips for keeping your readers gripped'. Julia Crouch, NoirWich, 2018.
• How Not to Write a Novel. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. Published by Penguin in 2009.
• I See You. Clare Mackintosh. Published by Sphere in 2016.
• The Fix. David Baldacci. Published by Pan Books in 2017.
• The Word is Murder. Anthony Horowitz. Published by Arrow in 2018.
• Time to Win. Harry Brett. Published by Corsair in 2017.

Have proofreading symbols passed their use-by date? It’s a controversial question, but one that we definitely need to ponder. So, as an unconventional ‘celebration’ of 30 years in publishing, Melanie Thompson is setting out to answer this question – and she needs your help ...

Over to Melanie ...

​A few months ago a colleague asked me whether (UK-based) clients want proofreaders to use British Standard proofreading symbols or whether they prefer mark-up using Acrobat tools on PDFs.

‘Good question,’ I replied. ‘I hope to be able to answer that later this year.’ That probably wasn’t the answer they were expecting.
 
The widely different expectations of clients who ask for ‘proofreading’ has been niggling at the back of my mind for a couple of years.

What's changed in three decades
I have been a practising proofreader for 30 years, I’ve managed teams of editors and proofreaders, and I’ve been a tutor for newcomers to our industry. Yet I still learn something every time I proofread for a new client.
 
It’s several years since I was last asked to use BS symbols for a ‘live’ project,* but I use them a lot on rough draft print-outs – because they’re so concise and … well, let’s face it, to some extent those symbols are like a secret language that only we ‘professionals’ know. I like to keep my hand in.
 
But proofreading is now a global business activity, and ‘proofreading symbols’ differ around the world – which kind of defeats their original objective.

And now so many of us work on Word files or PDFs (or slides, or banner ads, or websites or … ) and there are other ways of doing things.
 
This all makes daily work for a freelance proofreader a bit more complicated (or interesting (if challenges float your boat). We might be working for a local business one day and an author in the opposite hemisphere the next.

It’s rare, but not unheard of, to receive huge packets of page proofs through the mail and to have to rattle around in the desk drawer to find your long-lost favourite red pen. Usually, however, things tend to arrive by email or through an ftp site or a shared Dropbox folder.

Digital workflows

The ‘digital workflow’ is something we’re now all part of, whether we realize it or not. But clients are at different stages in their adoption (or not) of the latest tools and techniques, and that leaves us proofreaders in an interesting position.

We need to be able to adapt our working practices to suit different clients; ideally, seamlessly. For that, we need to understand what the current processes are, and what clients are planning for the future.
 
And that’s where I need your help.

​A new research project: proofreading2020
I’ve launched a research project, proofreading2020, to investigate proofreading now and where it might be heading.

The study begins with a survey, asking detailed questions about proofreading habits and preferences. Once the results are in, I’ll be conducting follow-up research for case studies and, early in 2019, publishing the results in book form.
 
​You can find out more and complete the survey at proofreading2020. It's open now, and closes on 30 June 2018.
 
Almost 200 proofreaders, project managers and publishers have already completed the survey. Several have contacted me to say it was really useful CPD, because it made them think about how they work and why they do things. So I hope you’ll be willing to set aside a tea-break to fill it in.
 
It takes about 20 minutes to complete, but it’s easy to skip questions that aren’t relevant to you.

​There are only a handful of questions (at the beginning and end) that are compulsory (just the usual demographics and privacy permissions). Beyond that, the sections cover the following:
​

• Proofreader training and qualifications
• Taking/making bookings and negotiating fees
• The materials people proofread (end products and the formats they’re created in)
• Marking up techniques (on paper, on screen, software tools etc.)
• Collating proofs and dealing with queries
• A bit of fun (yes, really!) and sci-fi proofreading

​* If a client does ask for BS symbols, I recommend downloading Louise’s free stamps for use on PDFs – they will save you a lot of time and help you deliver a neat and clear proof.

Melanie Thompson is an Advanced Professional Member of SfEP and an SfEP tutor.

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Running an editing or proofreading business is a journey, not a moment in time. Some of us will be offered work that’s not ideal because of fee, content, client type, time frame, or for some other reason.
​
Some might tell us it’s a bum job, that we should run a mile. But is it? Should we? Would acceptance be a compromise or an opportunity?

The problem with ‘ideal’
Ideal is something to aim for but rarely what lands in our laps, especially in the start-up phase of a business.

• Perhaps the fee is a lot lower than we’d like or than some of our editing friends are earning.
• Perhaps the subject or genre on offer isn’t what we dreamed of when we set up our business.
• Perhaps the client is a publisher whereas we’d prefer to work with corporates.
• Perhaps the client wants the project completed in a time frame that means we’d have to work outside our preferred office hours.

The challenge of visibility
Being discoverable is a challenge for many new starters. Ideal projects are out there, but the editor or proofreader isn’t yet visible enough in the relevant spaces.

And even if they can be found, they might not yet have enough experience to instil the trust that leads to initial contact.

Broadly, it’s easier to get in front of publishers because we know who and where they are. They’re used to being contacted by us, too, so we can go direct and cold.

With non-publishers, it’s more difficult. Not every business, charity, school, indie author, or student wants an editor or understands the value we might bring to the table. Going direct and cold is a trickier proposition.

The issue of trust
It’s not just the mechanics of visibility. Emotion plays a part too, especially trust.

With publishers it’s easier to overcome the trust barrier. They know what they want, what we do, are used to working with us, speak our language, and are experienced in evaluating our competence.

Non-publisher clients are more of a challenge. They might not be familiar with the different levels of editing.

Many will not have worked with a professional editor before.

Some – for example fiction writers – might be anxious about exposing their writing to someone they don’t know.

And for the inexperienced client, evaluating a good fit is more difficult.

In the start-up phase of business ownership, editors and proofreaders with less experience might therefore find it easier to acquire work with publishers than with non-publishers.

The choices on the business journey
So visibility and trust issues mean that new entrants to the field might not have the same breadth of choice as the more mature business owner.

It might mean deciding to accept work that isn’t ideal in the shorter term.

We could describe this as a compromise, but might it in fact be an opportunity?

Does the terminology matter?
I believe the terminology does matter because a compromise has negative connotations.

• A compromise implies a cost; an opportunity implies a benefit.
• A compromise implies a loss; an opportunity implies a win.
• A compromise puts us on the back foot; an opportunity pushes us forward.

Negatives leave us feeling dissatisfied, that we’ve been ripped off, that we’re not in control. We’re more likely to begrudge the choices we’ve made.

Positives are empowering. We’re more likely to see the choices we’ve made as rational and informed.

All of this might sound like a mindset game but there’s more to it than that. Decisions to accept work that isn’t ideal have measurable benefits.

​However, we need a longer-term approach, and that can be tough for the new starter who’s surrounded by colleagues who are booked up months in advance with the work that they want.

If that sounds like you, think of your editing business like a garden.

The editorial garden
What you do this year is not separate from what will happen next year, or the year after, or five years down the road. All the choices you make on your business journey are connected.

The seeds you plant now will grow if you look after them. Give them a little additional feed and they might sprout this season ... if the weather holds and you’re lucky. However, you will not get a tree, not this year, I guarantee it. Trees come later.

If you don’t plant anything, however, nothing will spout, not now, not next year, not five years down the road. You will be treeless.

Is planting the seeds a compromise? I don’t think so. It’s the opportunity to grow a tree.

Should we begrudge all that work of watering and feeding for just a few green shoots in this season? Again, not to my mind. The effort we make now will bear fruit later.

Our businesses are the same.

A patch of my editorial garden
I thought it might be helpful to share a story about my own business journey. It’s about how I accepted work that was way below my ideal price point, and did so with pleasure, because I believed I’d be able to leverage it later.
​
See these books?

• The Rats ​– this is a reissue of one of the UK’s most famous horror author’s first novels.
• Dracula – this is the centenary edition of possibly the most famous Gothic horror ever written.
• Then we have the Pulitzer-prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad.
• Three Moments of an Explosion is a short-story collection from one of the hottest ‘weird’ fiction talents in the market.
• And even if you haven’t read the books, you’ve probably heard of or seen the movie adaptations of The Stepford Wives and Cool Hand Luke.

These are some of the books I was commissioned by publishers to proofread a few years ago.

I proofread these books for about 13 quid an hour.

These days, I aim to earn between £35 and £40 per hour. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I hit my mark in the last financial year when I averaged out my annual project earnings. A few years ago, my aim was around the £30 mark.

Those books pictured above earned me less than half what I was aiming for. Did I compromise? Well, it depends how you look at it.

If I believe that each decision I make exists in the bubble of now, and that nothing affects anything else further down the road, then yes, I compromised. If I think that what I’m earning now is despite my decision to accept those proofreading projects, it was a massive compromise.

If, however, I decide that each decision I make can affect my choices down the road, that the walls around those individual decisions are permeable, it’s a different story. If I think that what I’m earning now is because of my decision to accept those proofreading projects, it’s a story of opportunity.

Authors make decisions to work with editors based on a whole host of factors, but the first step is deciding to get in touch in the belief that the person they’ve found feels like a good fit.

Back to trust
To take one example, those of us who edit fiction for self-publishers are asking those authors to put their novels into the hands of complete strangers.

Many of those authors have never worked with an independent editor. Some are anxious about the process of being edited. And for some, the editor’s might be only the second pair of eyes to read the text.

It’s a big ask that takes courage. And that’s where the trust comes in.

The editor who can instil trust quickly is more likely to compel authors to make the leap and hit the contact button.

And what better way to instil trust than offer a portfolio of mainstream published books written by big-name authors?

And that’s how I leveraged those half-my-ideal-fee books. They tell an anxious indie author that publishers of big-name books trusted me a few years ago. And that helps the author trust me now.

Those proofreading projects – and the £13 ph fees that came with them – encourage authors to contact me now, and trust that my £35­–£40 ph line/copyediting fee is a worthwhile investment. And I know it’s true because they’ve told me it's so.

I didn’t compromise. I planted a seed. Now the tree has grown, and I’m able to harvest the fruit. I had to wait a few years but the decisions I made then affect the choices I have now.

And that’s how an editing garden grows.

Your choice
I’m a great believer in leveraging for future opportunity. It’s not everyone’s bag. It doesn’t fit with every editor or proofreader’s business model. And that’s fine.

I offer this not as THE way of thinking, but as one approach. It’s something that those at the beginning of their journey might like to consider if they are still building visibility, but struggling with the age-old rates debate!

As independent business owners, we are free to accept or decline fees from price-setting clients as we see fit. We are also free to propose rates that meet our individual needs, regardless of what our colleagues are offering.

If you’re offered work, can see the benefit of that work for your portfolio, but can’t stomach the price, decline. But if you wish to accept, even though others tell you the price is ‘too low’ or ‘unfair’, go for it.
​
The hive mind of the international editorial community is there to offer support and to share its wealth of experience, but no one knows your business and your needs better than you!

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Today’s post is about creating tension in crime fiction with sentence length. I look at how overwriting can mar the pace of a novel and frustrate a reader, and how less can sometimes be more.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #93

Around eighty per cent of the books that end up in my editing studio are in the crime fiction genre.

One of the most common problems I encounter is overwriting. That’s not because the authors are poor writers. It’s because they’re nervous writers.

It takes a lot of hard graft to put enough words on a page to make a book. Yet it takes an equal amount of courage to remove them ... or some of them.

‘What if the reader just doesn’t get it?’
‘What if they’ve forgotten what I told them above?’
‘What if I haven’t provided enough detail?’
‘What if I just love both ways I’ve said that?’

These are the kinds of questions that result in anxious authors bulking up their prose.

In a bid to help you trim the fat, I’m going to explore the following:

• Trusting your reader
• Feisty fragments and snappy shorties
• Damage by dilution
• Letting go of what you love

​Trusting your reader
The issue is sometimes one of trust – in the author’s own writing and in the reader’s ability to fill in the gaps. Some genres of fiction lend themselves well to more flowery prose that goes off at a tangent for a moment, a little narrative indulgence for the purpose of artistry or even titillation.

Crime fiction, however, is all about the page turn. That doesn’t mean that the description isn’t rich, but there is an expectation of forward momentum. Avid readers of the genre love it for the thrill of the ride.

Great characterization is key, of course. We want the protagonist to draw us in, the antagonist to pique our curiosity, and the supporting cast to deepen the picture, but ultimately we want to know whodunnit.

And that means we want words that help us understand what’s happening, why, where, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, why it’s being done, and how it feels.

And we only need to be told once. We might need a little clarifying nudge here and there but we’re capable of extracting a lot with less than you might think.

Feisty fragments and snappy shorties
If you’re trying to evoke tension in your reader, short sentences and fragments can be very effective.
​
Look at the following examples and notice how the authors keep their narratives lean.

Here’s an excerpt from Gone Bad by JB Turner:

Turner gives us just enough to set the scene – when, where, who and what – but no more. He trusts us to fill in the gaps.

He might have given a more detailed description of the forest – its sounds and smells. He might have delved deeper into Cain’s emotions, or helped us to picture the backpack by detailing the colour, make, number of pockets and zips, and where the ammo was being held. He could have told us, word for word, how Cain loaded the gun, how careful he was, which bullets he used.

But he doesn’t. Turner leaves it to us to imagine the woods, to see in our mind’s eye the loading of the rifle, and to sense the cold hard determination of the shooter. And the backpack gets no more than a passing mention, because to do more would slow the pace and act as a distraction.

And the result is just right – Goldilocks would approve.
​
Now consider the choppy fragments in Jens Lapidus’s Life Deluxe:

Lapidus loves the colon more than any other author I’ve come across! It’s a hard piece of punctuation but it works because the characters we’re being introduced to lead hard lives. They’re always looking over their shoulders, thinking in short snaps, weighing up what’s in front of them ... and what might be behind.

Lapidus dares to trust us, dares not bore us. And because of, rather than despite, the short sentences and fragmented prose, reading the scene is an immersive experience for the reader. I recall a sense of taut fatigue as I read this book, like I was right there, ever watchful, on my guard.

This author’s deliberate punctuation choices and choppy style mean the word count is reduced but the tension is heightened. He doesn’t pad his narrative with purple prose and stage direction. Like Turner, he trusts us to do the work.

Damage by dilution
Consider your own writing. Leave your draft alone for a few days. Then return to it and see what happens if you take a more reductive approach to a scene.
​
​It's all about balance at the end of the day. Not too much but not to little. Howard Mittelmark & Sandra Newman write:

I’m not suggesting you remove information the reader needs to know, but asking you whether there is material your reader doesn’t need to know, material that might bore them or hold them back.

Neither am I suggesting you avoid creating emotive scenes that are high on tension.
Rather, might you build this tension with shorter, tighter sentences that demand your reader do some of the work?

And I’m not suggesting you should limit every sentence in your book to five words – not at all. I’m suggesting that you might use this technique when you think it would work, when it would push your reader forward, when fewer words – the right words – would work as well or better than more, especially if you know you tend to overwrite.

​Letting go of what you love
For some authors it’s not about trust, but about not wanting to let go. Perhaps you found two delicious ways to say the same thing and now you can’t bear to cut either. Or you constructed a stunning paragraph but it’s interrupting the conflict or the action.
​
In The Magic of Fiction, veteran editor Beth Hill says:

Hill asks authors to grab ‘the liberty to cut words as freely as you added them’ and then to enrich what’s left.

1. Precision: Use specific descriptive nouns and verbs that are appropriate to the scene and to the character’s voice.
2. Finesse: Eradicate waffle from phrases so that they’re 'pitch perfect' – use punctuation and words that match the mood: harsh scenes could benefit from words that are pronounced harshly and contain hard consonants.
3. Length: Play with ‘short and punchy words and short, hard-hitting phrases and incomplete sentences’.

It’s tricky for some beginner writers, I know, but repetition and interruption mean there are redundant words in your writing. And to make your novel sparkle, you need to let go of them because they’re not adding something new, they’re not in the right place, or they’re in the way.

Take courage. Try it with and without. You might be surprised.

Cited works and further reading

• Gone Bad. JB Turner. No Way Back Press, 2015
• How Not to Write a Novel. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. Penguin, 2009
• Life Deluxe. Jens Lapidus. Pan, 2015
• The Magic of Fiction, 2nd edition. Beth Hill. Title Page Books, 2016

If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit the Self-publishers page on my website. Try these in particular:
​

• 5 tips for writing about physical pain in fiction
• 11 things that helped me succeed as a self-published author
• The art of firearms in fiction
• Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
• How to be a better writer: Using a growth mindset to hone your craft
• Slipping into character – understanding the impact of narrative point of view
• What's the difference between a rule and a preference?

​

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the best posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

My thanks to this month's contributors!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• 5-minute branding by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘This quick exercise will help you sharpen your written voice and add consistency to all your communications.’
• Blog republishing strategy by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘Bloggers can stop worrying about duplicate content penalties from Google. With this advice, they can press ahead with republishing their articles on LinkedIn and Medium, helping their content reach a wider audience.’
• Overcoming marketing paralysis: How to turn overwhelm into action by Louise Harnby on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'Business promotion can feel overwhelming, and that can lead to inaction. This article includes some tips to help you move forward ... gently.'
• PayPal fees and your right to profits by Erin Brenner, published on Copyediting. Erin writes: 'The world does not owe you a profitable business. If you run a business to make money, the general rule is that you have to spend money first.'
• The editorial rates debate – why I don’t charge by the hour by Jen Toyne, published on the Jet Proofreading blog. Jen writes: ‘This article is about how charging by the hour does not work for me and how I made peace with my simple approach to pricing based on number of words.’ 
• Things I have learned in a year of running a business by Renee Moodie, published on the Safe Hands Web & Content Services blog. Renee writes: 'There’s been much to learn in a year of freelancing, starting with understanding that I am not in fact a freelancer but rather the owner of a business.'
• What to do when someone asks, 'What’s your rate?' by Molly McCowan, published on Copyediting. Molly writes: 'Do what you can to avoid offering up your hourly rate. Instead, gracefully “pivot” by answering with a question that will give you more insight into the project.'

​
​CLIENT FOCUS​

• Q&A on what to expect from a thesis proofreading service by Kate Haigh, published on the Kateproof blog. Kate writes: 'I work with a lot of postgraduate students and often get asked the same or similar questions. This blog post is a collation of the most common questions, with answers, which will hopefully help prospective clients but also other editors and proofreaders looking to work with this client set.'
• Proofreading tip – checking for mistyped words by Laura Ripper and Helen Stevens, published on the School Proof blog. ‘Teachers often have to proofread their own or their colleagues' student reports. We share some tips to help teachers and other professionals spot commonly mistyped words that Spellcheck won't flag up.’
• What is your writing worth to you? by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes, ‘Where’s the rule that says novelists have to accelerate from zero to pro with no professional guidance – and at no cost? Help clients put their editing costs into perspective.'
• Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your crime fiction: Advice for new writers by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: ‘I discuss the negative impact that just one word can have on narrative tension: Suddenly. I don't suggest that writers should eradicate it, but rather use it judiciously and with intention.'

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• How to close an editorial project effectively by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘Adding that last missing comma is not the end of a project. The way you close an editorial project has a huge bearing on how clients remember you (and thus whether your name pops into their head for future work) and how you manage your business’s development.’​
• Silent Changes by Eleanor Abraham, published on  eleanorabraham.com. Eleanor writes: ‘Word’s Track Changes is an amazing function letting you see all the revisions your editor is suggesting. But is it really necessary to see all the changes they make to your Word file?’
• Sorting text in Microsoft Word by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘I recently participated in a Facebook discussion on this topic and then decided to write a blog post about it. I hope this is helpful to other writers and editors!’
• The editing and revision process for self-publishers by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. In this newly revised article, Lisa writes, ‘Add more opportunities for feedback, more opportunities to check specific elements, and more opportunities for a fresh look.’

​FREELANCE LIFE

• Success in freelancing: Is it luck or hard work? by Denise Foster, published on Fostered Creativity. Denise writes: ‘I’ve always been interested in this topic—what factors determine success? (And what defines “success” anyway?) I decided to share my thoughts about how this specifically relates to freelancing.’
• The Perfectpreneur by Sara Donaldson, published on Northern Editorial. Sara writes: ‘If you find you’re constantly comparing yourself to the Perfectpreneur – the businessperson who has it all – here’s an exercise that can help you come back down to earth.’ 
• This proofreader’s approach to GDPR by Kate Haigh, published on the Kateproof blog. Kate writes: 'With the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) coming into force in May 2018, affecting anyone working with clients in the EU, I thought it would be useful for clients and colleagues to see how I have approached compliance. This blog post has more detail than my new privacy policy, giving detailed reasons about why I store what data and where.'
• Unimposter-able me by Kia Thomas, published on Kia Thomas Editing. Kia writes: 'Imposter syndrome comes for most of us at some point in our careers. But lately I’ve been learning how to fight it, with the help of some classic 90s pop.'

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

​If speaking in public gives you the heebie-jeebies, professional presenter Simon Raybould has some advice that will improve your performance and calm your nerves.
 
Over to Simon …

You edit words for a living, right? It’s a cool job, I admit, and not one I could conceivably aspire to.
 
As someone once put it, 'Simon, being your proofreader must be like being Seán McGowan’s dentist.’

​And yes, it’s true. She once sent me an email with the words ‘… first paragraph alone! Are you doing it on purpose? Are you trying to annoy me?’

But I think I have an even more cool option for you. Instead of editing words, why not edit minds? I’m not talking about some sci-fi concept – it’s what I do for a living.

A good presentation will change someone’s mind ... and with it, their world. A good presentation is a form of telepathy – sending ideas from your mind to someone else’s.

The upsides are awesome, but the downsides are pretty serious too:

• sleepless nights
• cold sweats
• fear of looking people in the eye
• more sleepless nights
• a fervent wish for the ground to open up and swallow you whole
• a haunted feeling and a sense of paranoia

But all is not lost – there are cures … or at least things that will help.

Here are a few quick-to-master ideas and tools that will help you to present at conferences (or anywhere else) with confidence.

Some are easy, some are harder, but all of them work. 

1. The least popular tool – just doing it
Let’s start with the least popular option.

When I ask people why they want to be confident, I often receive answers such as ‘If I were confident I’d be able to XYZ.’

And that’s great – they have a specific thing in mind.

What’s not so great is that they seem to think that confidence alone will mean they don’t have to invest time in doing XYZ.

I’m going to be blunt … you can’t shortcut your way to confidence. Don’t try to get confident before you do something. You can only get confident by doing that thing.

Think about how you learned to ride a bike.  Did you look at it, thinking, Cool! What an awesome bike. As soon as I’m a confident cyclist I’ll hop right on and go for rides in the hills? Nope. What you did was sit on it, fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on … and so on.

Presenting is like that.

Of course, with bikes you have stabilizers (and parents) holding you up. Stick with the analogy for a moment and figure out how you can make presentations in safer ways and places – stabilizers, as it were.
 
How about making presentations under the following conditions:

• When it doesn’t matter much if you screw it up

• Where the audience members are your friends
• When you have only three slides (one of which is your title and one of which is black!)?

I’m sure you get the idea.

To mix my movement metaphors … don’t run before you can walk. 

2. Know what success looks like
We all know what could go wrong, right? People might laugh at us; we could fall off the stage; cold sweat might drip down our backs or melt our mascara.
 
And that’s the thing… we know what the bad things look like. But what about success? Not fainting on stage doesn’t count. Things like this count:

• Explaining the new policy on (A) well enough that 60% of the audience act on it within (B) days.
• Making what you do sound so cool that two members of the audience ask you to work with them.
• Getting people so excited about a new website/resource that 10 people in your audience hit the site within a week.
  
  

The trick lies in knowing what success looks like.
 
Define it.
 
After all, if all you can identify is failure, that’s what you’ll concentrate on. But if you can define success, you stand a chance of concentrating on that instead.
 
(Defining success also helps you to design your conference presentation more effectively. If you don’t know what you want to achieve, you’re more likely to omit core material.)

3. Sentence zero ... the breathing tool
When we’re scared, we breathe from the top of our lungs. Air comes out in a rush, making our voices sound thinner, breathier and – frankly – less authoritative.
 
Hold that thought in your head for a moment and think about this: Lots of people tell me that once they get going in a presentation, things get better. So the important thing is to start well, right?  Right.
 
If you can control your breathing at the start, things are going to go better. Sentence zero is a handy tool for doing just that.
 
Get the very first sentence of your presentation straight in your head. Be specific. For now, let’s pretend that Sentence One is ‘Hello, my name is Simon.’

Now think of a sentence that could go before it, finishing with the word ‘and’.
 
For now, let’s pretend it’s 'Goodness, what a hideous lime green that back wall is, and …' We’ll call this Sentence Zero.

Now, as you start your presentation, say Sentence Zero+Sentence One in one breath, but only use your voice for Sentence One.
 
What that means is that your audience only hears Sentence One but you’ve already used the high-pressure, anxiety-sounding breath from the top of your lungs on the silent Sentence Zero.

• Pro tip 1: Make sure Sentence Zero is clean and positive (just in case you do inadvertently say it out loud).
• Pro tip 2: Make absolutely sure you don’t breathe in between Sentence Zero and Sentence One; that negates the effectiveness. 

4. Ditch the script
Writing is difficult. That’s why authors need you, right? So what on earth makes you think you can write a script for your presentation?
 
If it was that easy, we’d all be writing massively successful West End and Broadway plays. Don’t try.
 
Instead, define your structure.

• Start with the main point (think about success – what are you trying to achieve with your presentation?)
• Then move iteratively deeper into the finer detail.
• You’ve now got the structure. Stop.
• Jot down keywords.

 
Then, when you stand up to present, use the keywords as markers around which you improvise.
 
Trust me, you’ll sound more natural and be much, much more interesting.
 
Plus, you won’t spend time worrying about the massive confidence-drainer that is 'Did I get the wording absolutely right according to the script?'
 
As an aside, the answer is no.  No one does unless they’re RSC-grade actors.
 
What you’ll lose in the occasional fumble you’ll more than gain in sounding more relaxed and natural.
 
Plus, you won’t commit the ultimate presenter’s sin of using Latin words. It’s an over-simplification but we’re more likely write using the Latin-orientated words (‘commence’ rather than ‘start’) and speak using the Saxon versions (‘guts’ rather than ‘intestines’).
 
Ditching the script means you don’t speak like a textbook.

5. Wasp-swatting: The power of the list
A while ago, my team and I sat down for a meeting. Pizza and wine might have been involved. One of the things we asked each other was what made us nervous.
 
It turned out that about one-third of our conference nerves came not from the presentation but from the logistics that went with it.

• When am I on?
• Where’s the venue?
• Do I have the right version of Keynote or PowerPoint?
• Have I printed off the right slides?

 
Logisitical/trivial problems are like wasps. One seems manageable. A swarm’s a different matter. Each issue might be negligible on its own, but all of them together have a noticeable impact.

Similarly, each on its own is easily dealt with, but taken together the problem loses its perspective.

The solution is simple: a list.

At least two weeks in advance of the conference, create a simple checklist – one line for every issue. For example, I don’t have a 'cables' tick box on my list; I have entry for the power cable, another for the VGA adaptor, and another for the HDMI adaptor, and so on.

Before you go live, check the list. That way, when it’s time to perform, you can do so confident that you’ve not forgotten anything. It also frees up the parts of your brain you’d otherwise have wasted on trying to remember things.

6. Practice and rehearsal
This is so fundamental it probably shouldn't come last. It also needs the fewest words.

You will perform better if you go over your presentation and practise improvising using your keywords.

Wrapping up
There’s a lot more you can do to conquer your nerves – ideas range from breathing techniques to standing in certain positions – but these are good starting points. So go change the world and edit people’s heads!

Want to know more?
Simon's a presentations expert and productivity guru. He's running a session at the SfEP annual conference in Lancaster in 2018 so you can meet him there.

If you want to get in touch beforehand, here's what you need:

• Presentation Genius | @presentations​

• AIR | @AIRproductivity​

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Today, I discuss the negative impact that just one word can have on narrative tension: Suddenly.
​
I’m not suggesting writers eradicate it, but rather use it judiciously and with intention.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #92

I edit a lot of crime fiction written by beginner and emerging authors. I’m an avid reader of the genre too. Reading a genre isn’t enough to make anyone an expert in it, but it does afford the editor plenty of opportunities to see it written well, and to experience it as a punter ... to ask: Why do I like that? What is it about that scene that works so well? What’s hooking me here?

There’s one word that great crime writers put on the page with care – suddenly. However, many new or developing writers struggle to leave it out.

Two reasons for overuse stand out:
​

1. ​The writer is trying to counter wordiness
2. The writer doesn’t realize their existing words have done the job

​I’ve grabbed a handful of crime fiction from my own bookshelves, and taken examples from these books to show how suddenly-free writing can be more immediate and immersive.

​1. Countering wordiness
Some developing writers record every nod, every furrowed brow. All that mundane stuff happens in real life. And in the movies we get to see it played out onscreen. That doesn’t mean it all needs to go into a novel.

Readers don’t behave like viewers. When I’m watching a film I expect to be spoon-fed to a degree – dialogue, facial expression, action, and a healthy dollop of incidental music to tell me who’s feeling what and why.

The reason it works with film is because a chunk of that stuff happens simultaneously, and even I, impatient soul that I am, don’t get bored.

When I’m reading a book, my brain works differently. I don’t want all that stage direction. Too much of it distracts me and that’s when I’m most likely to lose interest.

When a new writer hasn’t learned the art of crafting the story so that there are just enough nudges to keep the narrative rich, but not so many that it becomes tedious, suddenly rears its head. Suddenly becomes an apology for overwriting – an exciting reward for sticking around.

Only it doesn’t work. It’s just one more word on the page that the reader doesn’t need.

Solution: Keep your crime writing lean
Not every writer wants to strip their writing back to the bare bones but ask yourself whether you’ve introduced a sentence with Suddenly purely to reengage the reader.

If so, tighten up the preceding narrative so that you don’t lose them in the first place. Less is sometimes more.

Example
Here’s a scene from Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz, featuring the protagonist, Daniel Brasher (p. 393):

A less experienced writer might have been tempted to overwork the preceding description and the line conveying Daniel’s anxiety ... and that could have led to a Suddenly barging its way onto the starting blocks of the final sentence to drag the reader out of the protagonist’s head and back into the external action.

​It could have gone like this:

Instead, Hurwitz has given us just enough to know that our protagonist is fretful. We hear the metallic boom in the same moment Daniel does. We imagine how it might make him jump. There are 58 words instead of 114.

​And the writing in the shorter, published example is tighter, the tension higher. The boom comes suddenly, but Hurwitz doesn’t tell us so. He doesn’t need to.

2. Redundancy – the verb’s already done the work
Even those novice writers who’ve conquered their noisy narrative can still be tempted to nudge unnecessarily with suddenly.

I see this most often in the following scene types:
​

• Fights: Suddenly, the masked man launched himself forward and crashed into Jake.
• Realizations: Suddenly, it dawned on her. It’d been staring her in the face all along.
• Emotional shifts: Suddenly, Ash’s face lit up with excitement.
• Grisly action: Suddenly, the woman’s torso exploded.
• Unexpected sounds: The phone trilled suddenly from his inside pocket.
• Shock events: Suddenly, Emma slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.

Certainly, writers who use suddenly are doing so with good intention – to give the reader a now-nudge. However, in most cases it’s unnecessary to convey immediacy and adds nothing to the narrative.

In the above examples, the immediacy is rendered perfectly with the verbs launched, dawned, lit up, exploded, trilled and slammed.

By adding suddenly into the mix, the reader is pulled out of the story, as if the author has tapped them on the shoulder and whispered, ‘Hey, you, something big’s coming. Just so you know. Right then, as you were. Carry on reading.’ That’s an interruption – the opposite of what the writer intended.

Now the reader’s no longer moving at the same pace as the character. They’re one step ahead rather than immersed in the moment.

Solution: Test the sentence out loud
Say it first with suddenly, then without. Ninety per cent of the time, the slimline version will work better. When that’s the case, hit the delete button.
​

• Fights: The masked man launched himself forward and crashed into Jake.
• Realizations: Then it dawned on her. It’d been staring her in the face all along.
• Emotional shifts: Ash’s face lit up with excitement.
• Grisly action: The woman’s torso exploded.
• Unexpected sounds: The phone trilled from his inside pocket.
• Shock events: Emma slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.

Published suddenly-free examples
Here are some published examples for comparison. None of the authors felt the need to nudge the reader into immediacy.

The Barclay example is particularly interesting. The narrative point of view in this chapter is that of the antagonist. From his perspective, the violence is almost mundane, which renders the scene all the more horrific for the reader.

A now-nudge in this paragraph wouldn’t have been just superfluous; it would have countered the perversity of our tension being heightened through being forced to immerse ourselves in Cory’s psychosis.

When suddenly works a treat
Suddenly-free isn’t a rule. Don’t ban it from your novel! There are times when it works beautifully:
​

• There were ten of them, all big, corralling the guy into the corner. Pip watched, feeling suddenly vulnerable.

​In this made-up example, the inclusion of suddenly subtly changes our perspective of Pip’s situation. There's a subtle immediacy to his discomfort has emerged only now, that in the seconds before he’d watched bu not felt threatened.

And so it’s not that suddenly does or doesn’t work. Rather, it depends on the writer’s intention.

Your turn ... how do you maintain tension with minimal interruption? Are there particular adverbs you use with caution?

If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit the  Self-publishers page on my website. Try these in particular:
​

• 5 tips for writing about physical pain in fiction
• 11 things that helped me succeed as a self-published author
• The art of firearms in fiction
• How to be a better writer: Using a growth mindset to hone your craft
• Slipping into character – understanding the impact of narrative point of view
• What's the difference between a rule and a preference?

​

​This tutorial shows you a fast and free method to turn your video’s subtitles/closed captions into text that can be repurposed for blog posts and DIY transcripts.

There are 2 reasons you might want to do this:

1. To generate keyword juice for SEO purposes
2. To respect customer/client preferences

Using the subtitles files in your existing videos means you can create content in a written format without starting from scratch.

That saves you precious time, allowing you to focus your attention on creating words (if you’re an author) and amending them (if you’re a proofreader or editor).

I’ll look at those reasons in more detail below. First, here’s the video walk-through. The written instructions are underneath.

​Instructions

• Go to your YouTube channel and select CREATOR STUDIO, then click on your chosen video.
• Click on Subtitles/CC.
• Under the blue ADD NEW SUBTITLES OR CC button, click on the grey language button. This will open up your subtitles stream.
• Click on ACTIONS.
• Select .srt.
• Now go to your computer’s DOWNLOADS folder.
• Locate the .srt file and rename it with a .doc extension (e.g. captions.srt becomes captions.doc).
• Now double-click on the newly created Word doc.

Now you’re ready to edit the text. And you will need to edit it! As I’m sure you’re aware, we don’t speak like we write. I’m always shocked by how much I mumble, how fast I speak, and how non-standard my spoken grammar is when I see my speech in written form!

Furthermore, while even the auto-subtitles generated by YouTube are rather amazing given that they’re free, it’s no surprise that a lot can go wrong.

Still, the basics are there so we’re not starting with a blank page – the core written material is ready and waiting for us.

If you’re creating a transcript, you might decide to leave in some of the time stamps. This is useful if you want to enable people to return to the video and access key themes, or if there’s more than one speaker.

If you’re creating a blog post, here’s how to remove the extraneous information ...

Removing the junk
So this is a partial screenshot of a subtitles file:

Let’s get rid of the time stamps first.

• Open Word’s FIND/REPLACE tool (ctrl-h on a PC)
• Copy and paste the following string into the FIND WHAT field: ^#^#:^#^#:^#^#,^#^#^# --> ^#^#:^#^#:^#^#,^#^#^#
• Leave the REPLACE WITH field empty
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

​Now your subtitles file looks like this:

Now let’s get rid of those stranded numbers above the main text, again using Word’s FIND/REPLACE tool.

• Place the following string into the FIND WHAT field: ^#^p
• Leave the REPLACE WITH field empty
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

If your video is long, you’ll have double-digit numbers too. In that case, click the REPLACE ALL button again. If you have triple-digit numbers, you’ll need to repeat it once more!
​
Now your subtitles file looks like this:

​Now we can remove the extraneous paragraph returns. Again, we’re using Word’s FIND/REPLACE tool.

• Place the following string into the FIND WHAT field: ^p^p
• In the REPLACE WITH field, type a space
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button
• Now place the following string into the FIND WHAT field: ^p
• Leave the space in the REPLACE WITH field
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button
• To tidy up any final double spaces, type two spaces in the FIND WHAT field
• Leave the space in the REPLACE WITH field
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button
• If there are a few double spaces remaining, click REPLACE ALL again

​Now your subtitles file looks like this:

Now you can tidy up your text, and copy and paste it into the text editor on your website. There, you can introduce paragraphs, bullet points, headings and any supporting imagery for your blog article.

Now let’s return to why we might decide to do this.

Generating keyword juice for SEO purposes
Video is compelling. It allows our audience to see our faces and hear our voices. That intimacy can be compelling, and it’s a fast-track to building trust. That’s important for authors seeking to build a readership, and editors wanting to attract clients who need editing help.

However, there are no keywords in a video. Yes, YouTube is a search engine in its own right, but it’s not the first point of search for every member of our audience.

​By repurposing video as blog content, we’re increasing our chances of being found in the likes of Google and Bing too.

Being findable on multiple platforms makes sense in an online world that’s becoming noisier by the minute.

Respecting customer/client preferences
Not everyone wants to watch video, and even if they do, it’s not always the most convenient option. Imagine the following scenarios:

Our reader’s broadband speed is slow
A blog post will load faster than a video on those occasions that the internet seems to be creaking at the seams.

If we’ve solved a reader’s problem in our videos, but they can’t play those videos, they could become frustrated and go elsewhere. If we’ve offered a written alternative, we’re more likely to keep them on our websites.

Video is difficult to scan
Written content is easy to scan and digest quickly. That makes it attractive to busy people. If our visitors can’t work out whether we’ve solved their problem without watching a video in its entirety, we might lose them.

When we provide written content as well, we can quickly show them what’s on offer with headings and bullet points. Our readers can scan this information and decide whether to dig deeper.

Blog posts can be printed
Some people still like to print useful content so that they’re not reliant on digital means to access it. A video can’t be printed; a blog post can. Again, it’s about respecting what’s convenient for our readers, rather than focusing on our own preferences.

Other options
What I’ve offered here is a DIY solution for authors and editors who need to keep an eye on the purse strings when they're repurposing vlog content.

It’s the method I use when I’m starting with a video rather than a blog post. Plus, I rather enjoy the process. However, it’s not everyone’s bag.

If you have the budget, you can commission a professional transcriptionist or content repurposer. They’ll have the tools and expertise to create top-quality written content from video that fits your brand and voice.

Summing up
Editors and authors who are creating valuable content to make their books and editorial services visible can repurpose it in multiple ways. No one method trumps another – audio, video and words all have their place.

However, our audiences will have different preferences. What’s convenient today might not work tomorrow. Repurposing content allows us to respect those preferences.

The trick is to find shortcuts to that repurposing so that we’re not starting from scratch each time. This is one of them.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Here's a treat for PerfectIt users ... a custom style sheet that includes the find-and-replace strings in my free ebook, The Author's Proofreading Companion.

If the Companion has made your life easier, you'll love what my colleague Andrea Kay of Yours Truleigh Editing has done. Yep, she's upped the efficiency game for all of us by creating a custom style sheet that can be imported into PerfectIt.

Thank you so much, Andrea!

For those unfamiliar with either the software or the booklet, I've provided an overview of both, and the benefits of importing the style sheet.

Andrea's also created a style sheet for the Student Proofreading Toolkit. Double thanks!

Below that are the installation instructions and the ready-to-download files for the Companion and the Toolkit.

​How to import your style sheet
Importing the style sheet is a doddle, I promise, Follow the instructions and screenshots below. If PerfectIt is already installed, the process will take no longer than 20 seconds.

1. Unfortunately, I can't upload the files to Weebly, so I'm using my bot Lulu and delivering via Messenger.

​Click on the green button below. That will take you to a post on my Facebook page. There you can comment with the word 'perfect' and Lulu will send you the files. Click on each one to download to your device.

2. Once you've installed PerfectIt, open the Word document you want to check.
3. Launch PerfectIt.
​4. Click on Manage Styles.

5. Click on the Import button.

6. Select the pft from your device and click OK.

7. Click OK in the Manage Styles window.

8. Select the your pft from the Current Style drop-down box.

9. To run PerfectIt on your current Word document using the custom style sheet, press Start.

If you're not a PerfectIt user ...
If you're not yet ready to invest in PerfectIt but still want access to the find-and-replace strings and other tools in the ebooks, click on the images below. They'll take you to the download pages.

​They're free and you won't have to hand over any personal data to access it. Enjoy!

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

If we’re serious about setting up an editing and proofreading business, free resources will get us so far, but only so far.

What free is good for
Free is brilliant when we’re starting out, particularly in the following circumstances:
​

• We’re not yet sure whether an editing career suits us.
• We’ve yet to establish where our skills gaps are.
• We need time to explore the lie of the land – what’s available, from where and whom, and how we’ll access it.
• We need time to get our finances in order but don’t want that to hold us back.

Free is equally great when we’re experienced but looking to shift the goalposts:

• We’re thinking about offering a new editing service but want to learn whether it’s a good fit for us.
• We’ve identified skills gaps but need to plan a staged approach to filling them – no one can do everything at once.
• We want to stick with the same editing services but focus on niche subject(s) or genre(s). That means exploring how we might expand our knowledge base such that we’re a more attractive proposition to potential clients.

Free stuff is about discovery, so that when the time comes to reach into the coffers we’re spending money in the right place.

​Free helps us to turn expense into investment.

What free is not good for
Free isn’t great in the long term because the offering usually comes with limitations. It will give us a glimpse, enough to help us on the journey. But that’s all.

The reason free has its limitations is because even creating free stuff and offering free help takes time, and time is money.
​
Imagine the following scenarios:

What tasters teach us ... and what they don't
In both cases, the freebies are of exceptionally high quality and Jane and Jack learn a ton from them. Creating that content must have taken time and effort.

However, free articles, blog posts and webinars are tasters. Those kinds of things help us understand the lie of the land, and give us a deeper sense of what more we need to learn.

What they won’t do is teach us everything we need to know.

We can’t learn how to become professional developmental editors from those resources alone ... any more than we could learn to cut hair or wire a house to acceptable standards without proper training and guidance.

Same goes for marketing. Take me, for example. It’s not luck and Google that made me a strong marketer. I pay a monthly sub to learn how to do it well from professional marketers, and invest time in implementing the strategies I’m learning.

If Jane wants to become a professional developmental editor and Jack wants to become a strong editorial marketer, both need to take all those freebies and use them to make informed decisions about the money they will invest to turn their investigations into reality.

Examples might include:

• A good-fit training course
• Recommended books written by experts

​
Free will help Jane and Jack make decisions. Investment will make them fit for professional purpose.

A better money mindset
It’s perfectly okay to decide that you can’t afford to run a professional editorial business ... but only as long as you decide not to run a professional editorial business.

No one on the planet owns a business that doesn’t have operating costs. Business owners have to take responsibility for training, equipment, invoicing, money transfer, software, marketing, client acquisition, office space, pension provision, taxation responsibilities, and more.

It’s true that the international editorial community is incredibly generous, which means that free resources and guidance abound on multiple platforms.

However, those who are serious about running an editorial business know they have to avoid hobbyist and employee mindsets.
​

• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I can’t afford it.’ They say, ‘I’ll work out a budget, take it step by step, and save up for it.’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I don’t know how to do it. I need someone to do it for me for free.’ They say, ‘Can someone recommend the best ways of learning how to do it?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘How do I get out of paying for X?’ They say, ‘Is that a reasonable cost of business and will it enable me to remain in profit and increase my income in the longer term?’
• The professional editor doesn’t say, ‘I’m only looking for free stuff.’ They say, ‘Can anyone guide me towards some useful resources that will help me plan how to invest wisely?’

The shoe on the other foot – when you’re asked for a freebie
We can’t have everything we want when we want it. We have to make choices. Freebies help us make the right choices so that the money we spend actually increases our prospects and income in the longer term.

And imagine yourself on the other side of the fence for a moment.

A potential client calls you. They have a book that needs copyediting. ‘The thing is,’ they say, ‘I can’t afford professional editing. How can I get out of paying you? To be honest, I’m just looking for free stuff.’

How fast would you hang up?

Now imagine another writer calls you. ‘I’m in the middle of doing as much self-editing as I can using some free tutorials I found online and some advice from my writing group. There’s a fair way to go,’ they say, ‘but I figured I’d start saving now. Can you give me a rough idea of how much it might cost and how much notice you’d need? That way I can start planning my book budget.’

That’s the kind of client I’m excited about working with.

The editor with the same mindset will be rewarded with guidance and help because they deserve it. The editor who wants it all for nothing won’t and doesn’t.

By all means, grab all the freebies. The creators of those resources want you to have them. Making free stuff that’s invisible and unused is a waste of time and effort.

​Just don’t forget that free is the starting blocks. Investment is what gets us to the finish line!

Further reading

• “I want to be an editor – when will I start earning $?” and other unanswerable questions
• The cost of editorial training – are you hitting the mark or missing the point?
• The highs and lows of editorial fees (or how not to trip up during rate talk)
• Why you MUST market your editorial business. Part I
• Increasing editing income – raising fees and declining lower-paid work
• Who finds your editing and proofreading clients for you?
• PayPal fees and your right to profits (Erin Brenner, Copyediting)

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

​If you’re an editor or proofreader who finds marketing your business overwhelming, here are 6 ideas to help you rethink your mindset and pull you out of the mire.

Recent discussions with colleagues on social media made me realize two things:

• Some editors are perceived as busier marketers than is actually the case.
• The struggling marketers aren’t always inspired by the busy bees. A sense of overwhelm and disillusionment takes over.

It made me sad to think that some of my colleagues could be negatively affected by those of us who find marketing easier or who enjoy it more.

If you're one of those who's struggling, this article is for you. It looks at the perceptions that might be triggering your discomfort and offers you new ways of thinking about each problem so that you can move forward.

If you want a reminder to pin on your wall, download the infographic at the bottom of the post. Or download the free PDF booklet to your preferred device.

Perception 1: It shouldn’t be done unless you can do it perfectly
Some editors are suffocated by their perfectionism. Not being able to do marketing perfectly and completely stops them from starting it. And so nothing gets done.

Here are five examples that reflect the truth of the matter:

• It is ideal to have a consistent and regular promotion strategy, but it is better to market a business sporadically than not at all.
• It is ideal to have a complete LinkedIn profile, but it is better to have a partial LinkedIn profile than none at all.
• It is ideal to have testimonials on each page of your website, but it is better to have a website with no testimonials than no website at all.
• It is ideal to have a strong headshot on your website and social media profiles, but it is better to have a cropped holiday snap that shows off your smile than no photo at all.
• For would-be bloggers, it is ideal to have a blog banner that identifies the space for what it is, but it is better to have a blog without a banner than no blog at all.

I have been blogging since 2011 and I only just got around to uploading a banner image that reflected the parlour theme of the blog. I’m confident that my audience will forgive me. Those who won’t are likely not my audience.

If you’re someone who finds themselves falling into this trap, give yourself a break, please. Everyone else will. Social media profiles can be tweaked, banners can be uploaded, testimonials can be added, and headshots can be updated.

In fact, everything about your marketing strategy can be amended, deleted or completely rethought whenever you wish.

Ask yourself this: When you edit for a client, do you guarantee perfection? Do you think it’s even possible? I don’t. One reason is that much of what I do depends on brief, style, preference or voice. Editing work isn’t an exact science.

I have some good news for you – nor is effective marketing. 

​Perception 2: Everyone else is doing way more than you
It might look like that but the reality is probably different. A colleague recently told me: ‘I know how hard you work on marketing. I can tell by how many posts you write and share on LinkedIn each day.’

I tend to share 7 blog articles throughout the day on both LinkedIn and Twitter. That’s 49 social media shares of my blog content every week on each platform. But I write one blog post a week. Just one. 

I share that new post on a Monday. The other 48 are reshares of older blog articles that I hope my community will be interested in if they missed them the first time around.

And people might well have missed them. Tweets and posts on Facebook are more likely to be missed than seen on busy social feeds with ever-changing algorithms. That’s why many editors reshare their older content.

Those of us who’ve been blogging for a few years have a lot of content banked, which means we have plenty to share. If you’re starting out on your blogging journey, you’ll have a smaller bank.

And that’s absolutely fine! It’s not a numbers game; it’s a content-delivery game. If you have older blog posts, reshare them. If you don’t, wait until you do and then reshare.

And if you'd rather write an article every two weeks, or once a month, that's your choice too. 

It matters not that I’m sharing 49 articles and you’re sharing 2 or 5 or whatever. What matters is that we’re delivering articles that will solve our colleagues’ and clients’ problems, and making our businesses more visible.

Don’t waste precious time worrying about my 49. Those are mine and for me to worry about. ​You need to think only about how to promote your 2 (or 5 or whatever) posts because those are what will drive traffic to your website.

​Perception 3: Some editors don’t do any marketing but have loads of work anyway
Marketing has many faces.

Remember my 49 blog-post shares? Those are part of a strategy to make me discoverable online and appealing to self-publishing authors of fiction.

What I do with my blog is a very visible form of marketing because the international editorial community is active on social media, and I use social media as one delivery tool for my blog content.

But what if an editor has a different target client base? Imagine Dan. He’s a copyeditor who specializes in social science books. His primary client base is publishers.

Last week he did the following:

• Sent emails of introduction to four presses for whom he’s never worked
• Sent hello-how-are-you emails to five presses whom he’s worked for in the past but whose radars he’s slipped off
• Updated his SfEP directory entry with a new testimonial, a reworked pitch, and several book jackets

None of this marketing activity has been tweeted, liked, shared or commented on. No one knows what Dan was up to last week. However, it’s excellent, targeted promotion, and worth every minute he spent on it.

What one editor does to put themselves in front of potential clients will not necessarily mirror what another is doing. An editor whose schedule is full but who doesn’t appear to be busy with marketing is likely promoting their services in less visible but just as powerful ways.

None of us is handed work. We have to find it, or enable it to find us.

Perhaps the marketing work you need to do is not about blogging, vlogging, tweeting or chatting. Maybe it’s about making a telephone call, attending a networking group, writing an email, sending a letter, or advertising in appropriate spaces.

​Perception 4: Unlike everyone else, you don’t have anything to show off about
I bet you do! Once a week in my Facebook group, I host a marketing #Carnival. It’s a celebration of wins. Any wins – big or small.

And it isn’t just shiny-shiny stuff like winning an award, securing a new client, launching a new product, or publishing a 2,000-word blog post.

It could also be completing a test, sending out 10 letters to prospective clients, filling out a LinkedIn profile, uploading a picture to a website, booking a course, securing a testimonial, creating a marketing to-do list, buying a domain name, or applying for a membership upgrade to a professional editorial society.

Anything that takes our businesses forward is worth celebrating. I’m good at holding a list of my wins in my head but you might prefer to keep a physical record of your achievements.

You don’t need anything fancy – a spreadsheet, a notebook or a space on your wall for Post-it notes.

​Then, when the overwhelm hits, look at that spreadsheet, notebook or wall, and remind yourself of all that you’ve achieved. That focuses attention on what’s been done rather than what’s left to do.

​Perception 5: Editor X is producing a seemingly impossible amount of regular new content
Unlikely! I suspect repurposing is what's going on. Bear in mind the following:

• Old content can be updated
• Guest content can be offered in a new format
• Existing content can be republished on other platforms and in different formats

I've done the following with some of my older blog posts:​

1. Republished on LinkedIn's native blogging platform using copy and paste
2. Republished on Facebook's native blogging platform using copy and paste
3. Edited drastically and created a Twitter thread
4. Reformatted as a booklet
5. Reformatted as a video
6. Reformatted as a slideshow
7. Used the content to build some of the key themes discussed in an online round-table discussion
8. Used the content in a conference presentation
9. Used the content in a live video in a closed Facebook group

There are even more ways to repurpose content for promotional means but you get the picture. 

Repurposing is quicker than creating from scratch and therefore great for the time-poor editor. But it also respects the fact that people like to access help in different ways and at different times.

Even if an editor appears to produce a lot of visible content, it’s more likely that they’re taking shortcuts to make life easier. And so can you!

​Perception 6: There’s just way too much to do at once
You’ve made a list of all the things you’ve seen others doing and it’s huge. Overwhelming, in fact. Ugh. There’s so much:

• Social media engagement
• Blogging
• Learning how to do video
• Advertising in directories
• Building a list of publishers, packagers and project management agencies and contacting them all
• Creating or refining your website
• Developing a newsletter mailing list
• Attending online and offline networking meetings
• And a bajillion other things

You don’t have nearly enough time in your life to get all of it sorted. It would take months and months and months to do all that!

Yep, it would. It might even take a couple of years to get up to full speed. And you know what? That’s fine! It’s supposed to be like that because you're a professional editor not a professional marketer.

So, if you feel overwhelmed by all that needs to be done, take a breath and think in ones.

Even the most visible and active of marketing editors started out with just one blog post, just one tweet, just one small list of publishers, just one directory entry, just one page on a website, just one online group they lurked in.

Everyone has to start somewhere. None of us creates a marketing strategy and nails it a month later.

And marketing gets easier over time because there comes a point where it starts to work for you instead of being a burden. Take me, for example ...

• I can use scheduling tools to quickly access old content and share it.
• I have old blog content that I can repurpose.
• My website’s up and running so I’m tweaking rather than building.
• I’ve already created my directory entries so I only need to renew and tweak once in a while.

Some years back, I was still in the process of developing that stuff. I didn’t do it all at once. I did a bit, then a bit more, then a bit more. Over time, the foundational work was completed, leaving me space to focus on the marketing activities that work best for me now.

Look at your marketing list. Instead of seeing it as an ocean in which to drown, break it down into cups from which you can sip.

Create a doable schedule. Choose a couple of things and an acceptable time frame in which to do them. Then choose a couple more and do those ... small steps that respect and reflect your client base, your personality, and the demands of your work and personal life.

​Beating the overwhelm: A downloadable checklist
There’s more than one way to do marketing. Your way might look different to mine. It might be less visible. It might involve targeting different clients. It might require a different pace. That's all fine.

Download the infographic below and pin it on your wall. It'll remind you that marketing is not about catching up with colleagues. It's a journey, a building process. It does require your time, but you get to choose the methods and the schedule.

If you feel the paralysis setting in, join my Facebook group, tell me what's holding you back, and we'll work out some steps to get you moving in a way that works for you.

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

Editors on the Blog is a monthly column curating some of the posts from the editing community – articles written by editors and proofreaders for colleagues and clients alike.

There are some absolute corkers in this inaugural edition. Thank you so much for contributing!

THE BUSINESS OF EDITING

• ‘How do I get freelance copywriting work?’ by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘One of the commonest questions I’m asked is: How do I get copywriting work? I hope it helps a few of you newbie copywriters to get started.'
• ‘How to get fiction editing and proofreading work’ by Louise Harnby, published on The Proofreader's Parlour. Louise writes: ‘This post looks at how specialization, training, directory advertising, content marketing, events and festivals, workshops and webinars, and reading fiction help to get us fiction editing work.'

​CLIENT FOCUS​

• '6 ways to improve your big-picture revision skills' by Lisa Poisso, published on JamiGold.com. Lisa writes: ‘Building your story sensibilities will give you the confidence to begin your revisions where they count: at the story level.’
• ‘Document content formats: pros and cons’ by John Espirian, published on Espirian. John writes: ‘My clients are often unsure about which document format they should use for their content. In this article, I look at the pros and cons of HTML, PDF, Word and PowerPoint.’
• 'How to cope when your manuscript query is rejected' by Lisa Poisso, published on lisapoisso.com. Lisa writes: ‘Your soul is not being judged at the pearly gates. You’re pitching a book in an industry based on pitching books. Toughen up. Lean into the punches and push back.’
• ‘How to start writing your novel’ by Cally Worden, published on The Enigma Blog. Cally writes: ‘If you perpetually avoid putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) here are five possible reasons why, with some ideas to help you out of each particular novel-writing rut.’
• 'Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?' by Louise Harnby, published on The Proofreader’s Parlour. Louise writes: ‘Understanding your crime-fiction subgenre(s) helps you tell readers where to find you, agents where to place you, and publishers where to shelve you. This article covers some of the biggies.’

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• ‘The art of being invisible’ by Brian Langan, published on Storyline Editing. Brian writes: ‘Book editors measure their success by their invisibility. Yet they share the emotional highs and lows of the authors, depending on the books’ critical reception.’
• ‘Proofreading pitfalls: Nine tips to improve your proofreading strategy’ by Hazel Bird, published on The Wordstitch Blog. Hazel writes: ‘How methodical is your proofreading approach? My latest blog post has nine tips on proofreading strategy from my experience as a project manager and proofreader.’

FREELANCE LIFE

• 'Business continuity planning for your proofreading service' by Pete Haigh, published on Kateproof. Pete writes: ‘My laptop broke. I thought it would be helpful to share my experience of what I did to get my editing and proofreading service back up and running and the lessons learnt (some the hard way!) from this process.’
• ‘Getting better and getting organised’ by Sarah Dronfield, published on Sarah Dronfield Proofreader. Sarah writes: ‘I hope that sharing my experiences will help others recognise when they need a break and/or what they could do to be more productive.’
• ​‘Introductory post to my series on being a nomadic editor and proofreader’ by Kate Haigh, published on Kateproof. Kate writes: ‘As the world’s workforce has the technology at hand to become less geographically fixed, I thought it might help other proofreaders and editors if I shared my experiences of being a nomadic editor and proofreader.’

LANGUAGE MATTERS

• ‘Cambridge Analytica Debacle – The Definition of Breach’ by Laureen Hudson, published on AlienVault. Laureen writes: ‘It's incredibly important, when explaining technology to those who are not fluent in its nuance, to use your words precisely, in a consistent and clear way. And as much as little sideslips like “on premise” and “crypto” make us all twitch, the use of the term “breach” when no actual breach occurred not only misleads people, it blurs the line between those victimized by breaches, and those manipulated without their explicit consent.’
• ‘Shakespeare’s Netymology’ by Laureen Hudson, published on AlienVault. Laureen writes: ‘Because technical editors and technical writers are also looking for ways to describe that thing that happens, we tend to be early adopters of protologisms, and move words along the spectrum to neologisms as fast as we upgrade the technology itself. As Shakespeare said in Henry V, “We, my dear, are the makers of fashion.”’

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

If you're an author, take a look at Louise’s Writing Library and access her latest self-publishing resources, all of which are free and available instantly.

​If you’re an editor, making Word work hard for you is a must. The new and revised edition of Editing in Word 2016 is one of my recommended resources. Here's why.

I’m a fiction editor who works solely for indie authors and self-publishers. I work on raw-text files, and Microsoft Word is one piece of software that I cannot afford to be without.

Word has its snafus but I don’t know of any word-processing software that comes close to offering its superb functionality. I don’t just edit in Word; I’ve also created print- and digital-ready books directly in it.

So when fellow editor and author Adrienne Montgomerie asked me to review the second edition of Editing in Word 2016, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’ve been using Word since 1991, so could Montgomerie teach this old dog a few new tricks? How about younger pups?
​
Let’s see ...

More than an ebook
This is a digital self-study course. Yes, you get the ebook with all the contextual information and foundational teaching. But there are also videos that show Word in action, and a bunch of exercises with which to practise what you learn at each stage of the process.

I love the fact that the advice is actionable. You read, you see, you learn, and then you do. There’s no better way to ensure it’s all sunk in.

A focus on core tools

We certainly do. Here are some of the tools that Montgomerie focuses on:

• Track Changes
• Comments
• Spellchecking
• Formatting
• Find and replace
• Styles
• Readability stats
• The equation editor
• Macros – creating, editing, running and using
• Recommended add-ins, plug-ins and apps

If you don’t know 8 out of 10 of the above tools inside out, you’re likely not as efficient or productive as you could be. That alone makes this course a worthy purchase.

That it’s a steal at just under 25 quid (excluding VAT) makes it a no-brainer.

​Let’s dig a little deeper ...

Screens, operating systems and how we work with Word
One of the best things about this course is its acknowledgement that editors work in different ways.

• I like Windows; you like a Mac. No problem.
• I like a ribbon/mouse combo; you like keyboard shortcuts; and he likes Mac menus. All those preferences are incorporated into the instructions.

Top tips
This course is rammed with useful and actionable tips on how to get stuff done and in ways that respect your preferences. For example:

• Pre-editing file preparation
• Different ways to do things: for example, running a macro or using keyboard-shortcuts instead
• Customizing your onscreen work space
• Incorporating additional plug-ins and apps into Word that will make editing even more efficient

And along the way, Montgomerie includes ‘Pro tips’, ‘Read more’ and ‘Troubleshooting’ callouts to keep you on track.

Video demos
I’m a big fan of multimedia learning. And when it comes to editing, sometimes just hearing your tutor’s voice and watching them go through the motions onscreen can trump the written word.

In addition to the ebook, there's a support website with 27 video tutorials for both Mac and Windows users.

This feature is excellent. I’ve come across a lot of editors who’d like to enhance their digital skills but are held back through fear. Montgomerie takes the stress away via accessible walkthroughs that even the most tech-nervous of nellies will be able to follow.

Here are just 3 examples:

• How to record a macro
• Installing an existing third-party macro
• Setting up autocorrect preferences

Practice makes perfect
There are 24 exercises in this course that help you to hone your skills and start doing what’s written in the book and shown in the videos.

Just a few examples include:

• Using autocorrect
• Locking Track Changes
• Language selection
• Comparing documents
• Customizing Word’s ribbon

A note on versions
This course was created in 2017 using Word 365 on Windows 10 and Sierra OS. Given that the author’s using the latest software and operating systems, you might find that the instructions need a little tweaking here and there if you’re using medieval Word (or should that be Wordeth?)!

For example, older versions of Word might have different ribbon displays, icons and menu options.

That’s unavoidable, and a reminder that, as professionals, we should be aspiring to use up-to-date equipment. I’d prefer my dentist not to fill my teeth with 10-year-old composites; we should treat our clients similarly.

My verdict
Did I learn anything new? Yes, I did. But editorial training isn’t just about finding out what you don’t know; it’s also great for affirmation of what you do know. I was pleased to learn from a pro that a lot of my Word usage is on track.

Here’s another thing, though: there are functions in Word that I use infrequently (e.g. erasing time stamps). I know it’s possible but I’ve simply forgotten how.

​And instead of trawling Google or spending valuable time asking questions in editing forums, I can have Editing in Word open on my desktop. From there, I can search, locate and solve my problem in seconds.

I recommend this without reservation for any editor who wants to get the very best from Word with a one-stop shop, especially those who've been held back by fear. Montgomerie will take that away from you – I promise.

Information and access

• Editing in Word 2016, 2nd ed.
• ISBN: 9781775045717
• Author: Adrienne Montgomerie
• Format: PDF 3.62 MB
• Price: £24.93 (excl. VAT)
• Access: Lulu. To get your copy of EIW16, click on the button below

Louise Harnby is a fiction copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in helping self-publishing writers prepare their novels for market.
​
She is the author of several books on business planning and marketing for editors, and runs online courses from within the Craft Your Editorial Fingerprint series. She is also an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Louise loves books, coffee and craft gin, though not always in that order.

​Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.

Crime fiction falls into a range of subgenres. Knowing where your novel fits helps you understand what readers expect, which published writers you can learn from, and how you might stand out.

This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #91
If you'd prefer to watch a video, scroll down to the bottom of the article.

This article provides an overview of some of the established subgenres, though the list isn’t exhaustive.

There’s crossover certainly and, depending on the commentator, crime fiction gets chopped up into subgenres variously.

I’ve elected not to focus on inverted-detective fiction, heists and capers, LGBTQ mysteries, feminist crime fiction, or romantic suspense, but these subgenres and more all have their place in the market.

One thing’s for sure: ‘Crime fiction is never static and never appears to be running out of ideas,’ says Barbara Henderson.

Two more reasons to know your subgenre
If you’re going it alone, one of your publishing jobs will be to help your readers find your book. When you upload to Amazon, Smashwords or any other distribution platform, you’ll need to decide which BISAC headings to place your book under.

And if you’re going down the traditional publishing route, identifying your subgenre(s) will help a literary agent understand which publishers have a best-fit list and where in a bookstore your novel will be shelved.

If the fit isn’t obvious to you, it could be harder to convince your agent that your book’s marketable.

Ultimately, though, it's the writing that needs to be top-notch, not strict conformity to one or another subgenre. These days, it's probably harder to find crime fiction that isn't fusion of subgenres!

Cosy crime fiction

If much of today’s crime fiction seems gritty, even gratuitously violent, and that’s not the way you want to write, fret not. Cosy crime is alive and kicking (though gently).

What distinguishes the cosy? Murder yes, but leave out the gore, the pain, and depressing social commentary. Your protagonist might well be flawed but no more so than anyone else in the novel, and your readers will embrace your hero’s quirkiness with a skip in their step.

That doesn’t mean the cosy isn’t tight on plot and well-paced action that drive the novel forward. Contemporary readers want fantastic mysteries with twists and turns that will keep them guessing.

Cosies can be liberating for the playful crime writer who wants to explore the genre with non-traditional characters placed in non-traditional settings: 

• ​Agatha Raisin is a former PR agent who moves to a village in the Cotswolds.
• Amy Myers’ Auguste Didier Mysteries feature a Victorian master chef cum sleuth.
• Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who … Mysteries feature Jim Qwilleran and his sleuthing cat Koko.
• Nancy J. Cohen’s Bad Hair Day Mysteries feature a beauty-salon owner.

Classic detective – the Golden Age and beyond

​

RD Collins locates the start of the genre with Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It found its feet with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and entered into a Golden Age in the 1920s with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, among others.
​
The Golden Age introduced ‘rules’ for the genre. Reba White Williams summarizes these as follows:

1. All the clues available to the investigator must be available to the reader.
2. There must be a body and we must be introduced to it quickly.
3. The perpetrator can’t conveniently appear out of nowhere in the finale.
4. The crime must be solved by deduction rather than coincidence.
5. There must be multiple clues that can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and more than one suspect.
6. Details must be accurate.

See also the quote further down from Otto Penzler about locked-room mysteries – no cheating with doubles and magic!

​Today’s authors must abide by the same rules, no matter whether their tales are set in Oxford with Morse, LA with Bosch, or Reykjavik with Erlendur.

Hardboiled crime fiction

That’s a quote from Raymond Chandler in conversation with Ian Fleming in 1958. Chandler’s response was to write crime fiction that was gritty, depressing, violent, cynical and seedy.
​
Hardboiled crime writing, as it came to be known, pulls no punches. The protagonists aren’t invulnerable superheroes. And the environments within which they operate are those of contrast – urban decay and tourist hotspots, hope and corruption.

If your crime writing falls into this category, don’t set an amateur protagonist sleuth alongside foolish law-enforcement officers who have neither brains nor access to detection resources.

Hardboiled isn’t pretty but it’s rich in believability. Plots are fattened with complex characters, social commentary and, of course, murder.

Says Matthew Lewin on the contemporary hardboiled crime fiction of James Lee Burke and James Ellroy:

​Think Harry Bosch. Tim Walker refers to his creator Michael Connelly as ‘the modern Raymond Chandler’. ‘Connelly says he still sees it as a duty to acknowledge the social climate in his novels’.

​Think also Rebus; Ian Rankin, like Connelly, fuses hardboiled with police procedural masterfully. 

With hardboiled, even when the crime is solved, your readers won’t expect to close the book feeling that everyone will live happily ever after.

​Historical crime fiction

Popular series feature CJ Sansom’s Shardlake, SJ Parris’s Giordano Bruno, Susanna Gregory’s Thomas Chaloner, and Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael.

The genre is as interesting for its criminal investigations as for the lessons in social history afforded to the reader. And because the reader needs to understand the historical setting, these novels are often long.

Sansom’s Dark Fire comes in at a whopping 600-plus pages. I have the hardback version and I’m sure I bulked up my biceps just carrying the book from Waterstones to the car park.

If historical fiction floats your writing boat, be prepared to put in the research. Many of your readers will know their history so you’ll need to dig deep.

It’s no accident that the protagonists in these novels are curious renegade monks, lawyers, scholars and the like. The criminal justice system as it exists in our era bears little resemblance to that in these bygone days. Consider the following:

• How did the law work in your time period and location?
• Where did power reside? With the church, the monarchy, the government, or the military?
• What obstacles would your protagonist have been up against? Think gender, access to education, and class boundaries for starters.
• Would your antagonist have had an easier ride than a contemporary baddie? Think modern forensics, technology, transport, communications and socio-economic factors.

Some historical fiction is cosier and shorter. Consider David Dickinson’s Lord Powerscourt and Emily Brightwell’s Mrs Jeffries. These Victorian mysteries offer plenty of intrigue and good old-fashioned murder, but we’re spared the grisly details.

Don’t be surprised to see this lighter crime fiction splashed with a dose of humour as the authors cast their gaze over the social-economic and gender disparities typical of the era.

​Still, if the Regency or Victorian cosy is your bag, you’ll still need to gen up on period details.

​Legal and medical crime fiction

Courtrooms, labs and hospitals make for great crime fiction, and ‘lawyers and doctors make effective protagonists since they seem to exist on a plane far above the rest of us. Although popular, these tales are usually penned by actual lawyers and doctors due to the demands of the information presented,’ writes Stephen D. Rogers.

Here are some examples:

• John Grisham (A Time to Kill, The Runaway Jury) is a former criminal lawyer.
• Kathy Reichs (Déjà Dead, Bare Bones) is certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.
• Robin Cook (Coma, Godplayer) is a trained medical doctor.

That old trope of writing what you know comes into play here and it’s a good reminder that using your own specialist knowledge to bring authenticity to your crime writing makes good sense. And if you’re not a former cop, doc or lawyer but you have friends who are, be sure to pick their brains.

In particular, research the role of your legal or medical protagonist and ensure that the powers of investigation you assign to them are appropriate for their location.

​Even if you’re pushing the boundaries of existing science, to give your reader the best experience the foundations will need to be solid.

Locked-room crime fiction

The crime scene is that of a moving train, a secluded and heavily guarded house, an aeroplane, a single-track road with only one way in and one way out ... less whodunnit, more howdunnit.
​
A locked-room novelist is the illusionist of crime writing, the creator of ‘impossible’ fiction. And yet not so impossible as it turns out, as our brilliant protagonist gradually reveals all.

Take care though. No cheating is allowed with locked-room crime. Says Otto Penzler:

Well-known examples include:

• And Then There Were None: Agatha Christie
• The Hollow Man: John Dickson Carr
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Edgar Allan Poe

​The artistry of the locked-room mystery lies in the author’s ability to deliver a reveal that doesn’t rely on a device that doesn’t exist in real life, that doesn’t require information to be deliberately withheld from the reader, and isn’t so obvious as to be deducible at the beginning of the story.

I recommend The Locked-room Mysteries, Penzler’s superb anthology for aspiring locked-room crime writers who want to see masters at work. It's huge – over 930 pages – ​and heavy, but literally worth its weight.

Police procedural

If you’re writing a police procedural, your in-depth research will need to be top-notch. The angle you take will be determined by your protagonist’s skills. Examples include:

• Harry Bosch: detective (Michael Connelly)
• Jenny Cooper: coroner (MR Hall)
• John Rebus: detective (Ian Rankin)
• Kay Scarpetta: medical examiner (Patricia Cornwell)
• Kurt Wallander: detective (Henning Mankell)
• Lincoln Rhyme: forensic consultant (Jeffery Deaver)
• Temperance Brennan: forensic anthropologist (Kathy Reichs)

Procedurals are notable for their thoroughly researched and authentic rendering of detection, evidence-gathering, forensics, autopsies, and interrogation procedures in order to solve the novel’s crime(s).

Wowser tools and tech don’t come at the cost of strong characterization though. Rhyme is paralyzed following an on-scene accident. Cooper is recovering from the breakdown of her marriage. Rebus has a history of trauma dating from his former military career. Wallander has diabetes, and his daughter attempted suicide in her teenage years.

These in-depth backstories provide complexity and conflict – a kind of layering that fattens the plot without complicating it.

I find Cooper a little whiny, Rebus grumpy, Scarpetta arrogant, Wallander depressing. That doesn’t stop me falling in love with them though. In fact, flawed characters can balance the sterility of the procedural details.
​
And you, the writer, might find a protagonist with foibles more enjoyable to write. Mankell did:

Spy thriller

When it comes to spy stories, your protagonist is a spook, the nation’s safety the hook. It’s a race against time – against a larger-than-life antagonist – in order to save, well, everyone. The plots are usually complex and the action high-octane.
​
‘When you’re writing spy fiction you have one overriding goal: to keep the reader turning the pages,’ says Graeme Shimmin.
​
Here’s some great advice from Kathrine Roid: Don’t wing it when it comes to plot:

If you’re wandering into spy-fi territory, you’ll have a little more freedom to play with gadgetry. If you’re keeping it real, do the research. Know your guns and your gear so that your protagonist doesn’t end up more tactifool than tactical.

But old on a mo. Your spy crime fiction doesn’t have to be a sprint like Robert Ludlum’s or Clive Cussler’s. Mick Herron is one of my favourite writers. The pace might be a little gentler but the brooding narrative is utterly believable. His Jackson Lamb series features the ‘slow horses’ – MI5 agents who’ve messed up and been put out to graze in the backwoods of inactive service.

Herron’s crime isn’t spy-fi – there are no wacky gadgets to get Lamb’s crew out of a fix. The characters are vulnerable, disgruntled, and bored ... until there’s a crime and Lamb suspects the spooks. It’s a fine example of character-driven writing with attention to detail on Service procedural and detection legwork.

Private eye and amateur sleuth

The private-eye tradition crosses subgenres: from cosy to hardboiled to classic thriller.

• For cosies, consider MC Beaton’s Agatha Raisin mysteries and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Here, the amateur sleuth is surrounded by far less knowledgeable and somewhat hapless police officers.
• For hardboiled, think Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Tim Weaver’s David Raker. Raker is a former journalist who, following the death of his wife, turns to investigating missing persons.
• Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton offer two examples of gritty female PI protagonists in the form of V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone.
• One of my favourites is ‘accidental detective’ Myron Bolitar, a slightly softer-boiled sports agent with excellent martial arts skills and a compelling backup team.
• And let us not forget Precious Ramotswe, Alexander McCall Smith’s delicious founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. McCall Smith manages to keep things light without getting too cosy, and captivate without shocking. It’s gentle, penetrating crime fiction.

Telling your story through a point-of-view character who works outside law enforcement has its advantages: your protagonist can behave and move in ways that a detective can’t, at least not without risking their job.

On the other hand, your sleuth won’t have access to the wealth of contemporary resources available to the police.
​
And take care not to make your amateur’s successes depend on witless professionals. Certainly, every organization/service has its fools and bad apples, and crime fiction is the perfect tool with which to explore police and state corruption, but contemporary readers are unlikely to engage with a novel whose chief investigator is an oaf.

Transgressor/noir

If this is your bag, you’ll go where others fear to tread. Whodunnit is still in the mix, but whydunnit is close behind.

It shares the grit of hardboiled but is distinctive for its focus on the narratives of the transgressor (Eoin McNamee: Resurrection Man), the victim (Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), or both (Lippman: I’d Know You Anywhere).

The authors who do this subgenre best seem almost to be able to channel their characters’ psychosocial conflict, and dig deep into the predator–prey relationship.

And even when the detective is the protagonist, they’re less superhero than anti-hero, troubled by demons, working despite – rather than within – an establishment as troubled as them (James Ellroy: LA Confidential; Antonin Varenne: Bed of Nails).

​Says Penzler in ‘Noir fiction is about losers, not private eyes’:

​Regional variants – e.g. Tartan, Scandinavian, Emerald – that represent the landscape, culture, idiom, and social and political identity of their settings have emerged to international acclaim.

A quick note on subgenre fusion

Your book might well fall into what Agnieszka Sienkiewicz-Charlish calls genre syncretism: ‘the hard-boiled detective story, the police procedural, Gothic fiction and the psycho-social novel’. She offers Rankin’s Rebus novels as an example.

Consider also China Miéville's The City & The City. In this novel, two locations occupy the same physical space. At heart, it's a police procedural, but there's a speculative/fantasy take on the hardboiled tradition: the shiny surfaces of one city butt up against a grubbier alternate, yet residents of each are legally bound to 'unsee' each other. As such, Mieville incorporates a subtle commentary on state authoritarianism, surveillance and corruption into a murder investigation.

Genre syncretism can help your work stand out, but take care to recognize the conventions of each so that the core subgenre elements are all done well. No reader will thank you for promising a fusion of hardboiled and police procedural if both are half-baked. Good writing trumps everything.

I hope you find this useful and wish you sleuthing success on your crime-writing journey!

And there's that video I promised for those of you who'd prefer to watch or listen.

​Further reading

• ‘From cozy to caper: A guide to mystery genres’: Stephen D. Rogers, Writing World, 2002
• ‘Henning Mankell: I'm not afraid of dying’: Interview with John Preston, The Telegraph, 2011
• ‘How to write a crime novel’: Penguin Random House webinar with Dr Barbara Henderson, 2018
• ‘How to write a spy