FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

Every professional editor and proofreader wants to attract best-fit clients who are prepared to commit to a contract of editorial services. For the most part, bookings go smoothly – cancellations, delays, and failures to pay are unusual. Still, editorial business owners need to protect themselves ... just in case.

This article doesn’t seek to offer you a model contract or set of terms and conditions (T&Cs), though you’re welcome to look at mine for inspiration: Terms and conditions.

Instead, I want to explore some ideas about how to develop your spidey sense, and use language and tools that will repel those who’d let you down.

What does ‘delay’ mean to you?
The concept of the delay is nonsense to an editorial business owner.

If a client asks you to proofread a book, tells you the proofs will arrive with you on 10 May, and requests return of the marked-up proofs a week later, and you agree to take on the job, those are the terms: proofread to start 10 May; delivery 7 days later.

You’ll schedule the project accordingly, and will decline to work for anyone else from 10–17 May. If two weeks ahead of the start date you’re told ‘there’ll be a delay’, you’ll likely have no work for 10–17 May unless you can fill that space at the last minute. Moreover, you will be booked for another project during the period when the project will become available.

To my mind, that’s not a delay. You can’t magic additional hours out of thin air. That’s a cancellation of the project terms that were agreed to by both parties.

Make sure your T&Cs reflect this. Don’t use the language of delay if it means nothing to you. Have a cancellation policy and make it clear that confirmed bookings are for an agreed time frame, and that failure to meet the agreed date will invoke that cancellation policy.

You might decide not to invoke it as a courtesy, but having it could reduce the likelihood of having to make the decision.

Is ‘deposit’ a strong enough term?
The word ‘deposit’ should be strong enough as long as the refund terms are clear. Still, you might want to couch your language along the lines of what editor and book coach Lisa Poisso calls ‘real money’.
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I don’t refer to deposits in my terms and conditions. I call them booking fees. A fee is a payment. It’s the language of money. ‘Deposit’ as a noun has a broader mass-of-material meaning; as a verb it means to place something somewhere. Maybe, for some people, it has a softer feel to it.

Of course, anyone required to pay a deposit knows full well that the financial definition is being referred to. Nevertheless, using the language of money – a fee – might well encourage time-wasters to think twice.

The following might also work for you:

• down payment
• advance payment
• prepayment

What you charge upfront is up to you. Some editors charge a 50% booking fee rather than a flat rate. Some require one third to secure the booking, another third just before editing starts, and the remaining third upon completion of the project. You can define your own model.

Do you have a booking form?
You and a client can agree to your providing editorial services via email, and emails count contractually. But how about requiring a specific additional action, one that reinforces a sense of commitment?

Asking someone to fill in a booking form that confirms they have read, understood and agreed to your terms and conditions, including your booking fee and your cancellation policy, means they have to make a proactive decision to commit.

When it comes to filling in a form and ticking boxes, a non-committed client is less likely to feel comfortable than a good-fit one because it feels more formal.
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You can create a PDF booking form that you’ll email manually, or create the form on your website. My choice is the latter. I include it below my T&Cs. That way, the booking and the terms are closely linked.

Here’s a screenshot of mine. Notice the boxes that must be checked in order to confirm the booking.

Is ‘booking form’ a strong enough term?
Even if someone is prepared to fill in a form and check some boxes, agreeing to a contract might make them think twice. That has a more legally binding feel about it; it’s more formal. And it might be the thing that repels someone who’s going to let you down.
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My T&Cs state that the booking-confirmation form is an agreement to the contract of services between me and the client, and the phrase ‘Contract of services agreement’ is the heading is what appears when the click on the booking-confirmation form button.

Are your terms and conditions detailed enough?
In the main, your website should be client-focused. It should make the client feel that you understand their problems, are able to deliver solutions, and understand what the impact of your solutions will be.

Your brand voice should sing out loud. In my case, for example, that means using a gentle, nurturing tone.

However, when it comes to your terms and conditions, forget all the touchy-feely stuff – this is where you and the client get down to business. It’s in everyone’s interests to know what’s what.

That might mean that your T&Cs are rather dull and boring. No matter. It’s the one place on your website where you’re allowed to be dull and boring!

I feel like chewing my own arm off when I read my T&Cs but I don’t want any of my clients in doubt about what I’m offering and what they’re getting.

Think about the following:

• How much do you charge for a booking fee or advance payment?
• What are the penalties for cancellation and when do they kick in?
• Is final payment required before the edited project is delivered to the client?
• If you’ll deliver first, will payment be required immediately? Within 7 days? Within 30 days?
• Are there penalties for late payment of the final invoice?
• Does your booking form require confirmation that your terms have been read, understood and agreed to?

A non-committed client will be repelled if your terms put them at risk. A good-fit client will feel reassured that they’re dealing with a fellow professional who takes the editing work as seriously as they do.

Are the basics front and centre?
Many editors place links to the detailed contractual stuff in their website’s footer, which means the T&Cs are almost invisible. Even a good-fit client probably won’t see or read your T&Cs during their initial search for editorial services.

That’s the case on my website. If it’s the same for you, consider placing the basics front and centre.

I’ve created a box on my contact page that spells out the non-refundable booking fee I charge.

Will it put off some potential clients? Absolutely. But if someone can’t afford that booking fee or doesn’t dare take the risk of making a payment because they’re unsure whether they’ll honour the contract, they’re not the right client for me.

Spotting red flags
Developing your spidey sense can reduce the likelihood of becoming entangled with those who’ll back out of confirmed bookings or fail to pay.

Though there’s no foolproof way to protect yourself from non-committed clients, there are red flags you can look out for:

• The person tells you they want to go ahead and hire you for a specific time frame but doesn’t fill in the booking form, or you have to nudge them several times. This could indicate that they’re not yet committed to working with you.
• The person fills in the booking form but fails to pay your booking fee. This is a strong indicator that the funds are not in place, and might never be.
• The person fills in a booking form and pays the fee but seeks to change the terms they booked under. This is a strong indicator that they’re not in the right mindset to commit to your editing services.
• The person is consistently slow to respond to emails during the initial discussion phase, and needs frequent nudging about the state of play. This might indicate that they don’t take your business offering seriously.
• The person gives you conflicting information about what’s required, or repeats questions about money and dates that you’ve already answered. This indicates they’ve not read your correspondence properly, which could lead to problems later.
• The person hasn’t begun the writing process, or has but isn’t sure when they’ll finish. If you don’t keep in regular touch with the client to check the project’s on track – which is time-consuming – the project could go off the rails and you’ll be none the wiser.

Summing up
I hope these tips help you avoid non-committed clients and safeguard your business. Even if you implement some of my ideas, there are no guarantees unless you ask for 100% of your fee upfront. However, rest assured that most clients are honest, committed and trustworthy individuals who are a pleasure to work with.

As for those who blow you out, a few are scoundrels. Others aren’t but are thoughtless and haven’t taken the time to understand the emotional and financial impact of cancellations and non-payment. Others have got cold feet. And some have been struck by unusual or extraordinary circumstances like bereavement. Most don’t mean to cause distress or place editors in financial hardship, even though those are two very real potential outcomes.
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By using real-money language and action-driving tools, we can build stronger bonds of trust with those who are serious about working with us, and repel most of those who aren’t.

If the thought of punctuating your novel’s dialogue brings you out in a sweat, let me mop your brow with these 7 tips.

In this article, we'll look at the following:
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1. How to indicate speech
2. Creating pauses and trail-offs
3. Showing interruptions
4. How to punctuate tagged speech
5. Working with broken-up dialogue
6. Handling vocative expressions
7. Dealing with faltering speech​

​1. Indicating speech
Quotation marks – or speech marks – are how authors usually indicate the spoken word. There are two choices – singles or doubles. Either are acceptable.
 
In US fiction publishing it’s more common to use doubles; in British fiction singles dominate. That doesn’t mean you must use doubles if you’re an American author or singles if you’re a British author. It’s not about right or wrong but about style, preference and convention.
 
Think about what your reader will expect to see and what’s standard where you live. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) recommends doubles, but acknowledges that the convention is for singles in the UK and elsewhere.
 
The most important thing is to be consistent and never use two single quotation marks instead of a double.
 
The following passages from published works illustrate each style:

Nested quotation marks
Sometimes you’ll need to place speech within speech (or quotes within quotes). To differentiate the speaker, use the alternate style for your internal or nested quotation marks:

Smart vs unidirectional marks
It’s conventional in mainstream publishing to use smart or curly quotation marks, not unidirectional ones. (The same applies to apostrophes, by the way.)

Some online fonts (like the one I use for the body text on my website) don’t do a good job of differentiating smart and unidirectional quotation marks, but word-processing software like Microsoft Word does – even with sans serif fonts.
 
To prevent the problem occurring from the minute you begin typing:
 

• Go to FILE and select OPTIONS
• Select PROOFING, then click on the AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS button
• Choose the AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE tab
• Make sure there’s a tick in the "STRAIGHT QUOTES" WITH “SMART QUOTES” box
• Click on OK

 
If you’ve pasted material into your book from elsewhere, or you didn’t check autocorrect options before you began typing, there might be some rogue unidirectional marks in your file. To change them quickly, do a global find/replace:
 

• Select CTRL+H on your keyboard to open FIND AND REPLACE
• Type a quotation mark into the FIND WHAT box
• Type the same quotation mark into the REPLACE WITH box
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

Alternative speech-indicator marks
An alternative way of displaying speech is via the em dash. This method can get messy if you have more than two speakers in a conversation, so use it with care.

The em is the longest in the dash suite. In the image below (1) is a hyphen, (2) is an en dash and (3) is the em dash.

Sylvain Neuvel uses this technique in Sleeping Giants, the first book in the hugely enjoyable Themis Files series.
 
While some chapters in the novel use standard quotation marks, most are case-file chapters that are entirely composed of dialogue between a known character and an agent who plays a key part in the story but remains anonymous and elusive to us throughout.
 
Each speaker’s turn is indicated with an em dash. The agent’s speech is rendered in bold.
 
If Neuvel had chosen the standard route, he’d have been forced to use clunky speech tags such as ‘the agent said’, and even reveal the agent’s gender to mix things up a little. Instead, the chapters are compelling, mysterious, but cleanly and tightly delivered.
 
Here’s an excerpt from p. 104:

​Same speaker; new paragraph
One final word on quotation marks. If you want your dialogue to take a new paragraph while retaining the current speaker, use a quotation mark at start of the new line but omit the closing one at the end of the previous paragraph.
 
This example from Jo Nesbo’s The Bat (p. 251) illustrates the convention:

2. Trailing-off and pauses in speech
The ellipsis is used to indicate a pause or speech trailing-off at the end of a sentence.
Here’s an excerpt from At Risk (p. 434) by Stella Rimington:

Notice how Rimington doesn’t also tell us that the character’s voice has trailed off, which would be unnecessary clutter. Here’s how it might have gone if she hadn’t trusted the ellipsis to do its job and her readers to understand that:
 
     She shook her head, her eyes unfocused. Then, draining her pint glass, she nudged it towards him. ‘Could you …?’ Jean said, her voice trailing off.
     ‘Yeah, sure.’
 
Here are examples from Sleeping Giants (p. 204) and At Risk (p. 434) where an ellipsis is used to indicate a mid-sentence pause:

The spacing of ellipses
CMOS asks for three full stops (or periods) separated by non-breaking spaces (1). Non-breaking spaces stop the elements they’re positioned between from becoming separated because of a line break.

​You can create one using your keyboard with the keys CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE. However, once again that’s a style choice. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the tighter single ellipsis character in Word (2).

The Unicode character for the ellipsis is 2026. To access it, go to the INSERT tab in Word’s ribbon, select SYMBOL, then MORE SYMBOLS.

Make sure the font is set to normal text (3) before you type the code into the character-code box (4).

From here on in, when you click on SYMBOL the ellipsis will show up in the list of recently used symbols. If you’re using a professional editor, you can ask them to ensure that your ellipses are rendered correctly, though it’s something most pros would check as a matter of course.
 
CMOS also recommends the following:
 

• Ellipsis occurring mid-sentence: space either side
• Ellipsis occurring at the beginning of a sentence: space after
• Ellipsis occurring at the end of a sentence: space before

 
Professional publishers use this style, and I recommend that self-publishers follow suit.

3. End-of-line interruptions in speech
To indicate that a speaking character has been interrupted, use an em dash. No matter whether you’re publishing in US or UK style, this is the tool of choice.
 
It’s a harder piece of punctuation and does a superb job of indicating emotions like impatience, curtness, disbelief, rudeness, frustration and anger on the part of the interrupting speaker.
 
Here’s a fast-paced conversation between Louisa and Min in Mick Herron’s Dead Lions (p. 115):

This use of the em dash keeps the dialogue moving at a fast pace.
 
Like Rimington, Herron doesn’t tell it twice. There are no cluttering speech tags or repetitive explanations that tell us how each speaker interrupted the other. The pace cracks like a whip and we’re offered an authentic back-and-forth.
 
Here’s one more example from Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot (p. 380). It shows how the em dash evokes a sense of impatience from the speaker who cuts in:

4. Punctuating tagged speech
Your character’s just spoken a complete sentence, and you want to follow through with a tag that tells the reader who said what (e.g. he said, she said). How does the punctuation work before the closing quotation mark at the end of the sentence?
 
The comma does the job, even when the sentence is complete, unless you’re finishing with an exclamation mark or a question mark. If there’s no tag following the dialogue, you can use a full stop.

Here are some examples from Parting Shot (p. 80) to show you how it works:

Note that when you follow up with second- or third-person speech tags (you said/he said/she said/they said) they always take lower case, whether the punctuation before the closing quotation mark is a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation mark.

5. Punctuating broken-up dialogue
If you want to break up your dialogue with speech tags or other stage direction, but your character hasn’t finished speaking, commas or dashes will help you keep your dialogue in order. The key is to get the punctuation right in the text between the dialogue too.
 
Let’s look at two more examples, both from The Chosen Ones by Howard Linskey (pp. 295, 306):

The unbroken speech would appear as ‘I assume that this is not the place.’ and ‘Then he gets nothing and he won’t be able to use it, will he?’

Nevertheless, it is conventional within most mainstream publishing companies to add a comma before the first closing quotation mark and after the speech tag. These commas act as parentheses.

If your dialogue is broken with description rather than speech tags, dashes can offer more clarity than commas. If you’re sticking to CMOS style, closed-up em dashes will be your choice. If you prefer the shorter en dash, place spaces around either side of it.
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Here’s an example from CMOS (6.87) using closed-up em dashes:

And here’s how it would look using spaced en dashes and single quotation marks if you were following UK publishing convention:

6. Punctuating vocative expressions in dialogue
A vocative expression is one where the person being addressed is directly referred to in a sentence. It needn’t be someone’s name; it could be a form of address that relates to their job or position, one that’s a term of respect (or disrespect).

​Commas are required for clarity.
 

• If the vocative expression comes at the beginning of the sentence, place a comma after it.
• If the vocative expression comes at the end of the sentence, place a comma before it.
• If the vocative expression interrupts a sentence, place a comma before and after it.

 
Here are some examples:

Punctuating vocative expressions incorrectly can lead to ambiguity. Compare the following examples of dialogue. Notice how the missing comma changes the meaning from expressions of address to instructions to carry out acts of violence!

7. Indicating faltering speech
If your character is out of breath, taken aback, caught off guard, frightened, or nervous, you might want to indicate faltering speech with punctuation.
 
There are no absolute rules about how you do this because it depends on the effect you want to achieve.
 

• For softer faltering where full words are repeated, try ellipses. They moderate the rhythm.
• For sharper faltering where the character stumbles over syllables, try hyphens. They provide a more staccato rhythm.
• For elongated faltering where the speaker is struggling to start a word and then takes a breath to compose themselves, a combination of repeated letters followed by ellipses could work.

 
Here’s how Sophie Hannah does it in one of her Hercule Poirot continuation novels, Closed Casket (p. 165):

And here’s a made-up example showing a more staccato faltering:

And here’s how Sylvain Neuvel handles scientist Marina Antoniou in Waking Gods (p. 103). This character consistently struggles with her speech so Neuvel uses a combo of repeated letters to elongate the starting consonants, followed by ellipses to show her process of forcing out the remainder of her words.
 
His approach is unconventional but it imparts an authentic sense of Antoniou fighting with her voice:

​
Use common sense with your speech tags. If you’ve made it obvious from the punctuation that the character’s speech is faltering, you needn’t tell the reader twice:
 
     ‘No. I-I-I mean not really. It was an accident. I just s-s-saw him standing there and I kinda flipped,’ Jack stammered.
 
If your character has a stammer, by all means use these tools to indicate it here and there but don’t feel compelled to litter the dialogue with it. Readers have good memories; nudges are enough. Overdo it and you risk dulling the writing and making your reader frustrated.
 
That’s it! Happy dialogue punctuating!

Cited sources

• At Risk by Stella Rimington. Arrow, 2015
• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah. Harper, 2017
• Dead Lions by Mick Herron. John Murray, 2017
• Parting Shot by Linwood Barclay. Orion, 2017
• Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. Penguin, 2016
• Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson. Hodder & Stoughton, 2018
• The Bat by Jo Nesbo. Vintage, 2013
• The Chicago Manual of Style (Online)
• The Chosen Ones by Howard Linskey. Penguin, 2018
• The Fix by David Baldacci. Pan Books, 2017
• Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel. Penguin, 2017

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

• 10 tips for proofreading and copyediting self-published fiction by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour: Louise writes: 'Here are 10 tips to help you prepare a mindful way for editing and proofreading fiction for independent authors and self-publishers.'
• How to create an amazing portfolio: Using stories to stand out by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour: Louise writes: 'An editing site without a visible portfolio is at a disadvantage. It’s the next best thing to the social proof of a testimonial because it demonstrates that you practise what you preach. Using stories is a method every editor can use to bring their portfolio page to life.'

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​CLIENT FOCUS​: BUSINESS AND OTHER NON-FICTION

• Business communication layering: Technical content for different audiences by Howard Walwyn, published on Prism-Clarity.com. Howard writes: ‘I’m not usually a fan of writing templates, but this one can be used across a wide range of business formats and is a great way of reaching different audiences with the same content.’
• It’s good to make mistakes by Claire Bacon, published on Bacon Editing Blog. Claire writes: ‘Writing a research paper in a second language is hard. In this post, I encourage non-native English-speaking scientists to improve their writing by learning from their mistakes.’

CLIENT FOCUS​: FICTION

•  10 ways a book editor can help besides editing by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes: ‘An editor can give you a hand out of all sorts of tight spots in your book’s development, not just writing and editing. A seasoned outside eye can help you smooth out story issues before you start writing or help you sell your novel effectively once you’ve finished.’
• Everything wrong with your vovel in 15 minutes by Kerri Miller, published on Utopian Editing. Kerri writes: ‘If you’ve ever watched CinemaSins on YouTube, you know their movie critiques are harsh but all too often true. As an author, you need to steel yourself and find a developmental editor who will help save your book from a similar fate (though hopefully with a little more tact).’
  
• Is your book ready for editing? by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity.
  Lisa writes: ‘When it’s time to come back to the drafting table to rework your manuscript, how many drafts is enough? The answer: as many as it takes to develop and polish all the elements that support your story.’
• Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes: 'By playing with commas and conjunctions you can alter the rhythm of a sentence. Changing the rhythm can help your readers immerse themselves deeper in the mood of your narrative and the emotions of your characters.' 
• Should I ask for feedback on my novel while I’m still writing it? by Sophie Playle, published on Liminal Pages. Sophie writes: ‘Feedback on an incomplete first draft can assure an author they’re on the right path and inspire them to keep going, but it can equally knock their confidence and cause them to give up … So what should they do? Here’s my advice.’
• Trim the fat from your fiction: Redundancy by Kerri Miller, published on Utopian Editing. Kerri writes: ‘Redundancy can bloat your manuscript and bog down the reader. Learn how to recognize and trim the most common types in fiction.’
  
• What kind of editing do I need? by Kerri Miller, published on Utopian Editing. Kerri writes: ‘First-time authors might find the editing process confusing. What types of editing are there? When should each kind be performed? Read on for a lifeline.’
  
• Writing a crime novel – should you plan or go with the flow? by Louise Harnby, published on The Parlour. Louise writes:  'Some crime writers are planners. Some are pantsers (so called because they fly by the seat of their pants). Neither is better than the other. What matters is that the method you choose to write your story works for you and results in a tale well told.'

EDITING IN PRACTICE

• Help! My edit is choking my computer! by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity.
  Lisa writes: ‘Word takes a lot of heat for choking on big documents when it’s really the user’s computer hardware at fault. The little laptop or older computer that’s served you so loyally for writing may not be able to keep up now that you’re showing and hiding tracked changes and formatting marks and forcing your system to repaginate on the fly.’
• PerfectIt, the copyeditor’s meticulous sidekick by Kerri Miller, published on Utopian Editing. Kerri writes: ‘Thinking about trying PerfectIt but can’t make up your mind? I documented my first experience with it and shared some thoughts that might help.’
  

LANGUAGE MATTERS

• ​Affordable ways to learn to be a better writer by Lisa Poisso, published on Clarity. Lisa writes: ‘Professional editing is overkill when you’re still getting basic writing skills under your belt—grammar, spelling, punctuation, usage, and fiction-specific narrative techniques such as dialogue and point of view. If you’re still learning to write, don’t invest in editing. Invest in writing.'
• Better words than 'said' by David Mundy, published on FPI Proofreading. David writes: 'Gustave Flaubert would spend an age looking for "le mot juste" in his writing! Here is a list, amassed by my 13 year-old students, of 180 words that can be used to replace the ubiquitous and over-used "said" in dialogue.'

​Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, and a Partner 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.

Here are 10 tips to help you prepare the way for editing and proofreading fiction for independent authors and self-publishers.

If your editorial business is relatively new and you’re keen to specialize in fiction editing, there are some core issues that are worth considering. Some of these certainly apply to other specialisms, but fiction does bring its own joys and challenges.

You'll need to be sensitive to the fact that your clients may not be familiar with conventional editorial workflows or the terms we use to describe them!

​Clarify what the client expects, especially when using terms like ‘proofreading’ and 'editing'.
​

• Most authors who ask for proofreading actually want what editorial pros would traditionally call copyediting – checking and correcting the raw text files in Word (usually using Track Changes).
• Editorial pros themselves don’t use universal terminology. One editor’s copyediting could include developmental work, while another's could be strictly sentence-level editing.
• Offer advice on the different levels of editing, and be honest about which ones you’re capable of supplying.

​

​Clarify the extent of revision required before you agree a price.
​

• A final quality-control check for spelling, punctuation, grammar and consistency errors may be the least of what’s required.
• Deeper problems may exist that ideally would have been attended to at an earlier editing stage – for example, problems with clarity, plot holes or inconsistencies, repetitive words and phrases, mangled sentence structure, dangling modifying clauses – all of which disfigure the text.
• Your copyediting could well include line editing – that takes longer and has to be factored into the budget.

​

​Find out how many stages of professional editing the file has already been through.
​

• If you’re the first, it’s more than likely that you’ll make thousands of amendments.
• Perfection, while aimed for, will be impossible unless you have superpowers!
• Make it clear that one pass is not enough to ensure that every literal and contextual error is attended to.
• Be honest about what’s possible within the available budget.

​

​What’s required according to the editorial pro and what’s desired by the client (owing to budget or some other factor) could well be two very different things.
​

• You’re entitled to decline the work if you feel you can’t do what the client wants, given what hasn’t gone before.
• The client is also entitled to not take their book through four stages of professional revision if they choose. If they want your help and you think you can help, and you’re both clear about how far that help can go, then by all means work with the author. If you prefer to wave goodbye, then that’s fine too.

​

​The authors we’re working with are at different stages of writing-craft development.

Some are complete beginners, some are emerging, others are developing and yet others are seasoned artists. If they’re in discussion with us, it’s because they think we can help.
​

• Even the beginner and emerging writers I’ve worked with have many strengths. Perhaps the sentences are awkward and repetitive, and yet the story they support and the characters who live within the narrative are amazing.
• An editorial report that summarizes strengths and weaknesses can help the author to develop their craft. I don’t provide professional manuscript evaluations/critiques or development/structural editing. That doesn’t mean I can’t tell the client what I liked, what I think they can work on, and where they might go to develop their skills.
• My editorial summaries range from a few paragraphs to a couple of A4 pages depending on what I find. They don’t take long to produce because I jot down notes as I work through the books – short reminders to myself about the points I want to make.

​

​Sometimes the author and the editor are simply not a good fit for each other. In the case of fiction, this can be because the editor's can't emotionally connect with the story.
​

• If, for example, deeper line editing is required, the editor will need to ‘get’ the author, be able to feel their way into the soul of the text so that they can polish without stripping out the author’s voice or style of writing.
• Repeating the mantra ‘It’s not my book’ can help but the ability to mimic the author is often intuitive more than anything else.
• If you don’t feel that intuition kicking in when you see the initial sample of the book – if it’s not grabbing you – it might well be necessary to walk away unless you’re being hired for micro correction work that focuses on spelling, grammar, punctuation and consistency.

​

​There are challenges and benefits to fiction editing and proofreading.
​

• On the one hand, fiction lends itself to flexibility with regard to strict adherence to pedantry, especially when that pedantry does more harm than good.
• Editing and proofreading fiction is in some ways nowhere near as technically demanding as an academic project with a book-length style guide attached to it and a reference list of a similar length.
• On the other hand, however, that very flexibility makes fiction work trickier too. Improving prose so that it meets publishing-industry standards while retaining authenticity of voice, flow, mood and style requires not a little artistry.
• If you've been hired to copyedit or proofread, you might not expect to have to deal with viewpoint problems. Still, they arise often enough with self-publishers that it's worth understanding how POV works so that you can query or fix. This post is how I explain it to beginner crime-writing authors but the principles apply across genres: A beginner's guide to narrative point of view in crime writing.
• Being emotionally responsive to the text is essential. That's a difficult thing to learn on a course. 
• Every change or suggestion needs to be carried out gently and elegantly so that the editor’s input is invisible to the reader. Some editors and proofreaders steer well clear of fiction; for others, it’s the best job in the world! There’s no shame in deciding it’s not for you.

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​Unless you’ve previously worked with the author, work on a short sample so that you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
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• Sometimes it’s only by actually working on a piece, rather than just reading it through, that you get a sense of where the problems are and whether you’re capable of solving them within the asked-for brief.
• This will help you to get the fee spot on, too, because you’ll be able to extrapolate how long it should take to complete the project.

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​All querying requires diplomacy, but fiction needs a particularly gentle touch.
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• Your authors have poured their hearts and souls into their novels. When you’re highlighting problems or suggesting recasts, it’s essential to get the tone right so that you don’t come across as critical.
• If it sounds like I’m stating the obvious, bear in mind that when you’re drawing attention to dangling modifier number 87 and you’re only on Chapter 5, it’s easy for notes of frustration to creep into your comments! I know this because one of my regular authors joked with me that she’d sensed this in my commenting in one of her books. Eeek! That made me pull my socks up.

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Some of our self-publishing clients are pulled a thousand-and-one ways every day. And, yet, they’ve found the time and energy to write a book. We must salute them.

Some are right at the beginning of the journey. There’s still a lot to learn and they’re on a budget; they’ve not taken their book through all the levels of professional editing that they might have liked to if things had been different.

Some haven't attended writer workshops and taken courses, and they probably never will – there’s barely enough time in the day to deal with living a normal life, never mind writing classes. They’re doing the best they can.

With that in mind, respect the journey.
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• We're professionals and we're hired to fix problems. If your author has struggled with a sentence and made an error that you think is amusing, fix it or suggest a recast, and move on.
• Don't share that error in an editing Facebook group (regardless of that group's privacy settings) so that you and your colleagues can have a giggle about it. Our clients are the people who pay our mortgages and food bills. None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes. We're hired to sort out these problems, not use them as fodder for relaxation and networking.
• Those 'closed' online groups can feel like private, intimate spaces where we can chat and let off steam with a select group of editor friends, but that's not what's happening in reality. What goes online, stays online. If you're sharing a head-desk moment, it can be seen by hundreds, perhaps even thousands of other editors, most of whom don't know you (though they might just know your author).
• If you're in doubt about whether you're oversharing, ask yourself how you would feel if you were the author. If the words 'hurt', 'offended' or 'disrespected' come to mind, you know what to do (or not to do).
• That the author's name hasn't been mentioned isn't an excuse. We are being paid to edit the words, not share unintentional blunders with 500+ colleagues. At best it's rude and unprofessional. At worst, it's a breach of privacy.
• If you need guidance from colleagues on how to recast or make sense of a piece of writing, create a fresh example that illustrates the problem and ask them for advice on that, not the original.
• Plus, if authors never made mistakes, we'd be redundant. And there's nothing funny about being an unemployed editor.

​We must always, always respect the writer and their writing, and acknowledge the privilege of having been selected to edit for them.

Those are my 10 tips for working with indie fiction writers! I hope you find them useful as you begin your own fiction-editing journey!

And drop me a note in the comments if you think I've missed anything out!

This post shows you how you can use commas and conjunctions to alter the rhythm of a sentence. Changing the rhythm can help your readers immerse themselves deeper in the mood of your narrative and the emotions of your characters.

Standard grammar advice – the stuff we learned when we were kids – calls for lists with three or more items (or phrases or clauses) in a sentence to be separated by a comma, and for a conjunction to be inserted before the final item:

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols and machetes.

Or, if your preference is to use the serial (or Oxford comma):

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols, and machetes.

The use of this one conjunction is called syndeton, and it moderates the pace.

When it comes to fiction, standard grammar works very well for the most part. However, there are other accepted literary devices you can use to help your readers feel the scene you’ve written in a different way: asyndeton and polysyndeton.

I’ve used examples from crime fiction in this article but the principles apply across genres.
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More on syndetic constructions
Syndeton is everywhere. It’s the most oft-used way of constructing a sentence with multiple clauses, and it works well because it aids clarity: this thing, that thing and that other thing.
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Here’s an excerpt from At Risk by Stella Rimington (p. 369):

And here’s an example from Jo Nesbo’s first Harry Hole thriller, The Bat (p. 250):

This second excerpt is taken from a chapter in which the head of the crime squad, Neil McCormack, delivers a long speech to the protagonist, Harry Hole. Harry has just spent nearly an hour delivering his own monologue, updating McCormack on everything that’s happened so far.

The mood of the entire scene is one of contemplation and resignation. The characters give each other the space to talk without rushing. Their behaviour feels controlled, and the way they talk is measured.

The grammatical structure of the sentence (syndetic) is a good choice because it moderates the speed at which we read, and reflects the mood.

Omitting conjunctions – asyndeton
Authors might choose on occasion to change the mood of a sentence by deliberately removing the conjunction. Separating all the items with only commas accelerates the rhythm.

That speeding-up can have a variety of effects:

• Imparting emotions – for example, frustration, futility, despair, desperation, determination, fear, hysteria or urgency.
• Indicating that a person is speaking rapidly.
• Evoking a sense of dislocation by bringing clinical precision to the narrative.
• Adding weight to each clause, thereby increasing drama.

Let’s go back to the Nesbo example and see what happens when we change it:

‘They helped the Allies against the Germans and the Italians, the South Koreans against the North Koreans, the Americans against the Japanese and the North Vietnamese.’

By omitting the conjunction and inserting a comma, a sense of frustration and urgency is introduced. It’s subtle, certainly, but that’s the beauty of it.

If Nesbo had wanted to convey more immediacy, he could have elected to make these small changes. They would have altered the rhythm and showed (without spelling it out) that McCormack’s tone had changed or the pace of his speech had increased.

Here are two examples from Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (p. 274 and p. 355):

In the example above, Ludlum could have introduced ‘and’ after/instead of the final comma of the first sentence with no detrimental effects, but I think its omission brings a sense of urgency and determination to the writing that reflects the tension of the scene.

In the excerpt below, he uses asyndeton to evoke a sense of futility, frustration and anger. The reader is forced to become bogged down in the senseless loss of life from a bullet to the head:

Asyndetic constructions can be particularly effective in noir and hardboiled crime fiction. These genres don’t shy away from the dark underbelly of their settings. The characters are often as damaged as the gritty environments they work within, and a sense of hollowness and futility underpins the novels.

Here’s an excerpt from The Little Sister (p. 177) by the king of hardboiled, Raymond Chandler:

Imagine that second sentence with ‘and’ after (or instead of) the final comma. It would ruin the flow and remove the utter sense of despair and hopelessness. Chandler doesn’t overdo it though. He saves his use of the asyndetic for the right moments rather than littering his pages with it.

Using multiple conjunctions – polysyndeton
Another technique for altering rhythm is that of using multiple conjunctions. Polysyndetic constructions are interesting in that they can work both ways:

• You might introduce multiple conjunctions to evoke a sense of excitement or hysteria. In this case the pace would be accelerated.
• Or you might use them to create a sense of overwhelm. In this case the pace would be moderated as the reader is pulled into the mire of the narrative.

In the following example, Chandler (p. 103) shows us two different groups of people waiting in a reception area that the main character, Philip Marlowe, has entered. By using a conjunction between each adjective describing the hopefuls, he enhances the brightness of their mood. This in turn tells us more than Chandler gives us in terms of words about the other group. We can imagine their boredom and frustration:

There’s a powerful example of the polysyndetic in Kate Hamer’s The Girl in the Red Coat (p. 151). Hamer uses it to enrich a child-character’s voice. Carmel has been abducted and is experiencing a kind of dislocation as she plays with two other children. The multiple conjunctions serve to emphasize the overwhelming giddiness. There’s almost no time to take a breath:

Beware the comma splice
Asyndeton should not be confused with the comma splice.

A comma splice describes two independent clauses joined by a comma rather than a conjunction or an alternative punctuation mark. I recommend you avoid it because some readers will think it's an error and might leave negative reviews.

​The standard-punctuation column in the table below shows how the authors have got it just right. The right-hand column shows you how the non-standard comma-spliced versions would appear.

I hope this overview of syndeton, asyndeton, polysyndeton and the comma splice will help you to discover new ways of playing with the rhythm of your own writing while keeping the punctuation pedants at bay!

Resources and works cited

• At Risk by Stella Rimington. Arrow, 2015.
• Literary Devices: Literary Devices, Terms, and Elements. This site is stacked with accessible guidance on definitions and terminology.
• More free crime writing tools, tips and resources.
• Other more general self-publishing guidance.
• The Bat by Jo Nesbo. Vintage, 2013.
• The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer. Faber & Faber, 2015.
• The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum. Orion, 2003.
• The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler. Penguin, 1955.