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This post explores how to use embedded dialogue snippets and what effect they have on tone, character and flow.
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Capturing speech memory
Dialogue doesn’t only happen in real time. Sometimes a character recalls what was said or what they half-heard, or they mentally echo something that was stated in the past. This is speech memory.
Done well, capturing those moments on the page enhances the reader’s experience. It can affect the mood and flow, and subtly shine a narrative light on one particular character, while still revealing how others interacted verbally with them.
What is embedded dialogue?
Embedded dialogue is reported speech or remembered lines that are woven into the narrative. The quotation marks and dialogue tags that we’d expect to see in active, real-time dialogue are omitted. Here's an example that compares the two approaches:
Active dialogue plus narrative: Dialogue embedded in the narrative:
While the reader gets the same information, the mood is different. The active-dialogue version feels punchier, more immediate. The embedded-dialogue version feels more contemplative.
When to use embedded dialogue
1. To reflect a character’s processing of a memory of speech
A remembered line can reveal emotion or motive without cutting to a flashback or breaking the scene. Here are a couple of embedded-dialogue examples:
Active-dialogue versions might look like this:
Again, neither of these versions – the embedded or active dialogue – are right or wrong. But they do convey a different mood, and the prose flows differently. The active dialogue versions are blunter, terser and highlight different voices. The embedded dialogue is smoother and less tense, and highlights one voice.
2. To keep the focus on the viewpoint character and their present tension Recalling memories of the spoken words can add weight to prose without shifting the spotlight away from the viewpoint character's perspective in the now. Here are two embedded-dialogue examples:
Active-dialogue versions might look like this:
I think the embedded dialogue feels much more grounded in the characters’ immediate conundrums. It's their voice that shines through. The active dialogue, however, even with the pluperfect (past-perfect) speech tags, pulls the reader out of the present and shines a light on other characters' speech.
3. To avoid disruption Long dialogue flashbacks can derail pacing. Embedded snippets allow you to fold the past into present seamlessly. Again, here are two embedded-dialogue examples:
Now let’s turn that into active dialogue:
I think the active-dialogue versions are disruptive because the recalled speech is so lengthy and flips the focus onto the past speakers.
However, in the embedded-dialogue versions, the flow of the narrative captures the past speech but maintains the smooth flow of the prose and keeps the reader’s gaze firmly on the current viewpoint characters. 4. To add variety to how 'remembered' dialogue is displayed Using a mixture of embedded and active dialogue can add variety to how remembered speech is displayed, making it more interesting for the reader. Here's an example that includes both: The last thing I wanted was to aggravate those two goons who'd trashed my apartment the previous week. Next time, they'd informed me, it wouldn't just be the dining table that got broken. It would be my legs. And my arms. "In fact, if it's attached to you and we can snap it, we will,” the beefier of the two had advised me.
Here, the two styles work with each other to capture multiple speaker voices, but in a way that still ensures the first-person narrator's immediate experience remains dominant.
When active dialogue works
Active dialogue is brilliant in the following circumstances:
The difference between embedded dialogue and free indirect speech
Both free indirect speech and embedded dialogue are narrative techniques used to represent characters’ thoughts or speech, but they differ in structure and how much the narrator mediates the character's voice.
Here are two examples: Example 1. Free indirect speech:
Notice how this feels more subjective. The psychic distance between the reader and the character is very close.
Free indirect speech is all about the viewpoint character and focuses on conveying what’s going on in their head now. Example 2. Embedded dialogue:
Notice how this feels a little more objective and told because of the expository filter word ‘wondering’ and ‘speech-memory indicator ‘said he’d’. The psychic distance is a little wider in this case, as if the prose is being told by the narrator.
Embedded dialogue is all about the viewpoint character’s recollection; it holds the essence of memory … that something specific was actually said in the past. Neither is right or wrong. Instead, free indirect speech and embedded dialogue serve different purposes, and so one might work better than the other depending on what the author’s trying to achieve.
Summing up
Embedded dialogue snippets let you carry the weight of past speech without quoting every line. Use them to deepen character, maintain narrative flow and give your prose a more intimate texture.
When done well, embedded dialogue allows the past to echo through to the present, shaping motive and mood without slowing the action. It’s not just about what was said, but how your viewpoint character remembers it.
Other resources you might like
About Louise
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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This post explores how oversimplifications of human motivation as ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ can damage crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers.
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The trouble with clear-cut morality
In real life, morality is murky. Few people do harm ‘just because’. People do bad things for complex reasons, and those in investigative roles – and apparently on the side of justice – don’t always behave impeccably.
Compelling contemporary crime fiction tends to avoid rigid binaries that present ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters, where the villain is evil because they commit a crime, and the sleuth is good because they solve it. Going down that route can weaken character development, limit emotional relatability and misrepresent how justice manifests in a way that’s plausible. How to turn flat caricatures into relatable characters
In a binary model, the villain is ‘monsterized’ as inherently bad – the evil psychopath or lowlife. The focus is more on the nastiness they’ve done.
Meanwhile, the investigator is ‘heroized’ as inherently good – the wonderful restorer of order. The focus is on how they’ve saved the day. However, when you provide a deeper understanding of the reasons why a criminal acted as they did, and when you make space for a sleuth’s flaws, doubts and moral ambiguity, readers are able to access more plausible and fully rounded characters with human backstories and worldviews, however flawed.
Prompt for writers and editors Exploring justice that reflects reality
Ditching binary models of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ allows you to explore crime and justice in a way that engages readers who’ve experienced systemic injustice in real life, as well as those whose privilege means they haven’t.
For example, a criminal’s actions might stem from something far more alarming than pure greed. It could be grounded in, or driven by, their experience of poverty, fear, abuse, racial- or class-based oppression. Taking this approach asks readers to consider where biases in the system are, who the establishment serves, and whether equal opportunity really stands up under the microscope.
Prompt for writers and editors Building tension through real-world themes
Avoiding traditional ‘good’ and ‘bad’ binaries encourages space for exploring themes that cement tension throughout the novel, and speak to readers living in the world as it is now … or the one it might be in the not-too-distant future.
Through those themes, you might explore societies’ values, and what constitutes criminal behaviour in terms of your own and your readers’ values. Are there are circumstances where bad deeds might be justified for the greater good? For example, could the perpetrator and the investigator both be grappling with thorny concepts that make who’s ‘right’ and who’s ‘wrong’ ambiguous?
Prompt for writers and editors Summing up
Crime fiction and thrillers can reveal uncomfortable truths about people and systems. By embracing ambiguity, you can craft more emotionally resonant and morally engaging stories.
To keep your characters interesting and out of binary waters, ask yourself whether the most compelling villain might be one who almost persuades us, and whether the most unforgettable hero might be one who almost breaks our trust. Other resources you might like
About Louise
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Backstory helps readers understand why characters act the way they do and what their motivations are. This post offers five tips on how to introduce it so that it enriches, rather than distracts from, the main story.
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What is character backstory?
Backstory is the fictional history of a character before the main plot begins. It could include past events, relationships, traumas or achievements that shape their present behaviour and decisions. Backstory should be:
To ensure you hit the mark, think about which of the following mechanisms might work best for your novel.
1. Drip feed the information
Think of backstory as the seasoning rather than the main dish. It can be tempting to give readers everything you want them to know about the past in a dedicated and detailed chapter. However, this comes with risk. Your reader, who’s itching to move forward and find out what’s going to happen next, is forced backwards.
The focus is no longer on the now of the novel, but on a different time and space. That in itself can be distracting. Plus, by giving readers all this backstory in one fell swoop, you could lose the opportunity to introduce suspense, mystery or intrigue. Instead of an information dump, try instead a brief but telling reference that’s related to the current action. For example, if your character’s past involves an event that’s made them mistrustful of small spaces, you could hint at this in the narrative, but explain it more fully in a piece of dialogue later on. Here’s how that might look at first mention. The backstory nudge is in bold. Baz legged it towards the market square but took the long way, avoiding the alley. Too dark. Too small. He’d never make that mistake again, not after last time. This way, you’re revealing backstory in smaller chunks – ones that invite the reader to think: What happened last time he went into a dark alley? This builds suspense and leaves readers with questions that you can answer later. And for now, the reader stays in the moment with Baz, running towards the square and finding safety in the crowd.
2. Use natural dialogue
Dialogue can be a superb way of unveiling backstory. Depending on when it comes up, you can drip feed or go into more detail.
The key is to ensure that it sounds natural rather than being a convenient tool. For example, if Marcus already knows about Baz’s fears, the following will feel overworked. The dialogue is for the reader’s benefit only, not what these two people might actually say to each other. *** AVOID *** This kind of dialogue-for-convenience is sometimes referred to as maid-and-butler dialogue. To avoid it, try something like the following instead. ‘You’re late,’ Marcus said, tapping his watch. ‘I was expecting you five minutes ago.’ Again, this version hints at a traumatic event in the past, but leaves an intriguing space for more to be revealed later.
3. Interject with narrative reflection
If the time has come to reveal more, you could use the space between the dialogue to offer a little more insight.
Take care to restrain it. Give the reader just enough, then pull them back to the present action. Here’s how that might look. ‘You’re late,’ Marcus said, tapping his watch. ‘I was expecting you five minutes ago.’
4. Use other characters to reveal backstory
You could decide to hint at a character’s backstory through how others see them. Again, readers should be given only what they need to know, and the reveal should be relevant to the scene.
Fi touched the screen. ‘So this is our route out. I don’t like it. See here? This alley is tight. No lights. Baz might be on his own, and we both know Baz doesn’t do confined spaces … at least he hasn’t done for the past eighteen months.’ Notice how we’re given a nudge about something in Baz’s past that means alternative arrangements have to be made. These add a little complexity to the plan Fi and Marcus are working on, but there’s space to explore in more detail at a later point. If it’s time to introduce that extra detail, an alternative could see Marcus reflecting internally on a plan he’s put together. Here, the backstory is more detailed but it’s still relevant to the present issue that he’s focusing on – planning an escape. The obvious route out was the alley. Through the kitchen, into the yard, over the wall, and they’d be gone. Two minutes tops. In theory it was good. In practice it was risky. Not for him and Fi. They were sound. But Baz would need to keep his head in the game. And for the past eighteen months, it hadn’t been. His friend had been ambushed, beaten to a pulp, the seventy-three stiches transforming his scalp into something Picasso would have been proud of. Since then, even the suggestion of a tight, unlit space had him going off on one.
5. Use sounds, objects or settings as triggers
The external environment can be effective tools with which to introduce backstory. Your protagonist might see, hear or touch something that triggers a memory or an emotion.
Here are two examples. Once more, they’re mere nudges that make the reader ask questions, rather than lengthy explanations that risk flattening the prose. There was a door to his left. Baz opened it. A narrow flight of wooden steps led downwards. He flicked the switch by the latch. A light flashed on, then fizzled and died. He stepped back and shut the door. Shuddered. Too dark, too tight. Not happening. Fi ran her hand over the cracked porcelain sink. Same kind they’d had in the safehouse in Rotterdam. Good times. Her, Marcus and Baz. All in it together. All of them with their heads in the game. All of them thinking they were invincible.
Summing up
Backstory is as a tool that gives your crime fiction and its characters emotional depth at any point it’s introduced. If it doesn’t affect how the reader engages with the story in the moment, remove it.
Keep it taut so that the reader remains engrossed in the novel’s present – what the characters are doing/feeling now. Nudges and hints at first mention are often far more suspenseful and intriguing. If backstory is dragging on for multiple paragraphs or even chapters – a within-novel biography – rethink its structure and how you might break it up so that you reveal it gradually.
Other resources you might like
About Louise
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Find out about 5 core character roles within a novel, and how the purpose they serve ensures the story stays focused.
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Example from published fiction
Adrian McKinty, The Chain, Orion, 2020 (Kindle version, Chapter 1) The doors power lock and Kylie curses herself for missing a chance. She could have unclicked the seat belt, opened the door, rolled out. Blind panic is beginning to overwhelm her. |
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Action beats
Action beats help readers imagine how a character is physically behaving and can give us insights into the environment and the person’s traits. They bring movement to a scene.
Perhaps a viewpoint character stands up because the overly soft chair is making their sciatica play up; maybe an object’s being discussed, and they push it away in disgust; or perhaps they rub their bare feet across the rough pile of a rug in order to soothe themselves in an unformattable situation.
These beats are particularly useful when an author wants to convey emotions being experienced by a non-viewpoint character whose internal head-space isn’t accessible in limited narrative styles. Perhaps wiping sweat off their forehead indicates they’re feeling nervous, or their fidgeting with a beer mat indicates boredom.
Perhaps a viewpoint character stands up because the overly soft chair is making their sciatica play up; maybe an object’s being discussed, and they push it away in disgust; or perhaps they rub their bare feet across the rough pile of a rug in order to soothe themselves in an unformattable situation.
These beats are particularly useful when an author wants to convey emotions being experienced by a non-viewpoint character whose internal head-space isn’t accessible in limited narrative styles. Perhaps wiping sweat off their forehead indicates they’re feeling nervous, or their fidgeting with a beer mat indicates boredom.
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Example from published fiction
Harlan Coben, Win, Arrow, 2021 (Kindle edition, Chapter 1) "You're a little slow, aren't you, Teddy?" I sigh. "No, I won't excuse you. There is no excuse for you. Are you with me now?" The scowl slowly returns to his face. "You got a problem?" |
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Inaction beats
Inaction beats are pauses, hesitations and moments of silence or stillness. Even when these are short, they help the reader understand pace. They bring breathing space to a scene.
They’re powerful because they can show rather than tell more than one character’s contemplation, consideration, indecision, or shock. The prose might state the stillness or silence directly, or it can be nuanced and come in the form of a character’s taking stock of a situation or bracing themselves for a potential upset.
They’re powerful because they can show rather than tell more than one character’s contemplation, consideration, indecision, or shock. The prose might state the stillness or silence directly, or it can be nuanced and come in the form of a character’s taking stock of a situation or bracing themselves for a potential upset.
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Example from published fiction
Kate Hamer, The Girl in the Red Coat, Faber & Faber, 2015 (Kindle edition, Chapter 6) When I wake up in the morning everything's wonderful. For a moment I can't understand why. Then I remember: Mum's said if the weather's good we can go to the storytelling festival and that's today. |
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Description beats
Description beats give readers objective information about the character or environment. They bring stability to a scene.
They help readers understand what characters are wearing, what they look like, what’s surrounding them, what they can hear, see, smell, touch or taste. That brings the scene alive.
They help readers understand what characters are wearing, what they look like, what’s surrounding them, what they can hear, see, smell, touch or taste. That brings the scene alive.
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Example from published fiction
Harlan Coben, Win, Arrow, 2021 (Kindle edition, Chapter 1) His name is Teddy Lyons. He is one of the too-many assistant coaches on the South State bench. He is six foot eight and beefy, a big slab of aw-shucks farm boy. Big T—that's what he likes to be called—is thirty-three years old, and this is his fourth college coaching job. From what I understand, he is a decent tactician but excels at recruiting talent. |
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Dialogue beats
Dialogue beats tell readers what characters are saying and let readers hear those distinct voices in action. Vocal speech can be heard, and so dialogue beats bring expression to a scene.
Like action beats, dialogue is an opportunity to bring depth to non-viewpoint characters in limited narrative styles. Their internal opinions and feelings – which we don’t have access to because we’re not in their heads – are revealed to us.
Like action beats, dialogue is an opportunity to bring depth to non-viewpoint characters in limited narrative styles. Their internal opinions and feelings – which we don’t have access to because we’re not in their heads – are revealed to us.
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Example from published fiction
Adrian McKinty, The Chain, Orion, 2020 (Kindle version, Chapter 1) “What should I tell her?” the man asks. “Don’t tell her anything. Tell her to shut the hell up,” the woman replies. “You need to be quiet, Kylie,” the man says. |
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Why mixing up beats makes scenes more interesting
Too much of anything is rarely a good thing, and the same applies to a novel’s beats. When a scene’s constructed primarily around a particular type of beat, there’s a risk the reader will become frustrated and lose interest.
Writers and their publishing teams can use the drafting and editing stages to analyse the prose and evaluate whether there’s sufficient balance.
Writers and their publishing teams can use the drafting and editing stages to analyse the prose and evaluate whether there’s sufficient balance.
How to analyse a scene for beat balance
Must all 5 beats be introduced? No, certainly not. There’s no formula to writing compelling fiction. Good line craft means making a judgement about what’s missing and what might be added.
Approach 1
One way of approaching this is to think not in terms of the different types of beats but instead in terms of what they contribute, and whether there’s too much or too little.
And so writers and their editors can ask: Which of the following should the reader experience in this scene, and are they present? Here’s a summary of those elements:
Approach 1
One way of approaching this is to think not in terms of the different types of beats but instead in terms of what they contribute, and whether there’s too much or too little.
And so writers and their editors can ask: Which of the following should the reader experience in this scene, and are they present? Here’s a summary of those elements:
- Sensibility (via emotion beats)
- Movement (via action beats)
- Breathing space (via inaction beats)
- Stability (via description beats)
- Expression (via dialogue beats)
Example: Is too much expression dampening the scene?
An over-reliance on dialogue – even if it’s extremely well written – leaves a reader with no nudges about the emotions characters are experiencing or the environment they’re operating in. It’s two or more talking heads on a page.
If there should be expression in the scene, but the characters are chattering too much, think how you might turn the volume down, or at least disrupt it.
Consider introducing a few action, description and emotion beats. Or even turn some of the information contained within the speech into narrative.
An over-reliance on dialogue – even if it’s extremely well written – leaves a reader with no nudges about the emotions characters are experiencing or the environment they’re operating in. It’s two or more talking heads on a page.
If there should be expression in the scene, but the characters are chattering too much, think how you might turn the volume down, or at least disrupt it.
Consider introducing a few action, description and emotion beats. Or even turn some of the information contained within the speech into narrative.
Example: Is too much stability flattening the scene?
An over-reliance on objective description – even if it gives the reader a rich sense of the environment – leaves readers with no way of accessing mood. It’s a menu of what’s where.
Description should stabilise the scene, not crush it so that it’s as flat as a pancake.
Help readers get under the skin of the characters and their environment by adding emotion or dialogue, or a little action that gives the scene some movement.
An over-reliance on objective description – even if it gives the reader a rich sense of the environment – leaves readers with no way of accessing mood. It’s a menu of what’s where.
Description should stabilise the scene, not crush it so that it’s as flat as a pancake.
Help readers get under the skin of the characters and their environment by adding emotion or dialogue, or a little action that gives the scene some movement.
Example: Is too much sensibility overwhelming the scene?
An over-reliance on emotion can be draining and doesn’t give the reader the chance to take a breath. It’s like a counselling session.
If there should be emotion, but a character’s self-absorption is swamping a reader’s ability to make sense of the environment, introduce description and action beats to ground the reader a little more objectively.
An over-reliance on emotion can be draining and doesn’t give the reader the chance to take a breath. It’s like a counselling session.
If there should be emotion, but a character’s self-absorption is swamping a reader’s ability to make sense of the environment, introduce description and action beats to ground the reader a little more objectively.
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Approach 2
Another option is to colour-code the text in a scene according to what type of beats are in play. This can help authors and editors evaluate whether one type of beat is overbearing, and where they might add in additional types of beat to disrupt that dominance. It's a powerful way of communicating the problem visually and quickly. |
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I've carried out a sample scene analysis using this method with a stunning excerpt from SA Cosby’s Razorblade Tears. Use the button below to get your free copy.
Summing up
Using different types of beats in a scene helps readers to understand where the character is, what’s around them, how they feel and what’s important to them. Over-reliance on one type can lead to boredom and frustration; mix things up to keep them interested and turning the page.
Other resources you might like
- Start Crime Fiction Editing: multimedia course
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: book
- Fiction editing line craft: books
- How to Line Edit for Suspense: multimedia course
- How to Write the Perfect Editorial Report: multimedia course
- Narrative Distance: multimedia course
- Resource library
- Switching to Fiction: multimedia course
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
Want to line edit crime fiction and thrillers? Pick up some handy tips to help you on your way.
Summary of Episode 96
Listen to find out more about:
- What's distinctive about editing crime fiction and thrillers
- What a good line editor needs to look out for
- What new entrants to the field need to study
- Marketing ideas
- Top tips for being a successful freelance editor/proofreader
- Do fiction editors use style guides?
Related resources
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Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
Are your thriller’s sentences front-loaded with filter words? If so, you could be slowing your reader down. This post explains what filter words are, how they affect a sentence and how to decide whether to include them or ditch them.
What’s in this post ...
Read on to find out more about:
- Why the start of a sentence is important.
- What filter words are.
- How filter words reduce momentum.
- How filter words make space for reflection.
Why the start of a sentence is important
If you’ve read any guidance about online writing, you’ll have come across the concept of front-loading a sentence. It means putting the most important stuff at the start. The idea is that website visitors are busy and scan for relevance. The quicker they find it, the more likely they are to engage.
While a novel that reads like a Google snippet from start to finish isn’t likely to win any prizes, the principle is worth paying attention to because the information at the start of a novel’s sentence is still what the reader will pay most attention to.
The start of a sentence is therefore valuable real estate. If filter words are being assigned to that top spot too often, more interesting subjects and verbs are likely being demoted.
While a novel that reads like a Google snippet from start to finish isn’t likely to win any prizes, the principle is worth paying attention to because the information at the start of a novel’s sentence is still what the reader will pay most attention to.
The start of a sentence is therefore valuable real estate. If filter words are being assigned to that top spot too often, more interesting subjects and verbs are likely being demoted.
What are filter words?
In everyday speech, we sometimes use the term ‘filter’ to convey a sense of slowdown or separation, usually because of a barrier of some sort. For example:
In literature, filter words are verbs that do a similar thing – they slow down the reader’s access to what the viewpoint character is experiencing.
Examples include 'watched', 'saw', 'noticed', 'spotted', 'looked at', 'felt', 'thought', 'wondered', 'heard', 'realised' and 'knew'.
Take a look at this short excerpt from Chapter 2 of Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby.
- Sunlight filtered through the tree canopy.
- Over the next couple of hours, information about the explosion filtered out of the camp.
- The children filtered through the turnstile and lined up in in yard.
In literature, filter words are verbs that do a similar thing – they slow down the reader’s access to what the viewpoint character is experiencing.
Examples include 'watched', 'saw', 'noticed', 'spotted', 'looked at', 'felt', 'thought', 'wondered', 'heard', 'realised' and 'knew'.
Take a look at this short excerpt from Chapter 2 of Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby.
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Ike Randolph let go of his wife's hand. She slumped against him. |
Ike is the viewpoint character, which means we experience the scene from his perspective.
Notice first what’s front-loading those two sentences. The subjects (Ike in the first, ‘she’ – Ike’s wife – in the second) and the verbs ‘let go’ and ‘slumped’.
That front-loading forces our gaze outwards – first towards Ike, then towards the movement of Ike’s wife’s body.
Now let’s introduce a filter word.
Ike Randolph let go of his wife's hand. He watched as she slumped against him.
Now the second sentence is front-loaded with a new verb – ‘watched’. Our access to the movement (the slumping) has been slowed down. We can’t shift directly to it without taking an extra step that involves centring our gaze for just a second on Ike’s watching.
In that brief moment, we’re no longer looking outward at what Ike’s experiencing. Instead, we’re looking inward at Ike and how he acquires that experience – by watching.
Less experienced writers can be tempted to overuse filter words. Indeed, it’s one of the most common problems I see in my editing studio. At sentence-level revision stage – whether that work’s being done by the writer themselves or with the help of a professional editor – it’s therefore worth watching out for them and assessing whether they’re impeding the novel’s pace.
When filter words reduce momentum
Thrillers are supposed to thrill, and action-packed scenes such as escapes, fights, heists and chases need to be written with razor-sharp precision so that readers don’t start skimming.
Problematic filter words can appear anywhere in a sentence, but front-loading sentences with them is even more likely to rip the momentum out of the prose. If you want your readers to focus on the action, make sure that any you retain are earning their keep.
Take a look at an excerpt from a published thriller that I’ve fiddled with. It’s a heist scene and the action takes place in a matter of seconds. The viewpoint character is coked up to his eyeballs and desperate, acting on impulse.
Problematic filter words can appear anywhere in a sentence, but front-loading sentences with them is even more likely to rip the momentum out of the prose. If you want your readers to focus on the action, make sure that any you retain are earning their keep.
Take a look at an excerpt from a published thriller that I’ve fiddled with. It’s a heist scene and the action takes place in a matter of seconds. The viewpoint character is coked up to his eyeballs and desperate, acting on impulse.
He knew that under normal circumstances he would never put his hands on a lady. However, these were not normal circumstances. Not, he thought, by a long shot.
Ronnie struck the manager just above her right eye with the butt of the .38. He watched as a divot the width of a popsicle stick appeared above her eye. Blood spewed from the wound like water from a broken faucet.
Ronnie struck the manager just above her right eye with the butt of the .38. He watched as a divot the width of a popsicle stick appeared above her eye. Blood spewed from the wound like water from a broken faucet.
The three instances of filtering moderate the pace and draw our attention towards the narrator’s doing knowing, thinking and watching, none of which are as interesting as what he knows, thinks and watches. All those filter words act as barriers that the reader has to jump over in order to get to the action.
We could even argue that they introduce a sort of voyeurism – as if Ronnie is reflecting on the impact of his violence, almost in slow motion. But that’s not what’s going on here. Rather, he’s wired, out of control and operating in the moment.
And that’s why the unadulterated version of Blacktop Wasteland (p. 113) – also by S.A. Cosby – is perfect:
|
Under normal circumstances he would never put his hands on a lady. However, these were not normal circumstances. Not by a long shot.
Ronnie struck the manager just above her right eye with the butt of the .38. A divot the width of a popsicle stick appeared above her eye. Blood spewed from the wound like water from a broken faucet. |
The filter words have gone, and with them the unintended pathological introspection, but the momentum is restored. We're in the moment with Ronnie as he lashes out. It's no less violent but the pace of the prose now mirrors the action authentically.
When filter words make space for reflection
Sometimes, however, the author wants us to slow down, step back and focus inward on the acquisition of experience.
Let’s take a look at another example from Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, this one also from Chapter 2.
Let’s take a look at another example from Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, this one also from Chapter 2.
The little girl sitting in her lap played with Mya's braids. Ike looked at the girl. Skin the color of honey with hair to match. Arianna had just turned three the week before her parents died. Did she have any inkling of what was happening? When Mya had told her that her daddies were asleep, she seemed to accept it without too much trouble. He envied the elasticity of her mind. She could wrap her head around this in a way that he couldn't.
The filter phrase is ‘looked at’, and it’s important. Ike is looking hard at what’s in front of him. As will be revealed later, this girl is his murdered son’s daughter. Ike recalls something he’d said to his son a few months earlier: ‘But that little girl, she gonna have it hard enough already. She's half Black. Her mama was somebody you paid to carry her, and she got two gay daddies. So now what?’
Ike and his wife will now be raising the little girl. Cosby wants to focus our attention inward for a moment on Ike’s reflection, and the filter word makes space for that.
While filter words can be effective when they’re used to create a sense of introspection, littering prose with them will be disruptive and pull the reader out of the viewpoint character's headspace. In other words, the psychic or narrative distance will be widened and we’ll feel disconnected from the immediacy of the character’s experience.
For that reason, always use filter words judiciously. In the above example, Cosby offers just a single nudge, and it’s enough.
Summing up
Every filter word needs to be assessed on its own merits. Some will have a place in a novel because the author wants to introduce a sense of introspection into a viewpoint character’s narrative. Just bear in mind the following:
- When filter words front-load a sentence, they’re the first thing a reader notices.
- They destroy momentum and so are often best avoided in pacy action scenes, regardless of their position.
- And even if they do serve a purpose – focusing a reader’s attention inwards on how the viewpoint character acquires the experience they’re reporting (by looking, thinking, feeling etc.) – it's worth keeping their use to a bare minimum. One nudge will likely be enough.
Further reading
Take a look at these related resources for editors and writers. They'll help you develop your fiction line craft:
- For editors: Fiction editing learning centre
- For authors: Line craft learning centre
- Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
- Blacktop Wasteland, Cosby, S.A., Headline, 2020
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
- Filter words in fiction: Purposeful inclusion and dramatic restriction (blog post)
- Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ (book for editors and authors)
- Narrative Distance: A Toolbox for Writers and Editors (course)
- Razorblade Tears, Cosby, S.A., Headline, 2021
- Switching to Fiction (course for editors)
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
Here are three clutter checks you can carry out on your novel. Reviewing, and editing where appropriate, will help keep your crime fiction, thriller or mystery writing tight and engaging.
In this post ...
In this post, I look at the following ways of decluttering prose in commercial fiction:
- Clutter check #1: Reviewing filter words
- Clutter check #2: Reviewing speech tags
- Clutter check #3: Reviewing action beats
Clutter check #1: Review your filter words
Filter words are verbs that focus the reader’s gaze inwards on the senses a character is using to experience action with.
Too many filter words that explain this sensory behaviour in action can make prose feel told rather shown, and increase narrative distance.
Examples include ‘noticed’, ‘seemed’, ‘spotted’, ‘saw’, ‘realized’, ‘felt’, ‘thought’, ‘wondered’, ‘believed’, ‘knew’ and ‘decided’.
Removing them focuses the reader’s gaze outwards on what is being experienced.
Sometimes an author wants an inward focus, but it’s often the case that the reader will assume that an odour is being smelled, a view is being seen, a thought is being thought, and knowledge is being known.
Review your narrative and consider whether the removal of a filter word would make the prose shorter and more immersive.
Here are some examples:
Too many filter words that explain this sensory behaviour in action can make prose feel told rather shown, and increase narrative distance.
Examples include ‘noticed’, ‘seemed’, ‘spotted’, ‘saw’, ‘realized’, ‘felt’, ‘thought’, ‘wondered’, ‘believed’, ‘knew’ and ‘decided’.
Removing them focuses the reader’s gaze outwards on what is being experienced.
Sometimes an author wants an inward focus, but it’s often the case that the reader will assume that an odour is being smelled, a view is being seen, a thought is being thought, and knowledge is being known.
Review your narrative and consider whether the removal of a filter word would make the prose shorter and more immersive.
Here are some examples:
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WITH FILTER
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FILTER REMOVED
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Danni knew there was a door in the back of the hut that led into the woods. She could make her escape there.
[Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on Danni’s doing the action of knowing.] |
There was a door in the back of the hut that led into the woods. She could make her escape there.
[Reader assumes it’s Danni doing the knowing since she’s the viewpoint character, and focuses outwards on the solution – the door.] |
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The backdoor – it leads to the woods, Danni thought.
[Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on Danni’s doing the action of thinking.] |
The backdoor – it leads to the woods.
[Reader assumes the thought belongs to Danni, and focuses on the substance of the thought.] The backdoor – it led to the woods. [This alternative uses free indirect style; it frames the thought in the novel’s base tense and narrative style – third-person past.] |
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He flung open the door and saw the gunman standing over by the window, rifle trained on the street below.
[Reader’s gaze focuses inwards on the man’s doing the action of seeing.] |
He flung open the door.
The gunman stood over by the window, rifle trained on the street below. [Reader assumes it’s the man doing the seeing since he’s the viewpoint character, and focuses outwards on the gunman.] |
Clutter check #2: Review speech tags
Great speech tags help the reader keep track of who’s speaking without drawing attention away from the dialogue.
Review your dialogue tags and consider the following:
If there are only two characters in a scene, it might be obvious who’s speaking, which gives the author space to introduce reminder nudges only now and then.
Review your dialogue tags and consider the following:
- Is the tag necessary?
- Is the tag taking centre stage?
- Is the tag illogical?
If there are only two characters in a scene, it might be obvious who’s speaking, which gives the author space to introduce reminder nudges only now and then.
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ALL THE TAGS!
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REDUCED TAGGING
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‘There’s a door at the back of the hut,’ Danni said.
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ I said. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’ ‘And that’ll get us into the woods?’ I said. ‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish,’ she said. ‘What do you mean was?’ I said. ‘You’re too funny,’ she said, and pulled a face. |
‘There’s a door at the back of the hut,’ Danni said.
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ ‘No. Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’ ‘And that’ll get us into the woods?’ ‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ I said. Danny pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’ |
‘Said’ is often best because it’s used so frequently in novels that it’s almost invisible. ‘Asked’ is also inoffensive when used to tag questions in dialogue. Others like ‘whispered’, ‘yelled’, ‘hissed’, ‘spat’ and ‘barked’ can be useful when used sparingly to convey volume and mood.
Showy speech tags scream their presence from the page, and shift the reader’s attention away from the dialogue and onto the tag. They often tell what the dialogue’s already shown, and indicate a lack of trust in the reader to get the speech. Examples include ‘exclaimed’, ‘opined’, ‘commanded’
Showy speech tags scream their presence from the page, and shift the reader’s attention away from the dialogue and onto the tag. They often tell what the dialogue’s already shown, and indicate a lack of trust in the reader to get the speech. Examples include ‘exclaimed’, ‘opined’, ‘commanded’
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TAG TAKES CENTRE STAGE
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DIALOGUE TAKES CENTRE STAGE
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‘Watch out!’ Danni warned.
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‘Watch out!’ Danni said.
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‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
‘What do you mean was?’ I joked. |
‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
‘What do you mean was? |
Facial expressions used as tags need special care. Examples include ‘laughed’, ‘smiled’, ‘grimaced’ and ‘sneered’. These are best recast as action beats or replaced with simpler speech tags.
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EXPRESSION TAG
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ACTION BEAT
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‘No,’ Danni grimaced. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
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‘No.’ Danni grimaced. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’
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EXPRESSION TAG
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SPEECH TAG
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‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
‘What do you mean was?’ I laughed. |
‘Yup. There’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’
‘What do you mean was?’ I said. |
Removing redundant tags will reduce your word count. Recasting showy and illogical tags won’t, but your prose will still be more immersive.
Clutter check #3: Review action beats
Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. They ground speech in the characters’ environment and can be effective alternatives to speech tags.
They key to effective use is ensuring they amplify dialogue rather than interrupt it.
Think about movies. On the screen, all the actors movements and gestures are visible. Replicating this detail in a novel can be invasive and pull the reader away from what’s being unveiled through the speech.
While action beats are superb backdoors into the emotional space of non-viewpoint characters, the dialogue should be where the main action is taking place. If it’s not, what might be required is a reworking of the dialogue, not the introduction of more action beats.
Instead of mimicking the screen experience, use action beats to show what the dialogue doesn’t convey. That needn’t mean including them with every turn. Great dialogue doesn’t need to be anchored every time a character opens their mouth. A purposeful nudge now and then will be enough.
Watch out in particular for prose that’s overloaded with mundane action beats – legs stretching, fingers raking through hair, raised eyebrows, arms folding, fingers steepling.
Review your action beats:
Getting rid of the dull and redundant ones will reduce your word count. And what’s left on the page will be more engaging.
They key to effective use is ensuring they amplify dialogue rather than interrupt it.
Think about movies. On the screen, all the actors movements and gestures are visible. Replicating this detail in a novel can be invasive and pull the reader away from what’s being unveiled through the speech.
While action beats are superb backdoors into the emotional space of non-viewpoint characters, the dialogue should be where the main action is taking place. If it’s not, what might be required is a reworking of the dialogue, not the introduction of more action beats.
Instead of mimicking the screen experience, use action beats to show what the dialogue doesn’t convey. That needn’t mean including them with every turn. Great dialogue doesn’t need to be anchored every time a character opens their mouth. A purposeful nudge now and then will be enough.
Watch out in particular for prose that’s overloaded with mundane action beats – legs stretching, fingers raking through hair, raised eyebrows, arms folding, fingers steepling.
Review your action beats:
- Do they tell the reader something the dialogue doesn’t or are they mundane details that a reader could imagine?
- Are they infrequent nudges or are they littering the dialogue at every turn of speech?
- Could the mood conveyed by the action beat be conveyed better by improving the dialogue?
Getting rid of the dull and redundant ones will reduce your word count. And what’s left on the page will be more engaging.
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ACTION BEATS THAT INTERRUPT DIALOGUE
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ACTION BEATS THAT AMPLIFY DIALOGUE
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Danni pointed at the back of the cellar. ‘Over there. The door. It leads to the woods.’
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ Max rubbed his forehead. ‘Maybe we need a Plan B.’ ‘No.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’ Max tilted his head. ‘The fire? What happened?’ ‘It was years ago.’ She waved his question away and jabbed a finger towards the door again. ‘Out back there’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ he said, and smirked. She pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’ |
Danni pointed at the back of the cellar. ‘Over there. The door. It leads to the woods.’
‘You’re sure it isn’t locked?’ Max said. ‘I dunno, maybe we need a Plan B.’ ‘No. Trish never locks it. Not since the fire.’ ‘The fire? What—’ ‘It was years ago. Whatever. Focus. Out back there’s a track. It’s overgrown but I know the way. Used it all the time when I was young and foolish.’ ‘What do you mean was?’ She pulled a face. ‘You’re too funny.’ |
Summing up
There’s nothing wrong with the filter words, speech tags and actions beats. They’re useful tools when they help a reader make sense of the story.
However, if they’re mundane or interruptive clutter that can be assumed, leave them out so we can focus on the words that really matter.
However, if they’re mundane or interruptive clutter that can be assumed, leave them out so we can focus on the words that really matter.
Related reading
- 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
- Author writing resources
- Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
- Dialogue tags and how to use them in fiction writing
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level (book for editors and authors)
- Filter words in fiction
- Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ (book for editors and authors)
- Switching to Fiction (course for editors)
- Tips on lean writing
- What are action beats and how can you use them in fiction writing?
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to thriller writer Andy Maslen about the creative-writing process.
Listen to find out more about
- Writing a series vs standalone novels
- Tips on developing a coherent series
- Starting afresh with a new set of characters in a new environment
- Top creative-writing tips for beginner author
- Recommended writing-craft resources
- Back-cover blurb and Amazon blurbs
- Cover design
Here's where you can find out more about Andy Maslen's thrillers.
Dig into these related resources
- Author resources
- Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
- Blog post: 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
- Blog post: Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
- Blog post: How to write dialogue that pops
- Blog post: Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
- Blog post: Writing a crime novel – should you plan or go with the flow?
- Podcast episodes: The indie author collection
Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to author David Unger about transforming a novel from print to audio.
Listen to find out more about
- Doing your own narration vs hiring a pro
- How to find a professional voice artist
- Which qualities are important
- The process of working with a professional narrator
- Obstacles to creating audio books
- Costs and time frame
Here's where you can find out more about David Unger's books.
Dig into these related resources
- Author resources
- Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
- The Editing Podcast: 6 ways to use audio for book promotion
- Booklet: How to narrate your own audio book
- Podcast episodes: The indie author collection
- Blog post: Why editors and proofreaders should be using audio
- Blog post: 5 ways to use audio for book marketing and reader engagement
- Blog post: How to go mobile with audio: Book-editor podcasting on the go
Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to mystery writer David Unger about story creation and revision.
Listen to find out more about
- What made David want to start writing and who inspired him
- Writing an alter ego
- The revision process
- On being edited
Here's where you can find out more about David Unger's books.
Dig into these related resources
- Author resources
- Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
- Blog post: 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
- Blog post: Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
- Blog post: How to write dialogue that pops
- Blog post: Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
- Blog post: Writing a crime novel – should you plan or go with the flow?
- Podcast episodes: The indie author collection
Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Good news! It is perfectly okay to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’ in crime fiction writing ... in any fiction writing, in fact. Doing so can enrich the narrative and dialogue, and inflect the prose with voice, mood and intention. The key is to make sure those conjunctions are being used purposefully and logically. This post shows you how.
What the style guides say
Here's what two industry-recognized style guides have to say on the matter.
New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press): ‘You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect.’
Chicago Manual of Style Online, 5.203 (Chicago University Press): ‘There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.'
6 good reasons to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’
Great! We have the go-ahead from a couple of big hitters to use our two conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence. Now let’s dig a little deeper into why doing so can make fiction more effective. Here are my top six reasons:
Serving natural speech
When we speak in real life, conjunctions are often the first things out of our mouths. So it should be in novels that want to render speech authentically.
Fictional dialogue doesn’t replicate real-life speech completely – that would mean including a lot of boring stuff that one might hear at the bus stop. Rather, it’s a sort of hybrid that has the essence of reality but with the mundanity judiciously removed. It might sound like a cheat but readers thank authors who don’t bore them!
Small nudges towards reality help with the authenticity goal, which is where our conjunctions come in handy. Here are a few examples for you:
Here's what two industry-recognized style guides have to say on the matter.
New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press): ‘You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect.’
Chicago Manual of Style Online, 5.203 (Chicago University Press): ‘There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.'
6 good reasons to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’
Great! We have the go-ahead from a couple of big hitters to use our two conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence. Now let’s dig a little deeper into why doing so can make fiction more effective. Here are my top six reasons:
- To serve natural speech
- To shorten narrative distance
- To introduce tension and suspense
- To add drama
- To emphasize the unexpected
- To make contrast explicit
Serving natural speech
When we speak in real life, conjunctions are often the first things out of our mouths. So it should be in novels that want to render speech authentically.
Fictional dialogue doesn’t replicate real-life speech completely – that would mean including a lot of boring stuff that one might hear at the bus stop. Rather, it’s a sort of hybrid that has the essence of reality but with the mundanity judiciously removed. It might sound like a cheat but readers thank authors who don’t bore them!
Small nudges towards reality help with the authenticity goal, which is where our conjunctions come in handy. Here are a few examples for you:
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‘And you will have no hesitation in doing what has to be done? You have no doubts?’ (At Risk, Stella Rimington, p. 187)
‘And where’s he getting the money from? You know the situation as well as I do. He isn’t on leave of absence from a university.’ (The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, p. 227) “But your way makes more sense. So you think Maura was working with Rex?” “I do.” “Doesn’t mean she didn’t set Rex up.” “Right.” “But if she wasn’t involved in the murder, where is she now?” (Don’t Let Go, Harlan Coben, p. 76) |
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Shortening narrative distance
Dialogue gives us the character’s speech; narrative gives us the character’s experience. When that’s a first-person narrative, it’s easy to feel close to the narrator. With a third-person narration, the reader can feel separated from the character, as if they’re on the outside looking in.
Authors who want to reduce that space between the reader and the character – called narrative distance or psychic distance – can experiment with a narration style that sounds like natural speech even though it’s not dialogue.
Here’s a lovely example from Blake Crouch’s Recursion (p. 182).
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There's a part of him that wants to run down there, charge through, and shoot every fucking person he sees inside that hotel, ending with the man who put him in the chair. Meghan’s brain broke because of him. She is dead because of him. Hotel Memory needs to end.
But that would most likely only get him killed. No, he'll call Gwen instead, propose an off-the-books, under-the-radar op with a handful of SWAT colleagues. If she insists, he'll take an affidavit to a judge. |
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Notice how the narration style is third person, though it doesn’t feel like it. Instead, we’re right inside the viewpoint character’s head.
The position of the conjunction in this example isn’t the sole reason why the narrative distance feels short – the free indirect speech above and beneath plays a huge part – but it certainly helps to give us a sense of the character’s mentally working out a problem.
Introducing tension and suspense
Take a look at this excerpt from p. 21 of The Matlock Paper by Robert Ludlum.
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Matlock walked to the small, rectangular window with the wire-enclosed glass. The police station was at the south end of the town of Carlyle, about a half a mile from the campus, the section of town considered industrialized. Still, there were trees along the streets. Carlyle was a very clean town, a neat town. The trees by the station house were pruned and shaped.
And Carlyle was also something else. |
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With that one word – the conjunction – Ludlum stops us in our tracks. Yes, we’re thinking, the town’s neat, it’s clean. All well and good. But then we realize that there’s more to it, for beneath the pruned trees lies a dark underbelly.
The ‘And’, positioned right up front, forces us to pay attention to it. It’s not any old conjunction. Rather, it’s loaded with suspense that drives the reader to ask a question that isn’t explicitly answered: What else is that ‘something’?
Adding drama and modifying rhythm
In this excerpt from Parting Shot (p. 433), the author uses the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence to inject drama into a scene.
The new line makes the rhythm of the prose more staccato, but the ‘And’ at the beginning of the final line is what really packs a punch.
The viewpoint character, Cory, is a killer. He ponders almost matter-of-factly who the threats are, and reaches his conclusion as he closes in on the cabin.
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Dolly Guntner certainly wasn't in a position to say anything bad about him.
Which left Carol Beakman. Carol had seen him. And while she didn't actually see him kill Dolly, if the police ever spoke with her, she'd be able to tell them it couldn't have been anyone else but him. As far as Cory could figure, the only living witness to his crimes was Carol Beakman. He was nearly back to the cabin. It seemed clear what he had to do. And he'd have to do it fast. |
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If Linwood Barclay had omitted the conjunction, he’d have introduced a separation between two ideas: realizing what needs to be done, and when the killer is going to do it. Yet these two ideas are very much connected. The ‘And’ therefore fulfils its purpose as a conjunction – a joining word.
But there’s more. If he’d run the two ideas together with a conjunction between (‘It seemed clear what he had to do, and he'd have to do it fast.’), the line would have lost its wallop. The staccato rhythm (one that mirrors the cold calculation taking place in Cory’s head) is gone. Instead, the prose has flatlined; it seems almost mundane, like a stroll in the park rather than the planning of a murder.
However, the ‘And’ reinforces this extra information – the deed must be done fast. The emphasis adds drama to the line. The final line is still connected to the clause it’s related to, but the mood-rich rhythm, and the drama that comes with it, is intact.
Emphasizing the unexpected
An up-front ‘But’ is perfect for the author who want to emphasize the unexpected, surprise or absurdity. Take a look at this excerpt from Terry Pratchett’s Dodger (p. 170).
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The boy said, 'I don't quite know exactly where Mister Charlie will be right now, but you could always ask the peelers.' He smiled. 'You can be sure that there will be a lot of them about.'
Ask a peeler! Dodger? But surely that was the old Dodger saying that, he thought. |
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It’s true that omitting the ‘But’ would leave the meaning intact. However, adding the conjunction reinforces the Dodger’s emotional response to the boy’s suggestion – he’s taken by surprise because in times past, asking a peeler was exactly what he’d have done, without question, without fear.
And so that ‘But’ does more than act as a conjunction. With just three letters, we’re shown character mood.
Making contrast explicit and suspenseful
David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks (p. 92) includes a smashing example how the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence reinforces a contrast with what’s gone before.
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I won't be able to place this in any kind of context until I go through everything Sam has brought, though he says he didn't see a reply to Jacoby's questions. Certainly the fact that a man who was soon to be a murder victim experimenting in any way with his own DNA is at least curious, and something for me to look into carefully if I stay on the case.
But a nurse comes in and asks me to quickly come to Laurie's room, so right now everything else is going to have to wait. |
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That contrast is explicit because the ‘But’ acts as an interrupter. We’re deep in the POV character’s head regarding the murder victim, ruminating with our protagonist. The conjunction then shoves us out of that rumination. It’s not gentle; the ‘But’ is a big one – something’s up with Laurie.
Not that we know what. Rosenfelt doesn’t tell us yet. Instead, he makes us ask the question: Why? And with that question, just as with the Ludlum example above, we have suspense.
Summing up
Feel free to pepper your prose with sentences that begin with ‘And’ and ‘But’. Anyone who tells you you’re on shaky ground grammatically knows less about grammar than you do!
It’s likely that the myth around positioning these conjunctions came about in a bid to nudge people away from stringing together clauses and sentences with no thought to creativity. And while such an intention makes sense, we have to recognize that imposing this zombie rule on writing can actually destroy the magic of prose.
And on that note, I will sign off! (See what I did there?)
More fiction editing guidance
- 3 reasons to use free indirect speech
- Author resources library: Booklets, videos, podcasts and articles for authors
- Commas, conjunctions and rhythm
- Coordinating conjunctions
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: My flagship line-editing book
- How to write suspenseful chapter endings
- Rules versus preferences
- Sentence length, pace and tension
- Switching to Fiction: Course for new fiction editors
- Transform Your Fiction guides: My fiction editing series for editors and authors
Cited sources
- At Risk, Stella Rimington, Arrow Books, 2004
- Don’t Let Go, Harlan Coben, Arrow Books, 2017
- Dodger, Terry Pratchett, Corgi, 2012
- Recursion, Blake Crouch, Pan Macmillan, 2019
- The Matlock Paper, Robert Ludlum, Orion, 2010
- The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, Gollancz, 2009
- Parting Shot, Linwood Barclay, Orion, 2017
- New Tricks, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central Publishing, 2009
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Want to use grammatical expletives in your crime, mystery and thriller fiction? These words serve as place holders or fillers in a sentence. They shift emphasis and can affect rhythm. Used injudiciously, however, they can be cluttering tension-wreckers. Here's how to strike a balance.
Because expletives shift emphasis, they have a syntactic function. However, they don’t in themselves contribute anything to our understanding of the sentence. In other words, they don't have a semantic role. You might also see them called syntactic expletives.
Common examples are:
Take a look at the following pair. The first sentence is introduced by an expletive.
When used well, expletives are enrichment tools that allow an author to play with a narrative voice’s register and the rhythm of sentences.
When prose is overloaded with them, it can feel cluttered with filler words that add nothing but ink on the page. At best, they widen the narrative distance between the reader and the POV character; at worst, they flatten a sentence and destroy suspense and tension.
Common examples are:
- there are/is/was/were
- it is/was
Take a look at the following pair. The first sentence is introduced by an expletive.
- There was a car parked outside the house.
- A car was parked outside the house.
When used well, expletives are enrichment tools that allow an author to play with a narrative voice’s register and the rhythm of sentences.
When prose is overloaded with them, it can feel cluttered with filler words that add nothing but ink on the page. At best, they widen the narrative distance between the reader and the POV character; at worst, they flatten a sentence and destroy suspense and tension.
Flat expletives that merit fixing
Too much telling of what there is or was can rip the immediacy from a scene and encourage skimming. That’s a problem – it means the reader isn’t engaged and risks missing something.
Furthermore, if they’re not performing their rhythmic or emphasis role, expletives make sentence navigation more difficult because all they're doing is cluttering the prose.
Here's an example. Think I've overworked it? There are published books from mainstream presses with passages just like this made-up one.
Too much telling of what there is or was can rip the immediacy from a scene and encourage skimming. That’s a problem – it means the reader isn’t engaged and risks missing something.
Furthermore, if they’re not performing their rhythmic or emphasis role, expletives make sentence navigation more difficult because all they're doing is cluttering the prose.
Here's an example. Think I've overworked it? There are published books from mainstream presses with passages just like this made-up one.
FLAT EXPLETIVE
It was a tiny room. There was a light switch with rust-coloured smudged fingermarks on the melamine surface. Was that blood? There was a noise coming from beyond on the back wall. It was a high-pitched whimper. Then there was silence. She held her breath and tiptoed forward.
Suddenly there was a scream.
It was a tiny room. There was a light switch with rust-coloured smudged fingermarks on the melamine surface. Was that blood? There was a noise coming from beyond on the back wall. It was a high-pitched whimper. Then there was silence. She held her breath and tiptoed forward.
Suddenly there was a scream.
The problem with the expletives in the passage above is that readers are bogged down in what there was rather than the viewpoint character's experience of discovery. Let's revise it to fix the problem.
THE FIX
The room was tiny. Rust-coloured fingermarks smudged the melamine surface of the light switch. Blood maybe. A noise came from beyond a door on the back wall. A high-pitched whimper. Then nothing. She held her breath and tiptoed forward.
A scream shattered the silence.
The room was tiny. Rust-coloured fingermarks smudged the melamine surface of the light switch. Blood maybe. A noise came from beyond a door on the back wall. A high-pitched whimper. Then nothing. She held her breath and tiptoed forward.
A scream shattered the silence.
Notice how the narrative distance has been reduced in the revised passage. Now it's as if we're in the viewpoint character's head, moving with her second by second. We can focus on the room, the dried-blood fingermarks, the whimper, and the scream rather than the being of those things – their was-ness.
Removing the expletives and swapping in stronger verbs (smudged, shattered) enables us to tighten up the prose and introduce immediacy. And now there's no need for the told 'suddenly' – we experience the suddenness through the in-the-moment shattering.
Expletives that pack a punch
As is always the case, obliterating expletives from a novel would be inappropriate because sometimes they're the perfect tool to help out with rhythm and emphasis.
The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (p. 1) uses expletives galore, and masterfully at that. The repetition (anaphora) brings a steady rhythm to the passage that ensures the reader gives equal weight to the contrasting extremes – from best and worst to hope and despair.
The expletives introduce a detached sense of reportage that forces us forward rather than allowing us to dwell on any of the heavens or hells on offer. It’s simultaneously mundane and monstrous, and that's why it's magical.
As is always the case, obliterating expletives from a novel would be inappropriate because sometimes they're the perfect tool to help out with rhythm and emphasis.
The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (p. 1) uses expletives galore, and masterfully at that. The repetition (anaphora) brings a steady rhythm to the passage that ensures the reader gives equal weight to the contrasting extremes – from best and worst to hope and despair.
The expletives introduce a detached sense of reportage that forces us forward rather than allowing us to dwell on any of the heavens or hells on offer. It’s simultaneously mundane and monstrous, and that's why it's magical.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair [...]
And here’s an example from Dog Tags (p. 1) where omission of the expletive would rip the energy from the opening first line of the chapter and interfere with our understanding of which words we’re supposed to emphasize.
“Andy Carpenter, Lawyer to the Dogs.”
That was the USA Today headline on a piece that ran about me a couple of months ago.
That was the USA Today headline on a piece that ran about me a couple of months ago.
Summing up
Grammatical expletives are a normal part of language and have every right to be in a novel. Overloading can destroy tension and make for a laboured narrative, but a purposeful peppering can amplify character emotion, moderate rhythm, and make space for the introduction of big themes in small spaces without sensory clutter.
Cited works and further reading
- Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, W. W. Norton & Company; Critical edition, 2020
- Dog Tags, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central Publishing, Reprint edition, 2011
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
- Making Sense of Punctuation: Transform Your Fiction 2
- ‘Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?’
- ‘Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions’
- 'Should I use a comma before coordinating conjunctions and independent clauses in fiction?'
- ‘What is anaphora and how can you use it in fiction writing?’
- 'Why "suddenly" can spoil your crime fiction'
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Not sure where to place your speech tags? This guide shows you how to tell readers who’s speaking, not based on a set of rules but in respect of clarity, suspense, invisibility, and rhythm.
What is a dialogue tag?
Dialogue tags, or speech tags, are complementary short phrases that tell the reader who’s talking. They’re not always necessary, particularly if there are only two speakers in a scene, but when they are used, this is what they look like:
Said is often best because readers are so used to seeing it that it’s pretty much invisible and therefore less interruptive.
What’s the rule about where tags go?
Dialogue tags can be placed after, between or before dialogue. Authors sometimes ask which position is best or whether there’s a rule.
There is no rule. All three positions have advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you want to achieve.
Position: After dialogue
Readers are so used to seeing speech tags like said at the end of dialogue that they’re almost invisible. That allows the dialogue, rather than the speaking of the dialogue, to be the focus.
Below is a wee example from Recursion (p. 292). The speech takes centre stage; the doing of speech (screaming, in this case) comes afterwards.
Furthermore, when the tag comes after the dialogue, it can roll seamlessly into any supporting narrative, as shown in the example from The Ghost Fields (p. 194).
Dialogue tags, or speech tags, are complementary short phrases that tell the reader who’s talking. They’re not always necessary, particularly if there are only two speakers in a scene, but when they are used, this is what they look like:
- ‘Dump that corpse and don’t ever mention it again,’ the hooded guy whispered.
- “Thanks for holding the gun,” Tom said. “Now pull the trigger.”
- Marg turned. Smirked. Said, ‘Tomorrow. If you’re late, he’s late. Geddit?’
Said is often best because readers are so used to seeing it that it’s pretty much invisible and therefore less interruptive.
What’s the rule about where tags go?
Dialogue tags can be placed after, between or before dialogue. Authors sometimes ask which position is best or whether there’s a rule.
There is no rule. All three positions have advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you want to achieve.
Position: After dialogue
Readers are so used to seeing speech tags like said at the end of dialogue that they’re almost invisible. That allows the dialogue, rather than the speaking of the dialogue, to be the focus.
Below is a wee example from Recursion (p. 292). The speech takes centre stage; the doing of speech (screaming, in this case) comes afterwards.
Furthermore, when the tag comes after the dialogue, it can roll seamlessly into any supporting narrative, as shown in the example from The Ghost Fields (p. 194).
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“Come on!” he screams.
‘It’s very … evocative,’ says Ruth. This is true. The brushwork may be crude, the planes out of perspective and the figures barely more than stick men, but there’s something about the work of the unknown airman that brings back the past more effectively than any documentary or reconstruction. |
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There are a couple of potential disadvantages:
- In longer chunks of dialogue in scenes with more than two speakers, the reader will have to wait until the end of the speech to find out who’s saying what.
- Placement at the end of speech can flatten a one-liner or suspense point in dialogue.
Position: Between dialogue
Placing speech tags between dialogue is also common and unlikely to jar the reader. Here are three reasons why it works:
- The tag breaks up longer streams of dialogue, which is especially handy if a monologue’s rearing its head.
- We’re given an early indication who’s speaking. If there are more than two speakers in a scene, and the reader’s likely to be confused, placement between the speech is an effective solution.
- One-liners, suspense points and shocks get to take centre stage. Adding the speech tag at the end could flatten the tension.
Here are two examples in which the mid placement of the tag means the suspense isn't interfered with. The first is taken from The Ghost Fields (p. 194); the second is something I made up.
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‘It’s not signed,’ says Frank, ‘but there’s something that may be a clue.’
“Thanks for holding the gun,” Tom said. “Now pull the trigger.” |
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In the first example, not having the speech tag at the end of the dialogue focuses the reader on one question: what’s the clue? Not: Frank’s the speaker.
In the second example, rejig the sentence so that Tom said comes after all the speech, and notice how this makes the wallop vanish from the line about pulling the trigger.
Position: Before dialogue
Placement of the tag before the dialogue isn’t a no-no but it is a less common option and more noticeable.
A tag tells of speaking; dialogue shows character voice, mood and intention. When the speaker’s announced first, it’s a tap on the shoulder that draws attention to speaking being done. It expands what author and creative-writing expert Emma Darwin calls the ‘psychic distance’ between the reader and the speaker, which can flatten the mood.
And, yet, this can also be its advantage. That tap introduces a more staccato rhythm that can stop a reader in their tracks.
In this extract from Recursion (p. 292), the placement of the tag before the dialogue induces an acute sense of resignation – that dull thump in the pit of one’s stomach when the proverbial’s hit the fan.
In the second example, rejig the sentence so that Tom said comes after all the speech, and notice how this makes the wallop vanish from the line about pulling the trigger.
Position: Before dialogue
Placement of the tag before the dialogue isn’t a no-no but it is a less common option and more noticeable.
A tag tells of speaking; dialogue shows character voice, mood and intention. When the speaker’s announced first, it’s a tap on the shoulder that draws attention to speaking being done. It expands what author and creative-writing expert Emma Darwin calls the ‘psychic distance’ between the reader and the speaker, which can flatten the mood.
And, yet, this can also be its advantage. That tap introduces a more staccato rhythm that can stop a reader in their tracks.
In this extract from Recursion (p. 292), the placement of the tag before the dialogue induces an acute sense of resignation – that dull thump in the pit of one’s stomach when the proverbial’s hit the fan.
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“That’s a Black Hawk,” he says. “Wonder what’s going on in town.”
The chopper banks hard to the left and slows its groundspeed, now drifting back in their direction as it lowers from five hundred feet toward the ground. Helena says, “They’re here for us.” |
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Not placing tags: Omission
There’s no need to include a speech tag if it’s adding nothing but clutter. In the following example from Recursion (p. 125), the author has omitted them because there are only two speakers. He lets the dialogue, and its punctuation, inject the voice, mood and intention into the scene rather than telling us who’s speaking and how they’re saying it.
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Slade lifts his Champagne glass and polishes off the rest.
“You stole that other life from me.” “Helena—” “Was I married? Did I have kids?” “Do you really want to know? It doesn’t matter now. It never happened.” “You’re a monster.” |
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Summing up
Placement of dialogue tags isn’t about rules. It’s about purpose:
- Varying rhythm
- Respecting mood and suspense
- Clarifying who’s speaking
- Avoiding unnecessary clutter
For that reason, mixing up the position of speech tags can be effective.
Let’s end with an extract from Out of Sight (pp. 135–7), which demonstrates the varied ways in which author Elmore Leonard handles his tagging: beginning, between, end, and omission.
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‘But you think they’re coming back,’ Karen said.
‘Yes, indeed, and we gonna have a surprise party. I want you to take a radio, go down to the lobby and hang out with the folks. You see Foley and this guy Bragg, what do you do?’ ‘Call and tell you.’ ‘And you let them come up. You understand? You don’t try to make the bust yourself.’ Burdon slipping back into his official mode. Karen said, ‘What if they see me?’ ‘You don’t let that happen,’ Burdon said. ‘I want them upstairs.’ |
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Cited sources and further reading
- Editing Fiction at Sentence Level, Louise Harnby, Panx Press, 2020
- How to Punctuate Dialogue (free webinar)
- Out of Sight, Elmore Leonard, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017
- Recursion, Blake Crouch, Pan, 2020
- The Ghost Fields, Elly Griffiths, Quercus, 2015
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to Barry Award-nominated thriller writer John A. Connell about moving from Berkley (Penguin USA) to independent publishing.
Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 12
Listen to find out more about:
- Being a Hollywood camera operator ... Jurassic Park, Thelma and Louise, and NYPD Blue
- Getting a publishing contract with a major press
- The Mason Collins series
- When publishers are no longer invested
- Moving to independent publishing
- Clawing back book rights
- Using movie experience to craft a novel's scene
- Beyond writing: what indie publishers need to do
- Challenges and benefits of indie publishing
- Being edited
- Useful organizations
- Writing a series versus standalone novels
- Future projects
Top tips From John
- Build a mailing list
- Offer a free short story or novella
- Develop a series
- Use Facebook ads
- Craft a great website
- Engage with your audience
- Get your business head on
- Invest in appropriate editing
Contact John A. Connell
Subscribe to John's newsletter and get a free book:
- Website: John A Connell: Gripping Thrillers With a Historical Twist
- Email: [email protected]
- Facebook author page
- John's books on Amazon US and UK
Editing bites
- Stephen King (video): Masterclass, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2012
- Joanna Penn: Video marketing for authors
- Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula
- International Thriller Writers
- Mystery Writers of America
- Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula
Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
The impact of ‘before’ and ‘after’ in fiction writing: Tacit and explicit chronology of action
17/2/2020
When the order of characters’ movements is told with the words ‘before’ and ‘after’, there’s a risk that readers will focus on timeline rather than story. That distraction can reduce engagement and dumb down the writing.
Here’s what to look out for and how to fix the problem.
Here’s what to look out for and how to fix the problem.
In this article, we’ll look at tacit and explicit chronologies of action, and assess which style of writing is more immersive and why.
Why writers include ‘before’ and ‘after’
The inclusion of ‘before’ and ‘after’ to tell the order of play is not an indication of poor grammar – not at all. There’s nothing grammatically wrong with these constructions.
Why writers include ‘before’ and ‘after’
The inclusion of ‘before’ and ‘after’ to tell the order of play is not an indication of poor grammar – not at all. There’s nothing grammatically wrong with these constructions.
More usually, it’s an indication of insecurity. The author hasn’t learned to trust the power of their words on the page, or the ability of their readers to perceive the meaning behind those words.
It’s also why writers sometimes use several adjectives with similar meanings rather than one strong one, or an adverbial phrase to fortify a weak verb.
Some authors also fear that their writing will come across as too ‘plain’ or ‘simple’. Chronological nudges are an attempt to ornament the prose.
Tacit chronology of action
The things that we do occur in a sequence; they have a chronology. This is as much the case in real life as it is on the screen, in an audiobook and in the pages of a novel. That chronology is tacit – we don’t need to explain it because it’s understood.
Take a look at this excerpt from The Devil’s Dice by Roz Watkins (p. 79, HQ, 2019):
It’s also why writers sometimes use several adjectives with similar meanings rather than one strong one, or an adverbial phrase to fortify a weak verb.
Some authors also fear that their writing will come across as too ‘plain’ or ‘simple’. Chronological nudges are an attempt to ornament the prose.
Tacit chronology of action
The things that we do occur in a sequence; they have a chronology. This is as much the case in real life as it is on the screen, in an audiobook and in the pages of a novel. That chronology is tacit – we don’t need to explain it because it’s understood.
Take a look at this excerpt from The Devil’s Dice by Roz Watkins (p. 79, HQ, 2019):
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I shuddered, put the laptop down and manoeuvred Hamlet onto my knee. I leant and breathed in his subtle, nutty cat smell.
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Watkins doesn’t tell us explicitly that the shuddering occurred before the laptop was put down, or that the laptop was moved before the character shifted the cat onto their knee. And yet we know. The sequence of events is implied by the order in which she places each clause. It’s tacit.
- First thing that happens: shudders
- Next thing that happens: moves laptop
- Next thing that happens: manoeuvres cat
- Next thing that happens: leans
- Next thing that happens: inhales cat odour
And that’s the thing with strong line craft – it allows the reader to immerse themselves in the chronology of action by showing us, clause by clause, what’s transpiring, instead of tapping us on the shoulder and telling us.
Explicit chronology of action
Let’s recast the Watkins excerpt with some explicit taps on the shoulder:
I shuddered before putting the laptop down, then manoeuvred Hamlet onto my knee. After leaning in, I breathed in his subtle, nutty cat smell.
I see this use of timeline nudges frequently in the fiction writing of less experienced authors, and it’s problematic when overused. Here’s why.
1. Some readers might feel patronized
Not every reader will notice the use of chronology nudges. But some will, and since no author wants to alienate a chunk of their readership, why push the story over a cliff when we can work out the sequence of events from the order of the words?
Telling readers that X was done before doing Y, or after doing Z, is akin to saying: ‘Hey, just in case you’re not clever enough, let me spell it out for you.’
It’s a dumbing-down that readers in the know won’t appreciate.
2. The inclusion is unnecessary
If you’re still not convinced, ask yourself whether the inclusion of ‘before’ or ‘after’ as timeline nudges is necessary. It often isn’t.
If a character’s shuddering occurs at the beginning of a sentence, the reader will assume that shuddering is what’s happening right now. If a new action follows that shuddering, the reader will assume that – just like in real life – the moment has passed and something else is happening in the new now of the novel.
3. The reader is focused on the wrong thing
When writers create immersive fiction, the reader feels as if they are in the moment – this is happening, now that, now the other.
‘Before’ and ‘after’ are distractions that focus the reader on when rather than what’s happening. The former is telling; the latter is showing.
4. There are more words than are necessary
Not enough words leaves readers hungry for clarity. Too many gives them indigestion. The artistry comes in the form of balance.
As long as the sequence of events can be understood by the reader, consider whether timeline nudges such as ‘before’ and ‘after’ are cluttering your prose.
The power of tacit chronology – more examples
Take a look at these pairs of narrative text, each of which has a shown tacit chronology and an alternative told explicit sequence. Which versions are more suspenseful? Which are most immediate? Which flow better when you read them out loud?
I’ve used examples from published fiction for the tacit versions, and taken a little artistic licence – altering them in ways their authors never intended – for the explicit chronologies.
Take a look at these pairs of narrative text, each of which has a shown tacit chronology and an alternative told explicit sequence. Which versions are more suspenseful? Which are most immediate? Which flow better when you read them out loud?
I’ve used examples from published fiction for the tacit versions, and taken a little artistic licence – altering them in ways their authors never intended – for the explicit chronologies.
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The Chalk Man, C. J. Tudor, Penguin, 2018, p. 92
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In the original version, the ‘and’ between the initial breath and the walk into the kitchen is a fine example of the power of a conjunction. It’s almost invisible, which gives us the space to take that breath with the viewpoint character. And having taken it, we’re ready to go into the kitchen with them.
In the edited version, ‘before’ pulls us away from that moment. The tension has fallen out of the sentence.
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The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, Gollancz, 2009, p. 201
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In the original version, it’s as if we’re in the room, watching the man as he smiles and leans back. There is space for that action to have its moment. Then he blows the smoke – that’s the new moment; we’ve left the other behind.
In the edited version, ‘after’ shoves us past the leaning back and smiling before we’ve had a chance to savour it. It’s already gone, even though we’re still reading about it.
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Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Arrow, 2006, Prologue from Kindle edition
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In the original version, Crichton shows us the action. Perhaps, like me, you can hear the chunter of the helicopter blades in the air. Who’s in this helicopter? Men in uniform. They jump out. What will happen next? We’re shown: they fling open the door. There’s a sense of order, of clandestine and militaristic precision.
In the edited version, ‘before’ saps the suspense from the final sentence. We’re focused on the timeline rather than the action.
Summing up
The table below summarizes the impact of tacit and explicit chronology on prose.
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Tacit chronology
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Explicit chronology
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Embraces the logic of standard sentence structure
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Assumes readers don’t understand the word order
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Allows readers to be in the now of the novel
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Pushes readers into an external time and space
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Shows us the story as it unfolds
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Tells us the timeline of movement
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Trims the fat
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Clutters the prose
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Take a look at your narrative. If ‘before’ and ‘after’ are telling rather than showing, recast gently and reread out loud. Is the order of play still clear? Is the prose more immersive? If so, there’ll be fewer words but what’s there will be all the richer.
And if you’re worried that your prose will be too plain, think again. Immersive writing allows the reader to decorate the story with their own imagination.
And if you’re worried that your prose will be too plain, think again. Immersive writing allows the reader to decorate the story with their own imagination.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
If your characters’ intention to act is trumping their action, a small recast could be in order. This article shows you how ‘to’ can affect immediacy and plausibility in certain circumstances.
The intention to act
Take a look at these sentences:
What’s noticeable in these examples is that the character does X in order to achieve Y. Let’s be clear – there’s nothing wrong with any of the sentences in terms of either grammar or syntax. A proofreader wouldn’t touch them. A line editor, however, would take a closer look.
In all three cases the narrator is describing the intention to act, rather than the act itself. And that can be problematic for a couple of reasons.
Take a look at these sentences:
- Jan reached up to switch on the light. The attic was empty. Almost.
- Andrew picked up the phone to call Carla. She answered on the third ring.
- I get out of the car to walk towards the caravan. The curtains are open so I peek through the plastic window. No one’s home.
What’s noticeable in these examples is that the character does X in order to achieve Y. Let’s be clear – there’s nothing wrong with any of the sentences in terms of either grammar or syntax. A proofreader wouldn’t touch them. A line editor, however, would take a closer look.
In all three cases the narrator is describing the intention to act, rather than the act itself. And that can be problematic for a couple of reasons.
- The action is where our attention is supposed to be. That’s how we move through the story at the same pace as the viewpoint character. When intention creeps in instead, the narrative distance – how close the reader feels to the story and the viewpoint character’s place within it at a given moment – widens. The narrative is less immediate.
- We need the action if the prose is to retain its plausibility. It’s essentially a question of logic and whether the infinitive form of the verb allows us to move from A to B.
Removing ‘to’
Now look at what happens when we remove the ‘to’, introduce a conjunction and tweak the conjugation.
In (1), now we’re moving through the story with Jan. She acts and we go with her. We feel closer to her, as if we are her. In the unedited example, she discovers the empty attic and yet the light never got switched on – all we had was her intention to do it. The ‘and’ fixes that problem.
In (2), Andrew picked up a phone and made a call. We’re doing those things with him. And Carla can now answer on the third ring because Andrew made a call, rather than just picking up the phone with the intention of getting in touch with her.
In (3), readers are focused on my journey to the caravan, not the reason why I get out of the car (to walk over to the caravan). And now that I do walking rather than just car-exiting, I can get to that caravan and peek through the window.
Now look at what happens when we remove the ‘to’, introduce a conjunction and tweak the conjugation.
- Jan reached up and switched on the light. The attic was empty. Almost.
- Andrew picked up the phone and called Carla. She answered on the third ring.
- I get out of the car and walk over to the caravan. The curtains are open so I peek through the plastic window. No one’s home.
In (1), now we’re moving through the story with Jan. She acts and we go with her. We feel closer to her, as if we are her. In the unedited example, she discovers the empty attic and yet the light never got switched on – all we had was her intention to do it. The ‘and’ fixes that problem.
In (2), Andrew picked up a phone and made a call. We’re doing those things with him. And Carla can now answer on the third ring because Andrew made a call, rather than just picking up the phone with the intention of getting in touch with her.
In (3), readers are focused on my journey to the caravan, not the reason why I get out of the car (to walk over to the caravan). And now that I do walking rather than just car-exiting, I can get to that caravan and peek through the window.
Shown prose versus told prose – which to choose
This problematic use of infinitives can be framed in terms of showing and telling. There’s room for both in any story, but, as always, context is everything.
Here are three points to bear in mind when deciding whether to ditch your ‘to’ and recast.
Conjunctions aren’t the only option. There are other ways of fixing told motivation-based prose where action is what the author really wants to convey. Let’s revisit one of our earlier examples. Each recast has a slightly different mood, but the ‘to’ has been ditched.
This problematic use of infinitives can be framed in terms of showing and telling. There’s room for both in any story, but, as always, context is everything.
Here are three points to bear in mind when deciding whether to ditch your ‘to’ and recast.
- An infinitive tells us why. A conjunction + verb shows us how.
- An infinitive holds us still – it’s motivation-based. A conjunction + verb shows us movement – it’s action-based.
- An infinitive tells us about what’s impending. A conjunction + verb shows us what’s happening in the now.
Conjunctions aren’t the only option. There are other ways of fixing told motivation-based prose where action is what the author really wants to convey. Let’s revisit one of our earlier examples. Each recast has a slightly different mood, but the ‘to’ has been ditched.
- I get out of the car and walk over to the caravan. The curtains are open so I peek through the plastic window. No one’s home.
- I get out of the car, walk over to the caravan, peek through the plastic window. The curtains are open. No one’s home.
- I get out of the car. Walk over to the caravan. The curtains are open so I peek through the plastic window. No one’s home.
Red flags – words and phrases to watch out for
What we mustn’t do is hunt out every example of an infinitive verb form and hit the DELETE button. That would be catastrophic. Instead, during the revision process, check what the following words and phrases are doing to your prose.
Are they showing motivation or impending action? Is that what you want? And will the logic hold up?
What we mustn’t do is hunt out every example of an infinitive verb form and hit the DELETE button. That would be catastrophic. Instead, during the revision process, check what the following words and phrases are doing to your prose.
- in an attempt to [verb]
- in order to [verb]
- so as to [verb]
- to [verb]
Are they showing motivation or impending action? Is that what you want? And will the logic hold up?
‘To’ and viewpoint drops
Infinitives can also interfere with point of view. In this case, it’s not immediacy at stake but what it’s possible for the viewpoint character to know.
Take a look at these examples:
In (1), I’m the viewpoint character. All is well until I meet the dog. It bares its teeth. We’re still good. But then the infinitive slips in, and with it I’m now privy to the dog’s intention – to bite. It’s a step too far. Perhaps the dog’s been trained to snarl. Maybe it’s more a warning than an impending attack.
The scene could demand I get bitten or escape intact. Either way, what matters is that we’re not in the dog’s head so we can’t know its intention. A recast that shows what happens, rather than telling what might, is in order.
In (2), Denise is the viewpoint character. We have access to her thoughts via the free indirect discourse: The guy was a pain ... That Matty grabbed the side of the boat is fine. In fact, it’s a solid example of shown prose because although we don’t have access to his intentions or motivations (because we’re not in his head) we can make a good guess at what they are from his observable action – grabbing the side of the boat.
The infinitive tells us why he grabbed the side of the boat. And that’s a problem because we can’t know; we’re not in his head. All we can do is see through Denise’s eyes. Yes, it’s likely that he’s steadying himself, but why not let the reader do the work? His actions are enough to show them.
A recast might go like this:
Or this more staccato version:
When intention is the intention!
There are times when the infinitive form of a verb is a good choice because intention, purpose or desire is exactly what the author wants to convey, not the action itself.
Here’s an excerpt from Nuala Ellwood’s Day of the Accident (Penguin, 2019, p. 94). The viewpoint character intends to talk but the action never happens. We’re supposed to focus on the intention, so the infinitives – to speak, to defend myself – work.
Infinitives can also interfere with point of view. In this case, it’s not immediacy at stake but what it’s possible for the viewpoint character to know.
Take a look at these examples:
- I jump over the wall and land on the soft verge. Dan’s German shepherd greets me. The dog bares its teeth, preparing to bite.
- Matty. The guy was a pain, had done nothing but hold her back all day. Denise shoved him hard in the back. He grabbed the side of the boat to steady himself.
In (1), I’m the viewpoint character. All is well until I meet the dog. It bares its teeth. We’re still good. But then the infinitive slips in, and with it I’m now privy to the dog’s intention – to bite. It’s a step too far. Perhaps the dog’s been trained to snarl. Maybe it’s more a warning than an impending attack.
The scene could demand I get bitten or escape intact. Either way, what matters is that we’re not in the dog’s head so we can’t know its intention. A recast that shows what happens, rather than telling what might, is in order.
- The painful version: The dog bares its teeth, leaps forward and clamps its jaw around my arm, puncturing the skin.
- The injury-free version: I jump over the wall and land on the soft verge. Dan’s German shepherd greets me. The dog bares its teeth and I freeze. It backs off, so I give it a wide berth and trot down the road.
In (2), Denise is the viewpoint character. We have access to her thoughts via the free indirect discourse: The guy was a pain ... That Matty grabbed the side of the boat is fine. In fact, it’s a solid example of shown prose because although we don’t have access to his intentions or motivations (because we’re not in his head) we can make a good guess at what they are from his observable action – grabbing the side of the boat.
The infinitive tells us why he grabbed the side of the boat. And that’s a problem because we can’t know; we’re not in his head. All we can do is see through Denise’s eyes. Yes, it’s likely that he’s steadying himself, but why not let the reader do the work? His actions are enough to show them.
A recast might go like this:
- Matty. The guy was a pain, had done nothing but hold her back all day. Denise shoved him hard in the back and he grabbed the side of the boat.
Or this more staccato version:
- Matty. The guy was a pain, had done nothing but hold her back all day. Denise shoved him hard in the back. He grabbed the side of the boat.
When intention is the intention!
There are times when the infinitive form of a verb is a good choice because intention, purpose or desire is exactly what the author wants to convey, not the action itself.
Here’s an excerpt from Nuala Ellwood’s Day of the Accident (Penguin, 2019, p. 94). The viewpoint character intends to talk but the action never happens. We’re supposed to focus on the intention, so the infinitives – to speak, to defend myself – work.
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Her eyes flash with hatred. I go to speak, to defend myself, but no words will come. Instead I let Sonia guide me away, Barbara’s venom ringing in my ears.
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Here are some additional (made-up) examples of where motivation is the order of the day. The character does X for the purpose of achieving Y, and the infinitive is effective.
- I take deep breaths to calm myself.
- He’d worked his backside off with this parole officer to stay out of trouble.
- Arthur went to pull Excalibur from the stone but Merlin’s scream stopped him in his tracks.
- I’ve made a decision. I’ll fill up her petrol tank with diesel to trash the engine. That’ll teach her.
Summing up
If you want your characters to act, show those actions in your prose rather than telling readers about intention. Replace the infinitives with a conjunction and modify how the verb’s conjugated. Or, for a more staccato feel, try commas, or closing the sentence with a full point and starting a new one.
If it’s motivation you want, a ‘to’ plus a verb has the right to stand.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re including fingerprint science in your fiction writing, these tips will help you get the basics right.
Fingerprints are an established part of forensic procedure. If they’re in your novel, you’ll need to think about the science, the degree to which you’ll stay true to reality, and how much detail to include without turning your fiction into a textbook.
Here are 9 tips to get you started.
1. Know how a fingerprint is formed
In ‘Introduction to Forensic Science’, Penny Haddrill describes fingerprints as follows:
Here are 9 tips to get you started.
1. Know how a fingerprint is formed
In ‘Introduction to Forensic Science’, Penny Haddrill describes fingerprints as follows:
‘On our fingers and toes there are many fine ridges. These ridges form recognisable patterns and are formed during the gestation period of the foetus during pregnancy. Fingerprints are produced from the contact between the ridges present on our fingers and a surface. The transfer is achieved by the deposition of the secretions from our glands associated with the ridges on our skin or by contaminants present on the finger surface.’
2. Know your terminology
If you’re seeking authenticity, the terminology you use will be determined by where your novel’s investigators are based. If your fiction is set in the UK at least, ‘fingerprint’ and ‘fingermark’ mean different things:
- PRINT: A fingerprint refers to what is taken from a known/controlled source. For example, if your suspect is arrested, their fingerprints will be taken by the police using specialist equipment. The prints will be of high quality and include all the ridge detail.
- MARK: A fingermark refers to what is taken from an unknown/uncontrolled source. Your investigator might find fingermarks at a crime scene or elsewhere on an object that’s suspected of being related to the crime scene. Fingermarks are the ridge patterns (either full or partial, and from one digit or several) left behind on surfaces. The marks will usually be of lower quality, and might be smudged or otherwise contaminated.
3. Categorize your fingermarks correctly
In Explore Forensics, Jack Claridge offers three categories of mark (though, again, in your novel’s jurisdiction, these might be referred to as prints):
- Impressed marks (visible to the naked eye): These are found when a person’s finger has been pressed into a malleable substance such as wax, clay, or wet paint. They’re sometimes referred to as plastic marks.
- Patent marks (visible to the naked eye): These are found on a surface that’s come into contact with a finger on which there is a residue of, say, blood, oil, dirt, or some other liquid or powder material.
- Latent marks (invisible to the naked eye): The skin secretes sweat from pores. Sweat mixes with external particles in the air, and the body’s natural oils, and sits on the ridges of the fingers. When those fingers come into contact with a surface (particularly something hard or shiny, such as glass) the ridges leave a fingermark that can be exposed under high-intensity light sources or displayed by dusting with a fine powder or chemicals.
4. Understand where the science wobbles
It is believed that no two fingerprints are alike but there is no empirical evidence to prove this.
While it’s true that, to date, identical fingerprint matches have not been found, there are enough similar ‘matching points’ between two people’s prints such that false positives and negatives have occurred.
Says Laura Spinney in Nature:
‘Fingerprint analysis is fundamentally subjective. Examiners often have to work with incomplete or distorted prints — where a finger slid across a surface, for example — and they have to select the relevant features from what is available. What is judged relevant therefore changes from case to case and examiner to examiner.'
You might want to bear this in mind when your characters are doing or talking about fingerprint uniqueness.
5. Get the twin stuff right
Identical twins have almost identical DNA because they develop from one zygote (created by one egg and one sperm) that splits into two embryos.
Fingerprints, however, are formed during foetal development. Here's Spinney again:
‘The ridges and furrows on any given fingertip develop in the womb, [and are] shaped by such a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors that not even identical twins share prints.’
With that in mind, don’t make the mistake of hanging your plot on murderous monozygotic mayhem created by a couple of trickster twins. Their DNA might be an almost perfect match, but their paw prints won’t be.
6. Acknowledge real-world procedure and bias
The Centre for Forensic Science identifies four separate stages in the methodology of fingermark collection: ACE-V.
- Analysis – all the features of the mark, including any distortions, are analysed by the examiner. Remember, the mark may well be of lower quality than an exemplar fingerprint because it’s smudged or partial or has been contaminated in some way. Marks are analysed in terms of their overall pattern (e.g. loop, regular arch, tented arch, whorl), their ridge characteristics (more detailed ‘minutiae’), and the size, shape and frequency of pores and ridge edges.
- Comparison – the features are compared with a fingerprint in the database.
- Evaluation – the examiner decides whether there’s a match. It might be impossible to conclude either way because a comparison can’t be carried out between a partial mark and a full print.
- Verification – more than one specialist examiner should verify the match.
In Forensics, Val McDermid discusses a miscarriage of justice that occurred because of flawed procedure (pp. 134–7). A partial fingermark left at the scene of a horrific bombing in Madrid in 2004 was analysed in comparison with a suspect’s fingerprints.
In other words, the A and C were not separate procedures. The examiner went looking for points of similarity rather than taking into account the differences, even though only a partial fingermark was available. This introduced unacceptable bias and led to erroneous findings. She summarizes the FBI’s later conclusions:
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'First of all the expert should analyse the mark in detail, describing as many minutiae as she can. Only afterwards should she examine possible matches and carry out a comparison. When analysis and comparison happen simultaneously, experts run the risk of finding matching minutiae [ridge characteristics) because they are looking for them.’
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Does this mean you can’t have flawed procedure in your novel? Not at all – it could be a great plot point.
Just bear in mind that the issue of bias is on the agenda for the forensics community internationally. Read ‘A Review of the FBI’s Handling of the Brandon Mayfield Case’ in its entirety if you want more insights into the challenges of fingerprint forensics.
Furthermore, many police forces are having to endure budget cuts. Stretched resources can lead to corner-cutting. How might that affect your story?
7. Familiarize yourself with processing and enhancement
Latent fingermarks are currently processed using the following techniques. To find out more, read Dr Chris Lennard’s paper, ‘The detection and enhancement of latent fingerprints’, presented at the 13th INTERPOL Forensic Science Symposium.
- Powder suspension – enhances latent marks on non-porous surfaces. A suspension of coloured metal and detergent is painted onto the surface, then washed off, leaving the fingermark exposed. The mark is photographed.
- Powders – enhances latent marks on non-porous surfaces. Coloured metal powder – aluminium for glass; black powder for UPVC – is brushed onto the surface, exposing the mark. The mark is photographed or lifted using tape.
- Cyanoacrylate – enhances latent marks on non-porous surfaces. This compound is found in superglue. The vapour reacts with some marks, producing white crystals on the mark’s ridges. The crystalline can be dyed or dusted with dark powder to further enhance the mark. The mark is then photographed.
- Ninhydrin – enhances latent marks on porous surfaces. The surface is covered with the chemical then baked. It reacts with amino acids in the finger mark and turns purple. The mark is photographed.
Exemplar fingerprints – those taken directly from an individual in controlled circumstances – are captured via two methods:
- Ink-rolling (called Tenprints in the UK) – the fingertips and palms are rolled in ink and re-rolled onto card, then photographed.
- Scanning (called Livescan in the UK and US) – the fingertips and palms are scanned electronically.
Read about how two law-enforcement organizations – one in the UK and one in the US – use ink and scanning technology here:
- FBI: Recording legible fingerprints
- Northumbria Police: Tenprints
8. Use the right fingerprint databases
Images of fingermarks extracted from a crime scene can be uploaded to databases containing both fingerprints (and other biometrics) of known individuals and fingermarks that have yet to be identified.
The main fingerprint databases are:
- UK: IDENT1
- US: IAFIS – Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
- Australia: National Automated Fingerprint Identification System
- Eurodac – specifically for identifying asylum seekers and illegal immigrants
- INTERPOL fingerprints database
9. Decide how far to bend the rules
Do you need to worry about any of this? After all, it’s fiction!
It depends on the subgenre of your writing, and how your readers are likely to respond to deviations from reality. If your novel is set in an alternative world or in the future, you can play it however you want.
If, however, you’re writing a realistic procedural, you could alienate sticklers if you get it wrong, especially those who are police officers, forensic scientists, scene-of-crime officers, and fingerprint examiners.
TV shows like Silent Witness and CSI offer audiences a single viewpoint. Most viewers accept that the real world involves more complex investigations with many more players. Books, like TV shows, entertain us, so readers too will indulge writers who bend the rules to a degree.
Even if you don’t want to go for maximum authenticity, consider sprinkling your narrative with factual information that grounds your investigation just enough to head off those whose fingers are hovering over the one-star button in Amazon’s review pane!
Further reading and related resources
- 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in crime fiction
- A Review of the FBI’s Handling of the Brandon Mayfield Case, US Department of Justice, 2006
- Crime writing resources for indie authors
- Fingerprint Examination – Terminology, Definitions and Acronyms, Forensic Science Regulator, 2013
- Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime, by Val McDermid. Wellcome Collection, 2015
- Introduction to Forensic Science (online course), with Penny Haddrill, Centre for Forensic Science, University of Strathclyde, 2018
- Latent Prints, by Jack Claridge. Explore Forensics, 2017
- Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
- Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions
- Science in court: The fine print, by Laura Spinney. Nature 464, 344–6, 2010
- The Detection and Enhancement of Latent Fingerprints, presented at the 13th INTERPOL Forensic Science Symposium, by Dr Chris Lennard, 2001
- Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your crime fiction: Advice for new writers
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
Not every reader can stomach violence in fiction, and not every writer wants to go the whole hog with it. Here are two ways to approach it: compressed reporting after the fact; and showing it all as it happens.
Compressed reporting after the fact
Reporting the outcome of violence after the fact can be a superb alternative to detailed descriptions that might upset or sicken authors and their readers. This technique is used on the screen too.
In Series 5, Episode 3 of Line of Duty (BBC1), the perpetrator breaks into the home of a core character’s ex-wife. The transgressor proceeds to torture the victim. There’s a drill involved and lots of screaming. It’s gross. Well, it would be if we saw it. But we don’t. All we see is the outcome.
The ex-wife lies in a hospital bed, bandaged from head to toe. We glimpse patches of skin, her flesh swollen and angry. Her face is physically untouched though trauma is etched into it. And even the slightest movement results in a whimper and a wince; despite the medication, she’s in pain. All we know so far is that something awful has happened to her but we don’t know what.
The scene cuts to two police officers listening to an audio file of the torture. Now we hear the drill and the screams. The officers play a little of the audio then switch it off and express their horror. A phone conversation with the victim’s husband ensues and we discover a little more about what’s been done to the woman. They finish the call and discuss the crime between themselves. Then the audio’s back and we hear a few more snatches. Off again, and there’s more analysis.
It’s a powerful rendition of extreme violence that protects viewers from the gory detail but leaves us in no doubt about the suffering that’s been endured.
This method can work just as beautifully in a novel. It’s not that the violence is diminished but that we access less of it.
Harlan Coben’s Run Away (Century, 2019, pp. 68–9) provides an excellent example. Aaron, a corrupt and possessive junkie, has been murdered. Coben elects not to show us the violence as it plays out. Instead, we learn what happened via a later conversation between Simon and Ingrid.
Reporting the outcome of violence after the fact can be a superb alternative to detailed descriptions that might upset or sicken authors and their readers. This technique is used on the screen too.
In Series 5, Episode 3 of Line of Duty (BBC1), the perpetrator breaks into the home of a core character’s ex-wife. The transgressor proceeds to torture the victim. There’s a drill involved and lots of screaming. It’s gross. Well, it would be if we saw it. But we don’t. All we see is the outcome.
The ex-wife lies in a hospital bed, bandaged from head to toe. We glimpse patches of skin, her flesh swollen and angry. Her face is physically untouched though trauma is etched into it. And even the slightest movement results in a whimper and a wince; despite the medication, she’s in pain. All we know so far is that something awful has happened to her but we don’t know what.
The scene cuts to two police officers listening to an audio file of the torture. Now we hear the drill and the screams. The officers play a little of the audio then switch it off and express their horror. A phone conversation with the victim’s husband ensues and we discover a little more about what’s been done to the woman. They finish the call and discuss the crime between themselves. Then the audio’s back and we hear a few more snatches. Off again, and there’s more analysis.
It’s a powerful rendition of extreme violence that protects viewers from the gory detail but leaves us in no doubt about the suffering that’s been endured.
This method can work just as beautifully in a novel. It’s not that the violence is diminished but that we access less of it.
Harlan Coben’s Run Away (Century, 2019, pp. 68–9) provides an excellent example. Aaron, a corrupt and possessive junkie, has been murdered. Coben elects not to show us the violence as it plays out. Instead, we learn what happened via a later conversation between Simon and Ingrid.
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“The murder,” Simon said. “It was gruesome.”
Ingrid wore a long thin coat. She dug her hands into her pockets. “Go on.” “Aaron was mutilated.” “How?” “Do you really need the details?” he asked. [...] “According to Hester’s source, the killer slit Aaron’s throat, though she said that’s a tame way of putting it. The knife went deep into his neck. Almost took off his head. They sliced off three fingers. They also cut off ...” “Pre- or post-mortem?” Ingrid asked in her physician tone. “The amputations. Was he still alive for them?” “I don’t know,” Simon said. “Does it matter?” |
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Two things stand out about this scene:
- The question that Simon asks Ingrid (‘Do you really need the details?’) is the same one Coben’s asking his readers. He decides to give us just enough to shake us up, but not so much that we’re hurling into a bucket. The ellipsis is a well-placed pause that forces us to do some of the work. Overall, it’s lean but rich. The author doesn’t over-egg it for the sake of grossing us out.
- The violence is not diluted, yet Ingrid’s clinical detachment – she’s gone into doctor mode – gives us a breather and contrasts with Simon’s higher emotional state. The dialogue acts as a framework within which the horror is divulged; but it also gives us insights into the characters’ personalities. In other words, it’s not all about the murder.
Cosies are a subgenre that bend particularly well to compressed after-the-fact reporting. Yes, people get hurt and die in grisly ways but most of the horror is left to the imagination.
Here’s an example from Emily Brightwell’s The Inspector and Mrs Jeffries (C&R Crime, 2013, pp. 1–3):
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Witherspoon leaned forward and examined the dead man. It was not a chore he relished. The fact was, he was rather squeamish about dead people, but as corpses went, this was a rather nice one. At least it wasn’t covered in blood.
[…] “The doctor was obviously reading when death occurred,” Witherspoon said. “See how his head is resting on that book. Except for the rather peculiar way his arms are flopped out, one each side, you’d think he was merely taking a nap.” “Well he isn’t napping,” snapped the doctor, glaring at Witherspoon. “He’s dead and the circumstances are very suspicious.” “Suspicious?” Witherspoon echoed. He didn’t think there was anything suspicious about a dead person in a doctor’s surgery. Mind you there were more dead people in hospitals, but surely, if one couldn’t die in a hospital, a surgery was the next best place. […] “Inspector Witherspoon,” Hightower began slowly, as though talking to a thick-skulled child, “if you’d trouble yourself to lift Dr. Slocum’s head, you’ll see why I considered his death suspicious.” Witherspoon swallowed hard and rolled the dead man’s head to one side. He tried not to shudder as a pair of open, beady gray eyes gazed up at him. The face surrounding those eyes was puffed up like bread dough, and the flesh was flushed a bright pink. A hideously swollen tongue protruded from between lips that had been stretched in a horrible parody of a smile. Inspector Witherspoon quickly turned the face away and stepped back. “As you can see, he’s swelled up like a bullfrog,” Hightower continued. “He may well have actually died of heart failure, but I assure you, it was brought on by something else. […] Dr. Slocum’s been poisoned.” |
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Brightwell focuses on the impact of the poison on the body; unlike in the Line of Duty screen example, there’s nothing that tells us about the suffering endured. That’s the cosy way.
And as with the Coben example, the implied violence is balanced by dialogue that unveils character personality. It’s not just the readers who shy away from the horror; Inspector Witherspoon does too. We also learn how he’s perceived by others in the scene – as a bumbling buffoon who can’t see the obvious. This sets the scene nicely for Mrs Jeffries’ more capable intervention later on in the novel.
Showing it all as it happens
Some acts of violence – such as fight scenes – work best when we’re shown everything as it plays out. Rendering a fight after the fact (as in the examples above) would destroy the dramatic tension.
Still, a fight scene needs to hold the reader’s attention. That means paying attention to pacing and providing just enough stage direction to enable the reader to understand the choreography.
This extract from The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore (Orion, 2014, pp. 244–5) appealed to me because it avoids high-octane, kickass tropes. Rather, the author captures the transgressor’s mysterious sensuality in the violent narrative. Her psychotically calm speech and composed movements have an ethereal quality. In sharp contrast, the protagonist’s actions are punctuated with sentence fragments that elevate the pace and introduce tension.
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He bent forward, suddenly, and caught himself with one hand on his knee. Like a runner who hits his limit. Winded and beaten. When Kennon looked up, Caleb could see veins and tendons bulging in his neck. Their eyes met.
“Don’t move,” Kennon said. This time, his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. Emmeline stood to her full height and took a step toward Kennon. He fired the gun at her. Caleb didn’t know if he was trying to hit her or not. A candle inside a glass sphere exploded three feet from Emmeline’s ankle. Closer, in fact, to Caleb’s head. Behind her, the man on the mattress went on twitching. The device clamped to his face was made of iron. Thumbscrews ran along both its sides in double rows. “Inspector, you’ll hit somebody,” Emmeline said. She kept coming toward him. Her dress was cut long in the back, so that its hem trailed on the floor behind her, a black train. Emmeline stepped carefully between the candles, but her dress swept over them. They tipped, spelling wax, sending up smoke as they went out. Caleb got to his back and struggled until his cuffed hands were behind his thighs. He didn’t take his eyes of Emmeline. “You look sick, Inspector,” Emmeline said. “I could get you something to drink. A glass of water, maybe? Something a little stronger?” Kennon fired again and Emmeline didn’t even flinch. The bullet missed her by ten feet, punching a hole in the back of the building. “Stop—” “You should be more careful what you touch,” Emmeline said. “Some things can go right through the skin.” Kennon fell onto his knees. His face was purple. |
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Moore, like Coben, doesn’t overwork it. The scene never drags even though the pace changes depending on who we’re watching.
Here’s a high-octane example from Robert Ludlum’s The Matlock Paper (Orion, 1973/2005, pp. 268–9). Ludlum never bores us, just tells us straight. The pace is quick and every word counts.
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But the man came closer. He wasn’t sure. And closer. The beam of light was just above Matlock now. Then it moved to his midsection and Matlock could see the large barrel of the ugly black automatic.
It was the second, the instant he’d waited for. He whipped his right hand up towards the weapon, simultaneously springing his whole body against the legs of the man in the raincoat. He held the automatic’s barrel, forcing it with all his strength toward the ground. The gun fired twice, the impact of the explosions nearly shattering Matlock’s hand, the sounds partially muted by wet earth and the slashing rain. The man was beneath him now, twisting on his side, thrashing with his legs and free arm against the heavier Matlock. Matlock flung himself on the pinned arm and sank his teeth into the wrist above the hand holding the weapon. He bit into the flesh until he could feel the blood spurting out, mingled with the cold rain. The man released the automatic, screaming in anguish. Matlock grabbed for the gun, wrested it free, and smashed it repeatedly into the man’s face. |
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Ludlum keeps the stage direction lean and the pace consistent. But I also love how he introduces the earth and rain into the narrative, but only briefly. The weather doesn’t distract us. The mentions are just enough to ground the violence in a physical environment that can be felt and heard; the men aren’t fighting in white space.
Lean is good but not too lean! Omitting the detail would render the scene inauthentic.
Imagine reading this:
Lamaison saw his chance, and he took it. But Reacher was ready and took him down. Game over.
Really? So how did he manage that? Was is that easy? Jack Reacher’s good but he’s human. Readers still need to know how he won the day, how he was challenged, what obstacles he had to overcome. That way we can rally behind him.
Here’s the real extract from Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble (Bantam, 2007, p. 492). Child gives us the detail, shows us the choreography of the fight, but it’s focused. None of the steps are repeated so we don’t get bored.
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Lamaison saw his chance, and he took it. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and scrabbled his heels on the carpet, trying to get his feet under him. But Reacher was ready. Readier than he had ever been. He kicked Lamaison hard in the side and swung an elbow that caught him on the ear. Wrestled him face down on the floor and got a knee between his shoulder blades and jammed the SIG against the top of his spine. Lamaison’s head was up and Reacher knew he was staring out into the void. He feet were drumming on the carpet. He was screaming. Reacher could hear him clearly over the noise. He could feel his chest heaving.
Too late, Reacher thought. You reap what you sow. |
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Child uses sentence fragments to accelerate the pace, and polysyndeton to introduce a sense of rampancy. And he deepens our interest by shifting the narrative distance – we move from observers in the wings to right inside Reacher’s head.
Summing up
For showing-it-all violence:
- Provide stage direction and choreography but avoid repetition.
- Play with narrative distance (using thoughts and free indirect speech).
- Experiment with commas and conjunctions (asyndetic and polysyndetic constructions) for rhythmic effect and to introduce tension.
- Alter sentence length and evaluate the impact on pace.
- Don’t forget the environment – will glimpses of it enrich a reader’s experience of the violence?
For reporting-after-the-fact violence:
- Focus on outcomes. Even if we haven’t followed the violence as it occurred, what are the after-effects? Think bodily injury, emotional trauma, and damage to the environment (though consider genre).
- Use dialogue to explore the violence through other characters’ perceptions of and responses to it. Might you introduce contrasting emotions to unveil character traits?
- Keep it short. While a show-it-all fight scene might fall over one or two pages, trust your reader to do more of the work in this case. Give them nudges that enable them to join the dots.
A final word. If your scenes of violence include weapons or specialist fighting techniques, do your research. Some of your readers will know their guns and martial arts. Placing suppressors on pistols that don’t take them or getting your martial arts moves wrong will pull readers out of your story and provide the pedants with excuses to knock stars off your Amazon reviews.
Further reading
- Dialogue tags: How to show who’s speaking
- How to convey accents
- How to punctuate dialogue
- How to use free indirect speech
- How to write novels for readers, not viewers
- How to write thoughts
- Physical description with style
- Playing with sentence length
- Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions
- Using adverbs in fiction writing
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, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).
If you’re looking for ways to inject some drama into your novel’s sentences, omitting filter words could be just the ticket. Do so judiciously though. Including them can add texture to mood and voice.
What are filter words?
Filter words are verbs that increase the narrative distance, reminding us that what we’re reading is being told by someone rather than experienced, or shown, through the eyes of the character.
Examples include noticed, seemed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, thought, wondered, believed, knew, decided.
I see more extensive filtering in books written by less experienced novelists who’ve not yet learned to trust their characters’ voices, who are uncomfortable about playing with devices such as free indirect style, or who are still learning the craft of injecting drama into narrative.
I’ve taken some examples from published fiction and introduced filtering so you can see the difference, and how by avoiding filter words the writers have brought immediacy to their narratives:
Filter words are verbs that increase the narrative distance, reminding us that what we’re reading is being told by someone rather than experienced, or shown, through the eyes of the character.
Examples include noticed, seemed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, thought, wondered, believed, knew, decided.
I see more extensive filtering in books written by less experienced novelists who’ve not yet learned to trust their characters’ voices, who are uncomfortable about playing with devices such as free indirect style, or who are still learning the craft of injecting drama into narrative.
I’ve taken some examples from published fiction and introduced filtering so you can see the difference, and how by avoiding filter words the writers have brought immediacy to their narratives:
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ORIGINAL UNFILTERED
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FILTERED BY ME
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When the dark mellowed, he shuffled inside and sank onto the seat that a long-dead troglodyte had hewn into the cave wall. The familiar coldness seeped through his trousers and into his flesh.
Roz Watkins, The Devil’s Dice, p. 1 |
When he saw that the dark had mellowed, he shuffled inside and sank onto the seat that a long-dead troglodyte had hewn into the cave wall. He felt the familiar coldness seeping through his trousers and into his flesh.
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The address is typed on a sticker, the postmark a smudge of ink in the top right-hand corner.
Clare Mackintosh, Let Me Lie, p. 15 |
I notice the address and realize it’s typed on a sticker, the postmark a smudge of ink in the top right-hand corner.
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Earlier that morning, she’d groaned at the invasive ringtone from her partner’s iPhone. […] How could such a small slab of silicone produce so much noise?
Val McDermid, Insidious Intent, p. 14 |
Earlier that morning, she’d groaned at the invasive ringtone from her partner’s iPhone. […] She wondered how such a small slab of silicone could produce so much noise.
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When filter words distract
Filter words – particularly when they’re used as a narrative staple – tap the reader on the shoulder and say, ‘You’re not in this book. Someone else is experiencing this.’ They’re a reminder that doing is being done.
Of course, we as readers know this to be true. Still, there’s nothing like immersing yourself in a character’s journey.
Here’s an extreme example I made up:
Filter words – particularly when they’re used as a narrative staple – tap the reader on the shoulder and say, ‘You’re not in this book. Someone else is experiencing this.’ They’re a reminder that doing is being done.
Of course, we as readers know this to be true. Still, there’s nothing like immersing yourself in a character’s journey.
Here’s an extreme example I made up:
John realized he needed to tell Marie. He’d wondered about how awful it would be. He’d long felt the weight of guilt bearing down on him, but now he’d decided it was time to let that go. He’d become aware that he’d fallen out of love with her months earlier and thought about what had gone wrong between them as soon as Mark had come into their lives.
He recalled their most recent argument and felt himself shudder. He’d looked on as she’d screamed abuse at him, seen the spittle fly from her mouth. He’d felt sadness at first but that had turned to fear when he’d seen her pick up a knife from the table.
He recalled their most recent argument and felt himself shudder. He’d looked on as she’d screamed abuse at him, seen the spittle fly from her mouth. He’d felt sadness at first but that had turned to fear when he’d seen her pick up a knife from the table.
The text is horribly laboured – overly cluttered with doing being done. When confronted with a novel filled with filtering, readers will be tempted to skim, which means they might miss something crucial. A worst-case scenario is that they’ll give up because it’s not an enjoyable experience.
Now let’s tighten it up by removing the filter words:
John was dreading telling Marie. The guilt had been eating him alive, but he was done with that. He’d fallen out of love with her months earlier, Mark’s entrance into their lives the trigger.
He shuddered, recalling their most recent argument. At first, there’d been only sadness as she screamed abuse at him, spittle flying from her mouth, but that had turned to fear when she’d reached for the knife on the table.
He shuddered, recalling their most recent argument. At first, there’d been only sadness as she screamed abuse at him, spittle flying from her mouth, but that had turned to fear when she’d reached for the knife on the table.
We’ve lost none of the detail but now the prose is more emotionally immersive. We can better feel John’s predicament because we’re not repeatedly told that he’s doing the doing. It’s narration that feels less narrated.
When filter words add texture
I’m not suggesting you ban all filter words. When used intentionally they have a layering effect that can enrich a novel.
- You might want to pepper your narrative style with some telling filters to mix things up.
- Perhaps the narrative distance in much of the surrounding text is close and you want to ease the tension and pull the reader back.
- You might use filter words to introduce a different mood, for example, more enquiring or deliberative.
- You might even need them so that your prose makes sense – sometimes a character does realize or watch or think something, and we need to know that.
- Filter words can deepen character voice, especially in a first-person narrative.
The Mackintosh example above is in first person. I think my filtered version works; it’s just different. Or perhaps it would be stronger with only one of the filters. Either way, one might argue that it imparts a deeper sense of the character’s scouring the envelope for clues.
I still prefer Mackintosh’s approach because I like my crime fiction on the nose, but the experiment demonstrates that filter words aren’t wrong or right, but rather devices you can use to play with the reader’s experience of your story and the characters moving around within it.
Here’s an example from Philip Prowse’s Hellyer’s Trip, p. 194:
Then the interrogation ceased. He knew he should have been scratching lines on the cell walls to mark the passing of time. But what was the point? He wasn’t the Count of effing Monte Cristo.
Prowse uses a filter word here: knew. He then follows through with free indirect style to close the narrative distance and take us right inside the character’s head while still maintaining a third-person viewpoint.
So let’s look at what happens when we remove ‘He knew’.
Then the interrogation ceased. He should have been scratching lines on the cell walls to mark the passing of time. But what was the point? He wasn’t the Count of effing Monte Cristo.
I think the unfiltered version works very well but it does change the feel of the writing. Gone is the sense of deliberation. All four sentences are immediate. To my ear, the rhythm accelerates. And although there’s a feel of telling with the inclusion of ‘He knew’ in the published version, there’s also an increased sense of despondency, as if the character has had time to think this over and arrive at this knowledge.
I mentioned character voice above. Here are two examples from Play Dead by David Rosenfelt:
When the movie is over, I realize I haven’t called Karen to ask if she can put me in touch with Keith Franklin. (p. 111)
Rosenfelt’s writing is tight. He never drops a beat. When he uses a filter word it’s with intention. Those who’ve read the Andy Carpenter series will know that this fictional attorney’s voice drips with a delicious acerbity, and the character thinks, acts and speaks with purpose.
When we’re told he realizes something it’s because the author wants us to have a sense of dawning awareness, not because he couldn’t be bothered to cast the sentence in a way that avoided it.
I’m so pissed at Vince that I don’t talk to him for the twenty-minute ride to our destination. He spends most of the time whistling and listening to the Mets game; I don’t think my silent treatment is bringing him to his knees. (p. 163)
Most of the time, Rosenfelt avoids filter words: ‘I’m so pissed …’ not ‘I feel so pissed …’; ‘He spends most of the time …’ not ‘I listen to him …’. However, he chooses to tag ‘I don’t think’ onto the beginning of the final sentence rather than going with something like ‘My silent treatment isn’t bringing him to his knees.’ And, actually, the protagonist’s thinking is what deepens the voice and the immediacy.
Summing up
To keep your prose tight, look out for filter words that tell of doing being done. Then consider whether a gentle recast without them will improve your prose. How does the revised text make you feel? Is the meaning still clear? Is the mood you’re seeking evident?
If the prose feels more dramatic and immersive, you’ve done your novel and your readers a favour. If you lose something in the revision, like voice, mood or intention, reintroduce your filters at the appropriate points.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. Here’s how to use them in your fiction writing.
What do action beats do?
Action beats enrich characters’ voices by telling us about their emotions, their movements and their intentions while they’re speaking. They can even tell us who’s speaking and whether their speech is reliable or not. And they can ensure that readers don’t become bored.
In that sense, we can think of them as alternative narrative ‘voices’ that enrich our perceptions of, or engagement with, the characters.
1. The voice breaker
Long chunks of dialogue can be off-putting. Action beats can act as rhythm moderators that break up the speech and its tagging.
Action beats enrich characters’ voices by telling us about their emotions, their movements and their intentions while they’re speaking. They can even tell us who’s speaking and whether their speech is reliable or not. And they can ensure that readers don’t become bored.
In that sense, we can think of them as alternative narrative ‘voices’ that enrich our perceptions of, or engagement with, the characters.
1. The voice breaker
Long chunks of dialogue can be off-putting. Action beats can act as rhythm moderators that break up the speech and its tagging.
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‘So do I,’ said Banks. After a short pause he went on. ‘Anyway, I seem to remember you told me you went to Silver Royd girls’ school in Wortley.’
‘That’s right. Why?’ ‘Does the name Wendy Vincent mean anything to you?’ ‘Yes, of course. She was the girl who was murdered when I was at school. [...] It was terrible.’ Banks looked away. He couldn’t help it, knowing the things that had happened to Linda, but she seemed unfazed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And there was something about her in the papers a couple of years ago. The fiftieth anniversary. Right?’ ‘That’s the one.’ ‘It seems a strange sort of anniversary to celebrate. A murder.’ ‘Media. What can I say? It wasn’t a [...]’ (Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson, pp. 273–4) |
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2. The emotional voice
Action beats can be mood indicators. In real life, we express what we’re feeling or sensing – for example, sadness, pain and frustration – with our bodies as much as our voices. Emotions manifest physically.
In fiction, complementary action beats can enrich the reader’s understanding of character emotions but without clumsy dialogue tags or adverbial modifiers that distract from the dialogue.
Here are some examples:
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‘I wanted to believe he could love me the way I loved him. And then I heard him ask Sophie to marry him, and … and …’ She dissolved into weeping.
(Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah, p. 165) ‘See these?’ She jangled the keys inches from my face then lobbed them over the fence. ‘Not taking them. No way. It’s bribery.’ ‘Right, that list of names – you said there were eighteen.’ ‘Eighty. Not eighteen. Sorry.’ I closed my eyes, massaging my aching temples. ‘Go on then. Take it from the top.’ |
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3. The physical voice
Perhaps you’ve heard of the term ‘talking heads syndrome’. When there’s a lot of dialogue, the reader can end up dislocated from the environment, as if the characters are speaking in a vacuum or floating in white space.
In ‘The Dreaded “Talking Heads Syndrome”’, writer James Boyle discusses an example from a writer in his critique group:
‘... [they] wrote a scene for a mystery story in which a detective is arguing with her boss. Though somewhat trite, the dialogue was realistic and believable, but there was virtually no description of their surroundings, no description of how the characters react to their environment.’
Action beats ground the dialogue by quickly giving it physicality – a geographical region, a room, a time of day, the weather conditions, even a body. They keep the reader grounded in the scene, which helps retain immersion.
Here are a few more examples:
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He bends down and starts fiddling with the dial. “Hank asked me to hold something for him.”
(Don’t Let Go by Harlan Coben, p. 201). ‘Just cuts and bruising?’ ‘Yes. The smaller ones had already healed by the time I was found, but this one …’ He placed a finger against chin. I could see star-shaped stitch marks tracing the line of the scar. ‘This one became pretty badly infected. The middle of my face was swollen and there was pus coming out of the wound. I got some sort of bone infection off the back of it as well. It was bad.’ (I Am Missing by Tim Weaver, p. 13) Dave glanced at the signature tattoo on the Matt’s hand. ‘That looks familiar. Who inked you?’ ‘How do you think we should play this?’ I walked over to the window and watched the evening rush-hour traffic. ‘Low profile or head on?’ |
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4. The alternative voice
What a character says via dialogue and what they mean or think might be very different. Action beats can act as an alternative voice that indicates reticence or unreliability. They say what the character can’t or won’t.
The examples below show you how it works:
‘I swear, I’m not going to tell anyone about this.’ I rubbed my hand over the back of my jeans pocket, feeling for the wire.
Margot relaxed her grip on the knife and pushed herself against me. I flinched at the stench of acrid sweat and stale smoke as she tucked her head into the side of my neck.
‘Promise you’ll never leave me,’ she said.
‘Never.’ I sized up the door and the window. ‘I love you. We’ll always be together.’ The window looked flimsier, jumpable.
Margot relaxed her grip on the knife and pushed herself against me. I flinched at the stench of acrid sweat and stale smoke as she tucked her head into the side of my neck.
‘Promise you’ll never leave me,’ she said.
‘Never.’ I sized up the door and the window. ‘I love you. We’ll always be together.’ The window looked flimsier, jumpable.
5. The voice indicator
Action beats and dialogue run on from each other because they’re connected. That means we can use beats instead of tags; they tell the reader who’s speaking.
Once more, I've given you some examples below:
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Ray studied his drink and narrowed his eyes. ‘You can be cruel sometimes, you know. I don’t know where you got it from. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth …” Your mother didn’t have a cruel bone in her body.’
(Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson, p. 261) Laura shrugged. “If you came equipped with a bone saw—” “Door opens, silenced 9mm in the brain, killer closes the door, cuts off Young’s hand and bags it, leaves the musical score in the other hand and gets out of there in, say, under five minutes?” “It’s possible.” I turned to Crabbie. “And the rest of the house was untouched. No trophies taken, no money, nothing like that.” “What are you thinking?” he asked. (The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty, p. 117) James pressed two fingers to his cheek and winced. ‘I’m heading off to the dentist.’ |
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How to lay out action beats and dialogue
Because action beats relate to dialogue, we run them on rather than creating a paragraph return.
Here’s an example from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (p.125):
Mma Ramotswe stiffened. If Rra Pekwane had killed somebody she would have to make it quite clear that the police should be called in. She would never dream of helping anybody conceal a murderer. [New para: Description]
‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked. [New para: Dialogue > tag]
Mma Pekwane lowered her voice. ‘He has stolen a car.’ [...] [New para: Action beat > dialogue]
Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Do men really think they can fool us that easily?’ she said. ‘Do they think we’re fools?’ [New para: Action beat > dialogue > tag > dialogue]
‘I think they do,’ said Mma Pekwane. [New para: Dialogue > tag]
‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked. [New para: Dialogue > tag]
Mma Pekwane lowered her voice. ‘He has stolen a car.’ [...] [New para: Action beat > dialogue]
Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Do men really think they can fool us that easily?’ she said. ‘Do they think we’re fools?’ [New para: Action beat > dialogue > tag > dialogue]
‘I think they do,’ said Mma Pekwane. [New para: Dialogue > tag]
How to punctuate and format actions beats
Before the dialogue
The action beat ends with a full point. An opening speech mark follows. The first word of the dialogue takes a capital letter.
- He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’
Note that I’ve styled this with single quotation marks, but doubles might be your preference, especially if you’re writing in US English.
After the dialogue
The dialogue finishes with a full point followed by a closing speech mark. The first word of the action beat takes a capital letter.
- ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain.
Again, I’ve used single quotation marks, but doubles are fine too. It’s a style choice.
Within the dialogue
You have several choices about how to handle this depending on where the beat goes and what punctuation style you choose.
Example 1: Mid-sentence
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue mid-sentence, which lends emphasis to the word ‘This’.
If you’re writing in British English style, you might prefer spaced en dashes and single quotation marks. This is how it looks:
- ‘This’ – he jabbed at the chintz curtain – ‘is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’
If you’re writing in US English style, you might go with closed-up em dashes and double quotation marks. This is how it looks:
- “This”—he jabbed at the chintz curtain—“is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.”
Notice the lack of initial capital letters and the omission of commas in both examples.
Example 2: Between complete sentences
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue between sentences. This is how it works:
- ‘This is the problem.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’
Notice that because the sentences in the dialogue are complete, we punctuate and capitalize according to the Before the dialogue and After the dialogue examples above.
Overuse, repetition and cliché
As is always the case with good writing, devices such as action beats, free indirect speech, dialogue tags, and anaphora work best when the reader can’t identify a writing pattern. Instead, mix things up so that your reader doesn’t guess which literary tool’s coming.
Pay attention to whether you repeat particular action beats, particularly clichéd ones. If your characters often purse their lips, furrow their brows, rake their hands through their hair, spit on the ground, or roll their eyes while they’re speaking, it’s time to think of alternative ways to express despair, disgruntlement or annoyance.
Summing up
Use action beats to enrich the emotionality of your characters’ speech and add interest to your writing. Think about how they can anchor the dialogue in a physical space, and whether they’ll provide an alternative to a speech tag so we know who’s saying what. However, watch out for oft-repeated phrases that turn beats from pop to pattern.
Cited sources
- Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah. Harper, 2017
- Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben. Arrow, 2018
- Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson. Hodder & Stoughton, 2018
- The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty. Serpent's Tail, 2012
- The Dreaded 'Talking Heads Syndrome', James Boyle, 2014
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, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you write fiction, chances are your characters will be thinking. This article shows you several different ways of conveying what’s going on in their heads.
First off, there is no rule. Instead there are standard ways and not-so-standard ways of conveying thoughts in fiction.
Rules are problematic because they lead writers down a prescriptive road that can render their fiction difficult to read, and lacking in aesthetic on the page.
Method 1: Quotation marks
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has this advice (13.43: ‘Unspoken discourse’):
Rules are problematic because they lead writers down a prescriptive road that can render their fiction difficult to read, and lacking in aesthetic on the page.
Method 1: Quotation marks
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has this advice (13.43: ‘Unspoken discourse’):
Thought, imagined dialogue, and other internal discourse (also called interior discourse) may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference. [...]
“I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern,” thought Vera. “Besides,” she told herself, “they’re all fools.”
“I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern,” thought Vera. “Besides,” she told herself, “they’re all fools.”
This is undoubtedly my least-favourite option. I recommend you use the speech-mark style with caution. I can’t remember the last time I saw this approach used in commercial fiction coming out of a mainstream publisher’s stable. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been, of course!
I dislike it intensely, and many fiction publishers seem to be choosing other methods by preference, but those aren’t good reasons to avoid it. Your style is your choice. The best reason for avoiding it is that using speech marks could confuse your reader.
The beauty of speech marks – or quotation marks – is that they indicate speech. When you put speech marks around a character’s thoughts, your reader will immediately assume they’re reading the spoken word.
Look at the CMOS example above. Only when we hit thought Vera do we realize she’s not speaking at all. She’s thinking.
Some authors might be tempted to use a different speech-mark style to indicate a thought. Again, this is confusing. Your reader might assume that you’ve not edited for consistency, as this example demonstrates:
“Jen, drop the knife. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
“No way. I’m not safe here, and nor are you.”
Jen held the blade steady and looked around.
‘Crap. I need an exit,’ she thought.
“No way. I’m not safe here, and nor are you.”
Jen held the blade steady and looked around.
‘Crap. I need an exit,’ she thought.
If, like me, you want something a little cleaner, something that won’t pull your reader out of the story because you led them down a speech-based garden path only to pull them up short at the gate, here are a few alternatives.
Method 2: Italic text
You can render your thoughts in italic text. For short thought streams, this is a common approach.
Let’s return to the CMOS example and see what it looks like:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools.
The advantages of this style are as follows:
- It’s a standard approach that readers will be familiar with.
- There’s no confusion. It’s clear that Vera’s not speaking out loud because the speech marks have been omitted.
However, some readers find that large chunks of italic strain their eyes. I’m one of them. I’m much more likely to skim over huge passages of italic because it’s not a pleasant reading experience.
If that text is masking a clue, or a key character trait, information about an important event or something else that holds the plot together, it’s essential that the reader accesses it.
Look at the Vera example again. There are two thought tags – thought Vera and she told herself – just to ram the point home that she’s thinking. Some readers and writers might consider two tags overkill, but they do help to break up the italic text and don’t jar as much as they might.
But imagine if Vera’s thought stream had gone something like this:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they don’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it’s their money they’re investing. We’ve trusted that bloody bank with our savings and look at what it’s got us. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
That’s a lot of italic to get one’s retinas around. If you have a long stream of consciousness, you might prefer another method.
Method 3: Normal body text
This style forgoes speech marks and italic, and sticks to normal text. This is how it looks with the longer Vera example:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they don’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it’s their money they’re investing. We’ve trusted that bloody bank with our savings and look at what it’s got us. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The advantage of this style is that it’s easy on the eye. However, some readers might be jarred by changes in tense.
If your narrative is set in the past tense and set in the third person (as in this example with Vera) and you use the same text style for present-tense direct thoughts, then in a longer thought stream you could pull your reader out of the story.
And if this happens frequently, your prose will be riddled with flip-flopping tenses that are at best frustrating and at worst confusing.
Method 4: Free indirect style
Another option is to use free indirect style (sometimes called free indirect discourse or free indirect speech). This style offers the essence of first-person thought but through a third-person viewpoint.
The advantages of this style are as follows:
- The character’s voice is foremost but gone is the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, and italic.
- The thoughts can be formatted in the normal body-text style but without the risk of jarring the reader because the tense will be consistent with the main narrative.
- The shift away from the thought stream and into the usual third-person narrative is seamless.
Let’s return to Vera to see how this works:
Vera didn’t care if they’d offended Morgenstern. Besides, they were all fools. Those people at the bank, they didn’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it was their money they were investing. Her family had trusted that bloody bank with their savings and look at what it had got them. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The free indirect style does keep the narrative distance close but it’s still not quite as immediate at the present-tense first person. So is there anything else we can do?
Method 5: Mix it up
A more creative option might be to combine direct and indirect thought styles.
In the example below we begin with two sentences that use the italic style for the present-tense first-person thought, and we retain the thought tags to break up the text.
Then we move into roman text but cast the thought stream in the free indirect style, which matches the main narrative: third-person past tense.
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they didn’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it was their money they were investing. Her family had trusted that bloody bank with their savings and look at what it had got them. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The advantages of this style are as follows:
- It’s flexible. The character’s voice is foremost throughout. The narrative distance shifts from the immediacy of the present-tense first person but is still close – we’re still in Vera’s head even when we’re in the third person.
- The italic doesn’t dominate, so the text is easy on the reader’s eye.
- Given that the thought stream is quite long, it still doesn’t feel invasive. The shift into free indirect style gives us a breather. This approach might therefore suit you if your character is having an inner rant and the inner turmoil feels overworked.
- We’ve retained the seamless shift back to the main third-person past-tense narrative comfortably.
Summing up
As with many sentence-level decisions in fiction writing, rendering thoughts is about style choices rather than a single prescriptive rule. Choose the solution that fits your story best. This might mean making different decisions at various points in your novel depending on what’s going on.
Consider combining approaches if you have longer thought streams and want to be sure of retaining reader engagement.
And, finally, avoid speech marks when it comes thoughts. They’re called speech marks for a reason and are best reserved for talking and muttering!
Cited works and related resources
- 3 reasons to use free indirect speech
- Dialogue tags and how to use them in fiction writing
- How to punctuate dialogue in a novel
- How to use apostrophes in fiction writing
- Playing with sentence length
- Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions
- The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. University of Chicago Press, 2017
- Unveiling your characters: Physical description with style
- Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your fiction
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
- Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
- Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
- Learn: Books and courses
- Discover: Resources for authors and editors
Novels and screenplays are two very different art forms. When a story is presented to a reader as if it were something being watched in a cinema or on TV, the book begins to wobble.
Great screenwriters can be great novelists, but being the former doesn’t guarantee the latter.
Description and dialogue
When a novelist approaches their story as if it’s going to be watched, the narrative and dialogue can become overwritten.
In TV shows and movies, characters do lots of quite mundane things – walking into and out of rooms, opening and shutting doors, scratching their heads, putting the kettle on, wringing their hands, frowning, standing up, sitting down, walking over to windows and gazing out of them, picking up tea cups or beer bottles and taking a sip or a slug.
They say hello and goodbye, and hmm, mmm, er, um and aah as they talk to each other and themselves.
All this stuff happens quickly and provides a backdrop to the main action and dialogue. Sometimes there’ll be a backing track to assist with mood creation.
Some of that mundane stuff can go into a novel, but when it’s replicated in full it can be tedious to read and does nothing to drive the novel forward.
Example: taut description and dialogue in a novel
Here’s a scene from Harlan Coben’s Don’t Let Go (Penguin Random House, 2017, p. 201). There are 122 words.
Description and dialogue
When a novelist approaches their story as if it’s going to be watched, the narrative and dialogue can become overwritten.
In TV shows and movies, characters do lots of quite mundane things – walking into and out of rooms, opening and shutting doors, scratching their heads, putting the kettle on, wringing their hands, frowning, standing up, sitting down, walking over to windows and gazing out of them, picking up tea cups or beer bottles and taking a sip or a slug.
They say hello and goodbye, and hmm, mmm, er, um and aah as they talk to each other and themselves.
All this stuff happens quickly and provides a backdrop to the main action and dialogue. Sometimes there’ll be a backing track to assist with mood creation.
Some of that mundane stuff can go into a novel, but when it’s replicated in full it can be tedious to read and does nothing to drive the novel forward.
Example: taut description and dialogue in a novel
Here’s a scene from Harlan Coben’s Don’t Let Go (Penguin Random House, 2017, p. 201). There are 122 words.
We pull into a garage the approximate dimensions of a college gymnasium—is that judging?—and park. He leads me through a side door and down into what some homes call a basement, but this one has a theater room and wine cellar, so we need to find a new term. Lower level, maybe? He heads into a small room and flicks on a switch. In the back right corner, there is a four-foot-high old-fashioned safe with a big dial.
“You’re not the cop on the case, right?”
This is the third time David has asked me that. “No. Why is that a big deal?”
He bends down and starts fiddling with the dial. “Hank asked me to hold something for him.”
“You’re not the cop on the case, right?”
This is the third time David has asked me that. “No. Why is that a big deal?”
He bends down and starts fiddling with the dial. “Hank asked me to hold something for him.”
Example: description and dialogue in a screenplay
If we were watching that on TV, we’d be shown a great deal more.
- We’d the see colour of the garage, the material it’s constructed from, the car pulling up and stopping.
- The driver would switch off the engine, then both men would undo their seatbelts, exit the car, close their doors and walk to the garage. One would open the side door and they’d both walk through as the door closed behind them. Then they’d walk down the steps, reach the door of the basement and open it.
- Once in the room, David would flick the light switch, walk over to the safe, bend down, move the dial, left, then right, then left again.
- The camera might flip from the concentration on his face and the beads of sweat on his forehead to the way his trousers pull down over his backside as he bends.
- We might watch and hear his laboured breathing or the slight grunt he lets out as he works.
- He might scratch his face, touch his hair, purse his lips, or look up at the other man (Nap).
- Nap, meanwhile, would be doing a bunch of things with his own body.
- As for the conversation, either man might sigh, pause, stammer, belch or cough at any point, and at no time would it moderate the pace of the film because the camera can show us many of these things simultaneously.
In his book, Coben omits almost all of that.
Instead, he lets the reader do the work. Good choice because all that stage direction would be boring to read. It could take a page to get through it all, maybe two, and none of it would drive the novel forward.
He gives us just enough to imagine the setting in our mind’s eye, then gets down to business with the interesting elements of the story.
He and we know that no one’s walking through doors spectre-like; they need to be opened and shut. No one’s leaving the car running; the engine will be switched off. And natural speech invariably includes noise and pause.
Example: overwriting in a novel
Here’s my mangled example of how that might have looked if the detail of the screen version had been written into the novel. There are 421 words.
We drive along the road, turn left into a treelined side street, pull up in front of a garage the approximate dimensions of a college gymnasium—is that judging?—and park. The garage door has a red aluminum facia with a silver handle.
David pushes a hand through his hair and looks at the garage. He remains still for a moment. I sense his anxiety, and my brow furrows in frustration as I follow his gaze.
He takes his foot off the accelerator, shifts into neutral, and pulls on the handbrake. He pulls the key from the ignition and unhooks his seatbelt. I follow suit and open the passenger-seat door, close it, then walk around to meet him on the driver’s side. David gets out of the car and joins me on the sidewalk. He slams his door shut and turns. We walk toward the garage, me slightly behind, letting him show me the way.
He leads me to a brown hardwood side door and stoops, fumbling the key in the lock. The door opens with a groan and we walk through to a dimly lit stairway. The door closes behind us. David goes first, leading me down into what some homes call a basement, but this one has a theater room and wine cellar, so we need to find a new term. Lower level, maybe?
We reach the door at the bottom of the steps. David opens it and heads into a small room. He flicks on a switch. The light comes on and he turns, gesturing for me to enter. I do, and look around. In the back right corner, there is a four-foot-high old-fashioned safe with a big dial.
“Um, you’re, er, not the cop on the case, right?” he says nervously.
This is the third time David has asked me that. “Like I told you before, no.” I hesitate before asking, “Why is that a big deal?”
He turns and walks toward the safe, bends down, and reaches for the dial with his hand. I watch as he fiddles with it, concentrating hard as he moves it first left, then right, then left again. I see sweat beading on his forehead. He stands, stretches, and wipes it off with the sleeve of his blue button-down shirt. As he lowers himself again and continues working the dial, his pants ride down over his ass.
He sighs as if he’s bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Hank asked me to hold something for him,” he says.
David pushes a hand through his hair and looks at the garage. He remains still for a moment. I sense his anxiety, and my brow furrows in frustration as I follow his gaze.
He takes his foot off the accelerator, shifts into neutral, and pulls on the handbrake. He pulls the key from the ignition and unhooks his seatbelt. I follow suit and open the passenger-seat door, close it, then walk around to meet him on the driver’s side. David gets out of the car and joins me on the sidewalk. He slams his door shut and turns. We walk toward the garage, me slightly behind, letting him show me the way.
He leads me to a brown hardwood side door and stoops, fumbling the key in the lock. The door opens with a groan and we walk through to a dimly lit stairway. The door closes behind us. David goes first, leading me down into what some homes call a basement, but this one has a theater room and wine cellar, so we need to find a new term. Lower level, maybe?
We reach the door at the bottom of the steps. David opens it and heads into a small room. He flicks on a switch. The light comes on and he turns, gesturing for me to enter. I do, and look around. In the back right corner, there is a four-foot-high old-fashioned safe with a big dial.
“Um, you’re, er, not the cop on the case, right?” he says nervously.
This is the third time David has asked me that. “Like I told you before, no.” I hesitate before asking, “Why is that a big deal?”
He turns and walks toward the safe, bends down, and reaches for the dial with his hand. I watch as he fiddles with it, concentrating hard as he moves it first left, then right, then left again. I see sweat beading on his forehead. He stands, stretches, and wipes it off with the sleeve of his blue button-down shirt. As he lowers himself again and continues working the dial, his pants ride down over his ass.
He sighs as if he’s bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Hank asked me to hold something for him,” he says.
Word dump
Writers who choose to write novels for viewers rather than readers risk adding ten, maybe twenty thousand words to their books that don’t need to be in there.
I’m not advocating removing description; I’m advocating writing for the page. That means making sure that the description is relevant rather than suffocating, enriching rather than boring.
If you have pages of characters making small talk about how they take their coffee over the noise the kettle’s making, that small talk needs to be central to the plot. So does the whistle of the kettle. And if it takes 500 words to get your character out of their car, there needs to be a reason for that.
If that information is just filler, give your reader the nudges they need and dump the rest into a box for when you write the screenplay version. Your director will the delighted!
Viewpoint characters
Viewpoint can unravel when a novelist approaches their story like a screenwriter.
When a novelist selects a viewpoint character for a section or chapter of their book, the reader will experience the story through that character’s perspective – what they see, smell, hear, touch and think.
Viewpoint characters allow the reader to immerse themselves in the moment, and for that reason they’re tremendously enriching.
Example: viewpoint on the screen
Imagine watching this short scene on TV:
- One of the characters, Matt, ducks under a hedge. We see him grimacing, shutting his eyes tightly. Then the camera cuts to a close-up of the thorns in the hedge pressing into his head. Perhaps there’s a trickle of blood down one side of his neck.
- The camera stays with Matt and we see him mouth the word ‘bitch’.
- We hear the clip-clopping of heels, and the camera moves to a lone woman on a footpath in the garden – Adriana. She speaks into her phone, saying, ‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out,’ then rubs her throat. She continues to talk, telling the person on the other end of the line that she’d had a skinful the previous night and is furious about Matt’s interference, which is all she needs because she feels like she has a cold coming on.
- The camera cuts to another character, John. He’s clad in black. We hear him reply to her, telling her not to worry, then watch as he peeks over a wall and sees Adriana.
- The view shifts to Adriana. She’s putting her phone in her pocket. Her expression is one of anger and frustration.
- We go back to John. He pulls down a balaclava and moves stealthily towards an area at the back of the house. He’s almost invisible in the darkness of the night but we see him in the shadows because the camera shows us where he is.
- Now it’s back to Matt. He’s still hunched up in the hedge, eyes wide, body still.
- The camera zooms out so that we can see Adriana moving ever closer to where Matt’s hiding. She’s getting nearer.
- The view moves in on Adriana. We see her flinch and purse her lips. She hobbles just a little, then bends to adjust her shoe. The camera view tilts down to her feet and we see the redness of the skin where it’s rubbing against her stilettos.
- The camera cuts to Matt, still in the hedge. But now he’s smiling, enjoying Adriana’s discomfort.
- Notice that the viewer can’t know what anyone’s thinking unless we are told through dialogue or facial expression. Gesturing will fill in the gaps. A soundtrack will also create mood.
Example: confused viewpoint in a novel
What some beginner writers do is render the scene in a way that partially mimics the screen version. That’s because they’re familiar with how stories are presented on the TV or in film.
Matt ducked under the hedge beside the footpath. He counted silently, mouthing the words, focusing attention away from the hawthorn piercing the back of his neck and scalp. Heels clicked on the footpath close by. Adriana. Bitch.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out,’ she said. Her throat felt swollen. 'Dammit, and to make things worse, I feel like I've got a cold coming on. Plus, I had a skinful last night.' And she’d needed it after that interfering prick Matt had started sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted.
‘I hear you, Adriana. Don’t worry, we’ll find him,’ said John. He was standing by the north wall, clad head-to-toe in black. Hands grasping brick and flint, he hauled himself up and peeked over to see Adriana pocketing her phone. He pulled down his balaclava and stole south to cover the back, masked by the shadow of night.
Adriana was on the phone, Matt realized. That was good. It meant she was on her own.
Adriana continued down the path, getting closer to where Matt was hiding with every step. Patrolling the grounds in stilettos had been a bad idea. They were killing her feet.
Matt hoped so, after what she’d put him through.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out,’ she said. Her throat felt swollen. 'Dammit, and to make things worse, I feel like I've got a cold coming on. Plus, I had a skinful last night.' And she’d needed it after that interfering prick Matt had started sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted.
‘I hear you, Adriana. Don’t worry, we’ll find him,’ said John. He was standing by the north wall, clad head-to-toe in black. Hands grasping brick and flint, he hauled himself up and peeked over to see Adriana pocketing her phone. He pulled down his balaclava and stole south to cover the back, masked by the shadow of night.
Adriana was on the phone, Matt realized. That was good. It meant she was on her own.
Adriana continued down the path, getting closer to where Matt was hiding with every step. Patrolling the grounds in stilettos had been a bad idea. They were killing her feet.
Matt hoped so, after what she’d put him through.
The problem is that there are multiple viewpoints that force the reader to bounce from one character’s experience to another. We never invest in Matt, Adriana or John because as soon as we try to immerse ourselves in the experience of one of those people, we’re dragged into the head of another.
The result is a wonky hybrid of novel and screenplay. We know what everyone’s doing, thinking and seeing. It rips out the tension and destroys the structure of the scene.
Example: singular immersive viewpoint in a novel
If, however, the writer commits to the viewpoint of one character, the prose is very different. In this version, we lose John completely. Adriana is visible but only from Matt’s perspective. We don’t have access to her thoughts, only what Matt thinks might be going on in her head based on what he knows, sees and hears.
It’s shorter, certainly, but the tension is back and the writing is tighter.
Matt ducked under the hedge beside the footpath. He counted silently, focusing attention away from the hawthorn piercing the back of his neck and scalp. Heels clicked on the footpath close by. Adriana. Bitch.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out.’
Her voice was thick, like she was full of virus or hungover. Or maybe it was fury.
Matt heard a reply – a man speaking – but the sound was muffled and tinny.
She must be on the phone. That was good. She was on her own. For now.
Patent-black stilettos passed no more than a metre in front of him. The skin below both Achilles looked swollen and red. Those shoes must be killing her, he thought. He hoped so, after what she’d put him through.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out.’
Her voice was thick, like she was full of virus or hungover. Or maybe it was fury.
Matt heard a reply – a man speaking – but the sound was muffled and tinny.
She must be on the phone. That was good. She was on her own. For now.
Patent-black stilettos passed no more than a metre in front of him. The skin below both Achilles looked swollen and red. Those shoes must be killing her, he thought. He hoped so, after what she’d put him through.
Summing up
If you’re at the start of your writing journey, take care to craft words for the page, not for the screen. Keep the boring stuff out, even if it’s realistic. You’ll reduce your wordcount but enhance reader engagement.
Look to books written by your favourite novelists for inspiration on how to build a beautiful page, rather than the Netflix adaptations. Your writing will be all the better for it, I promise.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Will your reader immerse themselves in your crime novel’s setting? Will the world you’ve built make sense, even if it’s a work of fantasy? And is it coherent? If you’re not sure, create a wiki.
A world-building wiki will help you keep track of your novel’s environment and the rules that govern it. And that will go some way to protecting your plot and maintaining a logical narrative.
‘But I write crime, not fantasy ...’
Even if your novel’s setting is the world as we know it right now, a world-building wiki is still useful.
I live in a hamlet in Norfolk (the UK one). Some of the things I have to deal with in my day-to-day life are different to those of friends who live only ten miles away in the city of Norwich.
‘But I write crime, not fantasy ...’
Even if your novel’s setting is the world as we know it right now, a world-building wiki is still useful.
I live in a hamlet in Norfolk (the UK one). Some of the things I have to deal with in my day-to-day life are different to those of friends who live only ten miles away in the city of Norwich.
|
For example, they’re connected to mains drainage. I, however, have to book the honey pot man to come and empty the septic tank once a year! Normal for me; weird for others.
And then there’s my local pal. He has the same drainage issues, but his working day is very different to mine. He’s a police officer. His work takes him directly into situations that I’m familiar with only at a distance, through the crime fiction I edit and the shows I watch on TV. |
Want to know what a honey pot man is? Read this! |
How does all of this relate to fiction writing?
One of my author clients bases his books in the Colorado Rockies. I know the lie of the land – how the weather affects the local population on a seasonal basis, how the pine smells in the spring, how the mountain passes are treacherous in the winter.
Then there’s the town where the sheriff’s office is located. And it is a sheriff rather than a chief constable who’s in charge of this fictional county’s law enforcement. I know about the guns people carry, the idiomatic turns of phrase they use, and where they tuck their chewing tobacco when they speak.
I live five thousand miles away and have never visited this region of the US, and yet I swear if I drove into that town with a flat tyre, I could locate the garage and a find place to grab a latte while the mechanic was fixing my car – without having to ask a soul.
And that’s because my author is a great world-builder.
He writes crime thrillers, but he never forgets that most of his readers aren’t cops; that many don’t even live in the US, never mind near the Colorado Rockies; and that no one lives in Rocky Points … because he made it up.
One of my author clients bases his books in the Colorado Rockies. I know the lie of the land – how the weather affects the local population on a seasonal basis, how the pine smells in the spring, how the mountain passes are treacherous in the winter.
Then there’s the town where the sheriff’s office is located. And it is a sheriff rather than a chief constable who’s in charge of this fictional county’s law enforcement. I know about the guns people carry, the idiomatic turns of phrase they use, and where they tuck their chewing tobacco when they speak.
I live five thousand miles away and have never visited this region of the US, and yet I swear if I drove into that town with a flat tyre, I could locate the garage and a find place to grab a latte while the mechanic was fixing my car – without having to ask a soul.
And that’s because my author is a great world-builder.
He writes crime thrillers, but he never forgets that most of his readers aren’t cops; that many don’t even live in the US, never mind near the Colorado Rockies; and that no one lives in Rocky Points … because he made it up.
Chris Brookmyre, Orbit, 2018 |
China Miéville, Pan, 2011 |
C.J. Sansom, Pan, 2015 |
Environments of the not-now and the not-here
Crime fiction is as versatile a genre as any other. For not-here, think about Chris Brookmyre’s Places in the Darkness. The Ciudad de Cielo space station makes the Colorado Rockies seem like a mere hop. It’s crime fiction, but spacey!
For not-now, how about C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series. It’s crime fiction but the Tudor world in which our lawyer-detective operates bears little resemblance to that of a modern detective.
And then there’s China Miéville’s not-here and not-now The City & The City. It’s a richly gritty world of hardboiled crime fiction where things don’t work in quite the same way. However, the narrative feels utterly reliable.
All three authors are fine crime-writing world-builders, and their plots never unravel because the worlds they’ve shown us work.
Your wiki and your plot
Not everything in your wiki has to end up in your book, but all of the information will help you keep track of who’s who, what’s where, and how. That means you can keep the environment(s) in which your story is set coherent.
Furthermore, if you decide to write a series, your wiki will help you maintain consistency across books. Even if you switch to a new location, even a new planet, and different rules come into play, it’s a space in which you can record the additional information and keep yourself on track.
Let’s look at some of the elements you might include in your crime wiki.
Physical environment
Where does your story take place and how will the geography, geology and climate play with your plot? Does the landscape or the weather restrict or empower your characters, and if so, how?
Real or fantastical, every world must obey its own scientific laws. Continuity is key, and your wiki will help you stay on track.
Imagine your protagonist’s partner dies because the paramedic’s oxygen tank is empty, but they live on a world where the population breathes mainly nitrogen. Even your characters’ inhalations can blow a hole in your plot if you don’t keep track of the rules of your physical environment.
If you’re setting a story in a real place that you’ve not visited, the wiki is where you record the details you’ll need to stop pedantic locals getting the hump when your hero sprints from the Tube station at Amersham to the next stop on the line. Chalfont & Latimer looks close by on the London Underground map, but trust me, it’s not for sprinting. Embankment to Charing Cross, yes!
Culture, language and faith
Use your wiki to record the ideas, customs, belief systems and social behaviours that distinguish your world, and how those will impact on your characters. Record also how your characters speak, and whether they are out of place in the setting, or fully integrated.
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Consider how historical cosy crime narratives find clever ways to enable characters who are restricted by socio-economic or gender disparities typical of the eras they’re set in.
A good example is Emily Brightwell’s Mrs Jeffries. She’s a Victorian housekeeper who nimbly engineers a higher quality of detection than her boss, the hapless Inspector Witherspoon, would be capable of without the help of his domestic staff. |
Emily Brightwell, Constable, 2018 |
How will you reflect the way people speak in your world? Do people from the region in which the novel’s set have a particular idiom or dialect, and will you express this just through dialogue or in the narrative too?
Will you offer nudges here and there or include it consistently and heavily throughout the book?
It goes without saying that if you include phrasing in a language you’re not fluent in, get it checked by someone who is. Google Translate is not the tool of choice here.
Rules of governance
Record who’s in control and how the rule of law works in your novel’s setting. If you’re mimicking reality, there might be variations not just between countries but also between states, counties, provinces or municipalities.
Who makes the law? Who upholds it? What powers do they have? What are their titles? Who are they accountable to? What are the checks and balances that restrict them? And what does sentencing and punishment look like in the world you’ve created?
How about the rules of engagement and the customary notifications given to characters apprehended by law enforcement? If a right-to-silence warning is given to a suspect arrested in the UK, and it’s referred to as a Miranda warning, your narrator’s reliability will be compromised. The term ‘caution’ is used in this neck of the woods.
Make notes about the way the jurisprudence system works, and the rights of your world’s citizens in the locations you situate them. For example, time and place will determine how long a person can be held without access to legal representation, and how they might be punished if they’re found guilty of a crime.
If your story is taking place in a fantastical setting, you can decide how all of this works. Still, your wiki will ensure there’s continuity in the way you apply your fictional rule of law to your characters.
Science, technology, engineering and medicine ... and guns
Your wiki is the perfect place to record essential information about science, tech and weaponry – what it is, how it works, who has access to it and what it’s used for.
If you’re going for authenticity, make notes about how it works in the real world. How heavy is a Glock 19, and can a suppressor be attached to the barrel? What noise does a suppressed gun really make – is it just a pop or something louder?
Years ago, I read a novel by a very well-known fantasy and horror writer. One of the subplots hinged on the DNA of a set of identical twins – one egg, one sperm, one zygote, which had split into two embryos. They had almost identical DNA. Only they didn’t because our twins were different sexes. That meant they were fraternal, not identical. The only thing they’d shared was a womb. A technical error pulled the plot to pieces.
Food, drink and dress
What do people eat and drink in this world, and how do they dress?
Are there foodstuffs or materials that are restricted, impractical, unaffordable or impossible to access for some or all of the characters in your world?
Does what people eat and how they dress indicate something about their status, their identity, their belief system, and what are the norms and rules surrounding their choices?
Even if this information isn’t integral to the plot, it can still help your reader immerse themselves in your narrative as they experience the colours, textures, tastes and smells of the world in which your characters are moving.
Heterogeneity in homogeneity
As with real life, just because a group of people share a location, a job, a faith, doesn’t mean they’re all the same.
Unless homogeneity is central to the plot, it can suck the soul from a novel because it’s unusual.
Will you offer nudges here and there or include it consistently and heavily throughout the book?
It goes without saying that if you include phrasing in a language you’re not fluent in, get it checked by someone who is. Google Translate is not the tool of choice here.
Rules of governance
Record who’s in control and how the rule of law works in your novel’s setting. If you’re mimicking reality, there might be variations not just between countries but also between states, counties, provinces or municipalities.
Who makes the law? Who upholds it? What powers do they have? What are their titles? Who are they accountable to? What are the checks and balances that restrict them? And what does sentencing and punishment look like in the world you’ve created?
How about the rules of engagement and the customary notifications given to characters apprehended by law enforcement? If a right-to-silence warning is given to a suspect arrested in the UK, and it’s referred to as a Miranda warning, your narrator’s reliability will be compromised. The term ‘caution’ is used in this neck of the woods.
Make notes about the way the jurisprudence system works, and the rights of your world’s citizens in the locations you situate them. For example, time and place will determine how long a person can be held without access to legal representation, and how they might be punished if they’re found guilty of a crime.
If your story is taking place in a fantastical setting, you can decide how all of this works. Still, your wiki will ensure there’s continuity in the way you apply your fictional rule of law to your characters.
Science, technology, engineering and medicine ... and guns
Your wiki is the perfect place to record essential information about science, tech and weaponry – what it is, how it works, who has access to it and what it’s used for.
If you’re going for authenticity, make notes about how it works in the real world. How heavy is a Glock 19, and can a suppressor be attached to the barrel? What noise does a suppressed gun really make – is it just a pop or something louder?
Years ago, I read a novel by a very well-known fantasy and horror writer. One of the subplots hinged on the DNA of a set of identical twins – one egg, one sperm, one zygote, which had split into two embryos. They had almost identical DNA. Only they didn’t because our twins were different sexes. That meant they were fraternal, not identical. The only thing they’d shared was a womb. A technical error pulled the plot to pieces.
Food, drink and dress
What do people eat and drink in this world, and how do they dress?
Are there foodstuffs or materials that are restricted, impractical, unaffordable or impossible to access for some or all of the characters in your world?
Does what people eat and how they dress indicate something about their status, their identity, their belief system, and what are the norms and rules surrounding their choices?
Even if this information isn’t integral to the plot, it can still help your reader immerse themselves in your narrative as they experience the colours, textures, tastes and smells of the world in which your characters are moving.
Heterogeneity in homogeneity
As with real life, just because a group of people share a location, a job, a faith, doesn’t mean they’re all the same.
Unless homogeneity is central to the plot, it can suck the soul from a novel because it’s unusual.
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Michael J. Sullivan’s Hollow World is a mystery thriller set in the future where a person’s physical appearance is determined by their job. That doesn’t stop him looking for ways to distinguish the members of his worker groups – through belief systems, styles of dress, hobbies and passions, even the way they move and smile.
Use your wiki to record which differences and similarities make sense in your world, and how you will reflect them. |
Michael J. Sullivan, Tachyon, 2014 |
Any other quirks
Record information about any other quirks that are story-specific in a miscellaneous section.
I nearly came undone with my own writing when embarking on a piece of flash fiction centred around where I live in Norfolk. During my research into pheasant shooting, I found out that my wee tale had come undone before I’d put a word on the page.
Initially, I’d centred my plot around a crime being ignored during the summer because of the gunshots from legal pheasant-shooting parties.
Record information about any other quirks that are story-specific in a miscellaneous section.
I nearly came undone with my own writing when embarking on a piece of flash fiction centred around where I live in Norfolk. During my research into pheasant shooting, I found out that my wee tale had come undone before I’d put a word on the page.
Initially, I’d centred my plot around a crime being ignored during the summer because of the gunshots from legal pheasant-shooting parties.
Louise Harnby, 2018. Click on the image to read |
Turned out this would have been impossible because the law in England prohibits shoots of that specific bird during the summertime.
Still, better that I made my discovery early on. Fixing it later would have required rewriting. The information I gleaned from my research would have gone straight into a wiki if I’d been writing an 80K-word novel rather than 800 words of flash. |
Summing up
You can include whatever you need to in your wiki. Fundamentally, it’s about consistency and continuity, such that your plot isn’t plundered because you forgot something crucial about your world and how it works.
More than that though, a reliable world is a believable world, even if it’s completely fabricated. When your readers feel like they can visit without having to ask where to grab a cuppa, you know you’ve built something beautiful.
You can include whatever you need to in your wiki. Fundamentally, it’s about consistency and continuity, such that your plot isn’t plundered because you forgot something crucial about your world and how it works.
More than that though, a reliable world is a believable world, even if it’s completely fabricated. When your readers feel like they can visit without having to ask where to grab a cuppa, you know you’ve built something beautiful.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Readers want to know what characters look like. Writers want to show them. Here are some tools that will help do it with subtlety rather than a sledgehammer.
We like to know what characters look like because it allows us to picture them in our mind’s eye. That helps us invest.
The author wants us to invest in them, immerse ourselves in their journey, because then we’re more likely to keep on reading.
Still, no reader wants all that information hurled at them as if they’re reading a shopping list, and certainly not in a way that’s cliched or mundane. That’s nothing more than an information dump.
Here are some ideas for how you might unveil your characters’ physical descriptions in ways that are relevant and interesting. I’ve used examples that I’ve enjoyed from published works of crime and speculative fiction.
First things: Pick and choose what to tell
I said above that readers like to know what characters look like. Actually, we don’t necessarily need this detail to immerse ourselves in a character’s experience.
I’ve just finished reading I Am Missing by Tim Weaver. I love the David Raker series, and have read most of the books in it. I can’t recall whether and where Weaver has given me a physical description of his missing-persons investigator, but he certainly didn’t in I Am Missing. And you know what? I didn’t care a jot.
Weaver uses first-person past-tense narratives, which means we uncover the mystery with Raker. We see what he saw, wonder what he wondered, run when he ran. His fear, pain, shock and relief are ours. That’s where the immersion comes, rather than in knowing that he’s X feet tall or has hair the colour of whatever.
Which is to say, you might not need to tell us about the physical appearance of a character to draw us deep into the story.
And even if you do want to give your readers a sense of what a character looks like, we don’t need to know everything. Tell us what’s interesting, what gives us an insight into the way they think or feel, or things they notice that will be relevant later in the story.
Green eyes might be more interesting if they’re surrounded by bags that show tiredness, or creped lids that give a clue to the character’s age. Long elegant fingers might be more deserving of a mention if the owner picked away at their cuticles and made them bleed, perhaps because of anxiety.
Choose the right space
If you decide you want to put a character’s physical traits in front of the reader in one fell swoop, you could follow Roger Hobbs’s approach. Ghostman is a gritty, punchy thriller. Hobbs’s writing is fast and taut.
Five pages into the novel (p. 8) we’re given a description of Jerome Ribbons. Hobbs fires a lot of information at us – skin, height, weight, strength. This is no shopping list, though.
Ribbons is about to carry out a casino heist, and Hobbs uses a description of the character’s physical traits to show us that he’s physically and mentally capable of the crime.
It’s a case of the right words in the right space.
The author wants us to invest in them, immerse ourselves in their journey, because then we’re more likely to keep on reading.
Still, no reader wants all that information hurled at them as if they’re reading a shopping list, and certainly not in a way that’s cliched or mundane. That’s nothing more than an information dump.
Here are some ideas for how you might unveil your characters’ physical descriptions in ways that are relevant and interesting. I’ve used examples that I’ve enjoyed from published works of crime and speculative fiction.
First things: Pick and choose what to tell
I said above that readers like to know what characters look like. Actually, we don’t necessarily need this detail to immerse ourselves in a character’s experience.
I’ve just finished reading I Am Missing by Tim Weaver. I love the David Raker series, and have read most of the books in it. I can’t recall whether and where Weaver has given me a physical description of his missing-persons investigator, but he certainly didn’t in I Am Missing. And you know what? I didn’t care a jot.
Weaver uses first-person past-tense narratives, which means we uncover the mystery with Raker. We see what he saw, wonder what he wondered, run when he ran. His fear, pain, shock and relief are ours. That’s where the immersion comes, rather than in knowing that he’s X feet tall or has hair the colour of whatever.
Which is to say, you might not need to tell us about the physical appearance of a character to draw us deep into the story.
And even if you do want to give your readers a sense of what a character looks like, we don’t need to know everything. Tell us what’s interesting, what gives us an insight into the way they think or feel, or things they notice that will be relevant later in the story.
Green eyes might be more interesting if they’re surrounded by bags that show tiredness, or creped lids that give a clue to the character’s age. Long elegant fingers might be more deserving of a mention if the owner picked away at their cuticles and made them bleed, perhaps because of anxiety.
Choose the right space
If you decide you want to put a character’s physical traits in front of the reader in one fell swoop, you could follow Roger Hobbs’s approach. Ghostman is a gritty, punchy thriller. Hobbs’s writing is fast and taut.
Five pages into the novel (p. 8) we’re given a description of Jerome Ribbons. Hobbs fires a lot of information at us – skin, height, weight, strength. This is no shopping list, though.
Ribbons is about to carry out a casino heist, and Hobbs uses a description of the character’s physical traits to show us that he’s physically and mentally capable of the crime.
It’s a case of the right words in the right space.
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Ribbons was a two-time felon out of north Philadelphia. Not an attractive résumé item, even for the kind of guy who sets up jobs like this, but it meant he had motive not to get caught. He had skin the color of charcoal and blue tattoos he’d got in Rockview Pen that peeked out from his clothing at odd angles. He’d done five years for his part in strong-arming a Citibank in Northern Liberties back in the nineties, but had never seen time for the four or five bank jobs he’d helped pull since he got out. He was a big man, at least six foot four with more than enough weight to match. Folds of fat poured out over his belt, and his face was as round and smooth as a child’s. He could press four hundred on a good day, and six hundred after a couple of lines of coke. He was good at this, whatever his rap sheet said.
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Show us through another character’s eyes
There’s no better time to show what someone looks like than when a viewpoint character sets eyes on them. We’re already in the viewpoint character’s head, thinking and seeing with them. Their observations are reliable, and it feels natural for the reader to be confronted with descriptions of what’s visible, and why it’s noticeable.
Here’s another excerpt from Ghostman (pp. 31–2).
Jack is the protagonist, and the viewpoint character in this chapter. We see what he saw, and know what he knew. More telling, we learn something about how this character’s appearance belies his nature.
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He didn’t speak until I was close.
‘Jack,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d never see you again.’ Marcus Hayes was tall and stringy, like the president of some computer company. He was as thin as a stalk and looked uncomfortable in his own skin. The most successful criminals don’t look the part. He wore a dark-blue Oxford shirt and Coke-bottle trifocals. His eyes went bad after serving a six-pack on a work camp on the Snake River in Oregon. His irises were dull blue and faded around the pupils. He was only ten years older than me, but he looked much older than that. The palms of his hands had gone leathery. His appearance didn’t fool me. He was the most brutal man I’d ever met. |
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Make your character self-reflect
A viewpoint character’s self-reflection is another useful tool for character description, especially when it includes contrast … that was then, this is now. We don’t feel like we’re reading a shopping list. Instead, the details tell us a story of change – whether that is positive or negative.
In The Wife Between Us (p. 11), Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen weave Vanessa’s current hair colour, height and weight into a narrative about the challenges she endured when her marriage to a wealthy hedge-fund manager broke down.
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I shower, then blow-dry my hair, noticing my roots are visible. I pull a box of Clairol Caramel Brown from under the sink to remind myself to touch them up tonight. Gone are the days when I paid—no, when Richard paid—hundreds of dollars for a cut and color.
[…] I stare at the dresses lined up in the armoire with an almost military precision and select a robin’s-egg-colored Chanel. One of the signature buttons is dented, and it hangs more loosely than the last time I wore it, a lifetime ago. I don’t need a scale to inform me I’ve lost too much weight; at five feet six, I have to take in even my size 4s. |
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Think about what you do when you look in a mirror.
- I don’t think: there’s a woman with brown hair with an orange streak in it. I think: I need my roots doing because there’s a grey stripe at the hairline that’s really stark against the brown hair and orange streak.
- I don’t think: there’s a woman with blue eyes. I think: I need to get a good night’s sleep tonight because my eyes look bloodshot, more so against the blue irises.
If your character is seeing themselves reflected in a window or mirror, have them notice things about themselves naturally.
Create an out-of-place setting
Might you set a character’s description in a scene where they look out of place?
Philip K. Dick doesn’t use any clever descriptors for Bill Black in Time Out of Joint (p. 19). Instead, the interest comes from how his manner of dress, hairstyle and gait appear old-fashioned to the viewpoint character, Ragle.
It’s less a case of what he looks like than why he looks strange. No matter – the reader knows what they’re looking at.
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He had on the Ivy League clothes customary with him these days. Button-down collar, tight pants … and of course his haircut. The styleless cropping that reminded Ragle of nothing so much as the army haircuts. Maybe that was it: an attempt on the part of sedulous young sprinters like Bill Black to appear regimented, part of some colossal machine. […] Bill Black, a case in point, worked for the city, for its water department. Every clear day he set off on foot, not in his car, striding optimistically along in his single-breasted suit, beanpole in shape because the coat and trousers were so unnaturally and senselessly tight. And, Ragle thought, so obsolete. Brief renaissance of an archaic style in men’s clothing […] And Black’s jerky too-swift stride added to the impression. Even his voice, Ragle thought. Speeded up. Too high-pitched. Shrill.
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Show us the viewpoint character’s emotional reactions
Describing how another character’s appearance makes the viewpoint character feel is another trick.
In Bad Luck and Trouble (p. 32), Lee Child uses rather mundane adjectives to describe Neagley, but the emotional impact on the plucky and usually granite-like Reacher, and Child’s typically no-nonsense sentence structure make this description anything but dull.
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Reacher stood for a moment in the parking lot and watched Neagley through the window. She hadn’t changed much in the four years since he had last seen her. She had to be nearer forty than thirty now, but it wasn’t showing. Her hair was still long and dark and shiny. Her eyes were still dark and alive. She was still slim and lithe. Still spending serious time in the gym. That was clear.
[…] Her nails were done. Her T-shirt looked like a quality item. Overall, she looked richer than he remembered her. Comfortable, at home with the world, successful, accustomed to the civilian life. For a moment, he felt awkward about his own cheap clothes and his scuffed shoes and his bad barbershop haircut. Like she was making it, and he wasn’t. |
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In the above example, Reacher feels awkward. You might use other emotional reactions as a way to open the door to natural-sounding physical description: envy, disgust, desire, for example.
Unveil through dialogue
Character descriptions needn’t come solely through the narrative. Dialogue is perfect for unveiling too because it pushes the details front and centre.
In I Am Missing (p. 13), Tim Weaver constructs a discussion between Raker, the protagonist investigator, and his client, Richard Kite. Weaver uses the conversation to show the scarring on Kite’s face.
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‘Just cuts and bruising?’
‘Yes. The smaller ones had already healed by the time I was found, but this one …’ He placed a finger against chin. I could see star-shaped stitch marks tracing the line of the scar. ‘This one became pretty badly infected. The middle of my face was swollen and there was pus coming out of the wound. I got some sort of bone infection off the back of it as well. It was bad.’ |
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Of note here is that the author chooses to give us little else about what Kite looks like – hair or eye colour, for example. It’s clever because this character is suffering from dissociative amnesia – unable to recall large chunks of information about himself. He is lost.
The author keeps such tight control over the physical description that we are drawn deeper into Kite’s loss of self, and Raker’s struggle to find any clue to who he is. As I read, he remained almost faceless in my mind’s eye. All I could picture was the harm he’d suffered.
Writers can and should be picky about what they choose to include, and omit, in order to draw a picture and evoke a mood.
Summing up
Do your best to avoid descriptions of characters that read like shopping lists or police reports. Instead, wrap the details around emotions, contrasts, and journeys of change.
See you next time (said the blue-eyed fiction editor with a bob, who wore size-nine shoes and was five foot eight).
Cited works and further reading
- Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, The Wife Between Us. Pan, 2018
- Lee Child, Bad Luck and Trouble. Bantam Books, 2011
- Louise Harnby, Editing Fiction at Sentence Level, Panx Press, 2020
- Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint. Vintage, 2002
- Roger Hobbs, Ghostman. Corgi, 2014
- Tim Weaver, I Am Missing. Penguin, 2017
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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