A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

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.

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.

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:

1. One of the characters, Matt, ducks under a hedge. We seem 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.
2. The camera stays with Matt and we see him mouth the word ‘bitch’.
3. 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 cold coming on.
4. 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.
5. The view shifts to Adriana. She’s putting her phone in her pocket. Her expression is one of anger and frustration.
6. 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.
7. Now it’s back to Matt. He’s still hunched up in the hedge, eyes wide, body still.
8. The camera zooms out so that we can see Adriana moving ever closer to where Matt’s hiding. She’s getting nearer.
9. 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.
10. The camera cuts to Matt, still in the hedge. But now he’s smiling, enjoying Adriana’s discomfort.
11. 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.

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.
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It’s shorter, certainly, but the tension is back and the writing is tighter.

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.
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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.

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.

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.
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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.

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.
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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.

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?
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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.

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. ​

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.
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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.

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.

​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.

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.
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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.

Think about what you do when you look in a mirror.
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• 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.

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. 

​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.
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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.

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, 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
• Louise Harnby, Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions
• Louise Harnby, Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
• Louise Harnby, A beginner's guide to narrative point of view in crime writing
• Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint. Vintage, 2002
• Roger Hobbs, Ghostman. Corgi, 2014
• Tim Weaver, I Am Missing. Penguin, 2017

Apostrophes confound some authors. Not knowing how to use them doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, but getting them wrong can distract a reader and alter the meaning of what you want to say. This guide shows you how to get it right.

What does an apostrophe look like?
The apostrophe is the same mark as a closing single quotation mark: ’ (unicode 2019).

This is worth remembering when you use them in your fiction to indicate the omission of letters at the beginning of a word. More on that further down.

What do apostrophes do?
Apostrophes have two main jobs:

1. To indicate possession
2. To indicate omission

And sometimes a third (though this is rarer and only applies to some expressions):

3. To indicate a plural

​1. Indicating possession
The English language doesn’t have one set of rules that apply universally. However, when it comes to possessive apostrophes, the following will usually apply:

Add an apostrophe after the thing that is doing the possessing.
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• If there is one thing – one noun – an s follows the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural noun is formed by adding an s (e.g. 1 horse; 2 horses), no s is required after the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural is formed irregularly (e.g. 1 child; 2 children), an s follows the apostrophe.

Possessive apostrophes and names
Names can be tricky. The most common problem I see is authors struggling to place the apostrophe correctly when family names are being used in the possessive case, even more so when the name ends with an s.
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Here are some examples of standard usage to show you how it’s done:

Note that in the Melanie Fields singular-possession example, there are two options. Both are correct but some readers will find the second more difficult to pronounce because there are three s's a row.

Hart’s Rules (4.2.1 Possession) has this advice: 'An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x, or z sound […] but an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in pronunciation, typically after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable.’

If you're unsure whether to apply the final s in a case like this, use common sense. Read it aloud to see if you can wrap your tongue around it, and decide whether the meaning is clear. Then choose the version that works best and go for consistency across your file. Pedantry shouldn't trump prescriptivism in effective writing.

2. Indicating omission
Indicating omission when one word is created from two
In fiction, we often use contracted forms of two words to create a more natural rhythm in the prose, particularly in dialogue. The apostrophes indicate that letters (and spaces) have been removed.
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Common examples include:

Indicating omission at the beginning, middle and end of single words
We can use an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing at the end of a word (dancing – dancin’), the middle of a word (cannot – can’t) and the beginning of a word (horrible – ’orrible).

Start-of-word letter omissions are commonly used in fiction writing to indicate informal speech or a speaker’s accent.

Make sure you use the correct mark. Microsoft Word automatically inserts an opening single quotation mark (‘) when you type it at the beginning of a word because it assumes you’re using it as a speech indicator.

Apostrophes are ALWAYS the closing single quotation mark (’) so do double check if you’re indicating omission at the start of a word.

Indicating omission in numbers and dates
Plural numbers don’t usually require an apostrophe because there’s no ambiguity. In fiction writing, it’s common to spell out numbers for one hundred and below, but even when numerals are used, no apostrophe is needed for plurals.

Omission-indicating apostrophes at the beginning of dates are acceptable according to some style manuals. In the example below, the 1970s is abbreviated. It’s conventional in UK writing to follow the NHR example below.
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In fiction, however, you can avoid the issue by spelling out the dates. This is universally acceptable, and my preference when writing and editing fiction.

3. Indicating a plural with an apostrophe
When indicating the plural of lower-case letters – for example, if you want to refer to two instances of the letter a – it’s essential to use an apostrophe because the addition of only an s will lead to confusion.
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In the non-standard examples below, you can see how the plurals (in bold) form complete words, resulting in ambiguity.

For that reason, it’s considered standard to use an apostrophe (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online 7.15 and New Hart’s Rules 4.2.2).

When indicating the plural of upper-case letters, the apostrophe would be considered non-standard because there’s no ambiguity.

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes and possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are the bane of the apostrophe novice’s writing life, especially its!

The following possessive pronouns NEVER need an apostrophe: hers, theirs, yours and its.

• it’s = the contracted form of it is (or it has)
• its = the possessive pronoun

​If you’re unsure whether to insert an apostrophe in its, say it out loud as it is. If it makes sense, you need an apostrophe; if it doesn’t, you don’t!

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes in plural forms
The apostrophe novice can fall into the trap of creating plural forms of nouns by adding an apostrophe before the final s.

Summary
I hope you’ve found this overview useful. It isn’t exhaustive – there are entire books about apostrophes. Fucking Apostrophes is one of my favourites.

However, when it comes to fiction writing, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about more than the basics covered here.

If you’re stuck on where to stick your apostrophe, feel free to ask me for guidance in the comments.

Further reading

• Fucking Apostrophes (Simon Griffin, Icon Books, 2016)
• How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article and free booklet)
• Punctuating dialogue in fiction (video series on my YouTube channel)
• New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

What is flash fiction and can its creation make us better writers and better editors?

​In July 2018, I wrote my first piece of flash fiction and submitted it to the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival’s flash fiction competition. Here’s what I learned.

What is flash fiction?
Think of a tiny story that packs a large wallop … that’s flash fiction. It’s not always called that. Some call it micro fiction, others nano fiction. I’ve also heard it called the shortie, short-short and postcard fiction.

How long is it? There’s no consensus other than it’s short ... very short. Some types of flash fiction have established word counts – the dribble with 50 words, the drabble with 100 words, and Twitterature – ­­no more than 280 characters. If Twitterature seems like a challenge, imagine writing it when the character-count limitation was 140!

So what are the key components and what can they teach writers of longer-form fiction?

1. Brevity – making every word count
Keeping things tight is one of the biggest challenges faced by many of the beginner novelists I work with.

Overwriting usually occurs because the author hasn’t yet learned to trust their reader. Will that single adjective be enough? Maybe another sentence that says a similar thing would be in order, just for clarification …

Often, it’s not a reflection of a writer’s ability to write, but about confidence. Getting the balance right comes with experience and not a little courage. A line editor can help with overwriting – they bring fresh eyes to the book, and can advise on what can safely be removed without damaging flow, sense, rhythm and tension, and in a way that respects style and voice.

Flash fiction helps writers practise the art of precision in the extreme. And when it comes to self-editing your novel, you can ask yourself this: ‘If this were a short story and my word count was restricted, is this the way I’d construct this sentence?’

The answer might be ‘No, but I’d be missing an opportunity to enrich the narrative and the dialogue in a way that’s best for my book.’ That’s a great answer. Still, the flash fiction writer is forced to be disciplined, and when it comes to writing longer works, that discipline will get you used to thinking in terms of making sure every word counts, and comfortable with removing those that don’t.

A limited word count also encourages writers to experiment with literary devices such as free indirect speech, sentence fragments, action beats, and asyndeton, all of which can facilitate brevity but enrich tension, immediacy, mood and rhythm. 

2. Structure – shaping the story
Stories need structure. No writer wants to get to the end of their novel only to realize that the denouement occurred ten chapters earlier. Sophie Hannah calls it ‘story architecture’, which I think is both a practical and a beautiful way of thinking about how a writer helps their readers experience a novel.

There are different ways to shape stories but the most common is the three-act structure. First, the beginning or hook that draws us in. Second, the middle where the confrontation takes place. This is where we come to understand the characters’ motivations and the conflict or obstacles in their way. Third, is the end where the denouement or resolution occurs.

Says Julia Crouch, ‘If you have any storytelling bones in you at all, you will more than likely, even subconsciously, end up with a structure like this.’

How does flash fiction help? Do you even need to worry about structure when you’re writing such a short piece of work?

Absolutely! No one will enjoy an 80,000-word novel that’s poorly structured. The same applies to 800 words. The only difference is that with flash fiction they’ll lose interest quicker.

Flash fiction is a story form in its own right. It’s not about pulling an excerpt from a longer-form piece of writing. Flash must have structure – a beginning, a middle and an end. Something must happen to someone or something, and readers must leave the story feeling satisfied, that the story is complete, that they’ve been on a journey, albeit a short one.

Without structure, it will descend into nothing more than an extract.

Perhaps flash is akin to poetry – squeezing big ideas into small spaces. That too, though, is good practice for the novelist, because it encourages writers to think about the discipline of shaping, and the journey that the reader will be taken on.

3. Strong endings – surprises and twists
There’s nothing more disappointing than a book that hooks you into turning page after page only to sag into a giant anti-climax.

‘Endings are so important to the reader and you will never please everyone,’ says Nicola Morgan. ‘Readers do want the end to feel “right”, though. They have spent time with these characters and they care what happens to them.’

How and when novelists decide to tie up all or most of the loose ends will depend on style, genre, and whether the book is part of a series, but there must be some sort of closure so that your readers aren’t left hanging.

Flash fiction is a challenge to write, but it’s a challenge to read too, particularly for those who love to get stuck into a world and the characters who move around within it.

It’s therefore an excellent format in which to practice packing a final punch, even if that amounts to just one or two sentences. This form of writing also allows writers to play with readers’ expectations of resolution in quirky ways.

You might decide to evoke a laugh, or a shudder, or shock, or a sense of poignancy, but the reader should feel something such that even though you’ve only written a few hundred words the story is memorable.

Here are some additional tips that you might consider if writing flash fiction appeals.

Flash fiction tips #1: Seek immediacy
Which tense will you use?

At the time of writing, I’ve written eight flash fiction stories, none of more than 900 words. In all but two I instinctively opted for the present tense. I didn’t notice my predilection until I reread them one after the other. It made me reconsider the two I’d framed in the past tense. I decided to see what would happen if I changed them.

I learned something. My narrative tension loses its piquancy when I write in the past. That’s not to say I wouldn’t use the past if I were writing a novel. However, for flash fiction, there’s no time to lose! I’m trying to close the distance between the reader and the viewpoint character so that the former is quickly immersed in the tiny world I’ve built.

The opposite might be true for you; there are no rules. But if your flash is flagging, don’t be afraid to experiment with tense and evaluate the impact.

Flash fiction tips #2: Characters and viewpoint
Given the space available, keep the story tight by sticking to one viewpoint character.
It’s easier to create immersion if you allow readers to get under the skin of a single person’s experience. That doesn’t mean there can’t be other characters in the frame, just that we see these others through the viewpoint character’s eyes.

You’ll likely need to omit anything about the character that isn’t necessary to drive the story forward. Novels include descriptions of the characters’ appearance and personality so that we can better visualize them and understand their motivations.
With flash, consider focusing only on those unique physical and emotional traits that nudge the reader towards the big reveal.

Flash fiction tips #3: Use the mundane
Play the what-if game. Take an object, or place, or personality attribute of someone you know, and ask what the story might be in another universe.

What if that old door in your friend’s hallway didn’t really go to the downstairs loo? What if that scribble you found on the inside of a library book had a more sinister connotation? What if your neighbour wasn’t quite who you believed them to be? What if your best mate’s boring job was just a cover story?

Sometimes the most wonderful clues to the theme of a shortie are hidden in plain sight.

4. The editor turned fiction writer – lessons learned
Writing and editing are two very different arts. I don’t believe that a good fiction editor must be a fiction writer. I do, however, think we need to understand the core components of fiction writing and what makes a book work, and be able to place ourselves in the shoes of the author and the reader.

Still, I’m (now) one of many fiction editors who also write fiction. Some of my colleagues have publishing contracts. Some are self-publishers. Some have agents, while others are seeking representation. Some of us write our fiction purely for pleasure.

​There are many roads, but we all agree on one thing: it has been good for us to sit on the other side of the desk – to be the writer, to be the one being edited. 

Louise reading 'Zeppelin'. Crime writer Elizabeth Haynes looks on.

The short story I wrote for Noirwich 2018 was a challenge for two reasons:

1. I’ve written non-fiction – several books, materials for online courses, this weekly blog, guest articles for magazines and newsletters, essays during my university days. But I’d not written fiction since I was in high school, and back then I wasn’t being judged on it.
2. The brief was to write 500 words of crime fiction related to Norwich or Norfolk. The last time I wrote anything with fewer than 500 words was when I constructed the bio on my website!

The amazing thing is that I made the final shortlist of three.

That, however, presented a new challenge. I was invited to Noirwich Live where the winner would be announced by New York Times bestseller Elizabeth Haynes. Would I read my story ‘Zeppelin’ to a roomful of people, mostly complete strangers?

The audience comprised fellow amateur writers, teachers of creative writing, published writers including Haynes, Merle Nygate and Andrew Hook, and most important of all, my daughter Flo and dear friend Rachel.

My knees might have been trembling as I took to the floor, but I got the job done and thought about what I’d learned from the experience.

Sharing takes courage
Writing fiction is one thing; sharing it with others is quite another. Even tiny fiction like mine. For some of us, it takes courage, especially when massive doses of newbie impostor syndrome are flowing through one’s veins.

And this is exactly how many of my author clients feel. Sometimes I’m the first person on the planet to see their work when they’re done with it. My experience enhanced my already deep respect for them, because now I know how it feels to share my fiction with others.

Editing is an honour
My own small venture has taught me what a privilege it is to be chosen by an author to edit for them. When they choose me or one of my colleagues, they take a leap of faith. They place trust in us to treat their words with respect and help them move forward towards their publishing goals.

Fiction is intimate
The nine stories I’ve written to date are really short. I’m at the beginning of my fiction writing journey. I have a lot to learn. But those stories are precious to me. Every one of them contains a bit of me, or of someone I care about, or someone or something that has made a mark on me in some way. They are not fact, but they are not completely made up either, and that infuses them with a level of intimacy.

In other words, fiction writing is personal.

It’s important that the fiction editor takes all of that into their editing studio and remembers it at every touchpoint of the project – an amendment, a query, a summary – and never forgets to say thank you.

​Further reading

• Julia Crouch. Five tips for keeping your readers gripped. Noirwich. 2018.
• Louise Harnby. 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
• Louise Harnby. Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions
• Louise Harnby. Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
• Louise Harnby. Zeppelin: Shorts and Flashes. 2018
• National Centre for Writing
• Nicola Morgan. Write to be Published. Snowbooks. 2014
• Noirwich Crime Writing Festival

Dialogue tags – or speech tags – are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. This article is about how to use them effectively.

A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech:
​

• Dave said, ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That,’ said Dave, ‘is the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say,’ Dave said.​

​​
Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up longer chunks.

Rather than give you a bunch of zombie rules that you’ll want to break about two seconds after you’ve read them, here are three guidelines to bear in mind when thinking about which tags to use, which to avoid, and when you might omit them altogether:
​

1. A good tag doesn’t trump the dialogue.
2. A good tag doesn’t repeat what the dialogue’s already told the reader.
3. A good tag doesn’t impair how natural the speech sounds.

Why said often works best, and when it’s not enough
The speech tag said  ‘is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible,’ say Mittelmark and Newman in How Not to Write a Novel (p. 132).

I agree, and I recommend you embrace it! If someone’s told you to avoid repeating said, head for your bookshelf and take a peek inside some of your favourite novels for reassurance.

If you deliberately try to avoid said, you run the risk that your writing will reflect that intention. If your reader is focusing on your avoidance, their focus is not where it should be – on your story.

Still, there will be times when you’ll want a tag that tells your reader about, say, the sound quality, the mood of the speech, or the tone of voice. Speech tags aren’t the only way to do this – for example, you could use action beats before the dialogue, or adverbial phrases after your tags – but few readers will complain if you use the likes of whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered or whined. Hissed is one that I rather like, though some writers and editors are less keen.

Even though said 's invisibility makes it harder to overuse, avoid the temptation to place it after every expression. Here’s an example of how it looks when it's been overworked (see, too, the final section in this article, ‘Omitting dialogue tags’):

Showy speech tags and underdeveloped dialogue
Showy tags can overwhelm dialogue. Since you’ve written your dialogue for a reason, that’s where the reader’s attention should be. When the tag is more visible than the speech, it’s a red flag that the dialogue, not the tag, needs enriching:

​Instead, we might amend the dialogue so that it conveys the preaching tone, and leaves the tag (said) with the mechanical function of indicating who’s speaking:

Showy speech tags and double-telling
Some speech tags are just repetitions of what the reader already knows – they double-tell. Asked and replied are two common examples, though these are used so often that they don’t fall into the showy category. For that reason, I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid these, though do take care not to overuse them.

Showier examples – such as opined, commanded, threatened – become redundant if you’ve got the dialogue right:

In the first three examples, it’s clear from the dialogue that an opinion, a command and a threat have been given. The speech tags repeat what we already know; we should consider whether said is a less invasive alternative.

In the fourth example, amazing and the exclamation mark (!) tell us that the speaker exclaimed, so again the showy tag is redundant.

It’s a question of style, of course. I’m not giving you rules but suggesting ways of thinking about the function of your tagging so that you keep your reader immersed in the spaces of your choosing.
​
Non-speech-based dialogue tags and the reality flop
Even if you decide you do want a more extravagant tag than said, take care when using verbs that are not related to the mechanics of speaking.

Examples include: smiled, gesticulated, ejaculated, thrusted, fawned, scowled, winced, smirked, sneered, pouted, frowned, indicated and laughed.

The physicality of these verbs will jar your reader and they immediately introduce an element of inauthenticity into the prose. They’re great words for describing what other parts of a person’s body can do, but are unsuitable for use as dialogue tags:

Try one of the following instead:

Alternatives to showy speech tags – more on action beats
Rich action beats can complement or even replace speech tags, and are useful if you want to keep your dialogue lean and are tempted to use a showy speech tag. Keep them on the same line as the speaker they’re related to.

Action beats let you set the scene so that the reader can fill in the gaps with their imagination while a character is speaking.

Here’s an example of dialogue with a showy speech tag – moaned:

In the alternative below, the reader can discern the moaning manner in which the speech is delivered because James’s discomfort is shown in the action beat preceding it:

Notice how the action beat is punctuated. There’s a full stop (period) after winced.

Neither of these examples is wrong or right. You might decide that you prefer one over the other. Rather, I’m showing you alternatives so that you can make informed decisions about how to make your writing engaging.

Using proper nouns in dialogue tags
If your fiction is gender binary (and it might well not be) and the genders are known to the reader, you needn’t repeat the speaker’s name every time they appear in a dialogue tag. You can use third-person singular pronouns: he and she. Clarity is everything here.
​
Notice how Alexander McCall Smith uses nouns and pronouns in his dialogue tags, and peppers the text with action beats so that the reader knows who’s speaking (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 125):

​Omitting dialogue tags
If you’re confident your reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags altogether. Once more, it’s not about rules but about sense and clarity.

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

Here’s an example from Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks novel Sleeping in the Ground (pp. 273–4). There are two characters in this scene: Banks and Linda. Robinson omits most of the dialogue tags in this conversation because it’s clear who’s speaking, but he keeps us on track with an action beat and a tag halfway through:

Summing up
When it comes to dialogue, remember the function of the tag: to indicate which character is speaking.

​Says Beth Hill, ‘These tags are background, part of the mechanics of story; they meet their purpose but don’t stand out. They let the dialogue take the spotlight’ (The Magic of Fiction, p. 166).

So, during the self-editing process:

• Check your tags to ensure they’re performing their indicative function rather than taking the spotlight.
• Position them to moderate pace and improve rhythm.
• Take care with non-speech-related tags.
  
• And support your dialogue with action beats so that said can take invisible pride of place.

Cited sources and further reading

• Alexander McCall Smith: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Abacus, 2003
• Beth Hill: The Magic of Fiction. Title Page Books, 2016
• Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman: How Not to Write a Novel. Penguin, 2009
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article)
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (videos)
• Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017

​

If you’re including authentic technical or procedural information in your crime writing, you’ll be wearing your research hat. Your story should come first, of course. However, be sure to get your facts straight before you decide if and how far you’re going to bend reality.

Procedure varies between region and country, and when your novel is set will also determine the relevance of the resources I’ve included. Still, even those outside your jurisdiction might spark an insight that drives your storyline further or deepens your characterization

Conversations and ride-alongs
My brushes with the law have been limited to bad parking. Still, I know a few coppers socially, and it’s to them I’d head for procedural guidance in the first instance.

If you know a police officer, a forensic anthropologist, a crime-scene investigator, a barrister, or whatever, ask them if you can pick their brains. They’ll have expert subject knowledge and insights, and your talking with them face to face could be the most powerful tool of all.

If you don’t have existing contacts, ask your friends for theirs or put a call out on social media. A writer recently requested help from munitions experts via the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Facebook group. Several commenters provided advice and one offered to put her in touch with an expert.

Here’s crime writer Julie Heaberlin discussing the importance of researching and feeling comfortable approaching experts, especially to bring deeper layering to her novels:

In a bid to improve relations between the police service and the public, some larger forces now operate ride-along schemes that allow members of the public to patrol with an officer. In the UK, these include Avon & Somerset, Nottinghamshire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Humberside and Warwickshire Police.

Search online using the keywords ‘ride-along police [your country/state/city]’ and see what comes up.

Watch and read
How about TV and movies? Your favourite crime dramas and fiction might have been meticulously researched. Then again, they might not. In ‘Five Rules for Writing Thrillers’ David Morrell urges writers to do the research but to use caution:

Morrell talks more about how research makes him ‘a fuller person’ and how he learned to fly in order to create an authentic pilot for his book The Shimmer. The expense of a pilot’s licence will probably be out of reach for the average self-publisher. YouTube could be the solution.

There are thousands of hours’ worth of real-life video footage on YouTube. You can learn from experts about how a body decomposes, how an autopsy is carried out, how a forensic sketch artist works, and how to clean up a crime scene.

And there are lectures on the science of blood spatter, computer forensics, investigation techniques, and forensic imaging. You name it, it’s probably there.

Use Wikipedia
Wikipedia is great for any sleuthing writer wanting to track down information about criminal procedure. Do, however, use the primary sources cited in the references to verify the information. In the online masterclass ‘How to Write a Crime Novel’ Dr Barbara Henderson recommends using at least two sources for internet-verification purposes.

Here are some searches to get you started:

• Law enforcement in the United States
• Police officer ranks (international)
• Murder (crime definitions)
• Firearms policy in the UK​

Security agencies

MI5 – the UK’s homeland security service
​Visit the official site of MI5. There’s information on how it handles covert surveillance, communications interception, and intelligence gathering, plus a brief overview of its history since its creation in 1909.

Christopher Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm is the first authorized history of the service. Published by Penguin in 2010, it’s available on Amazon and in major bookstores.

Visit The National Archives and type MI5 into the search box. That will give you access to all the files that have been released into the public domain to date.

National Crime Agency (UK)
The NCA is tasked with protecting UK citizens from organized crime. Its website has articles and reports about cybercrime, money laundering, drugs and firearms seizure, bribery and corruption, and trafficking.

I recommend looking at the NCA’s free in-depth but readable reports such as the National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2018, which outlines threats, vulnerabilities, the impact of technology, and response strategies.

MI6 (SIS) – the UK’s secret intelligence service
​Visit the official website of the SIS to find out how it handles overseas intelligence gathering and covert operations. There’s a brief overview of the service’s history and some vignettes that illustrate how intelligence officers operate.

Keith Jeffery’s MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 is ‘the first – and only – history of the Secret Intelligence Service, written with full and unrestricted access to the closed archives of the Service for the period 1909–1949’. If you want historical information, this is a good place to start.
​
GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters (UK)
The GCHQ website is worth visiting just to see the building from which it operates in Cheltenham! There’s an overview of GCHQ history, operations, its various operational bases, and how it works with Britain’s other security services to manage global threats.

For a more in-depth study of the service, start with Richard Aldrich’s GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency.

FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation (USA)
The FBI’s website is packed with the usual overview material of how and why, but I think the go-to resources are the likes of the free Handbook of Forensic Services, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC) page, and the training guidance.

​The easiest way to navigate around the site is to head to the FBI home page and scroll down to the links in the footer.
​
NSA – National Security Agency
The NSA website is the place to go for twenty-first-century code-breaking information, and there’s a ton of information about cybersecurity and intelligence. Head for the Publications section to get free access to The Next Wave and various research papers. The material is dense but could be just the ticket for building backstories for cybergeek characters.

Police forces
Michael O'Byrne is a former police officer who worked in Hong Kong, and later with the Metropolitan Police (sometimes referred to as New Scotland Yard). Try the second edition of his Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure.

INTERPOL
This is the world’s largest police force with nearly 200 member countries. The Expertise section of its website is rammed with useful and readable information on procedure, technical tools, investigative skills, officer training, fugitive investigations, border management and more.

UK police forces
Police procedure will vary depending on where you live. You can access a list of all UK police force websites here: Police forces, including the British Transport Police, the Central Motorway Policing Group, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence Police and the Port of Dover Police

An Garda Síochána – Ireland’s national police and security service
The easiest way to navigate the Garda’s website is to head for the home page and scroll down to the sitemap at the bottom. There you’ll find links to information on policing principles, organizational structure, and the history of the service. The Crime section is particularly strong on terminology and procedure.

Legal resources
Lawtons Solicitors’ website has an excellent Knowledge Centre filled with articles on parliamentary acts, offences, criminal charges and police procedure. What are the drug classifications in the UK? and Police Station interviews are just two examples.

Ann Rule’s advice on attending trials is aimed at true-crime writers, but you could use the guidance for fictional inspiration: Breaking Into True Crime: Ann Rule’s 9 Tips for Studying Courtroom Trials.

Crown Prosecution Service (UK): The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) website provides detailed prosecution guidance for criminal justice professionals. It is extremely dense, and so it should be; it wasn’t designed for novelists! See, for example, the section on Core Foundation Principles for Forensic Science Providers: DNA-17 Profiling. Still, there’s a wealth of information there for those prepared to wade through it.

​Department of Justice (USA): The DOJ site offers guidance on the role of the Attorney General, the organizational structure of the department, lots of statistical information, and maps of federal facilities.

​Forensics resources

• Forensic Science and Beyond: Authenticity, Provenance and Assurance is a free, huge and fascinating study that includes evidence and case studies of forensic science in relation to cybercrime, chemical weapons, victim identification, pharmaceuticals, nuclear forensics, and more. It’s worth a read for plot ideas as much as procedure.
• The Crime Scene Investigator Network claims to be ‘the world’s most popular crime scene investigation and forensic science website’. It’s US-centric, so whether the procedures outlined there will be relevant to your jurisdiction will be worth checking.
  Still, the site is easy to navigate and avoids academic jargon. There’s information on evidence collection (blood, semen, firearms residue, drugs, fingerprints, fibres, and so on), photography and procedure, and a collection of articles written by crime scene investigators. Well worth visiting, wherever you’re based.
• If you want to know what the UK’s Forensic Science Regulator considers best practice, delve into its current Codes of Practice And Conduct, 2017 and The Control and Avoidance of Contamination in Crime Scene Examination involving DNA Evidence Recovery.
• For additional technical guidance, and to search for more forensics resources, visit the UK government’s Publications and search by keyword. What’s especially useful about these collections is that archived reports are held on file. And that means you can access guidance not only as it stands now, but in the past too.
• The Royal Anthropological Institute has a Code of Practice for Forensic Anthropology that ‘defines the purpose of the forensic anthropology process and the series of steps that must be followed from the time a forensic anthropologist (FA) is notified of involvement in a case until the presentation of findings, whether by report alone or through the provision of evidence in the court room’.​
• There are some interesting insights into human taphonomic research (that's body farms to you and me) in this report: The Operation of Body Farms – Learning Points for Setting up a Human Taphonomy Facility in the UK.
• Val McDermid's Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime, published by the Wellcome Collection in 2015, 'traces the history of forensics from its earliest beginnings to the cutting-edge science of the modern day'.
• Introduction to Forensic Science: This is a free online course from the University of Strathclyde via FutureLearn. 'Explore the methods underpinning forensic science, from crime scene investigation to reporting evidential value within a case.'

Historical crime writing resources

• Victorian Crime & Punishment includes a prisoner database and case studies of real crimes and trials.
• The National Archives holds historical records of serving officers in the Metropolitan Police and the Royal Irish Constabulary.​
• The Police History Society documents police museums, collections, historical societies and related resources.
• US crime writer Jason Lucky Morrow hosts a true-crime blog called Historical Crime Detective. The subtitle is ‘Where Old Crime Does New Time’. That in itself was enough to pull me in! He promises we ‘will discover forgotten crimes and forgotten criminals lost to history. You will not find high profile cases that have been rehashed and retold ad infinitum to ad nauseam.’

Weapons research

• The Art of Firearms in Fiction is a free 45-page primer featuring Steve Allen, a soldier-turned-editor who specializes in military particulars, with additional material from Aden Nichols, an editor and Special Forces veteran.
• Guns Guns Guns is an ‘online directory and forum for those who prize their right to keep and bear arms’. If you want to know something about firearms, the answer’s probably there.
• The Firearms section of the UK government’s website includes statistics on firearms certification and guidance on legal use.
• The ATF: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (USA) includes a photo gallery of different categories of guns, a code of federal regulations, licensing information in regard to firearms and explosives, and articles about tools and services for law enforcement.

I hope you find these resources useful. I’ve barely been able to scratch the surface, not least because I’m busy trying to book a ride-along with my local bobby! While I sort that out, here’s some wise advice from David Morrell:

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

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

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

In this article, we'll look at the following:
​

1. How to indicate speech
2. Creating pauses and trail-offs
3. Showing interruptions
4. How to punctuate tagged speech
5. Working with broken-up dialogue
6. Handling vocative expressions
7. Dealing with faltering speech

If you prefer watching to reading, there's a complementary video series on my YouTube channel that covers each of the 7 sections in turn. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Commas are required for clarity.
 

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

 
Here are some examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cited sources

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

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

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

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols and machetes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That speeding-up can have a variety of effects:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources and works cited

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

If you're self-publishing within a strict budget, this booklet will help you decide how best to invest.

The guidance is broken down into sections that reflect the recommended order of play and the outcomes you want to achieve.

Click on the image to download your free copy.

Some crime writers are planners. Some are pantsers (so called because they fly by the seat of their pants). Neither is better than the other. What matters is that the method you choose to write your story works for you and results in a tale well told.

Being either a planner or a pantser won’t determine whether you sell lots of books. A story that makes sense – one that reads as if you had carefully planned it – is what’s key to creating an experience that readers will relish.

So what do some of the big-name crime writers have to say on the matter?

What’s right for you?
‘The more I talk to other crime writers the more I start to become fairly sure that for each writer there is an ideal way, but there isn’t one ideal way,’ says Sophie Hannah.

I think I’ve read everything Harlan Coben’s ever written. If I haven’t, it’s waiting in the pile or on the Kindle. If you’d asked me, I’d have marked him as a planner. His stories hang together so well; he ties up every loose end. And I always have that ‘Ah, that’s what happened’ moment. But in fact, Coben’s a pantser:

​Maybe you’re like him or Julia Heaberlin:

​Or perhaps you’re like Susan Spann:

Or Hannah:

​To help you decide whether to plan or pants, consider the following:
​

• Will planning impede your creativity?
• How fast do you write?
• When do you want to find out whether your plot works?
• Are you a linear or a non-linear writer?
• How will you decide where to plant your clues?
• How will you ensure your story has a cohesive structure?’

Planning and creativity
Some writers fear that planning will mute their creativity and the process of discovery. The following excerpt is from an article from the NY Book Editors blog:

Heaberlin feels that surrendering control to her characters is essential to the creative unfolding of her stories: