In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how to find an editor if you decide you want professional help.
Click to listen to Episode 10
Summary of Episode 10
Listen to find out more about:
Editing bites
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.
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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss the order of play for the different levels of editing, and some ideas about how you can keep costs down.
Click to listen to Episode 9
Summary of Episode 9
Listen to find out more about:
Editing bites
Other resources
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.
You don't need a lot of equipment to create superb audio content. A fellow book editor and I recently recorded 5 episodes for our podcast with nothing but a couple of mics, a splitter and our cell phones. Here's how to do it.
Mobile podcasting at ATOMICON
Denise Cowle and I were at ATOMICON, a one-day digital marketing conference hosted by my two favourite marketers, Andrew and Pete. The venue was the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle. 300 business owners, all with an interest in being visible online, gathered from near and far to learn, and have a good laugh doing it – Andrew and Pete don’t do anything without putting a smile on people’s faces!
Creating content ... while learning about creating content
In January, Denise and I launched The Editing Podcast. We're both experienced book editors and we use our knowledge and experience to make indie authors' publishing journeys easier by offering writing and editing tips, tools and guidance. Our target audience is anyone who writes. That means we’re creating audio material related to fiction and creative non-fiction, business, education and academia. We tackle editing issues from the viewpoint of print and digital publishing because we recognize that our listeners work in a variety of formats and use a range of platforms to distribute their writing. Now, we'd already planned to invite guests onto The Editing Podcast in Season 2 and beyond, but ATOMICON was too good an opportunity to miss. Since some of the 300 delegates had published books – fiction and non-fiction – we thought it would be great to hear their experiences of the editing and publishing process so that other indie authors might understand the various approaches taken and the challenges faced.
The question we asked ourselves was could we do it on the fly? The coffee breaks were short, the venue busy, and the atmosphere buzzing. That meant there’d be a lot of background noise to contend with.
What equipment did we use? We turned up in Newcastle with our very own micro podcasting studio! It consisted of the following:
That’s a small investment for an audio studio that fits in your pocket! And we can use the equipment over and over.
So did it work? Yes, it did! RØDE didn’t disappoint. We plugged in the mics, hit the RECORD button on the Reporter app, and away we went. Our voices come across clearly, and while the background noise of the convention is audible, it doesn't interfere with the conversation. In fact, we think it adds texture to the recordings because listeners can appreciate the atmosphere of a live event. Who did we talk to? The following lovely people were kind enough to let us interview them about their book revision and publication journeys:
You can listen to the bonus episodes on The Editing Podcast right here. Editing and publishing the recordings The recordings are .WAV files that sit in the Reporter app’s library. Download them to your computer or email them to yourself. We edit our audio files in Audacity – this is free, open-source, cross-platform audio-editing software. The dashboard does have something of a NASA feel to it, but it’s easy to learn how to do the basics with any number of free tutorials available on YouTube. Here’s one example from by David Taylor: Audacity: Complete Tutorial Guide to Audacity for Beginners.
To upload to most audio platforms, you’ll need to convert the WAVs to MP3s. You can do this in Audacity at export stage.
Publishing audio content Denise and I chose Captivate to syndicate our podcast content because of its superb user interface and competitive pricing plans.
You don’t have to go down that route, of course. If you’re creating audio content more sporadically for the purpose of author book promotion or to communicate your editing knowledge/services, you could go direct to, say, SoundCloud or another free audio-streaming service, and embed the audio on your website rather than going for full syndication. And it won’t cost you a penny.
Why should you use audio? Audio is a powerful engagement tool because it allows your listeners to hear your actual voice ... your accent, your pitch, your inflection and, perhaps most important, your emotion. That enables authors to connect with readers, and editors to connect with authors. When a conversation takes place, listeners can hear that connection, and enjoy it. Lots of The Editing Podcast's listeners have told me and Denise that they love not just the learning points we share but also the way our friendship plays out on air. It's a richer experience than words alone can provide. Learn how to do marketing better We had a great time at ATOMICON, and our mobile podcasting experiment was a huge success, with over 300 downloads of the author interviews in the first 2 hours of appearing on air. If you’re struggling to be visible online, Andrew and Pete will show you the way. Denise and I are heading back to ATOMICON in 2020. I'm certain we'll be doing more mobile podcasting, too! Click on the image below if you fancy joining us.
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk about about page proofs and the proofreading process.
Click to listen to Episode 8
Summary of Episode 8
Editing bites
Related resources Click on the image below to download my free proofreading checklist.
And check out these blog articles about proofreading too:
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk about style sheets, and how they’ll help you keep track of the key themes in your book, and ensure consistency along the way.
Click to listen to Episode 7
Summary of Episode 7 ...
Related resources
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss sample edits – what they are, how they can help, and who they’re useful for.
Click to listen to Episode 6
Summary of Episode 6 ...
Editing bites
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how to choose the right kind of editor to suit your publishing needs.
Click to listen to Episode 5
Summary of Episode 5 ...
Editing bites
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how much professional editing might cost if you decide to hire a third party, and what factors could affect the fee you’re quoted.
Click to listen to Episode 4
Summary of Episode 4 ...
Editing bites
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise look at why you might want to invest in hiring an editor rather than doing it all yourself.
Click to listen to Episode 3
Summary of Episode 3 ...
Editing bites
Other resources
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise demystify publishing language – the terms professionals use to describe the parts of a book – so that you can talk with confidence about your text.
Click to listen to Episode 2
Summary of Episode 2 ...
Editing bites Indexing societies
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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss the different levels of editing, why editing is worth doing, the order of play, and how perfection is impossible in one pass.
Click to listen to Episode 1
Summary of Episode 1 ...
Editing bites
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.
If you're a new proofreader or editor, having a global mindset in regard to choosing reference resources is essential for maximizing editorial business opportunities.
Like many of my fellow editorial business owners, I’m often approached by potential new entrants to the field who want advice about getting started. One of the most oft-asked questions is: ‘Which reference resources – style guides, dictionaries and the like – do I need?'
Bear in mind that anyone you seek guidance from in regard to best-fit resources must respect the fact that you might not be from the same place as them, speak like them, have the same potential clients as them, and spell colour/color like they do, or as a client brief asks them to. Centrism, whether from the United Kingdom, the United States, or elsewhere in the world, is useless to you as a new entrant because it’s based on false assumptions about you and your potential clients.
Social science ‘styles’ from an international perspective
Here’s a wee case fictive case study. Imagine a new entrant to the editing profession tells me the following:
Based on this, I suggest that social science publishers and academics would be good initial target markets. Does my new starter’s location affect their choice of potential publishers clients? It’s not clear cut. The online world has knocked down those geographical boundaries; you don’t have to spend a fortune to send page proofs to someone hundreds of miles away; you can email them to someone thousands of miles away for the price of an Internet connection. And how does my new starter’s location in the United States more broadly affect what they need to learn in terms of styles and language preferences? Again, it’s not clear cut. I see The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) recommended as the sole must-have resource so often in online discussions about editorial work that I worry that new entrants may fall into the trap of thinking that this ‘bible’ alone will tell them everything they need to know. Super though it is (I love chunks of it for fiction editing), CMOS is not the be all and end all of style guides, because it depends on what a client wants, the subject matter and country-specific language preferences. The California-based publisher SAGE Publications asks that its copyeditors have a thorough knowledge of both the CMOS and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). But note that these are core requirements for SAGE’s US book division. If you want to freelance for the US journal division, you’ll need to add the AMA Manual of Style and The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers to your reading list. (Bear in mind, too, that not all publishers want us to use the most current version of these manuals.) But why stop there? If my new starter can get work with SAGE in California, might it not be sensible to tap its sister office in London? But in that case, our newbie will also need familiarity with New Hart’s Rules, The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, and Butcher’s Copyediting. Or what if our new starter decides to target social science academics who are based in the US? They'll need to ask:
Actually, it’s just as likely that an eminent Boston-based scholar will submit to the European Journal of Political Research as to the American Political Science Review, Scandinavian Political Studies, or the Canadian Journal of Political Science. This will impact on what our newbie needs to know. For example:
Location doesn’t determine readership
Where our clients live doesn’t determine where they publish or the location of their intended readership. Given that the editorial freelancing market is competitive, it makes sense to exploit the most obvious opportunities. In the Internet Age, the physical barriers are gone. The only barrier to exploring an international work stream is an inability to appreciate that language conventions and preferences differ according to client (whether that be a particular publisher, a particular independent author, a particular journal), not according to one, and only one, globally recognized set of rules. Honestly – such a thing doesn’t exist; it doesn’t even exist within many countries.
Diversity of geography, language, and preferences
It’s not so much about where we live, but where our clients live and what preferences they have.
If you're a new entrant to the field and are wondering what you need to know, instead of listening to my preferences, familiarize yourself with a number of appropriate resources depending on what your clients want. Perhaps it’s CMOS; perhaps it’s not. And even if it is, ONLY knowing this could mean you're seriously restricting the base of clients for whom you can work, the types of material you can work on, and the geographical locations you can explore. So try the following:
If your world revolves around CMOS, it’s possibly a smaller world than it needs to be. And if your world is smaller than it needs to be, so are the opportunities you're exploring in a market that’s already very competitive. One other item to note. CMOS, CSE, APA, AMA, and the like are style guides; they give you guidance on whether, for example, to close up or hyphenate a compound adjective. They won't necessarily give you extensive guidance on how a word is being used, and whether that usage is considered standard, and in which community. Usage manuals, which give that kind of information, are as important as style guides. Using a style guide or a usage manual alone is an invitation to disaster.
Out with borders and in with flexibility
When you’re the owner of an editorial business you need to learn what your clients want you to learn, whether it’s a manual published by Chicago or Oxford, a house brief designed by a team of publisher project managers, a detailed set of guidelines issued by a European NGO, or a short brief issued by an independent author of fiction. I encourage you to think broadly, globally, and flexibly. If someone tries to guide to towards only one set of ‘rules’, at best their advice will restrict you; at worst it will be just plain wrong or inappropriate. There is, alas, no simple answer to the question of which resources are best. Instead, careful thought and planning centred around client- and skill-focused research is a good first step. That way, you’ll learn for yourself what resources, tools, and knowledge bases are suitable for you, your potential market, and your particular business model. Language usage, styles, and preferences differ – and that’s okay. Don’t let anyone tell you that’s not the case!
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.
This article offers guidance on how to self-edit your fiction writing so that accents don’t become the primary story.
Do your characters speak with an accent? All of us speak in ways that are distinctive; we just don’t notice our own accents because they’re ours and we’re used to them.
Oxford Dictionaries defines accent as ‘A distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class.’ Authors who are inexperienced at writing accented language can be tempted to use phonetic spelling. But writing accents is difficult; so is reading them. Most experienced authors and editors will therefore caution against this approach. Furthermore, spelling and pronunciation are two different things. Says Beth Hill in The Magic of Fiction (pp. 409, 394):
‘All English speakers would spell the words in the sentence you’re reading the same way; they just might pronounce them differently. [...] Dialogue is a report of the words that are spoken, not a visual of how they’re spoken. Show the how through means other than odd or phonetic spellings.’
Avoiding the inexperienced-ear trap
My husband was born in Belgium. He speaks fluent French. My friend Alain was born in southern France. He also speaks fluent French. They can hear strong differences in their pronunciation. Alain knows that Johnny’s accent is Belgian though he can’t tell what part of Belgium Johnny was born in. Johnny can tell that Alain is from France, and can even identify that he’s from the south, but not where in the south. I have enough French to get by, but it’s limited. When I hear Johnny and Alain speaking French to each other, I can’t hear the difference in their accents because my ear isn’t experienced enough. I also have friends and family from Yorkshire, England. To me, their accents sound the same, but I know they’re not. Nor are the turns of phrase they use. That’s because people in Yorkshire don’t all speak the same, even if those of us with inexperienced ears think they do. And I don’t speak identically to every other person born in Buckinghamshire, or use the same turns of phrase. And there’s the first problem. The ways accents are rendered by a writer will be influenced by their experience of that accent. If their experience is limited, any attempt to mimic it in writing could seem absurd to a reader with a more experienced ear. It could even turn into parody, and a bad one at that. Consider how much we’re influenced by others. Many of us talk to and listen to voices from all over the world. Speech is elastic and we often borrow from each other – not just words and phrases but pronunciation too. What each of us defines as accented, or not accented, will depend on where we’ve been, who we know, and what we’ve heard.
When phonetic spelling trumps story
Conveying accents through phonetic spelling can lead to phonemes trumping action. Here’s a mangled example of a French person speaking English. The spelling is phonetic:
Ze corpse was found in ze woods zis morning. ’Ow did zat ’appen? Ze area was checked only yesterday. Sumsing iz wrong ’ere.
If the protagonist detective is French, and every time she opens her mouth this is what we have to read, our focus won’t be on the plot. The most important thing about the sentence above is what it tells us: a corpse was found in a section of the woods that had been given the all-clear. Which means either the area wasn’t cordoned off and guarded, or the team didn’t check the area properly. That’s not what the reader will be focusing on. Instead they’ll be digging their way through a multitude of zeds. It’s a distraction that pulls the reader out of the story. Plus, we need to ask whether that phonetic spelling renders the speech authentic. I’d argue it’s a horrible inauthentic caricature that has no place in any work of fiction that isn’t intended to mock. My friend Alain mastered the th phoneme within a few weeks of living in the UK. Yes, his English was – and still is – accented (just as mine is to others), but if he was my detective, the most realistic way I could render this line in his mouth would be:
The corpse was found in the woods this morning. How did that happen? The area was checked only yesterday. Something is wrong here.
Which is just like I’d say and spell it in English. And so would my Scottish friend Denise, and my Canadian friend Janet, and my American friend Carrie, my German friend Nicole, my Yorkshire-born friend Helen ... you get the picture. We all have different accents, but conveying them with phonetic spelling is distraction not enrichment. Deliver what you promised and what’s interesting If your reader thought they were buying a mystery, a thriller, a romance or sci-fi opera, they might be disappointed to find out they’re reading something else. Lessons in how your Dutch, Indian, Welsh or British protagonist or transgressor pronounces words are not what they paid for. Furthermore, is your character’s accent really their most interesting trait? That they’re from a particular region or country might be enriching backstory. It might even play into the plot line. But is their accent key to the story? If it’s not – if it’s no more relevant than how they take their coffee – it needn’t go on the page, and if it does, it need only be in passing.
Respect your audience now, then and from wherever
There’s more than one way of speaking English. Just because I speak in a certain way, doesn’t make it standard. It’s just my way of speaking. But there’s a bigger problem. Seeking to render pronunciation ‘authentically’ can reinforce discrimination:
‘A stereotypical rendering of regional accent or dialect based on racial, cultural or ethnic "difference" could cause offence. Accent and dialogue in fiction may perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The simple-talking so-called "native" features strongly, for example, in fiction of past eras that either consciously supported or failed to question supremacist projects of conquest and domination.’ (Now Novel)
Writers need to examine their own biases (however unintentional) when they convey accents, and other characters’ perceptions of them. Plus, at the very least, overworked or badly done written accents can sound like mockery. And even if you think your writing is amusing, your reader might not. Years ago, I worked on a book in which the protagonist – for whom we were rooting – mocked his German arch-enemy for his ‘ridiculous’ pronunciation of a w as a v when speaking English. Actually, it was the protagonist and the author who ended up looking ridiculous because there is no ‘correct’ way to pronounce a w that can be universally applied across the planet. If one character’s mockery of another’s accent is central to the plot, that might be an opportunity to introduce phonetically spelled written accents briefly, but it will be a device that shows the mocker as ignorant and closed-minded. If that’s not your intention, and it doesn’t drive the novel forward, don’t include it. Make things easy for your reader The best novels make us forget we’re reading them. We’re so immersed in the story that we don’t notice we’re processing words on a page. Every time a writer forces us to decipher how a word sounds, they risk dragging us out of their book. If a book is littered with accented narrative and dialogue, we might not even get to the immersion stage. Say Mittelmark and Newman (p. 151):
‘No matter how good an ear you have, and how perfectly you’ve captured it, it soon becomes a task to read. The reader is forced to sound out each word, like somebody studying ESL, and will soon grow impatient. Instead, one or two well-placed words sprinkled throughout are enough to flavour the whole thing.’
‘Ah, but what about Irvine Welsh?’ you might say. This review on Goodreads reflects my own experience of Trainspotting:
‘I must have read the first page of Trainspotting more than twenty times since purchasing the book years ago, and each time I would put it back in fear of all the Scottish dialect. There's no point lying, this is a challenging novel. Sometimes you have to read things twice or pause to think about them to fully understand what’s being said. But, unlike a lot of books that are difficult to read, this was ultimately rewarding and once you get used to the slang words it becomes a very gritty, moving and funny read.'
Yes, he’s a great writer and it’s a great book, but I found it hard work. And I’m not always in the mood for hard work. I read for relaxation. If you think your audience is like me and this reviewer, think twice about whether you want to go down this route. Plus, it’s unlikely that any writer will be able to pull off what Welsh does if they’re writing accents and dialect that aren’t their own.
Other ways to convey accent – light flavouring
‘When doing any kind of accent, whether regional dialect, foreign accent, or a characteristic like a lisp, it is important to remember that a little goes a long way.’ (Mittelmark and Newman, p. 151)
So how might we gently nudge the reader to imagine a character’s accent in a way that avoids literally spelling it out? Here are 6 ideas: 1. Snippets of another language If the character’s from another country, you could add in a few of their native-language words here and there. Agatha Christie peppered her Poirot novels with mais ouis and mon amis (and Sophie Hannah has followed that style in her Poirot continuation mysteries). Christie didn’t go over the top though, and nor does Hannah. In Closed Casket, Poirot speaks at length, sometimes over several pages, and there’s no hint of a non. Less really is more. You could also introduce words from the character’s original language in moments of stress. Bear in mind, though, that lots of swear words (e.g. fuck) have an international appeal, so even a non-native English speaker might prefer this over their own language. I confess to being a little bemused when I read Poirot’s French snippets. He speaks English fluently, as this short excerpt from The ABC Murders (p. 3) demonstrates:
‘C’est vrai. To grow the vegetable marrows. And immediately a murder occurs—and I send the vegetable marrows to promenade themselves to the devil [...]'
The French therefore seems a little out of place. Poirot is able to use metaphor artfully, yet reverts to his native language for a simpler phrase. To some readers it will look a little contrived and old-fashioned. Still, it’s Christie, and she published this book in 1936. Fair enough. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your contemporary novel. 2. Noticing another’s accent Another character might notice someone’s accent – perhaps a Brit enters the scene in a novel set in the US, and the American protagonist notices the way they pronounce a hard t. In this case, it’s an observation that tells us something about the Brit’s voice, and from then on the reader can imagine their idea of how that would sound. No more need be said about it. This approach is best done early on. A character might frame another’s accent in terms of thoughts about how they themselves struggle to roll an r with the ease that the Parisian they’re listening to does. Or your character might convey another’s country of origin by pointing out how excellent their English is and how, for example, their Swedish or Russian accent is barely discernible. 3. Idiom and localization Localized or idiomatic words and phrases can also provide triggers for a reader that help them imagine accent. So perhaps your visiting Mancunian momentarily throws the people they’re hanging out with in Baltimore when they use the terms pissed or pants. And a character could identify another’s accent in the narrative by way of appreciating it. Again, it gives readers just enough information to do their own imagining. Check with people in the know if you use this approach. Say Mittelmark and Newman (p. 107):
‘When you use idioms incorrectly, it makes you sound as if you come for a different culture than the reader, and possibly a different planet.’
However, this warning might be something you can use purposefully if it’s suitable for your plot. 4. Contractions and dropped consonants You could sprinkle the dialogue with just a few dropped consonants or contractions to convey accent (’appen, innit, ain’t, nowt, t’other). Again, less is more. It shouldn’t stand out more than the story. 5. Grammatical structures that trip in translation Learn about other regional and grammatical structures that you could introduce once in a while. Says Now Novel:
‘Take the example of Russian immigrants to English-speaking countries. In the Russian language, there are few auxiliary verbs (verbs such as the verb “to be” or “is” are inferred from context). Thus errors such as “he good man” (for “he is a good man”) or “you go work tomorrow?” occur.’
Still, take care not to overdo these to the point of caricature and cliché. 6. Stories from other places Bring in other details that characterize a person’s place of birth – a detail about the environment, culture or food preferences, for example. Some years ago I was in Oslo in winter. I was cold and commented on the woeful weather to my friend. He replied: ‘Here in Norway, we say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.’ Another half-Norwegian friend (I know quite a few Norwegians!) once told me about one of her favourite childhood snacks, Svolvær postei (it's a kind of fish paste). We scoffed our way through several tins of the stuff one delicious afternoon. That, not her pronunciation, is what sticks in my mind when I think of her Norwegianness. For the novelist, those kinds of small details might be a more enriching way of conveying a person’s heritage than butchering the spelling of their dialogue.
Why focus on that accent?
One final thing to consider is why you would focus on one character’s accent and not every other’s. Remember, everyone speaks with an accent, whether our own ears recognize it as such or not. So imagine you’re an American living in the US. You’re in a cafe. Most of the people around you are from the US and pronounce words the way Americans do – which is to say, differently but broadly with an American accent. You don’t notice this because these accents are familiar to you. Then four Brits join your table and begin to speak. You notice their accents because they stand out for you. However, the four Brits think their accents are uninteresting because they’re familiar with their own pronunciation. Your American accent is the one that stands out. Now imagine that cafe is your novel and the people are your readers. What’s interesting – what stands out – depends on who’s doing the listening. The contemporary reader watches movies and TV, and listens to radio and podcasts. All of us are exposed to multiple voices and accents. We're used to noticing them, absorbing them and moving on. When I’m reading Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, which are set in Scotland, I’m not given frequent reminders that the primary characters speak with Scottish accents. When I’m reading Harlen Coben’s Myron Bolitar novels, which are set in the US, I’m not told that the characters speak with American accents. Why would the authors made a big deal of a Belgian, Indian, Swedish or British accent but not a Scottish or American accent? That’s not to say it wouldn’t be interesting to know where those people come from if that’s relevant to the story, and it might serve to ground the viewpoint character’s perceptions of their own nationality and pronunciation, but it wouldn’t excuse phonetic renditions of people talking differently. Consider, therefore, whether it’s necessary to make an issue of one of your character’s accents just because their pronunciation stands out to your ear when you’ve been happy to ignore the ‘home’-accented voices in your book. Any mention should be purposeful. Summing up It isn’t necessary to write accents. There are other more interesting ways to show where someone’s from. Focus on the story you’re telling and how you’re going to move it forward rather than worrying how the speakers pronounce their vowels and consonants. If you give the reader a little background and a light peppering, they can do all the imagining for themselves. If you still feel compelled to convey accents in your fiction, do so purposefully and sparingly, especially if they’re accents that you’re not familiar with. And watch out for caricature, parody and bias. Cited works and related resources
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.
Here are 5 things you can do in the year ahead to put a shine on the way you run your editing and proofreading business,
1. Be the editor who says, ‘It’s down to me’
Editors who work in-house edit. As for the other stuff, someone else does that for them – marketing, accounting, branding, heating the building, providing a good-quality office chair ... all of it. Employee editors can say, ‘It’s not my job.’ Independent editors can’t. Most indie editors don’t have assistants, in-house accountants, IT managers, marketing departments or ready-made brand strategies. All of those things are down to us. If we don’t make them part of our job, we risk not being able to put food on the table, not paying our bills, breaching our legal responsibilities, working in an environment that’s physically unfit for purpose and, worst of all, having no clients. And we have to buy our own chairs. Chairs aside, having no clients means we’re not independent business owners. It means we’re unemployed. There are bits of my job I’d rather not do. You’re probably the same. I happen to love the marketing side of things but I have friends who loathe it. One of my editor pals gets a kick from using gadgets and spreadsheets that help her manage her invoicing; I find it a bore. That’s fine – we’re different. However, we both must find clients and track our financials, whether we struggle with these tasks or relish the challenge. Being an editor is not enough. Being an editor is the work we do. Everything else is the work we do to get the work we do and operate in a professional manner. Editing is only one part of being an editorial business owner. For our businesses to thrive, we must do all the parts. We can’t afford to say, ‘But I don’t like marketing’, ‘I’m not good with spreadsheets’, ‘I’m not interested in the business end of things’, or ‘I don’t have time to learn how to do those things’, because we’re not employees. We have to say, ‘It’s down to me.’
2. Make changes
No one gets it perfect right from the get-go. Running a business is about testing and tracking so that we discover what works and what doesn’t. If things aren’t going as we hoped, we need to be ready to invest in change.
Easy to say, harder to do, I know. But change we must. The responsibility lies with us.
EXAMPLE
All businesses change. For example, a publisher might outsource production to another country, squeeze more words on a page, ask freelancers to do more for the same money, or freeze its project fees, all of which have an impact on profitability for the independent editor working for that publisher.
‘And it will reduce the quality,’ some editors say. Maybe not, maybe so. That’s not our problem. It’s theirs. They’re business owners and so are we. All of us do what we need to do to make our enterprises successful.
If we don’t like the way a client's operating, we should take positive action to find a replacement. It's not the client's job to make another business owner's enterprise successful. It can be tempting to use online spaces – Facebook groups, for example – to vent our complaints. However, that’s a waste of precious time that we could be using to locate our new client. Action for change trumps blame every time. 3. Don't measure your own success against other people’s raw data Track your own data and use it to assess the health of your editing business. Your colleagues’ metrics don’t matter because those relate to their businesses, not yours. And there’s another problem – it’s often like comparing apples and oranges. Here are two examples:
Does that mean you shouldn’t look at analytics? Not at all. But instead of looking at just the raw numbers, think about longer-term patterns in the data and outcomes (bookings/sales). How does this financial quarter compare with the previous one, or this year with the previous one? Have you made changes either on your website or elsewhere that might have influenced your analytics?
We must keep our attention on the end goal. Visitors, page views, shares, likes, follows, comments, connections etc. are only starting-point visibility indicators.
To be meaningful, they need to be considered over time and evaluated within the context of, and measured against, business goals: e.g. requests to quote, confirmed bookings, quality of clients, income, and the length of your wait-list. Otherwise, they’re nothing more than vanity metrics. As for other people’s raw stats, they tell you nothing about your own business’s needs and goals. Don't spend valuable time worrying about them. 4. Track, plan and schedule Like all sole traders, independent editors have to do everything themselves, unless they contract out services to, say, a VA, a marketer or an accountant, any of which will incur costs. We can find ourselves being asked to carry out impossible feats of juggling – too many activities and not enough time to do what must be done. The solution could lie in improved scheduling: (1) Track how much time you spend on social media during work hours and check that all of it is relevant to your business. Be strict with your social engagement – schedule it, and stick to that plan. You’ll save time and be more productive.
EXAMPLES
(2) Schedule all tasks, not just editing. Invoicing, marketing, replying to requests to quote, and dealing with queries can cause problems when they’re not scheduled. If you have 7 hours a day available for work, allot some of that time to stuff that enables you to run your business. That might mean you only have 5 hours a day available for editing, not 7, which means you’ll need to assign a longer period of time to complete each project. If you need to shift things around, fine – there’s a big difference between drinking your tea at a different time and forgetting to switch the kettle on.
EXAMPLE
When Denise Cowle and I decided to set up The Editing Podcast, we knew the pre-launch work would have to be squeezed into our already busy business and personal schedules. This was a new venture, one that would run on top of our existing business activities, not instead of them. It would have been easy for either of us to say, ‘I don’t have time – let’s do it in the next couple of weeks. I’ll call you when I’m free.’ We knew this would be a disaster, that it would lead to procrastination and delay. 5. Create templates and information resources Templates make life easier and help editors work faster. They can be customized, of course, but the underlying framework is in place, meaning we can focus on tweaking the nitty-gritty so that what we’re creating is specific to the recipient. The following all lend themselves to templating:
When we find ourselves explaining the same problem to different clients, it’s time to create a resource that we can use indefinitely. For example, if you’re a developmental editor you might have written numerous reports and queries in which you describe the fundamentals of narrative point of view. Instead of repeating yourself, create a document that outlines the principles in detail. The initial work will take you time, but once done you can use it over and over. You can also place that information on your website and use it as a promotional tool.
EXAMPLE
I’m a specialist sentence-level fiction editor. Many of my clients are first-time authors who struggle to punctuate dialogue, use apostrophes correctly, and render thoughts consistently in their writing. When I’m creating the handover editorial report, I don’t include long explanations about why and how I fixed these problems. Instead, I alert clients to the issues in brief and link to the relevant booklets on my website. I’ve shaved hours off my report-writing time and repurposed the resources for business promotion. Summing up If you’re looking for ways to make your business life run more smoothly in the next 12 months, perhaps some or all of these 5 tips will help you to save time, increase productivity, and take action. There are some free templates and other resources in the Further Reading section below. Help yourself. Happy New Year! Further reading
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.
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.
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.” Example: description and dialogue in a screenplay If we were watching that on TV, we’d be shown a great deal more.
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. 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:
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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? 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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
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.
This free booklet offers one example of how an editor or proofreader might approach testing which pricing model works best for their editing and proofreading business.
I discuss how and why I collect data, and the macro and micro insights I've gained that have helped me to grow my editorial income stream.
Hope you find it useful! Visit the Money Matters page in my resource library to download this free booklet. More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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
Want to revisit this information quickly? Visit the Books and Videos page in my resource library to download this free booklet.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
In this article, I offer 12 tips on how to make your book file editor-ready.
Interior book design is something that should be carried out after your book’s been edited, not before.
If you’re creating a printed book, post-design page proofs are perfect for the proofreader because they can check not only your spelling, punctuation and grammar but also the layout. Page proofs are either hard-copy or PDF versions of the book that are laid out exactly as they will appear in the final printed version. You and your proofreader will be looking at what the reader would see if they were to walk into a bookshop, pull the title off the shelf and browse through the pages … almost. The proofreader’s job is to ensure that any final errors and layout problems have been attended to before the book is printed. For a comprehensive overview of what needs to be attended to when proofreading designed page proofs, read this (available free when you sign up to The Editorial Letter): Proofreading checklist: How to check page proofs like a professional.
With copyediting (and proofreading raw-text files for digital books), it’s a different story ...
Working with raw-text files If you are asking a professional editor to work on the raw text of your book, follow these 12 recommendations to ensure that the file is editor-friendly. The good news is this: it means less work for you, not more, because you’re not having to design anything … not yet, anyway. 1. File format Most professional fiction editors work in Microsoft Word. That’s because, despite the odd glitch, it’s still the best word-processing software on the planet. It has a range of excellent onboard tools that help your editor style the various elements of your text consistently, and quickly locate potential problems that might need fixing. Word is compatible with a host of macros that complement the editor’s brain and eye. That means they can add an extra level of quality-control to the edit efficiently. Even if you’ve written your book in a different program – for example, Scrivener, Google Docs or Apple Pages – place the text in a Word file before you send it to your editor. You’ll get a better-quality book edit, I promise. 2. Number of files Unless you’ve agreed with your book editor to work serially – i.e. on a chapter-by-chapter basis – create a single master file that contains the full text of your novel. If you send them 75 separate chapters, all they’ll do is combine them into one file … after they’ve finished weeping with frustration. Editors want to ensure that your book is consistent – that Kathyrn doesn’t become Katherine, Catherine or Cathryn. There are Word plug-ins that can help them identify problems like this efficiently but they’re only effective if the editor is working with a single file. The same applies to ensuring that the various elements of your text are formatted consistently. For example, it’s conventional for the first paragraph in a chapter or section to be full-out (not indented). Your editor can use Word’s styles palette to define the appearance of a first paragraph. Once the style has been set, it’s a case of applying it to every relevant paragraph in the file. If they don’t have a master file to work with, they’ll have to create a new style for each one of your 75 chapters or import that style for the same. Fiction editors love master files, and they will love you if that’s what you provide. 3. Fonts You might have decided to use an unconventional font for your book interior. You’re perfectly entitled to use any font you choose ... just spare a thought for your editor’s eyes. When it comes to the editing stage, stick to something like Times New Roman, size 14. It’s a serif font, which means it’s easy on the eye. The less your editor struggles to read the text, the better the quality of their work.
4. Colours
I recommend you use black text on a white page. Again, it’s about readability. The white text on the coloured blocks below certainly stands out, and the contrast is visually appealing, but for editing purposes it’s a challenge.
A couple of years ago, I was asked to copyedit a fabulous book for an indie author. The pages were black, the text pink. The first thing I asked him – no, begged him – was for permission to change the file’s appearance to something more conventional.
He agreed to save the quirky colourway for the design stage and I was immensely grateful. So was he. I’d have had to increase my price because I would have edited more slowly. 5. Paragraphs Open any novel on your bookshelf and it’s likely you’ll see a text layout something like this:
Those indented paragraphs are not made using the tab key. Instead, use Word’s ribbon to create proper indents.
To find out how to create a body-text style with proper indents, watch this video tutorial: Self-editing your fiction in Word: How to use styles.
6. Spacing At line and copyediting stage, don’t worry about how many pages your text covers. Instead, give your editor a file with the lines spaced so that the text is easy to read. Setting the line spacing at 1.25 or 1.5 works well for a font size of 12 or 14. The line spacing function can be located by right-clicking on text and selecting PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the INDENTS AND SPACING tab. Then amend the LINE SPACING field.
7. Chapter headings
Your editor will adore you if you assign your chapter headings with one of Word’s heading styles:
You can even modify the style so that it automatically starts on a fresh page.
Right-click on the heading style, select MODIFY, then FORMAT, then PARAGRAPH. A window will open. Make sure you’re in the LINE AND PAGE BREAKS tab. Check the PAGE BREAK BEFORE box.
Why is this useful?
8. Page numbers
In a raw-text work of fiction, there’s no need for page numbers or other headers and footers. Word records the page number in the bottom-left-hand corner of the screen of a PC, and that’s what an editor will refer to if they need to direct your attention to a specific page.
If you plan to upload a later version of your file for ebook creation, your page numbers will need to be removed anyway.
If you’re printing, save the page numbering for design stage. 9. Section breaks I recommend introducing three asterisks (***) to indicate a section break. You can change them at design stage of course, but they’re handy at editing stage because your editor can see that you intend for there to be a section break. Why not just have a line space? Because sometimes a writer will accidentally hit the return button twice. Your editor will have to spend time working out whether the break is intended rather than focusing on the flow of your text and any errors that need correcting. 10. Pictures/images If your editor needs to check copy against images and their captions, consider placing these in a separate file. Images, especially high-resolution ones, will increase the size of your book file massively, and slow down refreshing when the editor saves. And your editor will save once every few seconds. Sounds bonkers, doesn't it? But the editor who doesn't save regularly is the editor who finds they've lost a precious half-hour's worth of editing because there was a power cut, or a hurricane, or the oven exploded, or whatever. And when they come to email your edited file full of hi-res images, it will be so huge that they'll have to use an external cloud-based transfer service. The file will take an hour to load (unless they have rubbish broadband speed, in which case it will take two or three hours). They'll do the transfer in the evening so that it doesn't slow them down while they're working, meaning their teenage kid will start moaning and giving them that look because Netflix is buffering or Minecraft won't load, or something equally devastating. Save us, I beg you.
On top of all that, amendments, deletions, and additions to the text will cause your carefully placed images to shift into spaces you didn't intend. Better to leave image placement to interior-design stage. It'll save you and your editor time and tears.
11. Manual tables of contents If you've created a table of contents in a Word file prior to copyediting, there's a good chance that a chunk of your page numbers and some of the chapter titles will be wrong by the time your editor has finished. Of course, you can pay them to fix these too. But that could add an extra hour's work onto your bill. Worse, you'll be wasting your money because when the book's interior is designed, everything will change again. I know this because when I proofread for publishers (and that means I'm working on designed page proofs that have been edited multiple times and designed by a professional interior formatter) the table of contents is always messed up. Sort out your table of contents before you do your final design, not at copyediting stage. It'll save you money, I promise. 12. Manual index I'm adding this one in for non-fiction writers, just in case you're reading. If the page numbers against a table of contents get messed up during copyediting, the damage to an index is nothing short of catastrophic. It's not just the page numbers, but the indexed entries too. Spellings might change, so might compound hyphenation. Some key terms will have been removed or changed. Others will have been added. Indexing should come after proofreading, ideally, but certainly not at copyediting stage. Summing up These are just suggestions, not book law, editing law, any kind of law. However, your editor will love you if you make life easier for them, not because they’re lazy but because they want to focus on making your narrative and dialogue sing rather than formatting text so that it’s readable. There’s absolutely a time and a place for great interior design, but pre-editing stage is not it. Save yourself the bother and keep it simple. For more raw-text tidy-up tips, grab this free booklet: Formatting in Word: Find and Replace.
Fancy watching a video instead? Here’s where to find the free tutorial.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
If you're a first-time writer, working out which editorial services you need help with and what you can do yourself can be tricky. Is proofreading enough or do you need additional assistance? A key question is: How does your reader dance?
Here's a free PDF booklet that covers the key issues. In it, you'll find guidance on:
Visit the Books and Videos page in my resource library to download this free booklet.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
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:
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
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.
Here are 10 tips to help you prepare the way for editing and proofreading fiction for independent authors and self-publishers.
If your editorial business is relatively new and you’re keen to specialize in fiction editing, there are some core issues that are worth considering. Some of these certainly apply to other specialisms, but fiction does bring its own joys and challenges.
1. Untangle the terminologyYou'll need to be sensitive to the fact that your clients may not be familiar with conventional editorial workflows or the terms we use to describe them! Clarify what the client expects, especially when using terms like ‘proofreading’ and 'editing'.
2. Discuss the revision extentClarify the extent of revision required before you agree a price.
3. Manage expectationsFind out how many stages of professional editing the file has already been through.
4. Put the client first – it’s all about the authorWhat’s required according to the editorial pro and what’s desired by the client (owing to budget or some other factor) could well be two very different things.
5. Be a champion of solutionsThe authors we’re working with are at different stages of writing-craft development. Some are complete beginners, some are emerging, others are developing and yet others are seasoned artists. If they’re in discussion with us, it’s because they think we can help.
6. Be prepared to walk awaySometimes the author and the editor are simply not a good fit for each other. In the case of fiction, this can be because the editor can't emotionally connect with the story.
7. Decide whether fiction's a good fit for youThere are challenges and benefits to fiction editing and proofreading.
8. Do a short sample edit before you commitUnless you’ve previously worked with the author, work on a short sample so that you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
9. Query like a superhero!All querying requires diplomacy, but fiction needs a particularly gentle touch.
10. Keep your clients' mistakes to yourselfSome of our self-publishing clients are pulled a thousand-and-one ways every day. And, yet, they’ve found the time and energy to write a book. We must salute them. Some are right at the beginning of the journey. There’s still a lot to learn and they’re on a budget; they’ve not taken their book through all the levels of professional editing that they might have liked to if things had been different. Some haven't attended writer workshops and taken courses, and they probably never will – there’s barely enough time in the day to deal with living a normal life, never mind writing classes. They’re doing the best they can. With that in mind, respect the journey.
We must always, always respect the writer and their writing, and acknowledge the privilege of having been selected to edit for them. Those are my 10 tips for working with indie fiction writers! I hope you find them useful as you begin your own fiction-editing journey!
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.
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:
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:
‘Another dumb, inanimate slug would shatter another skull, and another life would be stricken, erased, turned into the putrid animal matter from which it had been constituted.’
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:
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 was a flowered carpet, and a lot of people waiting to see Mr Sheridan Ballou. Some of them were bright and cheerful and full of hope. Some looked as if they had been there for days.’
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
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.
Three questions for you:
If the answer to all three is yes, you’re in marketing heaven!
I’m not kidding you. If you love learning about how to do your job better, and are prepared to make time in your business schedule for this continued professional development (CPD), you have at your fingertips all the marketing tools you need.
Here’s another question: Do you think there comes a point when you’ve learned all there is to learn about being a better editor? If you answered no to that, you’re in even better shape from a marketing point of view because you will never run out of ideas to connect with your target client. And here’s another question: Do you think you have no time in your schedule to learn how to become a better editor? If you answered yes, you need to make time. Every editor needs to continue learning. Our business isn’t static. New tools, resources and methods of working are a feature of our business landscape. Language use changes as society’s values shift. Markets expand and retract, which requires a response from us in terms of how we make ourselves visible. If you answered no, that’s great news because it means you have time for marketing. I know – you don’t like marketing. But that’s fine because we’re not calling it marketing. We’re calling it CPD, which you do like!
Making time for business
Everyone who knows me knows I love marketing my editing business. Lucky me – it’s much easier to do something necessary when you enjoy it. What a lot of people don’t get is how I make time for it and how I get myself in the mindset to devote that time to it. I don’t have a problem with calling it marketing. But the truth is that so much of the marketing I do is not about marketing; it’s about communicating what I’ve researched and learned. I love line and copyediting crime fiction. I think I’m really good at it. But I don’t think I’ve learned everything there is to learn. Not for a single minute. That leaves me with stuff to do. I have to learn. So off I go to various national editorial societies’ websites. I head for their training pages. I look for courses that will teach me how to be a better crime-fiction editor. There aren’t any. I turn to Google. Plenty of help for writers, but not specifically for editors. That’s fine. And so here’s what I’ve done: read books about crime writing, and attended workshops, author readings, and crime-writing festivals (I live a stone’s throw away from the National Centre for Writing and the annual Noirwich festival). And I’ve continued to read a ton of crime fiction. And to help me digest what I’ve learned, I’ve taken notes along the way. It’s what I’ve done all my life when I’m learning – O levels (as they were called in my day), A levels, my degree … notes, notes and more notes. How much time has it taken? Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been having too much fun. I love reading; I don’t count the hours I spend doing it. How long did the author event last? I’ve no clue. My husband and I had dinner afterwards though, so it was like a date. And it would have been rude to look at my watch.
Is it a blog post?
I wrote a blog post recently about planning when writing crime. I couldn’t churn out 2,000 words just like that; I’m not the world’s authority on the subject. So I referred to my notes from the event with a famous crime writer (the one where I had a dinner date with hubby). Turns out the guy talked about planning, and told us about his and a fellow crime writer’s approach to the matter. I reread a chapter from a book on how to write crime and found additional insights there. More notes. I read 14 online articles about plotting and pantsing too. Yet more notes. And then I put all those notes together, which really helped me to order my thoughts. I created a draft. Redrafted. Edited it. And sent it to my proofreader. Soon I'll publish it and share it in various online spaces. It’ll be on my blog and on the dedicated crime writing page of my website. Some people might call it content marketing. And it is, sort of, because it helps beginner self-publishers work out when they will attend to the structure of their crime fiction – either before they start writing, or after. From that point of view, it is useful, shareable, problem-solving content, which is a perfectly reasonable definition of content marketing.
Or is it CPD?
But look at it another way. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know before. I can use that knowledge to make me a better editor. I took notes and drafted those notes into an article. This is no different to what I did at least once a week at university. I wasn’t marketing then; I was learning. What is different is that no one but my professor was interested in my article. That’s not the case for my planning piece. That article will help some self-publishers on their writing journey. A few might just decide to hire me to line or copyedit for them. It’s happened before. Maybe it will happen again tomorrow, or next month, or next year. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter – the article will stay on my site for as long as it’s relevant.
Change your language
If the idea of marketing your business leaves you feeling overwhelmed, rethink the language you use to describe what’s required. You probably don’t consider attending an editorial conference a marketing activity, even though it might lead to referrals. It’s more likely you think of it as a business development and networking opportunity. You probably don’t consider a training course to be marketing. It’s more likely you think of it as editorial education. You probably don’t consider reading a book about the craft of writing to be marketing. It’s more likely you consider it knowledge acquisition. So how about this?
Training, embedding knowledge, writing essays, publishing research, sharing subject knowledge. Smashing stuff. Nicely done. And between you and me, it’s great content marketing too. But, shh, let’s keep that quiet. I know you don’t like marketing. Make your marketing about your editing If you don’t like marketing, maybe that’s because the kind of marketing you’re doing isn’t likeable. In that case, think about what you do like about running your business, and make those things the pivot for your marketing. [Click to tweet] In other words, it doesn’t need to be about choosing between marketing your editing business and learning to be a better editor, but about the former being a consequence of the latter. Two birds. One stone. Me? I’m off to read the latest Poirot. Just for fun, mind you!
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. |
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