Are your thriller’s sentences front-loaded with filter words? If so, you could be slowing your reader down. This post explains what filter words are, how they affect a sentence and how to decide whether to include them or ditch them.

Read on to find out more about:
​

• Why the start of a sentence is important.
• What filter words are.
• How filter words reduce momentum.
• How filter words make space for reflection.

If you’ve read any guidance about online writing, you’ll have come across the concept of front-loading a sentence. It means putting the most important stuff at the start. The idea is that website visitors are busy and scan for relevance. The quicker they find it, the more likely they are to engage.

While a novel that reads like a Google snippet from start to finish isn’t likely to win any prizes, the principle is worth paying attention to because the information at the start of a novel’s sentence is still what the reader will pay most attention to.
​
The start of a sentence is therefore valuable real estate. If filter words are being assigned to that top spot too often, more interesting subjects and verbs are likely being demoted.  

In everyday speech, we sometimes use the term ‘filter’ to convey a sense of slowdown or separation, usually because of a barrier of some sort. For example:

• Sunlight filtered through the tree canopy.
• Over the next couple of hours, information about the explosion filtered out of the camp.
  
• The children filtered through the turnstile and lined up in in yard.

In literature, filter words are verbs that do a similar thing – they slow down the reader’s access to what the viewpoint character is experiencing.

Examples include 'watched', 'saw', 'noticed', 'spotted', 'looked at', 'felt', 'thought', 'wondered', 'heard', 'realised' and 'knew'.

Take a look at this short excerpt from Chapter 2 of Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby.

Ike is the viewpoint character, which means we experience the scene from his perspective.

Notice first what’s front-loading those two sentences. The subjects (Ike in the first, ‘she’ – Ike’s wife – in the second) and the verbs  ‘let go’ and ‘slumped’.

That front-loading forces our gaze outwards – first towards Ike, then towards the movement of Ike’s wife’s body.

Now let’s introduce a filter word.

Now the second sentence is front-loaded with a new verb – ‘watched’. Our access to the movement (the slumping) has been slowed down. We can’t shift directly to it without taking an extra step that involves centring our gaze for just a second on Ike’s watching. 

In that brief moment, we’re no longer looking outward at what Ike’s experiencing. Instead, we’re looking inward at Ike and how he acquires that experience – by watching.

Less experienced writers can be tempted to overuse filter words. Indeed, it’s one of the most common problems I see in my editing studio. At sentence-level revision stage – whether that work’s being done by the writer themselves or with the help of a professional editor – it’s therefore worth watching out for them and assessing whether they’re impeding the novel’s pace.

Thrillers are supposed to thrill, and action-packed scenes such as escapes, fights, heists and chases need to be written with razor-sharp precision so that readers don’t start skimming.

Problematic filter words can appear anywhere in a sentence, but front-loading sentences with them is even more likely to rip the momentum out of the prose. If you want your readers to focus on the action, make sure that any you retain are earning their keep.
​
Take a look at an excerpt from a published thriller that I’ve fiddled with. It’s a heist scene and the action takes place in a matter of seconds. The viewpoint character is coked up to his eyeballs and desperate, acting on impulse.

The three instances of filtering moderate the pace and draw our attention towards the narrator’s doing knowing, thinking and watching, none of which are as interesting as what he knows, thinks and watches. All those filter words act as barriers that the reader has to jump over in order to get to the action.

We could even argue that they introduce a sort of voyeurism – as if Ronnie is reflecting on the impact of his violence, almost in slow motion. But that’s not what’s going on here. Rather, he’s wired, out of control and operating in the moment.
​
And that’s why the unadulterated version of Blacktop Wasteland  (p. 113) – also by S.A. Cosby – is perfect:

The filter words have gone, and with them the unintended pathological introspection, but the momentum is restored. We're in the moment with Ronnie as he lashes out. It's no less violent but the pace of the prose now mirrors the action authentically.

Sometimes, however, the author wants us to slow down, step back and focus inward on the acquisition of experience.
​
Let’s take a look at another example from Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, this one also from Chapter 2.

The filter phrase is ‘looked at’, and it’s important. Ike is looking hard at what’s in front of him. As will be revealed later, this girl is his murdered son’s daughter. Ike recalls something he’d said to his son a few months earlier: ‘But that little girl, she gonna have it hard enough already. She's half Black. Her mama was somebody you paid to carry her, and she got two gay daddies. So now what?’

Ike and his wife will now be raising the little girl. Cosby wants to focus our attention inward for a moment on Ike’s reflection, and the filter word makes space for that.

While filter words can be effective when they’re used to create a sense of introspection, littering prose with them will be disruptive and pull the reader out of the viewpoint character's headspace. In other words, the psychic or narrative distance will be widened and we’ll feel disconnected from the immediacy of the character’s experience.

For that reason, always use filter words judiciously. In the above example, Cosby offers just a single nudge, and it’s enough.

Every filter word needs to be assessed on its own merits. Some will have a place in a novel because the author wants to introduce a sense of introspection into a viewpoint character’s narrative. Just bear in mind the following:

• When filter words front-load a sentence, they’re the first thing a reader notices. 
• They destroy momentum and so are often best avoided in pacy action scenes, regardless of their position.
• And even if they do serve a purpose – focusing a reader’s attention inwards on how the viewpoint character acquires the experience they’re reporting (by looking, thinking, feeling etc.) – it's worth keeping their use to a bare minimum. One nudge will likely be enough.

Take a look at these related resources for editors and writers. They'll help you develop your fiction line craft:
​

• For editors: Fiction editing learning centre
• ​For authors: Line craft learning centre
• Becoming a Fiction Editor (free booklet for editors)
• Blacktop Wasteland, Cosby, S.A., Headline, 2020
• Editing Fiction at Sentence​ Level (book for editors and authors)
• Filter words in fiction: Purposeful inclusion and dramatic restriction (blog post)
• Making Sense of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ (book for editors and authors)
• Narrative Distance: A Toolbox for Writers and Editors (course)
• Razorblade Tears, Cosby, S.A., Headline, 2021
• Switching to Fiction (course for editors)

Here are 6 tips that will help emerging indie authors make informed decisions about their editing and writing process during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and beyond.

Regardless of whether an author’s doing their own editing or working with someone like me, I always advise them to make sure they understand the different levels of editing and the order of play.

The first draft of a book is unlikely to be ready for proofreading. Instead, focus on structure first – so how the story hangs together as a whole.

Next comes stylistic line work that focuses on the flow and rhythm of prose.

Copyediting comes after that. This is the more technical side of the work that looks at consistency and clarity.

Only then is it time for the quality-control stage: proofreading.
​
Writers who want to know more can watch a video, listen to a podcast episode or download a booklet.

To make the most of your budget, focus on the five Cs:
​

• community
• content
• craft books
• courses
• conscious language

Community
​Take a look at the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and the Society of Authors. They’re two fine examples of organizations who are dedicated to supporting writers at different stages of their journey.

Membership includes access to free and affordable paid-for events and resources. But they offer something else that’s incredibly valuable too – a network of like-minded people.

Trying to make your mark in the publishing world can feel overwhelming, so being able to get advice and inspiration from others on the same journey is priceless.

Content
There’s a ton of useful – and free – guidance about the craft of writing online, so it’s worth budget-sensitive writers spending time digging around in the search engines. However, those interested in sentence-level guidance can visit my resource library as a first port of call.

I also recommend The Creative Penn, a superb knowledge bank through which Joanna Penn guides aspiring authors on how to write, how to get their books published and how to make their work visible. I love Joanna’s genuine and approachable teaching style, and how she makes self-publishing accessible to everyone.

​Craft books
Books are the most affordable way I know of accessing high-quality guidance. There are lots – too many to mention here – but I recommend fiction writers start with The Magic of Fiction by Beth Hill because it pays attention to structure and helps writers create a great first draft.

My own Editing Fiction at Sentence Level focuses on line craft that helps writers refine the flow, rhythm, mood, voice and style of their prose.

For non-fiction writers, Andy Maslen’s Write to Sell is an excellent tool for any content creator who wants to craft a compelling message, something that’s critical for authors when they’re promoting their books.

And Joanna Penn’s How to Write Non-Fiction takes authors step by step through the whole book-creation process – from mindset to marketing and everything else in between.

Courses
Love learning at your own pace? Online courses are an affordable and convenient way to study in a multimedia environment.

There are lots to choose from. For starters, take a look at Joanna Penn’s business-focused author courses, and for craft-based tuition for fiction, try Narrative Distance: A Toolbox for Writers and Editors and Preparing Your Book for Submission, two courses from my own training stable.

The National Writing Centre also offers online training that aims to build authors’ confidence. Some of their courses are even free. The NWC also partners with the University of East Anglia to provide more in-depth premium creative-writing courses that come with tutor support.

Conscious language
Anyone who’s aware of the events surrounding Kate Clanchy’s Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will understand the importance of reviewing their work through the lens of representation.

I’m not for a minute suggesting that a work of fiction or non-fiction has to follow a set of prescribed ‘rules’ about what can or can’t be written, but rather that writing means applying the same mindfulness to the words we put on a page as those that come out of our mouths.

When we write, we’re building a relationship with our readers, even though we don’t know who most of them are. And so consciously considering whether our words are helping or harming is just good human practice – one that means our books function as we intend them to, whether that’s to teach or to entertain.

For authors who want a little more guidance on this, I have a free booklet on inclusive and respectful writing. It doesn’t prescribe, just helps writers make informed decisions.

The first draft isn’t usually something that should be sent to an editor. More often, the first draft is where the author lays down the story just as it comes.

Once that’s done, put the book away – just let it sit for a while – then revisit it and decide what’s working and what isn’t, what needs refining, amplifying or deleting.
Perhaps follow Sophie Hannah and Jeffery Deaver’s lead and create detailed outlines that help keep you on track even at first-draft stage. You can read more about Hannah’s method in ‘Why and how I plan my novels’.

If you do decide to work with an editor, invest time in finding someone who’s a great fit for you: someone who gets you and is engaged with what you’re doing with your writing.

That person should also be offering the right level of editing (see 1. Understand the different types of editing).

And tell them if you’re nervous about being edited; it’s perfectly normal to feel that way. Just bear in mind that they’re on your side and are working for you, for your book and for your reader!

I'm sometimes asked: 'What’s your biggest writing pet peeve as an editor?' My answer is: There’s no room for pet peeves in professional editing – or at least there shouldn’t be.

Do I have preferences? I do – everyone does – but that’s all they are and they have no business in the work that editors do for their clients. Our job is to focus on a client’s goals, the world of their story, and the readers who’ll come along for the journey.
​
There are stylistic and grammatical conventions in writing, and a professional editor should understand those and be mindful of them, but editing requires a malleable mindset that respects voice and rhythm as much as anything else.

​It’s about sense and sensibility, not prescriptivism and pedantry.

Listen right here to this collection of episodes from The Editing Podcast on language, grammar and style:

The main advantage of being an indie author is that you get to control everything.

The main disadvantage is … you get to control everything!

You’re the publisher as well as the writer, which means you decide which books to write and publish, what the cover will look like, which levels of editorial help to commission, which channels to distribute your book through, what the price will be, what formats the book will be available in, and how your promotion strategy will play out.

That’s a lot of work – work that costs you time and money. Publishers will do some of it for you. Still, that will come at a cost because you’ll be taking a royalty that’s likely lower than the return from selling direct.

Being your own publisher isn’t everyone’s wheelhouse, but for those who want to be in control, there’s never been a better time to wear that hat because of all the technical solutions available to authors.

Any writer can use Amazon. It’s the biggest bookstore on the planet. But you might want to sell direct via your website, too, because that’s your very own shop window.

Platforms like Payhip and BookFunnel have made that possible, and it’s made it easy … not just for you but for your customers too.

And for authors who are not only writing but also teaching about writing, there are multiple platforms that support that too – LearnDash (Wordpress plugin), LearnWorlds and Teachable for example.

Having a dedicated work space means you're not shifting two large monitors and a hard drive off the dinner table every evening. For those working from home, having a place where your business ‘lives’ helps you separate writing from family life. 

I realize that everyone’s situation is different, but I hope at least one of the following tips will speak to anyone trying to carve out a dedicated work space.
​

• Agree boundaries in shared spaces: Decide which part is yours and which is theirs, and respect that.

• Create boundaries in multifunctional spaces: Some writers have to work in a bedroom, kitchen or living room. If there’s enough space, fence off a corner with a panelled room divider. These can be pricey so an alternative is to install a rail and fashion a curtain from an old duvet cover or sheet.

• Use mobile desks in cramped spaces: Mobile desks are readily available online and are priced competitively so that even writers on a smaller budget can house a monitor, keyboard, mouse and hard drive. Complement with a storage trolley for your books and stationery. Wheel the whole lot into another room when required!

There’s a lot to think about when you decide to become your own publisher – not just what you write but also who supports you during that process, the ways you’ll invest in developing your craft and how to manage the space in which your books are written.
​
You’re not alone. There’s a ton of help available to help you … whatever your budget and whatever subject or genre you’re writing in. These 6 tips barely scratch the surface, but I hope they at least inspire you to take the next steps of your indie-author journey with confidence.

Your novel’s written in first person. Here are some tips for how to ensure your narrative doesn’t become overloaded with ‘I’ but remains immersive.

• Why reduce the ‘I’
• Why ‘I’ still has a place front and centre
• Focusing on the exterior rather than the interior
• Reducing the use of filter words
• Removing speech and thought tags
• Applying the principles of free indirect speech
• Taking the 'I' out of introspection
• Balancing ‘I’ with ‘we’

We might think that the mention of ‘I’ would always make prose more immediate, and draw the reader in closer to the viewpoint character. But sometimes the opposite is true.

Too much ‘I’ is a tap on the shoulder, one that says to the reader, ‘Just in case you’ve forgotten who the narrator is, here are lots of reminders.’
​
The consequence is that readers are pulled away. And that can actually increase rather than reduce narrative distance.

I confess to being a huge fan of first-person narrations. When done well, the pronoun is almost invisible, even if it’s used frequently. Certainly the books I’ve borrowed excerpts from here allow ‘I’ to take centre stage.

However, they don’t rely on a first-person pronoun to convey experience, thought, speech and action. Below, I'll show you some examples – ones that ensure the intimacy of the narration style is left intact.

And so while we don’t want to obliterate ‘I’, because avoiding it completely would render the prose awkward, inauthentic and overworked, too much ‘I’ can be repetitive and interruptive. What’s required is a balance.
​
This post aims to offer you choice – fitting alternatives that retain intimacy and immediacy when you’re concerned you’ve overdone it.

With a first-person narration, what’s reported must be through the lens of the narrator. Since their presence is a given, we don’t always need to be reminded that ‘I’ is involved.

A little peppering in a more objective report will suffice because the reader knows that it’s coming from the narrator, and only the narrator. It has to be.

And while writers can make space to explore the viewpoint character’s emotional behaviour, the exterior world is what grounds their experience in the novel’s physical world. It gives the novel substance, and the reader something to bite into.
​
Instead of focusing on who’s doing the reporting, shift the prose towards what’s being reported.

What and who else is in the scene? Why are they there? How do they behave? What do they look like? This information can be reported without ‘I’ so that the reader experiences the physical world within which the narrator is operating.
​
Here’s an example from To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, Pan, 1974, p. 11).

Notice the (almost) absence of ‘I’. Scout – our narrator – tells us about the town she lived in: Maycomb. The recollection is hers certainly –  ‘when I first knew it’ anchors it as such. It’s therefore intimate.

And yet because there’s only one I-nudge, we’re allowed enough emotional distance to step back and pan, like a roving camera, across Maycomb’s vista. We’re dislocated from Scout’s doing the experiencing and encouraged instead to focus on what she’s experiencing.
​
What’s happening here is a shift from the subjective to the objective.

​Here’s an example of a short excerpt that’s subjective. The focus is on the I-narrator. ​

​And here’s the real excerpt from David Rosenfelt’s Play Dead (Grand Central, 2009, p. 19). Now the focus is objective, yet in no way does this distance us from the centrality of the first-person narrator’s experience. We’re still deep in his head.

Filter words are a clue that an interior rather than exterior focus is in play. They’re verbs that increase the narrative distance, reminding us that what we’re reading is being told by someone rather than experienced, or shown, through the eyes of the character.

Examples include noticed, seemed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, thought, wondered, believed, knew, and decided.

Filter words focus the reader’s gaze inwards (interior focus) on the manner through which the viewpoint character experiences the world – the how.

They come with a pronoun: I saw, they believed, we decided, she knew, he noticed.

By removing filter words, the reader’s gaze is shifted outwards (exterior focus) and onto what is being experienced. That can make for a more immersive read. Plus, the omission means we say goodbye to their accompanying pronoun: 'I'.

Here are a few examples to give you a flavour of how you might recast in a way that avoids first-person filtering.

Dialogue tags are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. If the reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags.

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

Watching out for unnecessary tags is good practice regardless of narration style, but with a first-person narration it’s a particularly efficient way to declutter ‘I’-heavy prose.

​Take a look at this excerpt from David Rosenfelt’s Play Dead, pp. 194–5. There are two characters in this scene: Andy Carpenter, the protagonist and narrator, and Sam Willis, the non-POV character on the other end of the phone.

The exchange involves 19 speech elements within the thread, but only 3 speech tags, and only one of those marks our first-person narrator.
​
At no point do we lose track, and at no point are we distracted by repetitive ‘I said’s.

If you’ve played with free indirect speech (also called free indirect style/discourse) in third-person narratives, call on your craft for first-person narration.

In a nutshell, free indirect speech offers the essence of first-person dialogue or thought but through a third-person viewpoint. The character’s voice takes the lead, but without the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, italic, or other devices to indicate who’s thinking or saying what.
​
Here’s an example of third-person narration. Notice the filter words ‘glanced’ and ‘noticed’, the italic present-tense thought, and the thought tag:

Let’s change that to a first-person narration. The filter words are still there and there’s a thought tag with the ‘I’ pronoun.

Here’s what the third-person version could look like in free indirect style. The filter words and tags are gone. It feels like a first-person thought but the base tense and third-person narration remain intact.

And now the first-person version. All I’ve done is swapped out the pronoun ‘his’ for ‘my’. 

There’s nothing wrong with contemplation and introspection. Authentic characters ruminate just like real people.

However, when prose is littered rather than peppered with constructions such as I wasn’t sure if, I didn’t know whether, I wondered if, it can feel muddled and be laborious to read. The reader might respond: Well, of course you’re wondering. Who else could it be? You’re the narrator.

Worse, readers might think the narrator’s rather self-absorbed and unsure of themselves. While that might be necessary now and then, it’s problematic if it’s a staple because a narrator who’s always focused on themselves, and who never instils confidence in us, can’t tell the story as effectively.
​
Look out for ‘I’-centred introspection and experiment with statements and questions that allow the ‘I’ to be assumed.

Here are a few examples to show you how it might work.

Another option is to consider whether your narrator’s lived experience at particular points within the novel involves others.
​
This is an opportunity to frame the narrative around ‘we’ rather than just ‘I’.

Here’s an excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird (p. 162) in which Scout, Harper Lee’s first-person narrator, frames the recollection around not just her own experience but those of the people she was hanging out with.

The effect is powerful because we’re shown rather than told a sense of her belonging, of her being in a group, of the togetherness of that experience. And that intensifies our immersion in her world.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘I’, but a first-person narrator can tell a story without relying on their pronoun all the time. Since they’re the ones doing the reporting, the ‘I’ can often be assumed.
​
Try recasting sentences that start with ‘I’ more objectively, so that the focus is on the what – the emotion, the object, the person, the action and so on – rather than the sense being used to experience it or the I-narrator doing the experience.

Use the principles of free indirect speech to reduce your ‘I’ count. It’s a tool that encourages a narrowing of narrative distance to such a degree that the reader feels deeply connected to the viewpoint character – more like we’re reading a thought than straight narrative.

As for speech and thought tags, you might not need as many as you think. The speaker can usually be identified without them if there are only two people in the conversation. Removing redundant tags is worth considering whichever narration style you’re writing in.

• ​3 reasons to use free indirect speech
• ​6 ways to improve your novel right now
• Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
• ​Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
• ​Filter words in fiction: Purposeful inclusion and dramatic restriction
• Making Sense of Point of View: Transform Your Fiction 1
• What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?
• ​Switching to Fiction: Course for new fiction editors

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to thriller writer Andy Maslen about the creative-writing process.

​Listen to find out more about

• Writing a series vs standalone novels
• Tips on developing a coherent series
• Starting afresh with a new set of characters in a new environment
• Top creative-writing tips for beginner author
• Recommended writing-craft resources
• Back-cover blurb and Amazon blurbs
• Cover design

Here's where you can find out more about Andy Maslen's thrillers.

Dig into these related resources

• Author resources
• Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
• Blog post: 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
• Blog post: Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
• Blog post: How to write dialogue that pops
• Blog post: Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
• Blog post: Writing a crime novel – should you plan or go with the flow?​
• Podcast episodes: The indie author collection​

​Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to author David Unger about transforming a novel from print to audio.

​Listen to find out more about

• Doing your own narration vs hiring a pro
• How to find a professional voice artist
• Which qualities are important
• The process of working with a professional narrator
• Obstacles to creating audio books
• Costs and time frame

Here's where you can find out more about David Unger's books.

Dig into these related resources

• Author resources
• Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
• The Editing Podcast: 6 ways to use audio for book promotion
• ​Booklet: How to narrate your own audio book
• Podcast episodes: The indie author collection
• Blog post: Why editors and proofreaders should be using audio
• Blog post: 5 ways to use audio for book marketing and reader engagement
• Blog post: How to go mobile with audio: Book-editor podcasting on the go

Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/​

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, ​Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to mystery writer David Unger about story creation and revision.

​Listen to find out more about

• What made David want to start writing and who inspired him
• Writing an alter ego
• The revision process
• On being edited

Here's where you can find out more about David Unger's books.

Dig into these related resources

• Author resources
• Book: Editing Fiction at Sentence Level
  
• Blog post: 3 reasons to use free indirect speech in your crime fiction
• Blog post: Crime fiction subgenres: Where does your novel fit?
• Blog post: How to write dialogue that pops
• Blog post: Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?
• Blog post: Writing a crime novel – should you plan or go with the flow?​
  
• Podcast episodes: The indie author collection

Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/​

Good news! It is perfectly okay to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’ in fiction writing. Doing so can enrich narration and dialogue, and inflect the prose with voice, mood and intention. The key is to make sure those conjunctions are being used purposefully and logically. This post shows you how.

What the style guides say
Here's what two industry-recognized style guides have to say on the matter.

New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press): ‘You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect.’

Chicago Manual of Style Online, 5.203 (Chicago University Press): ‘There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.'

6 good reasons to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’
Great! We have the go-ahead from a couple of big hitters to use our two conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence. Now let’s dig a little deeper into why doing so can make fiction more effective. Here are my top six reasons:

• To serve natural speech
• To shorten narrative distance
• To introduce tension and suspense
• To add drama
• To emphasize the unexpected
• To make contrast explicit

Serving natural speech
When we speak in real life, conjunctions are often the first things out of our mouths. So it should be in novels that want to render speech authentically.

Fictional dialogue doesn’t replicate real-life speech completely – that would mean including a lot of boring stuff that one might hear at the bus stop. Rather, it’s a sort of hybrid that has the essence of reality but with the mundanity judiciously removed. It might sound like a cheat but readers thank authors who don’t bore them!

Small nudges towards reality help with the authenticity goal, which is where our conjunctions come in handy. Here are a few examples for you:

Shortening narrative distance
Dialogue gives us the character’s speech; narrative gives us the character’s experience. When that’s a first-person narrative, it’s easy to feel close to the narrator. With a third-person narration, the reader can feel separated from the character, as if they’re on the outside looking in.

Authors who want to reduce that space between the reader and the character – called narrative distance or psychic distance – can experiment with a narration style that sounds like natural speech even though it’s not dialogue.
​
Here’s a lovely example from Blake Crouch’s Recursion (p. 182). 

Notice how the narration style is third person, though it doesn’t feel like it. Instead, we’re right inside the viewpoint character’s head.
​
The position of the conjunction in this example isn’t the sole reason why the narrative distance feels short – the free indirect speech above and beneath plays a huge part – but it certainly helps to give us a sense of the character’s mentally working out a problem.

Introducing tension and suspense
Take a look at this excerpt from p. 21 of The Matlock Paper by Robert Ludlum.

With that one word – the conjunction – Ludlum stops us in our tracks. Yes, we’re thinking, the town’s neat, it’s clean. All well and good. But then we realize that there’s more to it, for beneath the pruned trees lies a dark underbelly.

The ‘And’, positioned right up front, forces us to pay attention to it. It’s not any old conjunction. Rather, it’s loaded with suspense that drives the reader to ask a question that isn’t explicitly answered: What else is that ‘something’?

Adding drama and modifying rhythm
In this excerpt from Parting Shot (p. 433), the author uses the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence to inject drama into a scene.

The new line makes the rhythm of the prose more staccato, but the ‘And’ at the beginning of the final line is what really packs a punch.

The viewpoint character, Cory, is a killer. He ponders almost matter-of-factly who the threats are, and reaches his conclusion as he closes in on the cabin.

If Linwood Barclay had omitted the conjunction, he’d have introduced a separation between two ideas: realizing what needs to be done, and when the killer is going to do it. Yet these two ideas are very much connected. The ‘And’ therefore fulfils its purpose as a conjunction – a joining word.

But there’s more. If he’d run the two ideas together with a conjunction between (‘It seemed clear what he had to do, and he'd have to do it fast.’), the line would have lost its wallop. The staccato rhythm (one that mirrors the cold calculation taking place in Cory’s head) is gone. Instead, the prose has flatlined; it seems almost mundane, like a stroll in the park rather than the planning of a murder.

However, the ‘And’ reinforces this extra information – the deed must be done fast. The emphasis adds drama to the line. The final line is still connected to the clause it’s related to, but the mood-rich rhythm, and the drama that comes with it, is intact.

Emphasizing the unexpected
An up-front ‘But’ is perfect for the author who want to emphasize the unexpected, surprise or absurdity. Take a look at this excerpt from Terry Pratchett’s Dodger (p. 170).

It’s true that omitting the ‘But’ would leave the meaning intact. However, adding the conjunction reinforces the Dodger’s emotional response to the boy’s suggestion – he’s taken by surprise because in times past, asking a peeler was exactly what he’d have done, without question, without fear.

And so that ‘But’ does more than act as a conjunction. With just three letters, we’re shown character mood.

Making contrast explicit and suspenseful
David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks (p. 92) includes a smashing example how the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence reinforces a contrast with what’s gone before.

That contrast is explicit because the ‘But’ acts as an interrupter. We’re deep in the POV character’s head regarding the murder victim, ruminating with our protagonist. The conjunction then shoves us out of that rumination. It’s not gentle; the ‘But’ is a big one – something’s up with Laurie.

Not that we know what. Rosenfelt doesn’t tell us yet. Instead, he makes us ask the question: Why? And with that question, just as with the Ludlum example above, we have suspense.

Summing up
Feel free to pepper your prose with sentences that begin with ‘And’ and ‘But’. Anyone who tells you you’re on shaky ground grammatically knows less about grammar than you do!

It’s likely that the myth around positioning these conjunctions came about in a bid to nudge people away from stringing together clauses and sentences with no thought to creativity. And while such an intention makes sense, we have to recognize that imposing this zombie rule on writing can actually destroy the magic of prose.

And on that note, I will sign off! (See what I did there?)

More fiction editing guidance

• 3 reasons to use free indirect speech
• Author resources library: Booklets, videos, podcasts and articles for authors
• Commas, conjunctions and rhythm
• Coordinating conjunctions
• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: My flagship line-editing book
• How to write suspenseful chapter endings
• Rules versus preferences
• Sentence length, pace and tension
• Switching to Fiction: Course for new fiction editors
• Transform Your Fiction guides: My fiction editing series for editors and authors

Cited sources

• At Risk, Stella Rimington, Arrow Books, 2004
• Don’t Let Go, Harlan Coben, Arrow Books, 2017
• Dodger, Terry Pratchett, Corgi, 2012
• Recursion, Blake Crouch, Pan Macmillan, 2019
• The Matlock Paper, Robert Ludlum, Orion, 2010
• The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, Gollancz, 2009
• Parting Shot, Linwood Barclay, Orion, 2017
• New Tricks, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central Publishing, 2009

Want to use grammatical expletives in your fiction? These words serve as place holders or fillers in a sentence. They shift emphasis and can affect rhythm. Used injudiciously, however, they can be cluttering tension-wreckers. Here's how to strike a balance.

Because expletives shift emphasis, they have a syntactic function. However, they don’t in themselves contribute anything to our understanding of the sentence. In other words, they don't have a semantic role. You might also see them called syntactic expletives.

Common examples are:

• there are/is/was/were
• it is/was

Take a look at the following pair. The first sentence is introduced by an expletive.
​

• There was a car parked outside the house.
• A car was parked outside the house.

When used well, expletives are enrichment tools that allow an author to play with a narrative voice’s register and the rhythm of sentences. 

When prose is overloaded with them, it can feel cluttered with filler words that add nothing but ink on the page. At best, they widen the narrative distance between the reader and the POV character; at worst, they flatten a sentence and destroy suspense and tension.

Flat expletives that merit fixing
Too much telling of what there is or was can rip the immediacy from a scene and encourage skimming. That’s a problem – it means the reader isn’t engaged and risks missing something.

Furthermore, if they’re not performing their rhythmic or emphasis role, expletives make sentence navigation more difficult because all they're doing is cluttering the prose.

Here's an example. Think I've overworked it? There are published books from mainstream presses with passages just like this made-up one.

The problem with the expletives in the passage above is that readers are bogged down in what there was rather than the viewpoint character's experience of discovery. Let's revise it to fix the problem.

Notice how the narrative distance has been reduced in the revised passage. Now it's as if we're in the viewpoint character's head, moving with her second by second. We can focus on the room, the dried-blood fingermarks, the whimper, and the scream rather than the being of those things – their was-ness. 

Removing the expletives and swapping in stronger verbs (smudged, shattered) enables us to tighten up the prose and introduce immediacy. And now there's no need for the told 'suddenly' – we experience the suddenness through the in-the-moment shattering. 

Expletives that pack a punch
As is always the case, obliterating expletives from a novel would be inappropriate because sometimes they're the perfect tool to help out with rhythm and emphasis.

The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (p. 1) uses expletives galore, and masterfully at that. The repetition (anaphora) brings a steady rhythm to the passage that ensures the reader gives equal weight to the contrasting extremes – from best and worst to hope and despair. 

​The expletives introduce a detached sense of reportage that forces us forward rather than allowing us to dwell on any of the heavens or hells on offer. It’s simultaneously mundane and monstrous, and that's why it's magical.

​And here’s an example from Dog Tags (p. 1) where omission of the expletive would rip the energy from the opening first line of the chapter and interfere with our understanding of which words we’re supposed to emphasize.

​Summing up
​Grammatical expletives are a normal part of language and have every right to be in a novel. Overloading can destroy tension and make for a laboured narrative, but a purposeful peppering can amplify character emotion, moderate rhythm, and make space for the introduction of big themes in small spaces without sensory clutter.

Cited works and further reading

• Author resource library (includes links to free webinars)
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, W. W. Norton & Company; Critical edition, 2020
• Dog Tags, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central Publishing, Reprint edition, 2011 ​
• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level: A Guide for Beginner and Developing Writers
• Making Sense of Punctuation: Transform Your Fiction 2
• ‘Playing with sentence length in crime fiction. Is it time to trim the fat?’
• ‘Playing with the rhythm of fiction: commas and conjunctions’
• 'Should I use a comma before coordinating conjunctions and independent clauses in fiction?'
• ‘What is anaphora and how can you use it in fiction writing?’
• 'Why "suddenly" can spoil your crime fiction'

This post helps less experienced fiction writers and editors make sense of omniscient point of view, and work with this narrative style effectively.

What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.

Third-person omniscient POV
This viewpoint is probably the trickiest to master. Omniscient means all-knowing. It’s the most flexible because it gives the reader potential access to every character’s external and internal experiences. It also has the potential to be the least intimate if not handled well.
​
Imagine a futuristic news helicopter. Inside, our roving reporter shifts her camera from one person to another, and one setting to another. She’s also got some serious kit, stuff that enables her to tap everyone’s phones, TVs and computers. But that’s not all; the characters’ brains are bugged too; our reporter knows what they’re thinking. She can see, hear and smell it all! Says Sophie Playle:

Examples: Deeper knowledge than third-person narration
If you’ve read anything by Neil Gaiman, you’ll see a blatant external narrator in evidence with a depth of knowledge that defies the rules of a third-person viewpoint. Here’s an example from Neverwhere (p. 10). 

The first ten words might appear to be a third-person viewpoint (‘He’ refers to Richard, the protagonist), but that’s not the case. What follows is a distinct narrative other, a voice that explains ‘white knowledge’.

In the second and third paragraphs, the all-knowing narrator offers historical information. Then in the final paragraph, we’re told more about Richard. The viewpoint was never third-person objective. It was omniscient all along.

In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, ‘the man’ takes centre stage in most of the sections such that we see what he sees and feel what he feels. It’s almost as if he’s the narrator, and once more we could be forgiven for thinking the viewpoint third person. But there’s more going on here.
​
In the following extracts, notice the shift beyond what it’s possible for the man to see, think or know.

In the first extract, only an all-knowing alternative narrator could be privy to the intent behind the marchers’ colour choice of scarves. In the second, the man watches the army, but it’s only an omniscient narrator who can know where their blades were forged and how the boy is feeling. Maybe that narrator is McCarthy; maybe it’s someone else. But it’s not the man.

Example: World-building backstory in a flash
Some genres – science fiction and fantasy for example – lend themselves well to omniscient narrators because they can provide critical world-building backstory quickly. Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters provides a fine example (pp. 1–2).

What omniscient is not
An omniscient viewpoint can be powerful but it needs to be controlled and used with purpose. If we’re accessing one character’s thoughts and experiences, and we jump to another character’s viewpoint, it can jar the reader. That's called head-hopping.

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

Then someone else barges up to you both and tells you what it was like for them. Your friend butts back in to wrestle the telling back to her.
​
Would the interruption annoy and frustrate you? Would you feel like your efforts to invest in your friend’s story were being thwarted?

The impact is the same when it occurs in a book’s narrative (though not the dialogue, of course). That viewpoint ping pong is not omniscient POV. It’s third-person limited gone awry.

Recommendation
I recommend caution. The beauty of fiction often lies in the unveiling, in the immersion. Overuse of an omniscient narrator can block this. 

The all-seeing eye can be a powerful tool – as demonstrated by the examples above – but less experienced authors, particularly those writing commercial fiction such as thrillers and mysteries, risk accidental head-hopping, which will destroy the tension and distance the reader from the characters.

Cited sources and related reading​​

• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level, Louise Harnby, Panx Press, 2020
• Making Sense of Point of View (Transform Your Fiction series: 1), Louise Harnby, Panx Press, 2020
• Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman, William Morrow Paperbacks, reprint edition, 2016
• Resources for authors: Library of articles, podcasts, videos and booklets for independent writers
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy, Picador, 2009
• 'What’s the Difference Between Omniscient and Third Person Narration?' Sophie Playle, Liminal Pages​
• 'What is head-hopping?'
• Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett, Harper, reprint edition, 2013

​Not sure where to place your speech tags? This guide shows you how to tell readers who’s speaking, not based on a set of rules but in respect of clarity, suspense, invisibility, and rhythm.

​What is a dialogue tag?
Dialogue tags, or speech tags, are complementary short phrases that tell the reader who’s talking. They’re not always necessary, particularly if there are only two speakers in a scene, but when they are used, this is what they look like:

• ‘Dump that corpse and don’t ever mention it again,’ the hooded guy whispered.
• “Thanks for holding the gun,” Tom said. “Now pull the trigger.”
• Marg turned. Smirked. Said, ‘Tomorrow. If you’re late, he’s late. Geddit?’

Said is often best because readers are so used to seeing it that it’s pretty much invisible and therefore less interruptive.

What’s the rule about where tags go?
Dialogue tags can be placed after, between or before dialogue. Authors sometimes ask which position is best or whether there’s a rule.

There is no rule. All three positions have advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you want to achieve.

Position: After dialogue
Readers are so used to seeing speech tags like said at the end of dialogue that they’re almost invisible. That allows the dialogue, rather than the speaking of the dialogue, to be the focus.

Below is a wee example from Recursion (p. 292). The speech takes centre stage; the doing of speech (screaming, in this case) comes afterwards.
​​
Furthermore, when the tag comes after the dialogue, it can roll seamlessly into any supporting narrative, as shown in the example from The Ghost Fields (p. 194).

There are a couple of potential disadvantages:
​

• In longer chunks of dialogue in scenes with more than two speakers, the reader will have to wait until the end of the speech to find out who’s saying what.
• Placement at the end of speech can flatten a one-liner or suspense point in dialogue.

Position: Between dialogue
Placing speech tags between dialogue is also common and unlikely to jar the reader. Here are three reasons why it works:

• The tag breaks up longer streams of dialogue, which is especially handy if a monologue’s rearing its head.
• We’re given an early indication who’s speaking. If there are more than two speakers in a scene, and the reader’s likely to be confused, placement between the speech is an effective solution.
• One-liners, suspense points and shocks get to take centre stage. Adding the speech tag at the end could flatten the tension.

Here are two examples in which the mid placement of the tag means the suspense isn't interfered with. The first is taken from The Ghost Fields (p. 194); the second is something I made up.

​

In the first example, not having the speech tag at the end of the dialogue focuses the reader on one question: what’s the clue? Not: Frank’s the speaker.

In the second example, rejig the sentence so that Tom said comes after all the speech, and notice how this makes the wallop vanish from the line about pulling the trigger.

Position: Before dialogue
Placement of the tag before the dialogue isn’t a no-no but it is a less common option and more noticeable.

A tag tells of speaking; dialogue shows character voice, mood and intention. When the speaker’s announced first, it’s a tap on the shoulder that draws attention to speaking being done. It expands what author and creative-writing expert Emma Darwin calls the ‘psychic distance’ between the reader and the speaker, which can flatten the mood.

And, yet, this can also be its advantage. That tap introduces a more staccato rhythm that can stop a reader in their tracks.
​
In this extract from Recursion (p. 292), the placement of the tag before the dialogue induces an acute sense of resignation – that dull thump in the pit of one’s stomach when the proverbial’s hit the fan.

Not placing tags: Omission
There’s no need to include a speech tag if it’s adding nothing but clutter. In the following example from Recursion (p. 125), the author has omitted them because there are only two speakers. He lets the dialogue, and its punctuation, inject the voice, mood and intention into the scene rather than telling us who’s speaking and how they’re saying it.

Summing up
​Placement of dialogue tags isn’t about rules. It’s about purpose:
​

• Varying rhythm
• Respecting mood and suspense
• Clarifying who’s speaking
• Avoiding unnecessary clutter

For that reason, mixing up the position of speech tags can be effective.

​Let’s end with an extract from Out of Sight (pp. 135–7), which demonstrates the varied ways in which author Elmore Leonard handles his tagging: beginning, between, end, and omission.

Cited sources and further reading

• Editing Fiction at Sentence Level, Louise Harnby, Panx Press, 2020
• How to Punctuate Dialogue (free webinar)
• Out of Sight, Elmore Leonard, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017
• Recursion, Blake Crouch, Pan, 2020
• The Ghost Fields, Elly Griffiths, Quercus, 2015

Not sure what a second-person narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your fiction writing? This post shows you how it works in a novel.

What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.

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

My aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations.

Second-person narrative viewpoint
In second-person narrative POVs, the pronoun is ‘you’. This narration is intimate, but strangely so, as if the author is talking directly to the reader as a character.

That intrusive element is both its strength and its weakness. It’s powerful because it places readers at the heart of the story, and yet we – the ‘you’ – know less than the narrator.

That can create a sense of immediacy, but almost amnesiac dislocation. We have to discover what we think, see, know and do. And if we don’t identify with the ‘you’ – if we feel implicated rather than attached – we can be pulled out of the story rather than brought deeper into it.

Still, this controlling aspect of second person can have an advantage. Whereas first-person narrators tell you what they thought and did, second-person narrators tell us what we thought and did.

This witnessing adds a level of reliability (even if we don’t like it). And readers aren’t daft. They know they’re not really the you-character, which means authors could use it as a tool to create surprise when the ‘you’ is unveiled later in the book.

If you want your readers to feel connected but controlled, second-person POV might be just the ticket, but it’s difficult to pull off and rare that authors of contemporary commercial fiction write an entire novel in it (though check out Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins if you want to see a good example in action). 

More likely, you’ll see shorter-form use: dedicated chapters or other narrative forms such as diary entries, letters or other missives.

Example: Curiosity, reliability and the complicit reader
In this example from Complicity (p. 9), Iain Banks uses the second-person viewpoint in which a narrator reports on the actions and thoughts of an unnamed serial killer addressed as ‘you’.

Think about how you feel as you read this. It’s as if you’re being addressed, as if you’re complicit. At the very least, the prose arouses curiosity – who is this ‘you’, and how is it that the narrator knows so much about them?

Banks doesn’t present the novel fully in second person; these sections fall between those of a first-person viewpoint character, journalist Cameron Colley. As such, readers are confronted by a juxtaposition of Cameron’s version of events and what was witnessed by the narrator.

Recommendation
By all means, experiment with second-person point of view but understand its implications. If you want to draw your reader into the heart of your story, it’s a good choice. However, that connection can come at a price – a lack of control that could alienate your audience.

For that reason, consider the purpose of this narrative style and the extent to which you employ it. It might be better constrained – limited to chapters inhabited by specific viewpoint characters.

If in doubt, rewrite your scene in an alternative narrative viewpoint so you can evaluate how this affects your perception of the story as a reader.

This post explains when and how to indent your narrative and dialogue according to publishing-industry convention.

The purpose of first-line indents
Each new paragraph signifies a change or shift of some sort ... perhaps a new idea, piece of action, thought or speaker, even a moderation or acceleration of pace. Still, the prose in all those paragraphs within a section is connected.

Paragraph indents have two purposes in fiction:

• Readability: They help the reader identify the shifts visually.
• Connectivity: They indicate a journey. Indented paragraphs are related to what's come before ... part of the same scene.

First lines in chapters and new sections
Chapters and sections are bigger shifts: perhaps the viewpoint character changes, or there's a shift in timeline or location.

To mark this bigger shift in a novel, it’s conventional not to indent the first line of text in a new chapter or a new section. You might hear editorial folks refer to this non-indented text as full out.

• This is standard with narrative and dialogue.
• The convention applies regardless of your line spacing.

NARRATIVE LAYOUT
The following example is taken from Part 5, Chapter 2, of Christopher Priest’s Inverted World (p. 287, 2010):
​

• Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
• The first line is not indented.
• The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.

And here's an example from Part 2, Chapter 6, p. 147, which shows how the layout works the same after a section break:
​

• Paragraph 1 is the first in the section.
• The first line is not indented.
• The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.

Even if an author chooses to include a design feature such as a dropped capital (sometimes called a drop cap), it's standard for that letter to be full out, as shown in the following example from To Kill a Devil (John A. Connell, p. 6, Nailhead Publishing, 2020):

• Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
• The capital letter on the first and second lines is not indented.
• The first line of the paragraph that follows it (2) is indented.

DIALOGUE LAYOUT
​The same applies even if the chapter or section starts with dialogue, as in this excerpt from David Rosenfelt's Dog Tags (p. 192, Grand Central, 2010):

• Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
• The first line is not indented.
• The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.

Body text: dialogue and narrative
The example below from Blake Crouch's Recursion (p. 4, Macmillan, 2019) shows how the indentation works in the body text when there's a mixture of dialogue and narrative.

• Regardless of whether the prose is narrative or reported speech, the text is indented.
• The convention applies regardless of line spacing.

IMPACT OF LINE SPACING
Even if you've elected to set your book file with double line spacing (perhaps at the request of a publisher, agent or editor), the indentation convention applies. Here's the Recursion example again, tweaked to show what it would look like: 

Indenting text that follows special elements
Your novel might include special elements such as letters, texts, reports, lists or newspaper articles. Authors can choose to set off these elements with wider line spacing, but how do we handle the text that comes after?

Again, it's conventional to indent text that follows this content, regardless of whether it's narrative or dialogue. That's because of the connective function; the text is part of the same scene.

​Here are some examples from commercial fiction pulled from my bookshelves.

1. REPORT: The Outsider, Stephen King, Hodder, 2018, p. 252
2. LIST: Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Canongate, 2002, p. 146
3. TRANSCRIPT: Snap, Belinda Bauer, Black Swan, 2018, p. 36
4. RECORD: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline, Arrow, 2012, p. 300

It's not the case that full-out text is never used, or can't be used, but fiction readers are used to conventions. When a paragraph isn't indented, they assume it's a new section, which creates a tiny disconnect.

That's what I think's happened in the example below from Kate Hamer's The Girl in the Red Coat (p. 325, Faber & Faber, 2015). Of course, it took me only a split second to work out that the narrator is referring to the preceding letter, but it's a split second that took me away from the story because I'd assumed I was looking at a section break.

​My preference would be to indent 'I touch my finger [...]' because that text is part of the scene, not a new section.

How to create a first-line indent in Word
Let's finish with some quick guidance on creating first-line indents. 

​Avoid using spaces and tabs to create indents in Word. Instead, create proper indents. There are several ways to do this.

• Open the Home tab (1).
• Select your text.
• Move your cursor to the ruler and select the top marker (2).
• Drag it to the position of your preferred indent.
• Right-click on the style in the ribbon (3).
• Select 'Update Normal to Match Selection'.​

OR​

• Open the Home tab (1).
• Open the Styles pane via the arrow icon (4).
• Select your text.
• Move your cursor to the ruler and select the top marker (2).
• Drag it to the position of your preferred indent.
• Go to the Styles pane (5) and right-click on the style (6).
• Select 'Update Normal to Match Selection'.​ ​

OR

• Open the Home tab (1).
• Open the Styles pane via the arrow icon (4).
• Go to the Styles pane (5) and right-click on the style (6).
• Select 'Modify' to open the Modify Styles pane (A).
• Click on the Format button in the bottom left-hand corner (B).
• Select Paragraph to open the Paragraph pane (C).
• Make sure you're in the Indents and Spacing tab.
• Look at the Indentations section in the middle. Make sure 'First line' is selected under 'Special:' (D).
• Adjust the first-line indent according to your preference (E).
• Click OK (F).

Create a new style for your full-out paragraphs using the same tools.
​

• If using the ruler, ensure the markers (2) are aligned, one on top of the other.
• If using the styles pane, adjust the indent spacing (E) to zero.

If you need more assistance with creating styles, watch this free webinar. There's no sign-up; just click on the button and dig in.

Non-viewpoint characters have emotions too. But how do we show them without head-hopping? The answer lies in mastering observable behaviour.

What is head-hopping?
When a reader can access the internal experiences (emotions, thoughts, memories) of more than one character in a chapter or section, head-hopping is usually in play.
The exception is if you’re tackling the tricky beast that is omniscient narration. It’s difficult to pull off and rarely used in contemporary commercial fiction.

Here’s an example of what head-hopping looks like on the page. Jack is the viewpoint character and the narration style is third-person limited.

​Notice the following:

• Best ever is Jack’s thought. That puts us in his head, which is fine because this is an excerpt from a chapter in which he’s the viewpoint character. But that means we cannot access what’s going on in Pete’s head – how he is remembering his dad and the accident, and the decision to not dwell on those things.
• Look at the physicality too. Jack turns away from the water, which means he was facing it and couldn’t have observed Pete weaving through the grass and slumping into the dune. All he can do is see Pete on the dune after he’s turned.

How to enter a non-viewpoint character’s space without dropping viewpoint
There will be times when you want your reader to enter the emotional and physical space of a non-viewpoint character.

Mastering observable behaviour – showing us what the viewpoint character can see, and their interpretation of that behaviour – is one solution that will enable you to hold viewpoint.

Here’s a recast of the Jack/Pete scene:

Notice the following:

• We don’t leave Jack’s head. I’ve given him the memory of their dad and the accident, and the decision to not dwell.
• I’ve changed the order of movement. Jack turns first so he can observe Pete’s journey through the grass and into the hollow of the dune.
• Pete’s mood isn’t told (since we can’t access his inner experience). However, it can be shown through the set of his mouth, the position of his neck and the hue of his skin as Jack perceives it. Furthermore, we can infer that he’s been struggling to deal with the accident through Jack’s relief that he’s at least outside for a change.

Mastering observation
Mastering observation enables writers to retain viewpoint but not be restricted by it. Think about how non-viewpoint characters will move in a way that reflects their internal experience, or what they will look like. Here are a few examples:

Summing up
If you’re writing in a third-person limited narration style, consider what the viewpoint character already knows, what they can observe in relation to a non-viewpoint character, and what they could infer from those observations. That will determine what they can report.

What they report can still allow readers to access the internal experience of the non-viewpoint character through a back door. And while that report will be biased, it will be immersive.

Himself, herself, myself, themself ... check the usage of pronouns in your fiction. You might just be overworking them, such that you’re stating the obvious, modifying the pace, and reducing tension.

Questionable usage
Reflexive pronouns can act as double tells by stating the obvious, and mar pace and tension.

Stating the obvious

• Max grabbed a fistful of dandelion leaves and shoved them into his mouth. Needs garlic, he thought to himself.
• Jenny wondered to herself about the dream – it had been so real, as if she’d had full control. And yet …

When it comes to internal musings, authors can ditch the reflexive pronouns. Thoughts take place inside a person’s head and, by definition, are offered only for the thinker – unless there’s telepathy going on in the novel!

Moderating pace and reducing tension

• Max ducked, rolled himself over the floor and grabbed the Browning. Fired out two shots. Both hit home.
• Ali sprinted down the street and swung herself into the shadows.

These are high-tension scenes. Max is in a shoot-out; Ali’s escaping danger. Every word stretches out the sentence. And as the sentence length loosens, so does the tension.

Look what happens when we remove the pronouns:

• Max ducked, rolled over the floor and grabbed the Browning. Fired out two shots. Both hit home.
• Ali sprinted down the street and swung into the shadows.

​The sentences shorten, the pace increases – and so does the tension.

Usage that works
We shouldn’t omit all -self pronouns. There are occasions when a sentence works better with them. Sometimes they’re essential.

Clarity
In some cases, the pronoun is necessary for clarity. The reader can’t be sure of what the verb’s object is without it. In the examples below, removing the pronouns could leave the reader with questions: Ashamed of what? A promise to whom? Stop what? Consider whom an expert?

• Ordinarily, she’d have been ashamed of herself, but there was no guilt – not this time.
• I made a promise to myself never again to lose my rag over something so inconsequential.
• He couldn’t stop himself; it took five minutes to demolish the chocolate egg.
• I consider myself an expert, and no one will convince me otherwise.

Emphasis
The pronoun can be used to emphasize the person being discussed. Omission would leave the sentence grammatically intact but change the mood and pacing. In this case, it’s a judgement call on the author’s part.

• Sarah told me so herself.
• The queen herself told me.
• John hadn’t been the only one having a hard time. I myself had been suffering from anxiety at the time.

Sense
Some sentences don’t make grammatical sense without a reflexive pronoun. Remove them and the writing leaves more than questions: it’s unreadable.

• She had to defend herself from that monster – no two ways about it.
• Cass doused themself in perfume.
• Why shouldn’t he call himself the King of Hearts? Who cares if it sounds daft? Daft is good.
• He dragged himself to the top of the stairs.

Reflexive pronouns: mood versus clutter
At the top of this post, I offered examples of how -self pronouns can reduce tension. There will be occasions when an author wants to do exactly that.

• I was trying to make a new life for myself. That’s all there was to it.
• I was trying to make a new life. That’s all there was to it.

There’s a more staccato feel to the second version above that might jar if the author’s seeking a contemplative mood.

Still, too much self-ing can make even a stress-free scene overly wordy so it’s always worth thinking about whether a leaner version would be more immersive and get the reader from A to B faster.

In the first version of the triplets that follow, the pronouns introduce a chilled-out sense of laissez-faire to the movement. In the second I’ve omitted them. And in the third, I’ve ditched the mundane movement and focused on the essential beat.

• He found himself a chair and sat down.
  
• He found a chair and sat down.
  
• He sat down.

• Maxie busied themself with the coffee machine and settled down to read the letter.
  
• Maxie made a coffee and settled down to read the letter.
  
• Maxie read the letter.

• She got herself up and called Mel.
  
• She got up and called Mel.
  
• She called Mel.

It’s always worth an author spending a little time on thinking about how much micromanagement of a scene is necessary.

Will the reader care about the chair discovery, or that Maxie had a hot drink while they were reading the letter, or that the protagonist was no longer on the sofa when she called Mel?

Perhaps. If that stuff’s central to driving the novel forward, to reflecting mood, to grounding the character in the environment, the pronoun and the stage direction might be necessary. If it’s clutter that can be removed without damaging reader engagement, lean up the scene!

Summing up
Use reflexive pronouns when they’re necessary for clarity, sense and emphasis. Otherwise, consider leaner prose that focuses on what the reader needs to know to move forward in the story.

Want to copyedit fiction for indie authors? Even if you have extensive experience of working for publishers, there are skills and knowledge you might need to acquire before making the shift.

Publishing has its own language
Fiction copyediting means something specific in a publishing company. It’s usually (there are always exceptions to the rule) the corrective work that focuses on spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and logic.

It’s important work – meticulous and detailed. It stops a character giving birth two months before she got pregnant; it spots when your protagonist’s eyes have changed colour; it flags up the trigger safety that doesn’t exist on the model of gun being described.

In the wider world, ‘copyediting’ can mean all sorts of things. It will include all of the above but might include a deeper level of stylistic work.

Some editors will use different terminology to describe their services, such that this middle-level editing – further down the chain than developmental or structural work but higher up than the prepublication proofread – is more intense.

Some editors even include developmental/structural work in their ‘copyediting’ service because their target clients fall into one or both of the following categories:
​

• aren’t familiar with all the levels of editing
• are more likely to search for terms such as ‘copyediting’ and ‘proofreading’ even though the big-picture elements of their story might also need some work

The mismatch between language and need
Some editors work only for publishers. Some work only for indie authors. Some work for both.

That messy publishing language becomes problematic when everyone’s using one term – ‘copyediting’ – to mean different things.

Plus, none of us knows what we don’t know.

If an editor has copyedited fiction only for publishers, and then moves into the indie-author market, there’s a risk that their knowledge and skills match the needs and expectations of mainstream publishers, but not those of indie authors.

Many indie authors are self-publishing for the first time. They’ll expect a professional editor to know what they don’t. But a fiction copyeditor, just by virtue of having done something called ‘fiction copyediting’ as defined by publishers, might not know how to handle the stylistic issues in a book.

That doesn’t mean they’re a bad editor. It means they have a specific skill set that might not be what the indie author needs or asks for.

I’ve done all three in my time. My choice was based on the author, my schedule, and the connection I felt with the project. There’s no wrong or right, just informed decision-making.

What’s gone wrong in the editing process?
So what went wrong in that case study? This problem arises because of flawed assumptions about language and responsibility.

Language
The author and the editor are using the same language to describe different outcomes.

• The author thinks of ‘copyediting’ as a middle-ground service between developmental/structural editing and proofreading.
• The editor, who works mainly for publishers, considers ‘copyediting’ a non-stylistic type of work that comes after line editing.

What Jo needed was an editor who recognizes that ‘copyediting’ could mean something different in the author’s head – something like: Do what’s required to make my prose sing! I don’t know what those things are, but that’s why I’m hiring you.

​What she got was a traditional high-quality copyedit as defined by a different client type. It’s work that she needed, but not all the work she needed.

Responsibility
A frequent fallback position on the editor’s part is this: it’s the author’s fault because they didn’t hire the right service. Jo shouldn’t have commissioned a copyedit when stylistic work was required.

That’s flawed. She hired a professional editor precisely because they’re a professional editor. She wanted them to show her what she didn’t know.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that editors define their services differently. I offer ‘line-/copyediting’. Some of my colleagues offer the same level of intervention but call it just ‘copyediting’. Others offer two distinct services: ‘line editing’ and ‘copyediting’.

Yet others don’t even call line editing ‘line editing’. It might be called ‘substantive editing’ or ‘stylistic editing’.

It is any wonder that an indie author chooses to ignore the tangled terminology and focus on collating a shortlist of editors who have extensive experience of working for traditional industry gatekeepers – publishers?
​
That works splendidly when the editors have the skills and knowledge to go beyond what a publisher might expect from a fiction copyedit. But it can fall of a cliff when the rigidity of the terminology restricts the depth of editing required.

How can editors help fix the problem?
Editors must take responsibility for the language they use and the skills they have so that they’re fit for a diverse indie-author market. That means learning and educating.

Learn line craft
Fiction editors serving indie authors should learn line craft – the stylistic sentence-level editing that might be required.

If we don’t understand the likes of show and tell, narrative viewpoint, tense, holding suspense, dialogue craft, and so on, we should question whether we’re ready for this market.

And if we do still want to serve this market with publisher-defined copyediting, we must be explicit about the fact that we don’t offer solutions to stylistic problems in prose.

Still, being able to say we don’t offer those solutions means understanding what they are in the first place. Not recognizing them is not an option.

Educate authors
We must go the extra mile to ensure that our online and direct communications with authors explain the different levels of editing and how we define them.

A website that boasts of our achievements but doesn’t show our understanding of the craft of fiction editing doesn’t help a beginner author make informed decisions. It serves only us, not them.

That can lead to disappointment on the author’s part. And disappointment leads to mistrust, not just with the editor who did the work but with the global editorial community in general.

Editors frequently report that editing is ‘undervalued’ and ‘underpaid’. But value and worth have to be earned. So does trust.
​
When an editor works with an indie author, but doesn’t have the skills to offer what’s required, or is ignorant of the fact that they don’t have those skills, it’s they – not the author – who is bringing down value and worth in the editing industry.

How can authors help fix the problem?
Writers can help themselves too. If you’re an indie author, and you’re not one hundred per cent sure about what you need, do the following:

Summing up
What publishers expect from a fiction copyeditor is often very different to what indie authors will want or need.

If you’re an editor who wants to offer sentence-level work for indie authors, think about the following:

• The language you use to describe your service.
• The indie author’s expectations.

Even if you have an extensive fiction copyediting background by virtue of having worked for a ton of mainstream publishers, there might still be a mismatch between what’s required or what’s asked for and your own definitions and experience.

​Be prepared to learn, and to show what you’ve learned when you communicate with indie authors. That’s how we build trust, value and worth.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to Barry Award-nominated thriller writer John A. Connell about moving from Berkley (Penguin USA) to independent publishing.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 12

• RATE AND REVIEW

Listen to find out more about:

• Being a Hollywood camera operator ... Jurassic Park, Thelma and Louise, and NYPD Blue
• Getting a publishing contract with a major press
• The Mason Collins series
• When publishers are no longer invested
• Moving to independent publishing
• Clawing back book rights
• Using movie experience to craft a novel's scene
• Beyond writing: what indie publishers need to do
• Challenges and benefits of indie publishing
• Being edited
• Useful organizations
• Writing a series versus standalone novels
• Future projects

Top tips From John

• Build a mailing list
• Offer a free short story or novella
• Develop a series
• Use Facebook ads
• Craft a great website
• Engage with your audience
• Get your business head on
• Invest in appropriate editing

Contact John A. Connell
Subscribe to John's newsletter and get a free book:

• Website: John A Connell: Gripping Thrillers With a Historical Twist
• Email: john@johnaconnell.com
• Facebook author page
• John's books on Amazon US and UK

Editing bites

• Stephen King (video): Masterclass, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2012
• Joanna Penn: Video marketing for authors
• Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula
• International Thriller Writers
• Mystery Writers of America
• Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula

​​
Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat with Brunella Costagliola, a specialist military writer and editor, about what makes a compelling military story.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 11

• RATE AND REVIEW

Listen to find out more about:

• What makes a good military book
• Style guides for editing military books
• Common problems authors face when writing military books
• Fact-checking resources for military writers

Contact Brunella

• Email: brunella.costagliola@hotmail.com
• Web: www.themilitaryeditor.com
• Facebook: @themilitaryeditor
• Reserve+ National Guard Magazine
• Military Families Magazine
• My Dad Got Hurt. What Can I Do? Helping Military Children Cope with a Brain-Injured Parent, Brunella Costagliola

Editing bites

• Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime, Val McDermid’s, Wellcome Collection, 2015
• Research tools for crime and thriller writers (blog post)
• Consulting Cops (UK consultancy firm for writers)
• The Art of Firearms in Fiction is a free 45-page primer featuring Steve Allen, a soldier-turned-editor who specializes in military particulars, with additional material from Aden Nichols, an editor and Special Forces veteran.​ ​

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to fellow editor Maya Berger about working on erotica and adult fiction.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 10

• RATE AND REVIEW

Listen to find out more about:

• Does adult fiction need editing?
• Sorting out the language: pornography versus erotica
• Editing in your comfort zone
• Common problems authors struggle with
• Sub-genres and good-fit editing
• Evaluating an author's work

Contact Maya

• Email: maya.berger@gmail.com
• Website: What I Mean To Say

Editing bites

• The Book Designer
• The Hot Copy Podcast

​
Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss the growth of audio in the book world, and how using sound creates reader engagement and helps build a fan base.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 9

Listen to find out more about:

• Narrating a sample chapter
• Creating free audio content that's usable
• Host a live sound event
• Broadcast an interview
• Encouraging sign-ups with your voice
• Starting a podcast
• Captivate: podcast hosting, stats and audience growth

Editing bites and other resources

• Write to be Published, Nicola Morgan, Snowbooks, 2011
• Twitter chat #indieauthorchat hosted by Tim Lewis
• Captivate
• Libsyn
• Soundcloud
• Music Visualisation Video Creator
• Audio-book Production (free booklet)
• ‘How to turn YouTube subtitles into blog posts and transcripts’ (blog post and video tutorial)
• Cleanfeed
• Zoom

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise discuss whether working with a specialist editor is necessary for all books and every type of editing.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 8

Listen to find out more about:

• Fiction versus non-fiction
• The type of editing
• Subject/genre

Editing bites and other resources

• Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing), Jack Hart
• ‘The Secrets of Story Structure’, KM Weiland
• The Editing Podcast, S1E1: The different levels of editing
• Switching to Fiction (online course for aspiring fiction editors)
• Research tools for crime and thriller writers (blog post)
• Consulting Cops

​Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat about 18 blogs for authors and editors that offer guidance on various aspects of writing craft.

Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 7

Listen to find out more about:

• ALLi blog: Alliance of Independent Authors
• Ann Handley blog
• Articles: The Writer’s Digest
• Articles: Tim Storm, Storm Writing School
• Bacon Editing blog: Claire Bacon
• Bookbaby blog
• Clarity: Lisa Poisso, Editor and Book Coach
• Denise Cowle Editorial Services blog: Denise Cowle
• Helping Writers become Authors: KM Weiland
• Jane Friedman blog
• LibroEditing blog: Liz Dexter
• Liminal Pages blog: Sophie Playle, Fiction Editor
• The Creative Penn blog: Joanna Penn
• The Editor’s Blog: Beth Hill
• The Itch of Writing: Emma Darwin
• The Editing Blog: Louise Harnby, Fiction Editor
• The Radical Copyeditor blog: Alex Kapitan
• The Subversive Copyeditor blog: Carol Saller

Editing bites and other resources

• ​Cult Pens
• Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein, Non Basic Stock Line, 2007

​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat with book coach and editor Lisa Poisso about honing story craft before embarking on expensive structural and line editing.