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 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 post, I outline the start of the author–editor relationship – from first contact, to initial discussion, to booking confirmation. My process is personal to my business but it gives you an idea of what to expect.
1. The author makes contact
Clients are welcome to contact me via email, social media, telephone or my contact form. Most use the latter. My contact form is basic because I want authors to be able to start a conversation with me as easily as possible. The biggest stumbling block is usually the time frame because I’m booked up months in advance. Establishing when they’d like the editing or proofreading carried out is therefore essential, as is the word count. It’s those two pieces of information that will guide me on best fit at this point. I include a dropdown menu so that authors can quickly choose the service they’re looking for: a full line and copyedit, a mini line critique or a proofread. I ask for a little information about the project, too. This is where an author can tell me about the genre of their novel and provide a brief summary of the project. I also ask for a name and email address – nothing more in terms of personal details. An underpinning principle of GPDR compliance requires business owners to collect only necessary data. For me, the name and email is enough to enable me to reply to the query.
2. The project discussion
Now the author and I begin to talk. The focus at this stage tends to be on time frame, the type of editing required, and the price (subject to seeing a sample). There might be a little back and forth as we get to know each other and agree the terms of the editing project. If the author sent a sample with their email, I’ll review it before responding. This is the perfect opportunity for me to check that the service they’ve asked for is a good fit for what I think the text requires. It also gives me a chance to get a feel for the writing style ... to see whether I can get under the skin of the novel and give the story the sentence-level pop the author’s seeking. A sample helps me work out how long the editing will take too. With that information, I can determine the fee. If you want more information about samples, Denise Cowle and I cover this topic in Episode 6 of The Editing Podcast. I sometimes include links to useful resources on my website if I think they'll help the author decide whether I’m a good fit for them. You can access everything on offer via my Author Resources page but the 3 tools I most often refer to during this discussion phase are:
3. Booking the editing project
Once the author and I have decided we want to work together, and agreed a price and completion date, it’s time to confirm the booking. I ask them to read my terms and conditions (which are designed to protect us both), then fill in the booking-confirmation form (scroll to the bottom of the T&Cs web page if you want to have a look at it). Receipt of that form triggers me to send an invoice for the booking fee that will secure the author’s slot in my schedule.
4. Preparing for the edit: styles and files
There’s an Author Style Preferences form next to the booking-confirmation form in which clients can register any decisions they’d like me to adhere to during the editing or proofreading process. These aren’t set in stone and can be changed at any time before the editing begins.
Authors are welcome to send me their book file at any time once the booking has been confirmed. My only stipulation is that it arrives 24 hours before editing begins. This gives me time to check that the file can be opened and edited.
I hold the files securely in my Dropbox account, which is protected via two-factor authentication. 5. Reminding the author about the start date I like to give my authors a little nudge at least a week before the start date. Editing will usually have been booked many months earlier and I might not be top of mind if the client is busy with other commitments. A nudge costs nothing and is invariably appreciated by time-poor authors. If I’ve already received the book file, the reminder is simply a courtesy to let them know I’m about to start working on their project, and to check that the file hasn’t been revised in the meantime. Otherwise, it’s a reminder of the date by which the author needs to deliver the file. Summing up Editors work in a variety of ways. The process I’ve outlined here might look very different to my colleagues’. Still, it gives you an idea of what to expect when you get in touch with me. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line. In the meantime, help yourself to the freebies. You don’t even have to hand over your email address to access them – just click and grab.
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 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.
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.
If you write fiction, chances are your characters will be thinking. This article shows you several different ways of conveying what’s going on in their heads.
First off, there is no rule. Instead there are standard ways and not-so-standard ways of conveying thoughts in fiction.
Rules are problematic because they lead writers down a prescriptive road that can render their fiction difficult to read, and lacking in aesthetic on the page. Method 1: Quotation marks The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) has this advice (13.43: ‘Unspoken discourse’):
Thought, imagined dialogue, and other internal discourse (also called interior discourse) may be enclosed in quotation marks or not, according to the context or the writer’s preference. [...]
“I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern,” thought Vera. “Besides,” she told herself, “they’re all fools.” This is undoubtedly my least-favourite option. I recommend you use the speech-mark style with caution. I can’t remember the last time I saw this approach used in commercial fiction coming out of a mainstream publisher’s stable. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been, of course! I dislike it intensely, and many fiction publishers seem to be choosing other methods by preference, but those aren’t good reasons to avoid it. Your style is your choice. The best reason for avoiding it is that using speech marks could confuse your reader. The beauty of speech marks – or quotation marks – is that they indicate speech. When you put speech marks around a character’s thoughts, your reader will immediately assume they’re reading the spoken word. Look at the CMOS example above. Only when we hit thought Vera do we realize she’s not speaking at all. She’s thinking. Some authors might be tempted to use a different speech-mark style to indicate a thought. Again, this is confusing. Your reader might assume that you’ve not edited for consistency, as this example demonstrates:
“Jen, drop the knife. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
“No way. I’m not safe here, and nor are you.” Jen held the blade steady and looked around. ‘Crap. I need an exit,’ she thought. If, like me, you want something a little cleaner, something that won’t pull your reader out of the story because you led them down a speech-based garden path only to pull them up short at the gate, here are a few alternatives. Method 2: Italic text You can render your thoughts in italic text. For short thought streams, this is a common approach. Let’s return to the CMOS example and see what it looks like:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools.
The advantages of this style are as follows:
However, some readers find that large chunks of italic strain their eyes. I’m one of them. I’m much more likely to skim over huge passages of italic because it’s not a pleasant reading experience. If that text is masking a clue, or a key character trait, information about an important event or something else that holds the plot together, it’s essential that the reader accesses it. Look at the Vera example again. There are two thought tags – thought Vera and she told herself – just to ram the point home that she’s thinking. Some readers and writers might consider two tags overkill, but they do help to break up the italic text and don’t jar as much as they might. But imagine if Vera’s thought stream had gone something like this:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they don’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it’s their money they’re investing. We’ve trusted that bloody bank with our savings and look at what it’s got us. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
That’s a lot of italic to get one’s retinas around. If you have a long stream of consciousness, you might prefer another method. Method 3: Normal body text This style forgoes speech marks and italic, and sticks to normal text. This is how it looks with the longer Vera example:
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they don’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it’s their money they’re investing. We’ve trusted that bloody bank with our savings and look at what it’s got us. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The advantage of this style is that it’s easy on the eye. However, some readers might be jarred by changes in tense. If your narrative is set in the past tense and set in the third person (as in this example with Vera) and you use the same text style for present-tense direct thoughts, then in a longer thought stream you could pull your reader out of the story. And if this happens frequently, your prose will be riddled with flip-flopping tenses that are at best frustrating and at worst confusing. Method 4: Free indirect style Another option is to use free indirect style (sometimes called free indirect discourse or free indirect speech). This style offers the essence of first-person thought but through a third-person viewpoint. The advantages of this style are as follows:
Let’s return to Vera to see how this works:
Vera didn’t care if they’d offended Morgenstern. Besides, they were all fools. Those people at the bank, they didn’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it was their money they were investing. Her family had trusted that bloody bank with their savings and look at what it had got them. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The free indirect style does keep the narrative distance close but it’s still not quite as immediate at the present-tense first person. So is there anything else we can do? Method 5: Mix it up A more creative option might be to combine direct and indirect thought styles. In the example below we begin with two sentences that use the italic style for the present-tense first-person thought, and we retain the thought tags to break up the text. Then we move into roman text but cast the thought stream in the free indirect style, which matches the main narrative: third-person past tense.
I don’t care if we have offended Morgenstern, thought Vera. Besides, she told herself, they’re all fools. Those people at the bank, they didn’t care a hoot for anyone but themselves. Like it was their money they were investing. Her family had trusted that bloody bank with their savings and look at what it had got them. Nothing. Damn cheek. Vera put the letter back in the envelope and scowled.
The advantages of this style are as follows:
Summing up As with many sentence-level decisions in fiction writing, rendering thoughts is about style choices rather than a single prescriptive rule. Choose the solution that fits your story best. This might mean making different decisions at various points in your novel depending on what’s going on. Consider combining approaches if you have longer thought streams and want to be sure of retaining reader engagement. And, finally, avoid speech marks when it comes thoughts. They’re called speech marks for a reason and are best reserved for talking and muttering! Cited works and related resources
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.
Repetition of key words and phrases in narrative and dialogue can make the reading experience laborious. There are times, however, when saying something more than once works beautifully. It’s time to talk about anaphora.
What is anaphora?
Anaphora is the deliberate repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses for artistic effect. This literary device is often seen in poetic works and in speeches. It’s also common to see it in children’s books that have a rhyming element. Anaphora – rhythm, emphasis and emotional back doors First, repetition of words affects rhythm, which can evoke mood: monotony, boredom, excitement, frustration. Emotions transform a story from just words on a page to a reader experience. Plus, rhythmic writing is memorable and digestible, which helps your reader get under the skin of your novel. Second, anaphora can be used for the purpose of emphasis. We notice repetition and, while it can jar when not used purposefully, deliberate repetition helps your character or narrator to drive a point home. Third, anaphora is one of a range of tools that will help you keep your writing tight but emotionally rich. Repetition is used purposefully so that the reader understands what the character is feeling, but via a literary back door.
Anaphora and your fiction’s narrative
Reading isn’t just about ingesting words. It’s about experiencing a sense of place and mood. There are different ways in which a writer can help a reader engage with a character and their story. 1. You can tell them what a character’s feeling:
TELLING
Melanie felt angry and bored. She’d been sitting in the jobcentre for forty-five minutes, had watched the same old faces passing back and forth, but as usual her name hadn’t been called. 2. You can show them what’s being felt with action beats:
ACTION BEATS
Melanie scowled and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. The same old faces had passed back and forth but forty-five minutes had passed and no one had called her name. 3. You can nudge them by playing with the rhythmic structures, of which anaphora is one:
ANAPHORA
Forty-five minutes had passed. Melanie waited but no one had called her name. Same old faces, same old silence, same old story. None is wrong or right but relying on only one could render your prose dull. Experimenting with different techniques can enrich your narrative.
Anaphora and your fiction’s dialogue
We often use anaphoric constructions in everyday speech, and the fiction writer seeking to mimic that naturally shouldn’t fear using them in dialogue. Here are some examples:
EXAMPLES
Note how the repetition adds emphasis and heightens the emotion. Take example (1). The anaphora helps us to feel the character’s frustration and hurt. We don’t need an action beat or dialogue tag to tell us this. There’s no need for the narrator to interject with an explanation. We don’t even need to use italic to nudge the reader towards where the emphasis should be placed in our mind’s ear. The anaphoric speech does it all for us. Here are examples of how the passage might look with extraneous information:
REDUNDANT ADVERBIAL DIALOGUE TAG
‘Every time you mention his name, every time you pick up that photograph, every time you recall some place you visited together, you’re telling me I’m second choice,’ said Ash, frustrated. REDUNDANT NARRATION Ash felt frustrated and hurt. ‘Every time you mention his name, every time you pick up that photograph, every time you recall some place you visited together, you’re telling me I’m second choice.’ REDUNDANT ITALIC EMPHASIS ‘Every time you mention his name, every time you pick up that photograph, every time you recall some place you visited together, you’re telling me I’m second choice.’ Used purposefully, anaphora can help writers declutter their dialogue. Readers don’t just focus on the words in the conversation: they also do their own emotional imagining. That can be a more rewarding way of engaging with the story than being told what the character must be feeling. Anaphora, memorability and overuse Anaphoric constructions are rhythmic, which makes them memorable. That’s why politicians employ them in their speeches when they’re trying to rally the masses, and why children’s book authors use them to help young readers engage with their stories. Look how Julia Donaldson uses it to gorgeous effect in The Magic Paintbrush: Still, in a novel, that memorability can work against the writer. If you overuse deliberate repetition, it could become an irritant instead of an engagement device. Readers will view it as a writing pattern, not a writing tool. As with any literary device, think about peppering rather than littering your prose with anaphora. That way, you maximize the impact. It becomes just one literary device among others that makes your prose interesting. When repetition isn’t a literary device Sometimes an author can get so carried away with writing that they don’t notice they’ve repeated words. This can make the prose clunky to read. After your first draft, revisit what you’ve written. You might even like to read it out loud or play it through an onboard narration tool on your computer. Anaphora is deliberate repetition. It serves a purpose – to evoke emotion, drive emphasis, or nudge readers towards their own emotional imagining. If multiple uses of a word or phrase aren’t serving artistry, recast the sentence.
ACCIDENTAL REPETITION
Jim sat in the big black leather office chair behind a large walnut-veneered office desk of the director’s office at PharmaCo HQ. It was his second home. POSSIBLE RECAST Jim sat in a large black leather chair behind a walnut-veneered desk. This was PharmaCo’s managing director’s office and Jim’s second home. ANAPHORA Jim sat at the desk in his office … the office that had been his second home for three years. The office where he’d sacked half the PharmaCo workforce just to keep the company afloat. The office that held enough sordid secrets to bury anyone who stood in his way. Summing up Anaphora is one device among several that has a place in the novelist’s toolbox. I’m not advocating removing description or action beats – not at all. Rather, I’m suggesting you might like to experiment with anaphora here and there in your fiction. If you enjoyed this post, check out my other articles on sentence-level mastery.
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.
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.
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.
Dialogue tags – or speech tags – are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. This article is about how to use them effectively.
A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech:
Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up longer chunks. Rather than give you a bunch of zombie rules that you’ll want to break about two seconds after you’ve read them, here are three guidelines to bear in mind when thinking about which tags to use, which to avoid, and when you might omit them altogether:
Why said often works best, and when it’s not enough The speech tag said ‘is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible,’ say Mittelmark and Newman in How Not to Write a Novel (p. 132). I agree, and I recommend you embrace it! If someone’s told you to avoid repeating said, head for your bookshelf and take a peek inside some of your favourite novels for reassurance. If you deliberately try to avoid said, you run the risk that your writing will reflect that intention. If your reader is focusing on your avoidance, their focus is not where it should be – on your story. Still, there will be times when you’ll want a tag that tells your reader about, say, the sound quality, the mood of the speech, or the tone of voice. Speech tags aren’t the only way to do this – for example, you could use action beats before the dialogue, or adverbial phrases after your tags – but few readers will complain if you use the likes of whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered or whined. Hissed is one that I rather like, though some writers and editors are less keen. Even though said 's invisibility makes it harder to overuse, avoid the temptation to place it after every expression. Here’s an example of how it looks when it's been overworked (see, too, the final section in this article, ‘Omitting dialogue tags’):
EXAMPLE: OVERUSE OF SAID
‘Tag it,’ he said. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. 'I'm glad you agree,' he said. Showy speech tags and underdeveloped dialogue Showy tags can overwhelm dialogue. Since you’ve written your dialogue for a reason, that’s where the reader’s attention should be. When the tag is more visible than the speech, it’s a red flag that the dialogue, not the tag, needs enriching:
EXAMPLE: SPEECH TAG OVERWHELMS THE DIALOGUE
‘The way he was dressed, the attack was inevitable,’ preached McCready. Instead, we might amend the dialogue so that it conveys the preaching tone, and leaves the tag (said) with the mechanical function of indicating who’s speaking:
EXAMPLE: ENRICHED DIALOGUE; SIMPLER SPEECH TAG
‘Oh, come on,’ McCready said. ‘You dress like that, you’re going to attract the weirdos. Just the way it is. He had it coming, no question.’ Showy speech tags and double-telling Some speech tags are just repetitions of what the reader already knows – they double-tell. Asked and replied are two common examples, though these are used so often that they don’t fall into the showy category. For that reason, I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid these, though do take care not to overuse them. Showier examples – such as opined, commanded, threatened – become redundant if you’ve got the dialogue right:
EXAMPLES: SHOWY SPEECH TAGS THAT DOUBLE-TELL
‘But it’s none of our business how Jan makes her living,’ opined Jack. ‘Stand down, soldier! That’s an order,’ the general commanded. ‘If you tell a soul what you heard here today, I swear I will kill you and everyone you have ever loved,’ Jennifer threatened. ‘That’s amazing!’ he exclaimed. In the first three examples, it’s clear from the dialogue that an opinion, a command and a threat have been given. The speech tags repeat what we already know; we should consider whether said is a less invasive alternative. In the fourth example, amazing and the exclamation mark (!) tell us that the speaker exclaimed, so again the showy tag is redundant. It’s a question of style, of course. I’m not giving you rules but suggesting ways of thinking about the function of your tagging so that you keep your reader immersed in the spaces of your choosing. Non-speech-based dialogue tags and the reality flop Even if you decide you do want a more extravagant tag than said, take care when using verbs that are not related to the mechanics of speaking. Examples include: smiled, gesticulated, ejaculated, thrusted, fawned, scowled, winced, smirked, sneered, pouted, frowned, indicated and laughed. The physicality of these verbs will jar your reader and they immediately introduce an element of inauthenticity into the prose. They’re great words for describing what other parts of a person’s body can do, but are unsuitable for use as dialogue tags:
EXAMPLES: UNSUITABLE NON-SPEECH-BASED TAGS
‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ she laughed. 'You,' she smiled, 'are the best thing that's ever happened to me.' Try one of the following instead:
EXAMPLES: ACTION BEATS AND ADVERBS; SIMPLER OR OMITTED SPEECH TAGS
‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ she said, laughing. [Uses laughed adverbially.] She laughed. ‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ [Uses laughed in an action beat.] 'You' – she smiled – 'are the best thing that's ever happened to me.' [Uses smiled in a mid-sentence action beat. Note the spaced en dashes. If you were styling according to US convention you could opt for double quotation marks and closed-up em dashes.] Alternatives to showy speech tags – more on action beats Rich action beats can complement or even replace speech tags, and are useful if you want to keep your dialogue lean and are tempted to use a showy speech tag. Keep them on the same line as the speaker they’re related to. Action beats let you set the scene so that the reader can fill in the gaps with their imagination while a character is speaking. Here’s an example of dialogue with a showy speech tag – moaned:
EXAMPLE: SHOWY SPEECH TAG
‘My back teeth are killing me,’ James moaned. In the alternative below, the reader can discern the moaning manner in which the speech is delivered because James’s discomfort is shown in the action beat preceding it:
EXAMPLE: ALTERNATIVE USING ACTION BEAT
James pressed two fingers to his cheek and winced. ‘My back teeth are killing me.’ Notice how the action beat is punctuated. There’s a full stop (period) after winced. Neither of these examples is wrong or right. You might decide that you prefer one over the other. Rather, I’m showing you alternatives so that you can make informed decisions about how to make your writing engaging. Using proper nouns in dialogue tags If your fiction is gender binary (and it might well not be) and the genders are known to the reader, you needn’t repeat the speaker’s name every time they appear in a dialogue tag. You can use third-person singular pronouns: he and she. Clarity is everything here. Notice how Alexander McCall Smith uses nouns and pronouns in his dialogue tags, and peppers the text with action beats so that the reader knows who’s speaking (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 125):
EXAMPLE: MIXING UP PRONOUNS AND PROPER NOUNS
Mma Ramotswe nodded her head gently. Masculine bad behaviour. ‘Men do terrible things,’ she said. ‘All wives are worried about their husbands. You are not alone.’ Mma Pekwane sighed. ‘But my husband has done a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘A very terrible thing.’ Mma Ramotswe stiffened. If Rra Pekwane had killed somebody she would have to make it quite clear that the police should be called in. She would never dream of helping anybody conceal a murderer. ‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked. Mma Pekwane lowered her voice. ‘He has stolen a car.’ [...] Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Do men really think they can fool us that easily?’ she said. ‘Do they think we’re fools?’ ‘I think they do,’ said Mma Pekwane. Omitting dialogue tags If you’re confident your reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags altogether. Once more, it’s not about rules but about sense and clarity. This will work best if there are no more than two characters in the conversation, and even then, most writers don’t extend the omission for more than a few back-and-forths before they introduce a reminder tag or an action beat. Here’s an example from Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks novel Sleeping in the Ground (pp. 273–4). There are two characters in this scene: Banks and Linda. Robinson omits most of the dialogue tags in this conversation because it’s clear who’s speaking, but he keeps us on track with an action beat and a tag halfway through:
EXAMPLE: KEEPING THE READER ON TRACK
‘So do I,’ said Banks. After a short pause he went on. ‘Anyway, I seem to remember you told me you went to Silver Royd girls’ school in Wortley.’ ‘That’s right. Why?’ 'Does the name Wendy Vincent mean anything to you?’ ‘Yes, of course. She was the girl who was murdered when I was at school. [...] It was terrible.’ Banks looked away. He couldn’t help it, knowing the things that had happened to Linda, but she seemed unfazed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And there was something about her in the papers a couple of year ago. The fiftieth anniversary. Right?’ ‘That’s the one.’ ‘It seems a strange sort of anniversary to celebrate. A murder.’ ‘Media. What can I say? It wasn’t a [...]’ Summing up When it comes to dialogue, remember the function of the tag: to indicate which character is speaking. Says Beth Hill, ‘These tags are background, part of the mechanics of story; they meet their purpose but don’t stand out. They let the dialogue take the spotlight’ (The Magic of Fiction, p. 166). So, during the self-editing process:
Cited sources 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.
If you’re including authentic technical or procedural information in your crime writing, you’ll be wearing your research hat. Your story should come first, of course. However, be sure to get your facts straight before you decide if and how far you’re going to bend reality.
Procedure varies between region and country, and when your novel is set will also determine the relevance of the resources I’ve included. Still, even those outside your jurisdiction might spark an insight that drives your storyline further or deepens your characterization
Conversations, consultations and ride-alongs
My brushes with the law have been limited to bad parking. Still, I know a few coppers socially, and it’s to them I’d head for procedural guidance in the first instance. If you know a police officer, a forensic anthropologist, a crime-scene investigator, a barrister, or whatever, ask them if you can pick their brains. They’ll have expert subject knowledge and insights, and your talking with them face to face could be the most powerful tool of all. If you don’t have existing contacts, ask your friends for theirs or put a call out on social media. A writer recently requested help from munitions experts via the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Facebook group. Several commenters provided advice and one offered to put her in touch with an expert. If your book's set in the UK, try Consulting Cops or Graham Bartlett, author and crime fiction advisor. Both have teams of law-enforcement experts who'll help you keep your facts straight. Here’s crime writer Julie Heaberlin discussing the importance of researching and feeling comfortable approaching experts, especially to bring deeper layering to her novels:
‘I’m very worried about not being accurate […] because there are a lot of writers who don’t research and that’s just more misinformation out there. And I learn things myself. Standing outside the Texas Death House during an execution … it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be.’
How to Write Crime – Harry Brett in conversation with Sophie Hannah and Julia Heaberlin. Waterstones, Norwich, 2018
In a bid to improve relations between the police service and the public, some larger forces now operate ride-along schemes that allow members of the public to patrol with an officer. In the UK, these include Avon & Somerset, Nottinghamshire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Humberside and Warwickshire Police.
Search online using the keywords ‘ride-along police [your country/state/city]’ and see what comes up.
Watch and read
How about TV and movies? Your favourite crime dramas and fiction might have been meticulously researched. Then again, they might not. In ‘Five Rules for Writing Thrillers’ David Morrell urges writers to do the research but to use caution:
‘You don’t need to be a physician or an attorney to write a medical thriller or a legal thriller, but it sure helps if you’ve been inside an emergency ward or a courtroom. Read non-fiction books about your topic. Interview experts. If characters shoot guns in your novel, it’s essential to fire one and realize how loud a shot can be. Plus, the smell of burned gunpowder lingers on your hands. Don’t rely on movies and television dramas for your research. Details in them are notoriously unreliable. For example, the fuel tanks of vehicles do not explode if they are shot. Nor do tires blow apart if shot with a pistol. But you frequently see this happen in films.'
Morrell talks more about how research makes him ‘a fuller person’ and how he learned to fly in order to create an authentic pilot for his book The Shimmer. The expense of a pilot’s licence will probably be out of reach for the average self-publisher. YouTube could be the solution.
There are thousands of hours’ worth of real-life video footage on YouTube. You can learn from experts about how a body decomposes, how an autopsy is carried out, how a forensic sketch artist works, and how to clean up a crime scene.
And there are lectures on the science of blood spatter, computer forensics, investigation techniques, and forensic imaging. You name it, it’s probably there.
Use Wikipedia
Wikipedia is great for any sleuthing writer wanting to track down information about criminal procedure. Do, however, use the primary sources cited in the references to verify the information. In the online masterclass ‘How to Write a Crime Novel’ Dr Barbara Henderson recommends using at least two sources for internet-verification purposes. Here are some searches to get you started:
Security agencies
MI5 – the UK’s homeland security service
Visit the official site of MI5. There’s information on how it handles covert surveillance, communications interception, and intelligence gathering, plus a brief overview of its history since its creation in 1909. Christopher Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm is the first authorized history of the service. Published by Penguin in 2010, it’s available on Amazon and in major bookstores. Visit The National Archives and type MI5 into the search box. That will give you access to all the files that have been released into the public domain to date. National Crime Agency (UK) The NCA is tasked with protecting UK citizens from organized crime. Its website has articles and reports about cybercrime, money laundering, drugs and firearms seizure, bribery and corruption, and trafficking. I recommend looking at the NCA’s free in-depth but readable reports such as the National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2018, which outlines threats, vulnerabilities, the impact of technology, and response strategies. MI6 (SIS) – the UK’s secret intelligence service Visit the official website of the SIS to find out how it handles overseas intelligence gathering and covert operations. There’s a brief overview of the service’s history and some vignettes that illustrate how intelligence officers operate. Keith Jeffery’s MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 is ‘the first – and only – history of the Secret Intelligence Service, written with full and unrestricted access to the closed archives of the Service for the period 1909–1949’. If you want historical information, this is a good place to start. GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters (UK) The GCHQ website is worth visiting just to see the building from which it operates in Cheltenham! There’s an overview of GCHQ history, operations, its various operational bases, and how it works with Britain’s other security services to manage global threats. For a more in-depth study of the service, start with Richard Aldrich’s GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency. FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation (USA) The FBI’s website is packed with the usual overview material of how and why, but I think the go-to resources are the likes of the free Handbook of Forensic Services, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC) page, and the training guidance. The easiest way to navigate around the site is to head to the FBI home page and scroll down to the links in the footer. NSA – National Security Agency The NSA website is the place to go for twenty-first-century code-breaking information, and there’s a ton of information about cybersecurity and intelligence. Head for the Publications section to get free access to The Next Wave and various research papers. The material is dense but could be just the ticket for building backstories for cybergeek characters.
Police forces
Michael O'Byrne is a former police officer who worked in Hong Kong, and later with the Metropolitan Police (sometimes referred to as New Scotland Yard). Try the second edition of his Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure. INTERPOL This is the world’s largest police force with nearly 200 member countries. The Expertise section of its website is rammed with useful and readable information on procedure, technical tools, investigative skills, officer training, fugitive investigations, border management and more. UK police forces Police procedure will vary depending on where you live. You can access a list of all UK police force websites here: Police forces, including the British Transport Police, the Central Motorway Policing Group, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence Police and the Port of Dover Police An Garda Síochána – Ireland’s national police and security service The easiest way to navigate the Garda’s website is to head for the home page and scroll down to the sitemap at the bottom. There you’ll find links to information on policing principles, organizational structure, and the history of the service. The Crime section is particularly strong on terminology and procedure. Legal resources Lawtons Solicitors’ website has an excellent Knowledge Centre filled with articles on parliamentary acts, offences, criminal charges and police procedure. What are the drug classifications in the UK? and Police Station interviews are just two examples. Ann Rule’s advice on attending trials is aimed at true-crime writers, but you could use the guidance for fictional inspiration: Breaking Into True Crime: Ann Rule’s 9 Tips for Studying Courtroom Trials. Crown Prosecution Service (UK): The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) website provides detailed prosecution guidance for criminal justice professionals. It is extremely dense, and so it should be; it wasn’t designed for novelists! See, for example, the section on Core Foundation Principles for Forensic Science Providers: DNA-17 Profiling. Still, there’s a wealth of information there for those prepared to wade through it. Department of Justice (USA): The DOJ site offers guidance on the role of the Attorney General, the organizational structure of the department, lots of statistical information, and maps of federal facilities.
Forensics resources
Historical crime writing resources
Weapons research
I hope you find these resources useful. I’ve barely been able to scratch the surface, not least because I’m busy trying to book a ride-along with my local bobby! While I sort that out, here’s some wise advice from David Morrell:
‘The point isn’t to overload your book with tedious facts. Rather, your objective is to avoid mistakes that distract readers from your story. If you’ve done your research, readers will sense the truth of your story’s background. In addition, the topic should interest you so much that the research is a joy, not a burden.'
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.
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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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