Powerful dialogue and thoughts enrich a story without the reader noticing. When done poorly they distract at best and bore at worst. Here are 8 problems to watch out for, and ideas about how to solve them.
Problem 1: Maid-and-butler dialogue
Is one of your characters telling another something they already know just so you can let your reader access backstory? If so, you’ve written maid-and-butler dialogue. It’s a literary misfire and should be avoided. Here's an extreme example:
‘Hi, Jenny! It’s good to see you after your three years at Nottingham University. Bet you’re delighted with that first-class honours degree in archaeology.’
‘Thanks. Yeah, I’m thrilled to bits, though there have been times when I’ve yearned for your nine-to-five job as an editor in a small fiction publishing company on the outskirts of Norwich.’ SOLUTIONS
‘Hi, Jenny! Good to see you. Been a while.’
Three years in fact. Clever Jen had notched up a first in archaeology from Nottingham Uni while I was inching my way up the publishing ladder with a small fiction press on the outskirts of Norwich. ‘Yup,’ she said. ‘Seems like an age. How’s tricks in the world of business? Found the next Booker Prize winner yet?’ Problem 2: Real but mundane The conversations many of us have in real life are deathly boring. Here’s one I had recently:
‘Fancy a brew?’
‘Yes, please. Coffee please. Er, or tea. Um, whatever you’re having. As long as it’s wet and warm.’ ‘I’m having coffee but I’m happy to make you tea.’ ‘No, erm, coffee’s perfect. Thanks.’ ‘Milk and sugar?’ ‘Just milk. No sugar, thanks.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Cheers.’ ‘Um, can I use your bathroom?’ ‘Of course you can. There’s extra loo roll in the cabinet if you need it.’ It’s realistic, certainly, but has no place in a novel. Most of the words are a waste of space, and the trees that were felled to create the paper on which they’re written deserve better. Dialogue needs to be natural, but not too natural. The best dialogue is a hybrid of the real and the contrived, ‘a kind of stylised representation of speech’ as Nicola Morgan calls it in Write to be Published (p. 151). SOLUTIONS
Problem 3: Written accented dialogue It can be tempting to convey accents with phonetic spellings, as in these appalling examples below:
‘Zis cannot be ’appening. Zer family would sinc it unacczeptable.’
‘Ve have vays of getting vat ve vant.’ There are so many problems with this approach that I recommend you avoid it altogether. Bear in mind that dialogue tells us what words have been spoken, not how they’re spelled. Phonetic spelling can turn dialogue into pastiche, and offensive pastiche at that. It’s also difficult to absorb and distracts readers from your story. SOLUTIONS
Problem 4: Troublesome tags The function of speech tags is to tell the reader who’s speaking. They shouldn’t push the dialogue into the background. Nor should they repeat what the reader knows from the dialogue. Furthermore, the verbs we use to tag the dialogue should be speech-related. Otherwise we end up with a reality crash that jars the reader.
‘That dress looks ridiculous,’ guffawed Marie.
‘Come here. Let me show you how it works,’ demonstrated Jonathan. ‘I swear I’ll stick this knife where the sun doesn’t shine if you don’t give me the letter,’ brandished Marcus. SOLUTIONS
Problem 5: Talking heads and monologues Some books can turn into podcasts on the page when dialogue isn’t grounded in the physical environment. Too much dialogue can make the reader feel dissociated from the story, as if the characters are talking in the cloud. In Jo Nesbo’s The Bat, McCormack starts talking on p. 249. On p. 250, Nesbo introduces one line of movement: ‘He turned from the window and faced Harry.’ Then McCormack’s off again. He doesn’t stop talking until p. 251. It’s a monologue in which Hole, the viewpoint character, seems to be nothing more than a receptacle for McCormack’s ear bending. There’s a little bit of back and forth with Hole, plus some action beats in the lower third of p. 251, but then McCormack’s off again for all of p. 252 and the top third of p. 253. The blue highlights show how much of these four pages are taken up with just one character’s speech.
Perhaps it’s deliberate, a way of showing that McCormack’s feeling jaded, worn down by the business of policing. Plus, Jo Nesbo has a big enough fan base to get away with this. However, for the writer who’s building readership, lengthy passages of speech that aren’t grounded in their environment could turn into snooze-fests.
SOLUTIONS
Problem 6: ‘Too many vocatives, Louise.’ The vocative case enables the writer to indicate who’s being spoken to in dialogue. In a bid to avoid speech tagging, some less experienced writers overuse vocatives, which renders the speech unnatural. Next time you get the opportunity to listen to a conversation between two people, notice how often they use each other’s names. You might find they don’t, other than for emphasis. Overuse can labour dialogue, as this example illustrates:
‘Louise, did you murder the sheriff?’
‘I didn’t murder anyone, Johnny. And I’m gutted that you felt the need to even ask that question.’ ‘I’m sorry, Louise, but it’s standard procedure.’ ‘Johnny, you don’t really think I could’ve done that, do you? ‘Not for a second, Louise. Just playing by the rules.’ The exception is dialogue between ranking officers or titled people and their staff. Omitting the sir, Your Lordship, Your Majesty, milady and the like would be unrealistic:
‘Sergeant, how many arrests have been made?’
‘Twelve, sir. We’re expecting two more today.’ ‘Any news on the Merton Street lead?’ ‘Not yet, sir.’ ‘Keep me informed, will you?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ SOLUTIONS
Problem 7: Thoughts in speech marks Speech marks (or quotation marks) have one function – to show the reader that a character is speaking out loud. While some recognized style guides allow for the use of speech marks to indicate thoughts, most professional editors and experienced writers don’t recommend this method because it’s confusing. 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. Here’s an example in which dialogue and thought have become muddled:
“Jackson, put that gun down. You’ll hurt someone.”
“No way. Not until I have some guarantees.” Jackson gripped the weapon and glanced left then right. He was surrounded by agents, all of them armed to the teeth. ‘Fuck fuck fuck. How the hell am I going to get out of this one?’ he thought. SOLUTIONS
Problem 8: Thinking unlikely thoughts If your character’s in the middle of an escape, a heist, great sex, or a mixed-martial arts smackdown, thoughts need to be handled with care to remain realistic. High-intensity scenes require rapid-fire thoughts otherwise the thinking becomes intrusive and moderates the pace of the action. Here’s an extreme example of how things can go awry:
Fleur dove behind the chair as the wall exploded. She fumbled for the phone, choking on brick dust, and punched a number onto the screen. Pick up, dammit. God, what I wouldn’t give for a hot bath, a long gin and a warm fire. I haven’t taken time off in ages – not since last summer when I went to the Lakes for a couple of weeks. When this is over and done with, I’m going to hunker down and chill for a few months … just me, the dog and a sandy beach.
Gunfire sent her scrambling on her belly for the door. Some writers use a character’s thoughts as a conduit for providing physical description. Take care with this. In reality, it’s rare for us to look in a mirror and notice our brown hair, green eyes or big feet. Instead, we’re more likely to frame those ideas in terms of criticism, appreciation or concern: Compare these two examples:
SOLUTIONS
Summing up ‘Dialogue isn’t a report of everything that characters say. It’s the compelling and noteworthy real-time, purpose-filled talk that plays out in front of the reader,’ writes Beth Hill (p. 157): The same can be said of thoughts. Reality takes a nosedive when it comes to the novel because only a little of what people think and say in real life will drive a story forward. Most of it is dull. Here’s Sol Stein (p. 113): ‘People won’t buy your novel to hear idiot talk. They get that free from relatives, friends, and at the supermarket. […] Some writers make the mistake of thinking that dialogue is overheard. Wrong! Dialogue is invented and the writer is the inventor.’ Invent dialogue and thoughts that show readers what is being felt (emotion) and what is happening (action). Cited sources and other 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.
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Not every reader can stomach violence in fiction, and not every writer wants to go the whole hog with it. Here are two ways to approach it: compressed reporting after the fact; and showing it all as it happens.
Compressed reporting after the fact
Reporting the outcome of violence after the fact can be a superb alternative to detailed descriptions that might upset or sicken authors and their readers. This technique is used on the screen too. In Series 5, Episode 3 of Line of Duty (BBC1), the perpetrator breaks into the home of a core character’s ex-wife. The transgressor proceeds to torture the victim. There’s a drill involved and lots of screaming. It’s gross. Well, it would be if we saw it. But we don’t. All we see is the outcome. The ex-wife lies in a hospital bed, bandaged from head to toe. We glimpse patches of skin, her flesh swollen and angry. Her face is physically untouched though trauma is etched into it. And even the slightest movement results in a whimper and a wince; despite the medication, she’s in pain. All we know so far is that something awful has happened to her but we don’t know what. The scene cuts to two police officers listening to an audio file of the torture. Now we hear the drill and the screams. The officers play a little of the audio then switch it off and express their horror. A phone conversation with the victim’s husband ensues and we discover a little more about what’s been done to the woman. They finish the call and discuss the crime between themselves. Then the audio’s back and we hear a few more snatches. Off again, and there’s more analysis. It’s a powerful rendition of extreme violence that protects viewers from the gory detail but leaves us in no doubt about the suffering that’s been endured. This method can work just as beautifully in a novel. It’s not that the violence is diminished but that we access less of it. Harlan Coben’s Run Away (Century, 2019, pp. 68–9) provides an excellent example. Aaron, a corrupt and possessive junkie, has been murdered. Coben elects not to show us the violence as it plays out. Instead, we learn what happened via a later conversation between Simon and Ingrid.
Two things stand out about this scene:
Cosies are a subgenre that bend particularly well to compressed after-the-fact reporting. Yes, people get hurt and die in grisly ways but most of the horror is left to the imagination. Here’s an example from Emily Brightwell’s The Inspector and Mrs Jeffries (C&R Crime, 2013, pp. 1–3):
Brightwell focuses on the impact of the poison on the body; unlike in the Line of Duty screen example, there’s nothing that tells us about the suffering endured. That’s the cosy way. And as with the Coben example, the implied violence is balanced by dialogue that unveils character personality. It’s not just the readers who shy away from the horror; Inspector Witherspoon does too. We also learn how he’s perceived by others in the scene – as a bumbling buffoon who can’t see the obvious. This sets the scene nicely for Mrs Jeffries’ more capable intervention later on in the novel. Showing it all as it happens Some acts of violence – such as fight scenes – work best when we’re shown everything as it plays out. Rendering a fight after the fact (as in the examples above) would destroy the dramatic tension. Still, a fight scene needs to hold the reader’s attention. That means paying attention to pacing and providing just enough stage direction to enable the reader to understand the choreography. This extract from The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore (Orion, 2014, pp. 244–5) appealed to me because it avoids high-octane, kickass tropes. Rather, the author captures the transgressor’s mysterious sensuality in the violent narrative. Her psychotically calm speech and composed movements have an ethereal quality. In sharp contrast, the protagonist’s actions are punctuated with sentence fragments that elevate the pace and introduce tension.
Moore, like Coben, doesn’t overwork it. The scene never drags even though the pace changes depending on who we’re watching. Here’s a high-octane example from Robert Ludlum’s The Matlock Paper (Orion, 1973/2005, pp. 268–9). Ludlum never bores us, just tells us straight. The pace is quick and every word counts.
Ludlum keeps the stage direction lean and the pace consistent. But I also love how he introduces the earth and rain into the narrative, but only briefly. The weather doesn’t distract us. The mentions are just enough to ground the violence in a physical environment that can be felt and heard; the men aren’t fighting in white space. Lean is good but not too lean! Omitting the detail would render the scene inauthentic. Imagine reading this:
Lamaison saw his chance, and he took it. But Reacher was ready and took him down. Game over.
Really? So how did he manage that? Was is that easy? Jack Reacher’s good but he’s human. Readers still need to know how he won the day, how he was challenged, what obstacles he had to overcome. That way we can rally behind him. Here’s the real extract from Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble (Bantam, 2007, p. 492). Child gives us the detail, shows us the choreography of the fight, but it’s focused. None of the steps are repeated so we don’t get bored.
Child uses sentence fragments to accelerate the pace, and polysyndeton to introduce a sense of rampancy. And he deepens our interest by shifting the narrative distance – we move from observers in the wings to right inside Reacher’s head. Summing up For showing-it-all violence:
For reporting-after-the-fact violence:
A final word. If your scenes of violence include weapons or specialist fighting techniques, do your research. Some of your readers will know their guns and martial arts. Placing suppressors on pistols that don’t take them or getting your martial arts moves wrong will pull readers out of your story and provide the pedants with excuses to knock stars off your Amazon reviews. Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).
If you’re looking for ways to inject some drama into your novel’s sentences, omitting filter words could be just the ticket. Do so judiciously though. Including them can add texture to mood and voice.
What are filter words?
Filter words are verbs that increase the narrative distance, reminding us that what we’re reading is being told by someone rather than experienced, or shown, through the eyes of the character. Examples include noticed, seemed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, thought, wondered, believed, knew, decided. I see more extensive filtering in books written by less experienced novelists who’ve not yet learned to trust their characters’ voices, who are uncomfortable about playing with devices such as free indirect style, or who are still learning the craft of injecting drama into narrative. I’ve taken some examples from published fiction and introduced filtering so you can see the difference, and how by avoiding filter words the writers have brought immediacy to their narratives:
When filter words distract
Filter words – particularly when they’re used as a narrative staple – tap the reader on the shoulder and say, ‘You’re not in this book. Someone else is experiencing this.’ They’re a reminder that doing is being done. Of course, we as readers know this to be true. Still, there’s nothing like immersing yourself in a character’s journey. Here’s an extreme example I made up:
John realized he needed to tell Marie. He’d wondered about how awful it would be. He’d long felt the weight of guilt bearing down on him, but now he’d decided it was time to let that go. He’d become aware that he’d fallen out of love with her months earlier and thought about what had gone wrong between them as soon as Mark had come into their lives.
He recalled their most recent argument and felt himself shudder. He’d looked on as she’d screamed abuse at him, seen the spittle fly from her mouth. He’d felt sadness at first but that had turned to fear when he’d seen her pick up a knife from the table. The text is horribly laboured – overly cluttered with doing being done. When confronted with a novel filled with filtering, readers will be tempted to skim, which means they might miss something crucial. A worst-case scenario is that they’ll give up because it’s not an enjoyable experience. Now let’s tighten it up by removing the filter words:
John was dreading telling Marie. The guilt had been eating him alive, but he was done with that. He’d fallen out of love with her months earlier, Mark’s entrance into their lives the trigger.
He shuddered, recalling their most recent argument. At first, there’d been only sadness as she screamed abuse at him, spittle flying from her mouth, but that had turned to fear when she’d reached for the knife on the table. We’ve lost none of the detail but now the prose is more emotionally immersive. We can better feel John’s predicament because we’re not repeatedly told that he’s doing the doing. It’s narration that feels less narrated. When filter words add texture I’m not suggesting you ban all filter words. When used intentionally they have a layering effect that can enrich a novel.
The Mackintosh example above is in first person. I think my filtered version works; it’s just different. Or perhaps it would be stronger with only one of the filters. Either way, one might argue that it imparts a deeper sense of the character’s scouring the envelope for clues. I still prefer Mackintosh’s approach because I like my crime fiction on the nose, but the experiment demonstrates that filter words aren’t wrong or right, but rather devices you can use to play with the reader’s experience of your story and the characters moving around within it. Here’s an example from Philip Prowse’s Hellyer’s Trip, p. 194:
Then the interrogation ceased. He knew he should have been scratching lines on the cell walls to mark the passing of time. But what was the point? He wasn’t the Count of effing Monte Cristo.
Prowse uses a filter word here: knew. He then follows through with free indirect style to close the narrative distance and take us right inside the character’s head while still maintaining a third-person viewpoint. So let’s look at what happens when we remove ‘He knew’.
Then the interrogation ceased. He should have been scratching lines on the cell walls to mark the passing of time. But what was the point? He wasn’t the Count of effing Monte Cristo.
I think the unfiltered version works very well but it does change the feel of the writing. Gone is the sense of deliberation. All four sentences are immediate. To my ear, the rhythm accelerates. And although there’s a feel of telling with the inclusion of ‘He knew’ in the published version, there’s also an increased sense of despondency, as if the character has had time to think this over and arrive at this knowledge. I mentioned character voice above. Here are two examples from Play Dead by David Rosenfelt:
When the movie is over, I realize I haven’t called Karen to ask if she can put me in touch with Keith Franklin. (p. 111)
Rosenfelt’s writing is tight. He never drops a beat. When he uses a filter word it’s with intention. Those who’ve read the Andy Carpenter series will know that this fictional attorney’s voice drips with a delicious acerbity, and the character thinks, acts and speaks with purpose. When we’re told he realizes something it’s because the author wants us to have a sense of dawning awareness, not because he couldn’t be bothered to cast the sentence in a way that avoided it.
I’m so pissed at Vince that I don’t talk to him for the twenty-minute ride to our destination. He spends most of the time whistling and listening to the Mets game; I don’t think my silent treatment is bringing him to his knees. (p. 163)
Most of the time, Rosenfelt avoids filter words: ‘I’m so pissed …’ not ‘I feel so pissed …’; ‘He spends most of the time …’ not ‘I listen to him …’. However, he chooses to tag ‘I don’t think’ onto the beginning of the final sentence rather than going with something like ‘My silent treatment isn’t bringing him to his knees.’ And, actually, the protagonist’s thinking is what deepens the voice and the immediacy. Summing up To keep your prose tight, look out for filter words that tell of doing being done. Then consider whether a gentle recast without them will improve your prose. How does the revised text make you feel? Is the meaning still clear? Is the mood you’re seeking evident? If the prose feels more dramatic and immersive, you’ve done your novel and your readers a favour. If you lose something in the revision, like voice, mood or intention, reintroduce your filters at the appropriate points.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. Here’s how to use them in your fiction writing.
What do action beats do?
Action beats enrich characters’ voices by telling us about their emotions, their movements and their intentions while they’re speaking. They can even tell us who’s speaking and whether their speech is reliable or not. And they can ensure that readers don’t become bored. In that sense, we can think of them as alternative narrative ‘voices’ that enrich our perceptions of, or engagement with, the characters. 1. The voice breaker Long chunks of dialogue can be off-putting. Action beats can act as rhythm moderators that break up the speech and its tagging.
2. The emotional voice Action beats can be mood indicators. In real life, we express what we’re feeling or sensing – for example, sadness, pain and frustration – with our bodies as much as our voices. Emotions manifest physically. In fiction, complementary action beats can enrich the reader’s understanding of character emotions but without clumsy dialogue tags or adverbial modifiers that distract from the dialogue. Here are some examples:
3. The physical voice Perhaps you’ve heard of the term ‘talking heads syndrome’. When there’s a lot of dialogue, the reader can end up dislocated from the environment, as if the characters are speaking in a vacuum or floating in white space. In ‘The Dreaded “Talking Heads Syndrome”’, writer James Boyle discusses an example from a writer in his critique group: ‘... [they] wrote a scene for a mystery story in which a detective is arguing with her boss. Though somewhat trite, the dialogue was realistic and believable, but there was virtually no description of their surroundings, no description of how the characters react to their environment.’ Action beats ground the dialogue by quickly giving it physicality – a geographical region, a room, a time of day, the weather conditions, even a body. They keep the reader grounded in the scene, which helps retain immersion. Here are a few more examples:
4. The alternative voice What a character says via dialogue and what they mean or think might be very different. Action beats can act as an alternative voice that indicates reticence or unreliability. They say what the character can’t or won’t. The examples below show you how it works:
‘I swear, I’m not going to tell anyone about this.’ I rubbed my hand over the back of my jeans pocket, feeling for the wire.
Margot relaxed her grip on the knife and pushed herself against me. I flinched at the stench of acrid sweat and stale smoke as she tucked her head into the side of my neck. ‘Promise you’ll never leave me,’ she said. ‘Never.’ I sized up the door and the window. ‘I love you. We’ll always be together.’ The window looked flimsier, jumpable. 5. The voice indicator Action beats and dialogue run on from each other because they’re connected. That means we can use beats instead of tags; they tell the reader who’s speaking. Once more, I've given you some examples below:
How to lay out action beats and dialogue Because action beats relate to dialogue, we run them on rather than creating a paragraph return. Here’s an example from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (p.125):
Mma Ramotswe stiffened. If Rra Pekwane had killed somebody she would have to make it quite clear that the police should be called in. She would never dream of helping anybody conceal a murderer. [New para: Description]
‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked. [New para: Dialogue > tag] Mma Pekwane lowered her voice. ‘He has stolen a car.’ [...] [New para: Action beat > dialogue] Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Do men really think they can fool us that easily?’ she said. ‘Do they think we’re fools?’ [New para: Action beat > dialogue > tag > dialogue] ‘I think they do,’ said Mma Pekwane. [New para: Dialogue > tag] How to punctuate and format actions beats Before the dialogue The action beat ends with a full point. An opening speech mark follows. The first word of the dialogue takes a capital letter.
Note that I’ve styled this with single quotation marks, but doubles might be your preference, especially if you’re writing in US English. After the dialogue The dialogue finishes with a full point followed by a closing speech mark. The first word of the action beat takes a capital letter.
Again, I’ve used single quotation marks, but doubles are fine too. It’s a style choice. Within the dialogue You have several choices about how to handle this depending on where the beat goes and what punctuation style you choose. Example 1: Mid-sentence In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue mid-sentence, which lends emphasis to the word ‘This’. If you’re writing in British English style, you might prefer spaced en dashes and single quotation marks. This is how it looks:
If you’re writing in US English style, you might go with closed-up em dashes and double quotation marks. This is how it looks:
Notice the lack of initial capital letters and the omission of commas in both examples. Example 2: Between complete sentences In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue between sentences. This is how it works:
Notice that because the sentences in the dialogue are complete, we punctuate and capitalize according to the Before the dialogue and After the dialogue examples above. Overuse, repetition and cliché As is always the case with good writing, devices such as action beats, free indirect speech, dialogue tags, and anaphora work best when the reader can’t identify a writing pattern. Instead, mix things up so that your reader doesn’t guess which literary tool’s coming. Pay attention to whether you repeat particular action beats, particularly clichéd ones. If your characters often purse their lips, furrow their brows, rake their hands through their hair, spit on the ground, or roll their eyes while they’re speaking, it’s time to think of alternative ways to express despair, disgruntlement or annoyance. Summing up Use action beats to enrich the emotionality of your characters’ speech and add interest to your writing. Think about how they can anchor the dialogue in a physical space, and whether they’ll provide an alternative to a speech tag so we know who’s saying what. However, watch out for oft-repeated phrases that turn beats from pop to pattern. Cited sources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and an Associate Member of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
Adverbs and adverbial phrases sometimes get a bit of a pummelling, and yet they needn’t intrude and shouldn’t be removed indiscriminately. An adverb is no more likely to spoil a sentence than a poorly chosen adjective or noun.
Use them purposefully in your writing when they bring clarity, but remove them when they create clunk.
Are there rules? You won’t find any in this article, just common-sense guidance to help beginner writers make informed decisions.
The fiction writer – and the fiction editor – who takes a formulaic approach to the treatment of adverbs is heading for trouble. A note on form Not all adverbs end in –ly (e.g. backwards, inside) and not all words ending in –ly are adverbs (e.g. deadly is an adjective and anomaly is a noun). That’s one good reason not to eradicate all –ly words from your writing. To work out whether a word or phrase is behaving adverbially, focus on what it’s modifying not on how it’s spelled. Verb and adverbs – a quick refresher A verb is a doing word; it describes a physical or mental action or state of being.
An adverb is a word that describes a verb (just as an adjective describes a noun).
An adverbial phrase behaves in the same way but uses two or more words to describe the verb (or verb phrase).
Clunk: Telling us what we already know from dialogue Here are four examples where the adverb (in bold) attached to the speech tag is redundant because the information in the dialogue does the same job:
These aren’t rules but guidelines. Test it. Remove the adverb and read the sentence aloud. Is the intention still clear from the dialogue you’ve written? If so, great – you can lose the adverb. If it’s not, can you recast the dialogue? Consider the following:
In (1), dialogue and supporting speech tag seem a little flat. In (2), the adverb helps us to understand John’s mood. In (3), we lose the adverb but the mood intention is supplied by the additional dialogue. In (4), the adverb repeats the mood intention. None of above four examples is grammatically incorrect, but (1) is possibly underwritten and (4) is definitely overwritten. Context is everything though. If you’re writing a high-octane crime-thriller scene in which the pace is fast and furious, (1) might just be perfect, (2) and (3) would slow the reader down, and (4) would still be a non-starter. Clunk: Telling us what we already know from the speech tag Here are three examples where the adverb (in bold) is redundant because the verb (in italic) provides the same information:
Beginner writers sometimes trip up with double tells in speech tags because they’re trying not to overuse ‘said’. A replacement verb is introduced but the clarifying adverb (which served to give intention to ‘said’) is left intact even though it’s no longer needed.
‘Said’ is a rather delicious speech tag because it’s almost invisible. (For an examination of tagging, read: ‘Dialogue tags and how to use them in fiction writing’.) Readers are so used to seeing ‘said’ that they slide over it without a glance. And that means they stay immersed in the conversation on the page, which if you’re writing dialogue is exactly where you want them. Clunk: Telling us what we already know from the verb Here are three examples where the adverb or adverbial phrase (in bold) is redundant because the verb (in italic) provides similar information in the narrative:
Slips like these can occur because the writer is still learning to trust their reader. They fear there are too few words or that the description isn’t rich enough. And sometimes writers just run away with themselves, so deeply are they immersed in the world they’ve created and what their characters are experiencing. This is why drafting and redrafting are so important, and why a fresh set of professional eyes can give the writer courage. I hire people to check most of my own writing because I know that even when I’m writing educational non-fiction I’m so desperate to get my point across that I can sometimes end up in a right old tangle! Self-editing is hard – professional editors know this. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re prone to double tells – you’re only human. Instead, cross-check your adverbs against your verbs to make sure you’re not repeating yourself. Clunk: Dragging us away from immediacy Some adverbs like suddenly, immediately and instantly can do the opposite of what's intended. Overuse can make the action less sudden, less instant. I cover this in detail in Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your crime fiction: Advice for new writers. In brief, these adverbs can act like taps on the shoulder that prevent the reader from moving through a story at the same pace as the character. The suddenness of the action is told to us first instead of being experienced by us. Compare these examples. They demonstrate how removing the adverbs can leave the immediacy of events intact.
WITH:
A damp mist had settled but he was snug enough. The parka would keep the edge off until the sun rose. Suddenly, the phone trilled in his pocket, jolting him. WITHOUT: A damp mist had settled but he was snug enough. The parka would keep the edge off until the sun rose. The phone trilled in his pocket, jolting him. WITH: Jimmy immediately slammed on the brake, fighting with the wheel as the car careened around the corner. WITHOUT: Jimmy slammed on the brake, fighting with the wheel as the car careened around the corner. Purposeful adverbs Adverbs, used well, can show motivation, indicate mood, and enrich our imagining of a scene. I love books that tell it straight because every word pushes me forward. David Rosenfelt is a writer who never disappoints. His Andy Carpenter series features a tenacious lawyer with a dry wit. The author’s prose is sharp as a knife. Does he use adverbs? Absolutely, though sparingly and they’re always purpose-filled.
Summing up
Use adverbs when they help your reader understand more than they would have without them. A well-placed adverb or adverbial phrase will help you keep your prose leaner because it will nudge a reader towards imagining the action, the mood of the characters and what their intentions are. If they’re repetitive clutter that add nothing we couldn’t have guessed, get rid of them. If the narrative or dialogue feels flat, head for a thesaurus and find alternative verbs that will bring your prose to life.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you using free indirect speech in your writing? This article provides an overview of what it is and how it can spice up crime fiction.
What is free indirect speech?
In a nutshell, free indirect speech offers the essence of first-person dialogue or thought but through a third-person viewpoint. The character’s voice takes the lead, but without the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, italic, or other devices to indicate who’s thinking or saying what. It’s a useful tool to have in your sentence-level toolbox because:
The table below shows three contrasting third-person narrative styles in action so you can see how free indirect speech works:
It’s also referred to as free indirect style and free indirect discourse.
1. Flexibility and interest Free indirect speech (FIS) is flexible because it can be blended seamlessly with other third-person narrative styles. Let’s say you want to convey information about a character’s physical description, their experiences, and their thoughts – what they think and delivered in the way they’d say it. You could use third-person objective for the description, third-person limited for the experience, and free indirect speech for some of the thought processes. In other words, you have a single narrative viewpoint but styled in different ways. You’re not changing the viewpoint, but rather shifting the distance between the reader and the character. And that can make your prose more interesting. Here’s an example from Val McDermid’s Insidious Intent (p. 14). She begins with a more distant third-person narrator who reports what had been on Elinor Blessing’s mind, and when. Then she shifts to free indirect speech (the bold text). This gives us temporary access to Blessing’s innermost thoughts – her irritation – and her lightly sweary tone, but still in the third-person:
Philip Prowse employs a similar shift in Hellyer’s Trip (p. 194): 2. A leaner narrative FIS is a useful tool when you want to declutter. Direct speech and thoughts are often tagged so that the reader knows who’s speaking/thinking:
With regard to thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with a reader being told that a character thought this or wondered that, but tagging can be interruptive and render your prose overworked and laboured if that’s the only device you use. Imagine your viewpoint character’s in a tight spot – a fight scene with an arch enemy. The pace of the action is lightning quick and you want that to be reflected in how your viewpoint character experiences the scene. FIS enables you to ditch the tags, focus on what’s going on in the character’s head, and maintain a cracking pace. The opening chapter of Stephen Lloyd Jones’s The Silenced contains numerous examples of free indirect speech dotted about. Mallory is being hunted by the bad guys. She’s already disarmed one in a violent confrontation and fears more are on the way. Jones keeps the tension high by splintering descriptions of step-by-step action with free-indirect-styled insights into his protagonist’s deepest thought processes as, ridden with terror, she tries to find a way out of her predicament:
Here’s an excerpt from Lee Child’s The Hard Way (p. 64). Child doesn’t use FIS to close the narrative distance. Instead, he opts to shift into first-person thoughts. Reacher is wondering if he’s been made, and whether it matters:
Some might argue that this is a little clunkier than going down the FIS route, but perhaps he wanted to retain a sense of Reacher’s clinical, military-style dissection of the problem in hand. If Child had elected to use FIS, it might have looked like this: Had they seen him? Of course they had. Close to certainty. The mugger saw him – that’s for damn sure. And those other guys were smarter than any mugger. [...] But had they been worried? No, they’d seen a professional opportunity. That’s all. It’s a good reminder that choice of narrative style isn’t about right or wrong but about intention – what works for your writing and your character in a particular situation. 3. Deeper insight into characters A third-person narrator is the bridge between the character and the reader. As such, it has its own voice. If there’s more than one viewpoint character in your novel, we can learn what we need to know via a narrator but the voice will not be the same as when the characters are speaking in the first person. FIS allows the reader to stay in third-person but access a character’s intimate world view and their voice. It closes the distance between the reader and the character because the bridging narrator is pushed to the side, but only temporarily. That temporary pushing-aside means the writer isn’t bound to the character’s voice, state of mind and internal processing. When the narrator takes up its role once more, the reader takes a step back. Furthermore, there might be times when we need to hear that character’s voice but the spoken word would seem unnatural:
FIS therefore allows a character to speak without speech – a silent voice, if you like. Think about transgressor narratives in particular. If you want to give your readers intimate insights into a perpetrator’s pathology and motivations, but are writing in the third-person, FIS could be just the ticket. Here’s an example from Harlan Coben’s Stay Close (chapter 25). Ken and his partner Barbie are a murderous couple bound together by sadism and psychopathy. Ken is preparing for the capture and torture of a police officer whom he believes is a threat:
This excerpt is from an audiobook. While listening, I could hear how the voice artist, Nick Landrum, used pitch to shift narrative distance. The book’s entire narrative is in the third-person, but Landrum used a higher pitch when presenting the narrator voice. Ken’s dialogue, however, is in a lower pitch, and so is the free indirect speech of this character – we get to hear the essence of Ken even when he’s not speaking out loud. If you’re considering turning your novel into an audiobook, FIS could enrich the emotionality of the telling, and the connection with your listener. A closer look at narrative distance To decide whether to play with free indirect speech, consider narrative distance and the impact it can have on a scene. Look at these short paragraphs, all of which convey the same information. All are grammatically correct but the reader’s experience is different because of the way in which the information is given, and by whom.
Your choice will depend on your intention. Think about your character, their personality, the situation they’re in, which emotions they’re experiencing, and the degree to which you want your reader to intimately connect with them.
Consider the following examples in relation to the table above:
Wrapping up FIS is used across genres, but I think it’s a particularly effective tool in crime writing because of its ability to simultaneously embrace brevity and communicate intimacy. Jon Gingerich sums up as follows: ‘Free Indirect Discourse takes advantage of the biggest asset a first-person P.O.V. has (access) and combines it with the single best benefit of a third-person narrative (reliability). It allows the narrator to dig deep into a character’s thoughts and emotions without being permanently tied to that person’s P.O.V. Done correctly, it can offer the best of both worlds.’ If you haven’t yet played with it, give it a go, especially if you’re looking for ways to trim the fat. 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.
If you’re not sure what a first-person narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your fiction writing, this post is for you.
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved. There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a single character. And to complicate things, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why. POV can be tricky and my aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations and build up and outwards. Why should you bother nailing POV? Pro editors and experienced writers agree on one thing: it’s worth the beginner author’s time to understand POV so that they can make decisions about which to use, where, and why. Consider the following:
Point of view: What are the options?
There are multiple ways in which to narrate a novel. Some are more popular than others, and some easier to master. What you choose will shape not only the story you tell but also your readers’ understanding of it. The options are as follows:
First-person POV First-person narrative POVs are the most intimate, the most immediate, but they’re less flexible. The pronouns used are ‘I’ and ‘we’. The reader is privy to an individual character’s thoughts, emotions and experiences, all told through a distinctive voice. We can only see, hear, smell and feel what the character sees, hears, smells and feels. We are compelled to move through the story knowing only what they know, and at their pace. However, used throughout an entire novel, from on character only, it can be problematic for the following reasons:
Example: Not relying on ‘I’ In To Kill a Mockingbird (p. 5), Harper Lee keeps ‘I’ to a minimum and yet the prose oozes with first person. Note in particular how the voice is rich and distinct, rather than the more neutral tone we’d expect from third-person objective narration.
Because Lee doesn’t append ‘I’ plus a verb to much of the prose, we are given a shown narrative that we can experience rather than being told how the narrator experienced the world being described. Compare it with the ‘I’-heavy made-up example below and consider how the narrator’s told experience keeps the reader at a distance.
I placed my hand on the rusty handle and tugged, but the old oak door refused to give way to me. I heard a rustling sound behind me and turned my head. I spotted movement in the inky shadows and felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle with terror as I realized I wasn’t alone.
Let’s rewrite this with a less invasive first-person narration in which the reader can experience the action as it unfolds. The handle was rusty against my palms as I tugged but the old oak door refused to give. A rustling came from behind and I turned. A shape flitted in the inky shadows and the skin on the back of my neck prickled. I wasn’t alone. Example: Sustaining interest with other interpretations In The Word is Murder (p. 208), author Anthony Horowitz is one of the characters! The viewpoint is first person (his). The author is like a floating camera; we see the protagonist – the detective (Hawthorne) who solves the crime – through Horowitz’s eyes as he accompanies him to interviews with suspects and on visits to crime scenes. The author-character offers his own theories, even pursues his own lines of investigation, and interjects with stories about his life and career. This adds interest but, ultimately, it’s the detective who grounds the crime story, brings reliability to the narrative, and drives the novel forward; it’s through him that we access the procedural elements and the answer to whodunnit. Here’s an excerpt:
Recommendation First-person narratives introduce depth and explain motivations but can be difficult to sustain if not sufficiently interesting and there’s too much told narrative. Watch out for filter words if you think you’re over-telling. Consider whether your whole novel needs to be in first person. Perhaps limiting this approach to specific characters in dedicated chapters would be more effective. If you decide to stick with first person throughout, think about voice and how your viewpoint character (and therefore the reader) will discover the how, when and why of the story at an engaging pace. And, finally, if you’re basing your whole novel in the first person, be cautious about using the present tense throughout. The past might give you more flexibility, particularly if you’re writing action-heavy scenes where, in reality, the character wouldn’t have time to give much thought to the consequences and motivations of their behaviour. Cited sources and related 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.
Sentence length can affect tension. This post looks at how overwriting can mar the pace of a novel and frustrate a reader, and how less can sometimes be more.
Around eighty per cent of the books that end up in my editing studio are in the crime fiction genre.
One of the most common problems I encounter is overwriting. That’s not because the authors are poor writers. It’s because they’re nervous writers. It takes a lot of hard graft to put enough words on a page to make a book. Yet it takes an equal amount of courage to remove them ... or some of them. ‘What if the reader just doesn’t get it?’ ‘What if they’ve forgotten what I told them above?’ ‘What if I haven’t provided enough detail?’ ‘What if I just love both ways I’ve said that?’ These are the kinds of questions that result in anxious authors bulking up their prose. In a bid to help you trim the fat, I’m going to explore the following:
Trusting your reader The issue is sometimes one of trust – in the author’s own writing and in the reader’s ability to fill in the gaps. Some genres of fiction lend themselves well to more flowery prose that goes off at a tangent for a moment, a little narrative indulgence for the purpose of artistry or even titillation. Crime fiction, however, is all about the page turn. That doesn’t mean that the description isn’t rich, but there is an expectation of forward momentum. Avid readers of the genre love it for the thrill of the ride. Great characterization is key, of course. We want the protagonist to draw us in, the antagonist to pique our curiosity, and the supporting cast to deepen the picture, but ultimately we want to know whodunnit. And that means we want words that help us understand what’s happening, why, where, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, why it’s being done, and how it feels. And we only need to be told once. We might need a little clarifying nudge here and there but we’re capable of extracting a lot with less than you might think. Feisty fragments and snappy shorties If you’re trying to evoke tension in your reader, short sentences and fragments can be very effective. Look at the following examples and notice how the authors keep their narratives lean. Here’s an excerpt from Gone Bad by JB Turner:
Turner gives us just enough to set the scene – when, where, who and what – but no more. He trusts us to fill in the gaps.
He might have given a more detailed description of the forest – its sounds and smells. He might have delved deeper into Cain’s emotions, or helped us to picture the backpack by detailing the colour, make, number of pockets and zips, and where the ammo was being held. He could have told us, word for word, how Cain loaded the gun, how careful he was, which bullets he used. But he doesn’t. Turner leaves it to us to imagine the woods, to see in our mind’s eye the loading of the rifle, and to sense the cold hard determination of the shooter. And the backpack gets no more than a passing mention, because to do more would slow the pace and act as a distraction. And the result is just right – Goldilocks would approve. Now consider the choppy fragments in Jens Lapidus’s Life Deluxe:
Lapidus loves the colon more than any other author I’ve come across! It’s a hard piece of punctuation but it works because the characters we’re being introduced to lead hard lives. They’re always looking over their shoulders, thinking in short snaps, weighing up what’s in front of them ... and what might be behind.
Lapidus dares to trust us, dares not bore us. And because of, rather than despite, the short sentences and fragmented prose, reading the scene is an immersive experience for the reader. I recall a sense of taut fatigue as I read this book, like I was right there, ever watchful, on my guard. This author’s deliberate punctuation choices and choppy style mean the word count is reduced but the tension is heightened. He doesn’t pad his narrative with purple prose and stage direction. Like Turner, he trusts us to do the work. Damage by dilution Consider your own writing. Leave your draft alone for a few days. Then return to it and see what happens if you take a more reductive approach to a scene. It's all about balance at the end of the day. Not too much but not too little. Howard Mittelmark & Sandra Newman write:
I’m not suggesting you remove information the reader needs to know, but asking you whether there is material your reader doesn’t need to know, material that might bore them or hold them back.
Neither am I suggesting you avoid creating emotive scenes that are high on tension. Rather, might you build this tension with shorter, tighter sentences that demand your reader do some of the work? And I’m not suggesting you should limit every sentence in your book to five words – not at all. I’m suggesting that you might use this technique when you think it would work, when it would push your reader forward, when fewer words – the right words – would work as well or better than more, especially if you know you tend to overwrite. Letting go of what you love For some authors it’s not about trust, but about not wanting to let go. Perhaps you found two delicious ways to say the same thing and now you can’t bear to cut either. Or you constructed a stunning paragraph but it’s interrupting the conflict or the action. In The Magic of Fiction, veteran editor Beth Hill says:
Hill asks authors to grab ‘the liberty to cut words as freely as you added them’ and then to enrich what’s left.
It’s tricky for some beginner writers, I know, but repetition and interruption mean there are redundant words in your writing. And to make your novel sparkle, you need to let go of them because they’re not adding something new, they’re not in the right place, or they’re in the way. Take courage. Try it with and without. You might be surprised.
Cited works and further reading
If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit the Self-publishers page on my website. Try these in particular:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Here are 8 problems to watch out in your writing. Fix these to raise your game and lift your writing to the next level more quickly. Attending to them at draft stage will reduce your third-party editing costs further down the line.
1. Rushing to publish rather than hushing to polish
Some new authors are so desperate to publish that they omit the drafting stage. Hush time means putting the book aside for a while and revisiting and self-editing with fresh eyes. If you don’t go through the drafting stage, you’re less likely to spot problems with plot, pace, readability and repetition. And that means your book will not be ready for the later stages of editing like copy-editing and proofreading. 2. Overwriting Too much detail Some beginner writers don’t trust their readers to fill in the gaps. This results in writing that gives too much detail. The narrative becomes laboured, boring even. There are some excellent examples in Christina Delay’s 5 Steps to Avoid Overwriting (Jami Gold blog); it’s what Gold calls ‘giving too much stage direction’: Imagine if an author described a character traveling from a store to their home by listing every single action: ‘She inserted the key into the ignition. Turned the key. Waited for the engine to engage. Slipped the engine into reverse. Expertly maneuvered the car out of its parking spot …’ Gold recommends getting straight to the point – unless, of course, something important happens in the detail that’s key to moving the story forward. If it’s just detail that mimics the mundanity of real life, strip it out. Repetition Watch out for repetition, especially ‘wow’ words. If Jo thunders down the hallway, her face like thunder, you have a problem. If the reader is told that Mike is ‘in agony’ and ‘agonized’ several times in one paragraph, trim the fat (and think of some synonyms!). High-intensity scenes of fear, danger, desire or confusion are those most prone to repetition and over-explanation in beginner writing, usually because the author is worried that the reader might not understand what the character’s experiencing. Gold calls these ‘emotionally overwrought passages of purple prose’. When drafting, consider creating a list that features key moments of disclosure and emotion/response. By mapping these moments, you can see whether the descriptions lie in close proximity to each other, and whether you’ve already provided enough detail earlier in the book. Then you can cut accordingly. Less is more. Telling twice Telling twice is another consequence of not trusting the reader to fill in the gaps.
The bold text in the example above simply repeats what we already know and it’s therefore superfluous. It’s another issue to watch out for at self-editing stage. Removing this kind of detail makes the writing leaner and sharper. 3. Logic flop Logic flop happens when writers try to avoid conjunctions (probably because they’ve been told that conjunctions are boring and shouldn’t be overused). This can lead to grammatical hiccups that disfigure the writing and trip up the reader.
In the first example, we have a character seemingly doing two things at once – running through one place while he’s making his way inside another. And to the discerning reader, the first phrase will even seem to modify the second (Roy bolted into the bedroom in a manner of running barefoot along the corridor). The second, edited version introduces a conjunction that brings logic and clarity to the sentence. Conjunctions are a perfectly natural way to join connecting action clauses that happen one after the other, and don’t need to be avoided simply on principle. Don't be afraid to embrace them! 4. Reluctance to use contractions The use of contractions isn’t always appropriate, particularly when the writer wants to introduce formality (e.g. in a historical setting or in academic non-fiction) or emphasis. However, in contemporary novel writing, the narrative can feel laboured if contractions are excluded, especially in dialogue. In real life, people don’t say things like ‘we are going’ and ‘I would have liked to’ so it’s often better to offer the contracted form. If in doubt, say the words out loud. If the likes of ‘we’re going’ and ‘I would’ve liked to’ sound more natural in the context of your book, then use contractions. Readers won’t notice if you do, but they might stumble if you don’t. 5. Overuse of exclamation marks Take care not to overuse exclamation marks. Too many can be distracting and overwhelm the text. Exclamation marks can detract from the gravity of a statement, making it sound upbeat when a different mood was intended – tension, fear, anger, danger. If you’ve used the right words to convey the mood, the exclamation mark will often be superfluous. If you do decide that an exclamation mark is necessary, don’t use more than one. Compare the following:
Read them out loud and decide which one best conveys the speaker’s disbelief. I think the first does the job perfectly well. The second introduces a light-heartedness that may or may not be appropriate. The third is overkill. 6. Speech tagging problems – sighing, smiling, laughing Beginner authors can be reluctant to overuse he said/she said constructions, even though they’re the most discreet way of tagging. Take a look at these examples; the bold versions are clean, effective examples of dialogue tags that won’t trip up the reader.
I'm not saying you should only ever use 'said' – just apply a little caution! 7. Formatting too early Focus on making your book look beautiful after the bulk of the editing has been done. Fancy fonts and heavily designed text are difficult to work with at editing stage. Furthermore, the layout might have to be reworked if there are major additions or deletions to the text during structural editing and copy-editing. Word’s styles palette is sufficient prior to the design stage. You (or your copy-editor) can introduce consistency to the different elements of the book (chapter titles, headings, quoted matter, main text, captions etc.) in a way that’s clear and simple. 8. Unrealistic expectations of what’s possible in one pass Some beginner writers think that one pass – a ‘final proofread’ carried out by a third-party professional – is enough to guarantee absolute perfection. It’s not. The mainstream publishing industry doesn’t believe it’s possible, and nor should the independent author. If you hire a professional to proofread or copy-edit your Word file, and that file has not been through previous rounds of extensive and meticulous editorial revision, there will likely be thousands of amendments:
Don’t expect your editor or proofreader to say, ‘I’ve made 8,000 revisions to your document, compiled 67 queries, spotted four problems with character-history consistency, noticed two character-surname changes, offered 200 suggestions for alternative wording, and I guarantee that, in spite of this, I have not missed one single literal or contextual error.’ Get as many fresh eyes on your work as you can afford. If budget’s an issue, that’s fine, but make sure your expectations reflect this. Good luck with the self-editing process! More resources
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. 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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