Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
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The Editing Blog: for Editors, Proofreaders and Writers

FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

Creative writing tips: With thriller writer Andy Maslen

23/11/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to thriller writer Andy Maslen about the creative-writing process.
Creative writing tips: With thriller writer Andy Maslen
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​Listen to find out more about
  • Writing a series vs standalone novels
  • Tips on developing a coherent series
  • Starting afresh with a new set of characters in a new environment
  • Top creative-writing tips for beginner author
  • Recommended writing-craft resources
  • Back-cover blurb and Amazon blurbs
  • Cover design

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

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

​Music Credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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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When to indent text: Laying out narrative and dialogue in fiction

27/7/2020

21 Comments

 
This post explains when and how to indent your narrative and dialogue according to publishing-industry convention.
To indent or not to indent: A quick guide to laying out narrative and dialogue in fiction
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The purpose of first-line indents
Each new paragraph signifies a change or shift of some sort ... perhaps a new idea, piece of action, thought or speaker, even a moderation or acceleration of pace. Still, the prose in all those paragraphs within a section is connected.

Paragraph indents have two purposes in fiction:

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

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

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

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

NARRATIVE LAYOUT
The following example is taken from Part 5, Chapter 2, of Christopher Priest’s Inverted World (p. 287, 2010):
​
  • Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
  • The first line is not indented.
  • The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.
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And here's an example from Part 2, Chapter 6, p. 147, which shows how the layout works the same after a section break:
​
  • Paragraph 1 is the first in the section.
  • The first line is not indented.
  • The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.
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Even if an author chooses to include a design feature such as a dropped capital (sometimes called a drop cap), it's standard for that letter to be full out, as shown in the following example from To Kill a Devil (John A. Connell, p. 6, Nailhead Publishing, 2020):

  • Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
  • The capital letter on the first and second lines is not indented.
  • The first line of the paragraph that follows it (2) is indented.
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DIALOGUE LAYOUT
​The same applies even if the chapter or section starts with dialogue, as in this excerpt from David Rosenfelt's Dog Tags (p. 192, Grand Central, 2010):

  • Paragraph 1 is the first in the chapter.
  • The first line is not indented.
  • The first lines of the paragraphs that follow it (2) are indented.
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Body text: dialogue and narrative
The example below from Blake Crouch's Recursion (p. 4, Macmillan, 2019) shows how the indentation works in the body text when there's a mixture of dialogue and narrative.

  • Regardless of whether the prose is narrative or reported speech, the text is indented.
  • The convention applies regardless of line spacing.
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IMPACT OF LINE SPACING
Even if you've elected to set your book file with double line spacing (perhaps at the request of a publisher, agent or editor), the indentation convention applies. Here's the Recursion example again, tweaked to show what it would look like: 
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Indenting text that follows special elements
Your novel might include special elements such as letters, texts, reports, lists or newspaper articles. Authors can choose to set off these elements with wider line spacing, but how do we handle the text that comes after?

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

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

  1. REPORT: The Outsider, Stephen King, Hodder, 2018, p. 252
  2. LIST: Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Canongate, 2002, p. 146
  3. TRANSCRIPT: Snap, Belinda Bauer, Black Swan, 2018, p. 36
  4. RECORD: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline, Arrow, 2012, p. 300
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It's not the case that full-out text is never used, or can't be used, but fiction readers are used to conventions. When a paragraph isn't indented, they assume it's a new section, which creates a tiny disconnect.

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

​My preference would be to indent 'I touch my finger [...]' because that text is part of the scene, not a new section.
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How to create a first-line indent in Word
Let's finish with some quick guidance on creating first-line indents. 

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

  • Open the Home tab (1).
  • Select your text.
  • Move your cursor to the ruler and select the top marker (2).
  • Drag it to the position of your preferred indent.
  • Right-click on the style in the ribbon (3).
  • Select 'Update Normal to Match Selection'.​
OR​
  • Open the Home tab (1).
  • Open the Styles pane via the arrow icon (4).
  • Select your text.
  • Move your cursor to the ruler and select the top marker (2).
  • Drag it to the position of your preferred indent.
  • Go to the Styles pane (5) and right-click on the style (6).
  • Select 'Update Normal to Match Selection'.​ ​
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OR
  • Open the Home tab (1).
  • Open the Styles pane via the arrow icon (4).
  • Go to the Styles pane (5) and right-click on the style (6).
  • Select 'Modify' to open the Modify Styles pane (A).
  • Click on the Format button in the bottom left-hand corner (B).
  • Select Paragraph to open the Paragraph pane (C).
  • Make sure you're in the Indents and Spacing tab.
  • Look at the Indentations section in the middle. Make sure 'First line' is selected under 'Special:' (D).
  • Adjust the first-line indent according to your preference (E).
  • Click OK (F).
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Create a new style for your full-out paragraphs using the same tools.
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  • If using the ruler, ensure the markers (2) are aligned, one on top of the other.
  • If using the styles pane, adjust the indent spacing (E) to zero.

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

The Editing Podcast: Moving from traditional to indie publishing, with John A. Connell

22/6/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to Barry Award-nominated thriller writer John A. Connell about moving from Berkley (Penguin USA) to independent publishing.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 12
  • RATE AND REVIEW

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

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

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

Editing bites
  • Stephen King (video): Masterclass, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2012
  • Joanna Penn: Video marketing for authors
  • Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula
  • International Thriller Writers
  • Mystery Writers of America
  • Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula
​​
Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
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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The Editing Podcast: How to write a military story that sells

15/6/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat with Brunella Costagliola, a specialist military writer and editor, about what makes a compelling military story.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 11
  • RATE AND REVIEW

Listen to find out more about:
  • What makes a good military book
  • Style guides for editing military books
  • Common problems authors face when writing military books
  • Fact-checking resources for military writers

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

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

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
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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The Editing Podcast: Editing erotica and adult fiction, S4E10

8/6/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to fellow editor Maya Berger about working on erotica and adult fiction.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 10
  • RATE AND REVIEW

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

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

Editing bites
  • The Book Designer
  • The Hot Copy Podcast
​
Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
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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The Editing Podcast: 6 ways to use audio for book promotion, S4E9

1/6/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss the growth of audio in the book world, and how using sound creates reader engagement and helps build a fan base.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 9

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

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

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
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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The Editing Podcast: Do you need a specialist editor?

25/5/2020

1 Comment

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise discuss whether working with a specialist editor is necessary for all books and every type of editing.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 8

Listen to find out more about:
  • Fiction versus non-fiction
  • The type of editing
  • Subject/genre

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

​Music credit

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

The Editing Podcast: 18 writing-craft blogs for editors and authors, S4E7

18/5/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat about 18 blogs for authors and editors that offer guidance on various aspects of writing craft.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 7

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

Editing bites and other resources
  • ​Cult Pens
  • Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein, Non Basic Stock Line, 2007
​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
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.
0 Comments

How to save money and time with book coaching: The Editing Podcast, S4E4

11/5/2020

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat with book coach and editor Lisa Poisso about honing story craft before embarking on expensive structural and line editing.
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Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 4

Listen to find out more about:
  • Story basics: the Plot Accelerator 
  • Why developmental/structural editing comes after book coaching
  • Genre, viewpoint, tense, character motivation and conflict, plot and subplot, and character arc
  • Book mapping, and avoiding drinking and thinking!
  • Super critiques on steroids: making a story solid
  • The dynamics of book coaching
  • Most common problems authors face
  • Super-critiques

Contacting Lisa Poisso
  • Email: lisa@lisapoisso.com
  • Website
  • Blog
  • Facebook
  • Twitter: @lisapoisso
  • Instagram: lisapoisso
  • Clarity newsletter
​
Editing bites and other resources
  • Moniack Mhor, Creative Writing Centre, Scotland
  • Start writing fiction: Free Open University course

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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Writing a content-marketing book. With John Espirian: The Editing Podcast, S4E3

2/5/2020

0 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to technical writer and editor John Espirian about content marketing, editing and bringing a book to market.
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​Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 3

Listen to find out more about:
  • Content DNA - the book
  • Developing the book's concept: The shape of you
  • Writing the book
  • Tackling the editing process
  • Cover design and branding
  • The benefits of a foreword
  • Content marketing, and why it works
  • Social media focus and email-list building
  • Pricing, marketing and sales
  • Creating an audio book
  • Finding an audience to use as a springboard for business books
  • Building a personal brand that acts as a buffer
  • Targeting clients' problems and offering solutions
  • What is technical writing?
  • Who uses technical writers?

Contacting John Espirian
  • Website
  • Content DNA
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Blog

Editing bites and other resources
  • AgentQuery.com
  • The Tao of Twitter, by Mark Schaefer
  • KNOWN, by Mark Schaefer
  • Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)
  • Col Gray, graphic design and brand design: pixels ink; YouTube​

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery 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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Identifying showing and telling: Thinking in layers to understand reader experience

27/1/2020

7 Comments

 
Are you storytelling-telling? Too much told narrative can force the reader to experience a story through extraneous layers that add clutter rather than clarity. Here’s how to identify one type of told prose and write with more immediacy.
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Narrative distance and the layers of reader experience

There’s a story ... stuff that happens to people and things. We experience it on the page via a narrative voice – this could be a first-, second- or third-person viewpoint.

The closer the reader feels to what’s being narrated, the more immersive the experience.

It can help to think in terms of how many layers readers must travel through to experience the story through a viewpoint character’s lens.

Let’s imagine Joe, a young teen. His journey is unveiled via a third-person past-tense narrator.

The viewpoint style is limited, or close – we can access what Joe can hear, see, smell, touch, feel (his emotions) and think. That accessible information can be either be shown or told.
​
With each approach, the reader pushes through various layers of the story as they are experienced by Joe.
EXAMPLE: A TOLD NARRATIVE
     Joe heard the sounds of grunts coming from his mother’s bedroom. He pushed the door open and looked on in shock as his mother screeched and pulled the duvet over herself and their neighbour Mr Michelson.
     He looked at the bed and saw them both lying there naked. She started talking fast but he couldn’t make out what she was saying because everything felt confused in his head. He wondered where Dad was, and felt worried about Christmas and the trip to Grandma’s. And what about soccer practice with Mr Michelson’s son, Justin? he thought. Then he remembered how Abbie’s parents had got divorced, and how awful she’d said it had been.

 EXAMPLE: A SHOWN NARRATIVE 
     The grunts were coming from his mother’s bedroom. Joe pushed the door open. His mother screeched and pulled the duvet over herself and-- 
     And their neighbour Mr Michelson.
     They were both lying there naked and she started talking fast but the words made no sense – just a wah-wah-wah like Charlie Brown’s teacher in those old TV shows. And where was Dad, and what about Christmas and the trip to Grandma’s and soccer practice with Justin, Mr Michelson’s son, for Christ’s sake? And then there was what happened to Abbie. Her parents had got divorced – a right old bloody stink-up, she’d called it.


Gridding the layers

If we place each unfolding layer of our story in a grid, we can see how much harder the reader has to work to get from start to finish with the told narrative – 23 layers as opposed to 10 with the shown alternative.
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Layers of doing being done: Putting the reader on pause

In the Told column of the grid, notice how much doing being done there is: heard, felt, wondered, saw, thought. Each of those words adds a new layer that puts the reader on pause.

Instead of seeing a bed (and doing it with Joe because he’s the viewpoint character), we see Joe seeing a bed. We’re not focused first and foremost on the bed, but on Joe doing seeing.

That extra layer increases narrative distance, unless that’s the effect you want to achieve, because it’s like a tap on the shoulder, telling us what to do. It screams: Reader, you’re not in this world; you’re just holding a book.

​Limited narrative viewpoint and the reader

When writers choose a limited viewpoint, the reader’s already in the perfect position to know ...
​
  • that when there’s an odour, it’s being smelled
  • that when there’s an object in front of a sighted character’s eyes, it’s being seen
  • that when they’re processing internal questions and ideas, there’s thinking being done
  • and that when emotion is in play, our character is feeling it.

Shown narratives respect this – it’s storytelling. Told narratives overplay it – it’s storytelling-telling!
​
If you think you might be storytelling-telling, try gridding a section of narrative to identify each layer. Then recast to tighten up the prose. Chances are, it’ll be more immediate and immersive.
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.
7 Comments

The Editing Podcast S3E7: How to use en dashes

25/12/2019

2 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss en dashes, or en rules, and how to use them in fiction and non-fiction writing.
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​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 7
​
Find out more about ...
  • Parenthetical use
  • Indicating number spans
  • Placement in dialogue interrupted by narrative description
  • Linking in adjectival compounds
  • Showing faltering speech
  • Indicating a relationship/alternative
  • Profanity

Editing bites
  • Masterclass
  • The Conscious Style Guide ​

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
2 Comments

Tim Storm on editing unearned writing: ​The Editing Podcast

4/12/2019

2 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat with Tim Storm about the concept of unearned writing, and how to craft prose that's authentic and plausible.
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​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 4
​
Find out more about
  • The writer’s responsibility to the reader and the story
  • Story events and character reactions in relation to plausibility and authenticity
  • Salvation events
  • Unnatural character realizations
  • Contrived plot turns
  • Thematic insertions or digressions
  • Turning unearned writing into earned prose
  • Idea flow in non-fiction

Resources related to the show
  • Title Case Converter
  • The Allusionist podcast
  • Storm Writing School
  • Free course from Tim: The Gold Standard Scene: Analyses of Near-Perfect Scenes in Prose Fiction
  • Storm Writing School on Twitter
  • Storm Writing School on Facebook
  • Storm Writing School on Pinterest
  • Writing resources from Louise

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
2 Comments

What is a fiction line critique?

28/10/2019

7 Comments

 
Story-level critiques focus on the big picture – plot, pace, characterization, voice. Line critiques evaluate a book at a micro level, focusing on sentence construction, word choice, and readability. Here’s an overview of what to expect.
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Story first ...
Think of your book as a construction project.

First you lay the foundations and build the walls – writing and redrafting to ensure the structure of your storytelling is sound. It’s where you and your editor (if you have one) focus on the big-picture stuff such as:

  • Plot
  • Pace
  • Characterization
  • Voice
  • Tense choices
  • Viewpoint decisions

At this macro stage, you might end up adding, deleting or shifting sections of your prose.

Some authors do their own structural editing because they’re good at it and have studied story craft via writing courses, groups or books. Others seek professional help, either because they’re at an earlier stage of their authorial journey or because they feel they’re too close to the book to see the problems.

One thing’s for sure – there’s no right or wrong way. Every writer has to make their own choices.

If a full, done-for-you developmental (or structural) edit isn’t the path you take, you might still decide to work with a specialist editor who analyses your book and provides a detailed report on its strengths and weaknesses at story level, and offers suggestions about how to improve your writing.
​
That’s where story-level critiques come into play. You might also hear them called manuscript evaluations and manuscript assessments.
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​Line level second ...
Once the foundations and walls are in place, it’s plastering time – smoothing at sentence level to ensure that a reader’s journey through the pages is satisfying. In a sense, it’s still structural work but at a micro level. This is where you (and your editor if you have one) focus on nuances such as:

  • Viewpoint
  • Spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation
  • Dialogue
  • Narrative readability
  • Character description
  • Thoughts
  • Action beats
  • Shown and told prose
  • Tenses
  • Formatting

Again, some authors do their own line editing because they’re good at it and have studied line craft via writing courses, groups or books. Others seek help.
If a full, done-for-you line- and copyedit isn’t an option, a line critique could be just the ticket.

A line critique, like its story-level sister, is an assessment or evaluation of your story but at sentence level. Your report will include examples from your novel that show what’s holding you back.

​You’ll also be offered suggestions on how you can fix any problems identified. Then you can implement what you learn throughout the rest of your book.
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Critiques are about learning, not criticizing
Some authors are nervous about critiques. Pro editors get it – it can be tough to put your book in the hands of another and ask them to tell you what’s working and what’s not, especially when you’ve put in so much hard work.

The thing to remember is that a critique (whether at sentence or story level) is not about criticism. It’s about identifying strengths and weaknesses, and offering solutions so that you can move forward to the next stage of your publishing journey with confidence.

And critiques are a long-term investment. They enable you to improve your self-editing skills. That’ll save you time and money further down the line because anyone else you commission will have less to do.

The line critique: the process and the report
What follows is an overview of the way I handle line critiques. Every editor has their own process, but the basic principles will be similar.

1. The service: Mini line critique
Authors email a Word file comprising, say, 5K words of their novel. It’s in a writer’s best interest to include a section that includes both narrative and dialogue. That way we can assess whether both are working effectively.

Furthermore, if there are multiple viewpoint characters in the novel, and different viewpoint styles and tenses have been used, a sample that represents these choices will enable us to provide a report that evaluates the success of those decisions.

2. First readthrough
The first stage of the process is a complete readthrough of the 5K words. It’s not about micro-level reporting, not yet. Rather, we’re getting a sense of the author’s writing style, the characters’ voices, and the flow of the narrative.

 3. Second pass: Identification tagging
We go back to the beginning and start the analytical process, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the author’s line craft.
 
We work through the sample, tagging sections of the text with Word’s commenting tool. The author won’t see these tags – they’re just a tool that allow us to locate the sections we’ll pull from the text and into the report for demonstration.
​
The text in the image below has been blurred in order to respect confidentiality, but you can see the tagging process in the margins of just one page of one of my reports.
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TAGGING IN A MINI FICTION LINE CRITIQUE
4. Writing the report
Now that we’ve tagged the sample, we can create a report. Line critiques are usually between 20 and 30 pages long, depending on the length of the text samples the editor is pulling in and offering recasts for. 

Each report is divided into sections that address the strengths and weaknesses of the following:

NARRATIVE
  • Clarity of narrative viewpoint
  • Tense choice
  • Showing and telling
  • Character description
  • Filter words
  • Action beats
  • Sentence length, flow and rhythm
  • Adverbs and adverbial phrases
  • Tentative language in relation to a told narrative

DIALOGUE AND THOUGHTS
  • Voice, mood and intention
  • Dialogue layout
  • Dialogue punctuation
  • Effectiveness of dialogue tags
  • How thoughts are styled

TECHNICAL ELEMENTS
  • Spelling
  • Punctuation
  • Grammar
  • Syntax

FORMATTING
  • Pre-proof layout recommendations
  • Using Word’s styles tool

The tags in the sample allow editors to search for and locate the text we want to use as examples of good practice and to highlight areas with improvement potential.

​Here’s an example of one of those sections (I’ve disguised the identifying traits of the original in order to respect the author’s confidentiality):
CLARITY OF NARRATIVE VIEWPOINT
What worked
You held narrative viewpoint well and I commend your decision to separate the two viewpoint characters with chapters. This ensured the narrative voices remained distinct.
 
Using a present-tense second-person POV for your transgressor and a past-tense first-person POV for your protagonist worked extremely well. Have you read Complicity by Iain Banks? He does the same thing! It’s effective because it makes us wonder whether that first-person narrative is reliable, though you don’t give the game away until the denouement, which I loved.
 
The second-person POV also lent a rather creepy voyeurism to the transgressor chapters, and though these were demanding to read, you did give your readers plenty of breathing space with the contrasting protagonist chapters. Nicely done!
 
What could be improved
Your protagonist narrative was laboured at times because of the abundance of ‘I’. Overusing this pronoun can lead to an overly told narrative in which the reader is forced to experience everything via the character’s experience of it. This can be distancing. I’m not suggesting you remove every instance of ‘I’ plus the verb – not at all. Instead, consider toning it down and removing some of the filter words so that the reader can experience some of the doing with the character rather than through the character. Here are two examples and suggested fixes:

  • ORIGINAL (p. 14): I looked up and saw a shooting star zipping through the night sky.
  • SUGGESTED EDIT: I looked up. A shooting star zipped through the night sky.
 
Notice how I’ve suggested removing ‘I saw’, which feels redundant given that we already know that Marcus is looking up, and only tells us of more seeing being done. Instead, you can focus the reader’s attention on the immediacy of what’s seen once the looking up’s happened: the movement of the shooting star. That allows you to show readers what Marcus sees rather than telling them.

  • ORIGINAL (p. 24): I scuttled towards the garage and hid behind a large oak tree. I heard the sound of Phil’s boots on the gravel underfoot and smelled the sharp aroma of his awful aftershave. I realized he was close, about two feet away from me.
  • SUGGESTED EDIT: I scuttled towards the garage and hid behind a large oak. Gravel crunched. Rank aftershave tickled my nose. Phil was close, a couple of feet at most.
 
Notice how in the original there’s a lot of telling of what ‘I’ did. I like your use of a strong verb to introduce tension – ‘scuttled’ – but that tension dissipates with the more distant told narrative that follows. There’s telling of sound, smell, and realization. I’ve suggested you tighten up the paragraph by retaining the original anchor in which Marcus hides; perhaps follow that with a shown narrative that, again, allows the reader to experience the sounds and smells at the same time as Marcus rather than through his ears, nose and brain’s doing hearing, smelling and realizing.
 
Recommendation
Bear in mind that a first-person narrative, by definition, puts the reader in the character’s head. If you keep that in mind, you’ll save yourself a lot of work because you’ll need fewer words on the page.
 
Have a read through all the protagonist chapters and consider where you can tighten up the prose in order to limit some of the telling of doing being done. You can still anchor the first-person viewpoint with ‘I’ in places, of course, but you might recast some of writing that follows with shown action. 

5. Wrapping up and emailing the report
When the report is complete, we save it as a PDF and email it to the author. PDF is the tool of choice for many editors because it can’t be edited. If the client wishes to refer back to it during future writing projects, they can do so safe in the knowledge that nothing’s been accidentally removed.

Summing up
If you want to hone your line craft and polish your book at sentence level, but a full line- and copyedit is beyond your budget, consider a more affordable alternative: the line critique.

Think of a critique as another form of authorial development, of book-craft study. And what you learn from your critique won’t be something you can apply just to the current book. It’s a tool you can use with every story you write thereafter.
​
And here’s a free booklet that outlines the various levels of editing. Just click on the cover to get your copy (and, no, you don’t have to give me your email address!).
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Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
7 Comments

British English and US English in your fiction, and why you should be consistent

21/10/2019

0 Comments

 
It doesn’t matter a jot to me which kind of English an author wants to write in. What does matter is their readers' expectations and perceptions, and being consistent.

​This free booklet shows you how to stay on track. To get it, head over to the Grammar and Spelling section of my Resource Centre.
Why you shouldn't mix your Englishes
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.
​
  • Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
  • Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
  • Learn: Books and courses
  • Discover: Resources for authors and editors
0 Comments

The Editing Podcast: 10 things an author needs to tell an editor

30/9/2019

0 Comments

 
In this bonus episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat about 10 things an author needs to tell an editor about so that both parties can work out whether they're a good fit.
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Listen here ...

​Find out more about ...
  • Word count
  • File format
  • Genre or subject
  • Previous rounds of editing
  • Type of editing required
  • Audience and publishing path
  • Time frame
  • Other published works (online or in print)
  • Sourcing editorial assistance

Mentioned in the show
  • The Editing Podcast, Point of view: On editing erotica. With editor Maya Berger
  • The Editing Podcast, S1E1: The different levels of editing
  • The Editing Podcast, S1E6: What is a sample edit?
  • The Editing Podcast, S2E9: Writing and editing for the web. With Erin Brenner

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
0 Comments

Fact checking. With copyeditor Laura Poole

24/9/2019

3 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk to Laura Poole about the importance of fact checking.
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Listen here ...

Find out more about
  • What a copyediting service includes
  • When fact checking takes place in the editorial process
  • Fiction: place names, historical accuracy, idiom, dates, etymology
  • Non-fiction: people names, obscure terms, place names, dates, protecting author reputation
  • Differences between spot checking and fact checking
  • Fact checking for consistency across series
  • Print versus digital: preventing reputational damage in the long term
  • Tools for fact checking
  • Who’s responsible for fact checking?
  • Effective and sensitive querying of facts in non-fiction
  • Artistic licence with facts in fiction

Related links and resources
  • Laura Poole, Archer Editorial
  • Tool: Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
  • Tool: The Historical Thesaurus of English
  • Tool: Google Ngram Viewer
  • Tool: CIA – The World Factbook
  • Tool: The New Food Lover's Companion (Barron's Cooking Guide)
  • Tool: Research tools for crime and thriller writers
​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
3 Comments

The Editing Podcast: Point of view – editing erotica. With editor Maya Berger

23/9/2019

0 Comments

 
In this bonus episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk to editor Maya Berger about editing erotica.
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Listen here ...
Summary
Find out more about:
  • Why authors shouldn’t fear approaching an editor
  • Why erotica deserves the same editorial rigour as any other genre
  • The rise of romance and erotica in mainstream publishing
  • How to find an editor who specializes in erotic fiction
  • Subgenres and the benefits of specialist editing: LGBTQ, kink and taboo (BDSM and powerplay dymanics)
  • Sensitivity reading: representing voice and identity

Related links and resources
  • Maya Berger (website): What I Mean To Say
  • Maya Berger (CIEP listing)
  • Directory of Editorial Services: Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP)
  • Finding an editor (blog by Louise)
  • Finding an editor (podcast): The Editing Podcast, S1E10, How to Find an Editor
  • Copyediting and proofreading pornography and erotica (blog by Louise)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
0 Comments

Tenses in fiction writing: Present, past, past perfect and habitual past

16/9/2019

16 Comments

 
You have a choice when it comes to tense in your fiction’s narrative. Here’s an overview of the tenses you’ll most likely be working with, and some guidance on the benefits and challenges of each.
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The present tense
Here’s an overview of the present tense, with basic examples:

  • Simple present: I write a novel; he writes a novel
  • Present progressive (also called present continuous): I am writing a novel; he is writing a novel
  • Present perfect: I have written a novel; he has written a novel
  • Present perfect progressive: I have been writing a novel; he has been writing a novel

The present is immediate, and that right-nowness forces the reader to stick close to the viewpoint character. We’re in the moment with them. That’s why it appeals to some fiction authors, and why others find it restrictive.
​
With second-person viewpoints, the present tense is intensely voyeuristic, invasive even. Here’s an excerpt from Iain Banks’s Complicity (p. 60). This is a transgressor narrative with a difference – the narrator is anonymous, at least until later in the novel:
     You stand up, reach forward and take the neatly folded handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket, flick it open and wipe the blade of the Marttiini on it until the knife is clean. The knife comes from Finland; that’s why the name has such a strange spelling. It hasn’t occurred to you before, but its nationality seems appropriate now and even funny in a grim sort of way; it’s Finnish and you’ve used it to finish Mr Persimmon.
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And in this example from a later chapter (p. 90), we’re back with the protagonist. Here, the main narrative tense is present. The viewpoint is first-person:
The next day I scrounge a Lambert & Butler off Rose in the Foreign News section, smoke it at my desk and get a real hit off it, then feel disgusted with myself and vow that’s the last one I’m going to smoke.

RECOMMENDATION
​
The present tense is great if you want to shorten the distance between the reader and the viewpoint character. 

Present tense works particularly well for short fiction because space is limited. I use it often in my own shorts and flashes because it enables me to pack an immersive punch quickly. 

However, it’s tricky to manage if there are multiple viewpoint-character chapters or sections, all operating in the present tense. You’ll need to keep a close eye on the timelines so that the reader’s clear on what ‘now’ really means. If your plot twist hinges on deliberately duping them via your use of tense rather than story craft, you’ll break their trust.

The present tense can also be tiring for readers because it’s emotionally immersive. If you’re writing a novel, you might consider using it only for certain viewpoint characters – your transgressor or victim, for example.

In Let Me Lie, Clare Mackintosh mixes it up: the Anna-viewpoint chapters are set in first-person present; the Murray-viewpoint chapters are third-person past. 

The past tense
Now let’s turn to the past tense, starting with some basic examples:

  • Simple past: I wrote a novel; he wrote a novel
  • Past progressive: I was writing a novel; he was writing a novel
  • Past perfect: I had written a novel; he had written a novel
  • Past perfect progressive: I had been writing a novel; he had been writing a novel
  • Habitual past: I would write a chapter every week; he would write a chapter every week; I used to write a chapter every week; he used to write a chapter every week

The past tense is the choice of most contemporary commercial fiction writers. What’s interesting is that readers are so used to this style that they can still immerse themselves in a past-tense narrative as though the story is unfolding now.

Here’s an excerpt from T. M. Logan’s 29 Seconds (p. 73). We’re given a past-tense narrative with a third-person limited viewpoint (Sarah’s):

​     At the last moment, just as Sarah thought he was going to tear open her door and attack her, he turned and bent down to his injured friend.
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WHEN PAST TENSE FLOPS – UNDERSTANDING PAST PERFECT​
​Less experienced writers can end up in a pickle when referencing events that happened earlier than their novel’s now.

The crucial thing to remember is that when we set a novel in the past tense, anything that happens in the story’s past will likely need the past perfect, at least when the action is introduced.
What you want the reader to experience
What tense you should write in
​Now – the present of your novel
​Simple past or past progressive
​(she stood; she was standing)
​Something that happened before now (i.e. in the novel’s past)
​Past perfect
​(she had stood; she had been standing)
Here’s an excerpt from The Wife Between Us (p. 57) by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. This chapter’s primary narrative tense is past (see underlined verb):
​     She stood there for a moment, taking in the white Christmas lights Samantha had wound through the slats of her bed’s headboard, and the fuzzy green-and-blue rug the two of them had found rolled up by the curb of a posh apartment building on Fifth Avenue. “Is someone actually throwing this out?” Samantha had asked.
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When we’re told that ‘She stood’, that’s the novel’s now. But when the narrator recalls events that happened further back in time (bold) – Samantha’s decorating her bed, and the two women’s procuring a rug – these need to be anchored in the past-perfect tense: had, had been.

When authors fail to anchor past events in a novel whose now is already set in the past tense, the reader will be confused.

RENDERING BYGONE ROUTINE – UNDERSTANDING HABITUAL PAST
Now and then, you might want to reference events from your novel’s past that happened routinely or habitually. This is where the habitual past tense comes into play, and the tools are would and used to.

This excerpt from The Templar's Garden by Catherine Clover illustrates the usage. The narrative is set in third-person past but the viewpoint character is recalling regular journeys taken earlier in her life:
     Sometimes Père Charles would accompany me and we would explore the countryside around Brill or the wooded depths of Bernwood Forest. But lately the bookkeeping necessary for managing the Boarstall estate kept him occupied, and I was often unaccompanied on my frequent rides.
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And in Time To Win (p. 62), Harry Brett uses the simple past and past progressive for the most part, but then Frank, the viewpoint character, recalls something he’d done habitually in former times:
     Tatty was talking to Simon. Frank couldn’t hear what they were saying. He looked down the road, towards the harbour and the dead end, the industrial buildings laid low by the unexpected weight of late summer sun, and somewhere over to his left the top of Nelson’s Monument, clear of cloud for once. He used to enjoy driving down South Denes Road and curving back round onto South Beach Parade, accelerating past the old Pleasure Beach and into a different era.
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Like the past perfect, the habitual past acts as an anchor, so that readers don’t mix up the reminiscence of a routine event with the novel’s now. 

To see that confusion in action, replace ‘used to enjoy’ with the simple past: ‘enjoyed’. It reads as if Frank is enjoying driving down South Denes Road right now. 

If you don’t want to use the habitual past, then an alternative anchor is necessary. Here I’ve added an anchoring clause and changed the tense to past perfect (he’d, or he had):
​
  • Back in the day, he’d enjoyed driving down [...]

RECOMMENDATION
The past tense is flexible; it’s easier to shift narrative distance (the distance between the reader and the narrator) than is the case with the present tense, though this does increase the risk of flatter writing. Dramatic scenes – fights, escapes, arguments – could end up laboured if the writing isn’t lean and rich.

Still, it’s traditional and readers are used to it. No one will get tired of reading in the past as long as the line craft is strong.

Do take care, however, with rendering events that have taken place in your novel’s past. Use the past perfect or the habitual past when necessary to ensure your readers know what happened when. 

Summing up
Write in the tense you feel most comfortable with, and that you think readers of your genre will be most comfortable reading. The past and the present both have their challenges and their advantages. The most important thing is that readers know where and when they are in the story. 

Cited sources 
  • 29 Seconds, T. M. Logan, Zaffre, 2018
  • Complicity, Iain Banks, Abacus, 1994
  • The Templar’s Garden, Catherine Clover, The Holywell Press, 2017
  • The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, Pan, 2018
  • Time to Win, Harry Brett, Corsair, 2017
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.

  • Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
  • Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
  • Learn: Books and courses
  • Discover: Resources for authors and editors
16 Comments

The Editing Podcast, S2E8: Publishing with an independent press: In conversation with Salt

19/8/2019

0 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk to Jen Hamilton-Emery, co-director of Salt, one of the UK's premier independent literary publishers.
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​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 8
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
  • The Salt story: awards, authors and publishing goals
  • Author retention
  • Indie publishing and the digital revolution
  • The submission process
  • The author–publisher relationship
  • The publishing process
  • Rights, sales and royalties
  • Print runs
  • Resources for authors

Find out more
  • Visit the Salt website

Editing bites
  • Typographic Style Handbook: A Guide to Typography by Michael Mitchell and Susan Wightman
  • Understanding Show, Don’t Tell by Janice Hardy

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
0 Comments

The Editing Podcast, S2E7: So you want to change your editor ...

12/8/2019

0 Comments

 
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise offer guidance on how to change your editor, and manage the process in a way that ensures everyone comes out smiling!
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​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 7
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
  • Why authors change editors
  • Planning ahead and giving notice
  • Whether the editor should get involved in sourcing a replacement
  • Checking T&Cs and cancellation policies
  • Information and tools to share with the new editor

Editing bites
  • The NCW Podcast (National Centre for Writing)
  • Oxford Dictionary of English Idiom
  • Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms

Other resources​​
  • The Editing Podcast, S1E1: The different levels of editing
  • The Editing Podcast, S1E10: How to find an editor
  • The Editing Podcast, S1E7: Style sheets for writing and editing
  • Blog article: How do I find a proofreader, copyeditor or developmental editor?
  • Blog article: What's a style sheet and how do I create one? (includes a free downloadable style-sheet template)
  • The different levels of editing (free webinar)

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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How to edit for consistency and style with PerfectIt: The Editing Podcast

15/7/2019

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk with Daniel Heuman, founder of Intelligent Editing and developer of PerfectIt – consistency-checking and style-enforcing software for editors and writers.
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​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 3
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
  • What PerfectIt does
  • Who uses PerfectIt
  • What’s new with PerfectIt 4
  • Using the onboard styles
  • The PerfectIt 4 interface
  • How to access PerfectIt on PC and Mac
  • How much a subscription costs and what’s included
  • Where to download PerfectIt​
​
​Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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The Editing Podcast, S2E2: 4 kinds of writer, and how editing helps

6/7/2019

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss four different kinds of writers and how identifying what kind you are can help you work out the kind of editing that’s the best fit for you.
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​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 2
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
  • The confident writer
  • The nervous writer
  • The reluctant writer
  • The impatient writer

Editing bites
  • ‘How to proofread your own writing – 10 tips to clean up your writing’
  • ‘Is proofreading enough? Does Your Reader Dance?’

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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The Editing Podcast, S2E1: How to prepare your book file for editing

1/7/2019

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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how to prepare your book file for editing ... whether you're doing it yourself or working with an editor.
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​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 1
Summary
Listen to find out more about:
  • When to do interior layout
  • Where to do your editing
  • Whether to edit in a single document or multiples
  • Using styles
  • Font choice
  • Colour choice
  • Paragraph design​​
  • Spacing
  • Defining headings
  • Page numbering
  • Section breaks
  • Pictures and images
  • Tables of contents
  • Indexing


​Editing bites
  • Editing in Word, 2nd Edition, by Adrienne Montgomerie
  • How to Market a Book, by Joanna Penn

Other resources
  • Review of Montgomerie’s Editing in Word, 2nd ed. by Louise Harnby (blog post)
  • How to use styles (free tutorial)
  • How to use styles (blog post)
  • PerfectIt
  • Formatting in Word: Find and Replace (booklet containing raw-text tidy-up tips)
  • Proofreading checklist (free PDF booklet, available when you sign up to The Editorial Letter)
​
Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

  • Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader
  • Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
  • Learn: Books and courses
  • Discover: Resources for authors and editors
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How to write good dialogue in your novel

3/6/2019

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Is your dialogue pushing your novel forward or making the reader feel like they’re eavesdropping on a mundane conversation at the bus stop? Here’s how to ensure your dialogue pops.
How to write good dialogue in your novel
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What good dialogue isn’t
Good dialogue is the icing on the cake of a well-structured novel. Bad dialogue will mar a well-structured narrative and bury a story that is barely hanging in there. Before we look at what makes great dialogue, let’s look at what dialogue isn’t: 
WHAT DIALOGUE IS NOT
  • ​It’s not everyday conversation – much of that is boring and has no place in a novel.
  • It’s not a narrative – that tells us what’s happening in a story. Dialogue should show us how characters respond to those events.
  • It’s not a tool to set up the next character’s lines – that’s a waste of words on the page. Every line should have a purpose, whoever’s speaking it. Every line should tell us something about the character – who they are, how they’re feeling and what they want.
  • It’s not a backstory-delivery mechanism that the characters are already familiar with – that’s maid-and-butler dialogue and a misfire.
  • It’s not a monologue – that’s best left for viewpoint characters mulling things over in their own time, unless your intention is to show one person being bored rigid by another. If only one person’s doing all the talking, ask yourself why the other person on the page is still in the room.

3 components of effective dialogue
‘Dialogue should be the character in action,’ says John Yorke in his must-read Into the Woods (p. 151). Yorke’s talking about the art of screenwriting but the advice is just as pertinent for novelists. I recommend you read it even if you have no intention of writing for the screen because it’s a masterclass in storytelling, whatever the medium.

When we stop thinking about dialogue as words spoken – as conversations – and instead frame it in terms of characters, we create something that’s fit for a novel.

​What does your dialogue tell readers about who your characters are, how they’re feeling, and what their motivations are?
3 COMPONENTS OF EFFECTIVE DIALOGUE
  • Character voice: How characters speak tells us about who they are, what makes them tick – their fears, frustrations, hopes and dreams, identity, preferences. Perhaps their speech is abrupt, rude, measured, polite, sweary or seductive. When we change the way a character speaks, we change their voice. And that means we change them.
  • Character mood: How characters speak tells us how they’re feeling. Dialogue that conveys emotions allows us into their heads, even if they’re not the viewpoint character. 
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  • Character intent: How characters speak tells us what they want to do. Perhaps they’re asking questions for the purpose of discovery and understanding whodunit (doctors, lawyers, PIs and police officers regularly use dialogue in novels to this end), but dialogue can express a multitude of motivations. Ask yourself what your character wants every time they open their mouth.

Unreliable dialogue
What a character expresses through dialogue need not match their true voice, mood or intent. Unreliable dialogue is powerful precisely because it jars the reader by masking the truth (which the characters themselves may even have buried).

Imagine this scenario: John has been kidnapped by Jane. They met in a club where she spiked his drink. He started to feel unwell and she offered him a ride to the Tube station. He never made it. He’s been held captive for several days, during which time he’s been physically abused and deprived of food. He’s frightened out of his wits, and weak to boot.

The dialogue between John and Jane could go as follows: John raves and rants, telling Jane her behaviour is monstrous, that Jane’s going to pay for her actions and that he’s going straight to the police as soon as he’s escaped. Jane responds in fury, telling John he deserves it all and how there’s no way he’ll ever escape.

Or the dialogue could be unreliable. John might be polite, sycophantic even, as he thanks her for the water she provided, compliments her on her appearance, or asks her about her life. Through that speech, we are shown his desperation. It’s about keeping her on side and calm in order to save himself.

And Jane’s verbal response might be chipper, seductive even. Through that dialogue, we are shown her psychosis.

The result is a sinister verbal exchange that allows us to explore the inner workings of the characters’ minds without it being forced down our throats via an all-to-obvious narrative that’s centred around the viewpoint character.

Breaking free of viewpoint limitations
Most novelists opt to hold third- or first-person narrative viewpoints. That means the story in a chapter plays out through one person’s perspective.

When authors drop viewpoint, readers end up playing a game of narrative table tennis in which they bounce from one character’s head to another. We know who everyone is (voice), what everyone’s feeling (mood), and what everyone wants (intention) all of the time. Readers become disengaged because they don’t have time to immerse themselves in any one character’s experience.

Good dialogue allows writers and readers to break free without head-hopping. Through dialogue, readers can intuit the voice, mood and intention of multiple characters, yet the singular narrative viewpoint remains true throughout. That keeps the reader engaged and the writing taut.

Purposeful dialogue in action
Here’s an excerpt from Lee Child’s Never Go Back (pp. 457–8). I chose it because I’ve also seen the movie, which allowed me to compare my experience of the screen dialogue (and the advice Yorke gives) with the novel’s, and because there are no action beats, only two speech tags and no narrative. It’s just dialogue between a teenage girl and Jack Reacher. 
Note on what reader already knows: Following a lawsuit filed by Candice Dayton, Jack Reacher believes that the teenager in the scene, who’s running for her life, may be his daughter. He also cased out the diner and the staff the evening before, so the servers’ faces are familiar.
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     ‘Am I in trouble?’
     Reacher said, ‘No you’re not in trouble. We’re just checking a couple of things. What’s your mom’s name?’
     ‘Is she in trouble?’
     ‘No one’s in trouble. Not on your street, anyway. This is about the other guy.’
     ‘Does he know my mom? Oh my God, is it us you’re watching? You’re waiting for him to come see my mom?’
     ‘One step at a time,’ Reacher said. ‘What’s your mom’s name? And, yes, I know about the Colt Python.’
     ‘My mom’s name is Candice Dayton.’
     ‘In that case I would like to meet her.’
     ‘Why? Is she a suspect?’
     ‘No, this would be personal.’
     ‘How could it be?’
     ‘I’m the guy they’re looking for. They think I know your mother.’
     ‘You?’
     ‘Yes, me.’
     ‘You don’t know my mother.’
     ‘They think face to face I might recognize her, or she might recognize me.’
     ‘She wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t.’
     ‘It’s hard to say for sure, without actually trying it.’
     ‘Trust me.’
     ‘I would like to.’
     ‘Mister, I can tell you quite categorically you don’t know my mom and she doesn’t know you.’
     ‘Because you never saw me before? We’re talking a number of years here, maybe back before you were born.’
     ‘How well are you supposed to have known her?’
     ‘Well enough that we might recognize each other.’
     ‘Then you didn’t know her.’
     ‘What do you mean?’
     ‘Why do you think I always eat in here?’
     ‘Because you like it?’
     ​‘Because I get it for free. Because my mom works here. She’s right over there. She’s the blonde. You walked past her two times already and you didn’t bat an eye. And neither did she. You two never knew each other.’

WHAT WE LEARN
  • Viewpoint: Reacher is the viewpoint character. However, through the dialogue, readers are able to access information about him and the teenager.
  • Voice: Both characters speak in a no-nonsense fashion. Reacher might think he holds the balance of power, given his job and age, but the girl’s streetwise tone suggests she thinks otherwise; they’re equals.
  • Mood: Reacher is calm (we’d expect nothing more) and measured, but there is emotional engagement; he seems keen not to give too much away (probably in respect of the fact that he’s talking to a child, perhaps his daughter). As for the girl, she’s almost disinterested. I imagine her stuffing fries into her mouth, as focused on her food as she is on the conversation ... until she thinks her mother might be in trouble. Child doesn’t tell us, but I can see her in my mind’s eye, mouth full, looking at him, just a twitch of alarm registering in her expression. There’s almost a sense of the traditional mother/daughter relationship reversed; this is a kid who’s used to looking after herself. There’s movement in this dialogue; the speech is infused with its own action beats.
  • Intent: Reacher wants to find out who the mother is. This exchange is all about building trust with the girl in order to achieve that. The girl needs someone she can turn to because bad people are watching her and her mother. She wants to know how Reacher might know Candice; Reacher wants to keep the possible sexual encounter and his resulting paternity to himself. The girl’s not stupid and picks up on his vague inference to a sexual encounter. As the conversation and the chapter close, Reacher and the readers discover that Candice and our protagonist have never met, and that the girl can’t be his daughter.   

This is characters in action, expressed through speech. Child makes every line count towards the chapter denouement. If he was tempted to introduce narrative and action beats that ensured we’d get it, it doesn’t show. In fact, they would have been interruptions and slowed the pace. Instead, he trusts us to do the work because the dialogue gives us everything we need.

Here’s an excerpt from The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore (pp. 244–5). I chose this because of the contrast between Kennon and Emmeline’s speech.
Note on what reader already knows: There’s another man in the room with torture devices attached to him; he’s twitching. Caleb is the viewpoint character, but he’s handcuffed and out of play. Nevertheless, we have access to two more characters’ voices, moods and intentions through the dialogue.
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     ​“Don’t move,” Kennon said.
​     ​This time, his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.
​     ​[...]
​     ​“Inspector, you’ll hit somebody,” Emmeline said.
​     ​[...]
​     ​“You look sick, Inspector,” Emmeline said. “I could get you something to drink. A glass of water, maybe? Something a little stronger?”
​     ​Kennon fired again and Emmeline didn’t even flinch.
​     ​The bullet missed her by ten feet, punching a hole in the back of the building.
​     ​“Stop—”
​     ​“You should be more careful what you touch,” Emmeline said. “Some things can go right through the skin.”

WHAT WE LEARN
  • Viewpoint: Even though Emmeline isn’t the viewpoint character, we get to access her transgressor headspace through the dialogue, and the result is powerful and sinister.
  • Voice: Kennon doesn’t say much, but what he does say is what we’d expect from a trained inspector, though it’s offered quietly. Emmeline, however, is pathologically measured. We’re left in no doubt that she’s dangerous.
  • Mood: We sense Kennon’s fear and desperation through his truncated, whispered speech. There’s almost exhaustion in play. Emmeline, in contrast, is seductive (offering him a drink as if she were hosting a dinner party). Given the torture in evidence, her dialogue is obscene.
  • Intent: Kennon is trying to save himself, Caleb and the twitching man, but he’s playing by the rule of law, warning Emmeline that he will fire his gun. Emmeline wants to finish her game, and her desire to play is evident in her speech. Of course, this may be unreliable; it could be masking a deep-seated fear that she’ll be harmed or killed.

This, too, is characters in action, expressed through speech. Moore draws us deep into the transgressor’s mind – even though she’s not the viewpoint character. Her dialogue, juxtaposed with Kennon’s exhausted near-silence, generates a powerful scene that oozes with sickly tension.

Here’s a third example from Harlan Coben’s Run Away (pp. 68–9):
​Note on what reader already knows: Simon and Ingrid are married. They hold Aaron – a corrupt and possessive addict who’s been murdered – responsible for their daughter’s breakdown.​
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     “The murder,” Simon said. “It was gruesome.”
     Ingrid wore a long thin coat. She dug her hands into her pockets. “Go on.”
     “Aaron was mutilated.”
     “How?”
     ​“Do you really need the details?” he asked.
     [...]
     “According to Hester’s source, the killer slit Aaron’s throat, though she said that’s a tame way of putting it. The knife went deep into his neck. Almost took off his head. They sliced off three fingers. They also cut off ...”
     “Pre- or post-mortem?” Ingrid asked in her physician tone.
     “The amputations. Was he still alive for them?”
     ​“I don’t know,” Simon said. “Does it matter?”

WHAT WE LEARN
  • Viewpoint: Simon is the viewpoint character but through Ingrid’s speech we learn how she uses her professional mindset to manage stressful situations. 
  • Voice: Simon’s voice is emotional and verbose; Ingrid’s is precise and clinical.
  • Mood: Simon’s disgust and distress are evident. You can almost feel the words falling out of his mouth. Ingrid’s speech exudes clinical detachment. She’s in doctor mode.
  • Intent: Simon wants to unload. Ingrid wants to understand.

Again, through speech we see the characters in action. The contrasting voices and moods show us Simon and Ingrid’s different intentions. There’s no need for more than a peppering of supporting narrative.

Summing up
  1. Make your characters’ speech count. Use it to show who the character is (voice), how they feel (mood) and what they want (intention).
  2. Play with unreliable dialogue if it will enhance our understanding of characters’ emotions and motivations. Those deliberate juxtapositions will deepen our engagement.
  3. Realistic everyday speech, while authentic, is dull, invasive and will disengage your reader. Remove it! 

​Free dialogue enrichment tool
To help you think about your characters' voices, moods and intentions, and how these will enrich your dialogue, download this tool. It's a fillable PDF with ready-made examples and space for you to record your own decisions. ​
Dialogue enrichment tool
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE PDF
More dialogue resources
  • 8 problems with dialogue and how to solve them
  • Addressing others in dialogue: How to use vocatives
  • How to complement dialogue with action beats
  • How to convey accents in dialogue
  • How to punctuate dialogue in a novel
  • How to use apostrophes
  • How to use speech tags in fiction​
Cited sources
  • Into the Woods by John Yorke (Penguin, 2013)
  • Never Go Back by Lee Child (Bantam, 2014)
  • Run Away by Harlan Coben (Century, 2019)
  • The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore (Orion, 2014)
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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