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Learn how to identify glue words, hedges and qualifiers, and then explore whether they’re adding clarity and enhancing character voice, or cluttering your fiction writing.
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What are glue words, hedge words and qualifiers?
Glue words, hedge words and qualifiers serve different purposes and are used in different contexts, but all relate to how language functions in writing or speech.
The function of glue words The function of glue words is structural. They hold or glue a sentence together. By themselves they add little semantic meaning to a sentence. Examples include:
He flicked through the report to get a better sense of what the prosecutor’s approach might be. The function of hedge words The function of hedge words is modification. They soften or limit the strength of a claim and can introduce uncertainty, speculation, caution or humility. Examples include:
Xe flicked through the report. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. The detective might even come out on xer side once she understood the background. The function of qualifiers The function of qualifiers is limitation. They narrow the meaning of another word such as a noun or adjective, and make a statement more precise. Examples include:
Lex was pretty sure that, despite the officer’s reassurance, she was almost certainly not going to get away with a warning. A little pessimistic, her dad would have said. But that was Lex all over. Are glue words, hedges and qualifiers signal of poor writing?
No, glue words, hedges and qualifiers are not signals of poor writing, not when they’re used with purpose.
If you’re reading guidance on using these words, watch out for statements arguing bluntly that they:
Why? Because this kind of prescriptivism can encourage developing writers to rip the heart and soul out of a character’s voice, emotions and layered experience. The key is to ensure that every word on the page is working hard for you – whether it’s a glue word, a hedging word, a qualifying word, or some other language marker. Using glue words, hedges and qualifiers with purpose
Instead of eliminating glue, hedging and qualifying words, review your sentences and consider whether these markers are:
How glue words can enhance prose
Let’s look at an example of how glue words can enhance a piece of prose:
Lex was pretty sure that, despite the officer’s reassurance, she was almost certainly not going to get away with a warning. A little pessimistic, her dad might have said. But, really, that was her all over. Very Lex. Always had been somewhat glass half full. She flicked through the report a second time to get a better sense of what the prosecutor’s approach might be, but the text was all blurred – headings and words and numbers mashed up together.
This paragraph has multiple glue words including ‘was’, ‘that’, ‘despite’, ‘the’, ‘to’, ‘but’ and ‘and’. Think of them as the cement that holds the prose together, ensuring that the prose maintains a smooth syntactic flow even when internal thought becomes more fragmented or reflective.
But note also the rhythmic tool in play in the final clause – the use of multiple gluing conjunctions (polysyndeton) to show rather than tell Lex’s overwhelm as she looks at the report. Glue words can therefore go beyond their structural function. They can also be used as a literary mechanism to evoke mood and emotion. How hedge words can enhance prose
The example also contains instances of hedging language including ‘might have said’, ‘somewhat’ and ‘might be’.
Lex was pretty sure that, despite the officer’s reassurance, she was almost certainly not going to get away with a warning. A little pessimistic, her dad might have said. But, really, that was her all over. Very Lex. Always had been somewhat glass half full. She flicked through the report a second time to get a better sense of what the prosecutor’s approach might be, but the text was all blurred – headings and words and numbers mashed up together.
These hedges reflect Lex’s tentativeness in terms of her dad’s opinion, the prosecutor’s strategy and her own self-judgement about her positivity, and this helps readers understand how she bends towards reflection and uncertainty.
The language also helps the writer convey a more realistic voice that carries nuanced emotional conflict. Lex is trying to be rational but her doubt is intruding. Through this, readers are shown how people rarely speak or think in absolutes. How qualifiers can enhance prose
The qualifiers in the excerpt adjust the meaning of the words they modify to give reads more emotional texture.
Lex was pretty sure that, despite the officer’s reassurance, she was almost certainly not going to get away with a warning. A little pessimistic, her dad might have said. But, really, that was her all over. Very Lex. Always had been somewhat glass half full. She flicked through the report a second time to get a better sense of what the prosecutor’s approach might be, but the text was all blurred – headings and words and numbers mashed up together.
Overall, the interplay of glue words, hedges and modifiers creates a narrative tone that avoids the extremes of melodrama or stoicism, and instead takes a middle ground that deepens our understanding of Lex as introspective, thoughtful, quietly resigned and gently self-critical.
Summing up
Glue words, hedge words and qualifiers can be effective writing devices when they’re used with purpose.
Don’t ditch yours without first analysing them so you understand whether they’re working for your prose. If they’re just adding to your word count needlessly, remove or rework them. However, if they’re providing your characters with emotional complexity and intelligence, and enhancing the structure, flow and mood of your sentences, embrace them! Other resources you might like
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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Find out about 5 core character roles within a novel, and how the purpose they serve ensures the story stays focused.
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About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Learn about scene technique with special guest, editor, book coach and story consultant Lisa Poisso. A must-listen for editors and authors alike.
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About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
We discuss the 8 reference resources that we regularly dip into when we're writing and editing for business.
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About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Are your thriller’s sentences front-loaded with filter words? If so, you could be slowing your reader down. This post explains what filter words are, how they affect a sentence and how to decide whether to include them or ditch them.
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Why the start of a sentence is important
If you’ve read any guidance about online writing, you’ll have come across the concept of front-loading a sentence. It means putting the most important stuff at the start. The idea is that website visitors are busy and scan for relevance. The quicker they find it, the more likely they are to engage.
While a novel that reads like a Google snippet from start to finish isn’t likely to win any prizes, the principle is worth paying attention to because the information at the start of a novel’s sentence is still what the reader will pay most attention to. The start of a sentence is therefore valuable real estate. If filter words are being assigned to that top spot too often, more interesting subjects and verbs are likely being demoted. What are filter words?
In everyday speech, we sometimes use the term ‘filter’ to convey a sense of slowdown or separation, usually because of a barrier of some sort. For example:
In literature, filter words are verbs that do a similar thing – they slow down the reader’s access to what the viewpoint character is experiencing. Examples include 'watched', 'saw', 'noticed', 'spotted', 'looked at', 'felt', 'thought', 'wondered', 'heard', 'realised' and 'knew'. Take a look at this short excerpt from Chapter 2 of Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby.
Ike is the viewpoint character, which means we experience the scene from his perspective.
Notice first what’s front-loading those two sentences. The subjects (Ike in the first, ‘she’ – Ike’s wife – in the second) and the verbs ‘let go’ and ‘slumped’. That front-loading forces our gaze outwards – first towards Ike, then towards the movement of Ike’s wife’s body. Now let’s introduce a filter word.
Now the second sentence is front-loaded with a new verb – ‘watched’. Our access to the movement (the slumping) has been slowed down. We can’t shift directly to it without taking an extra step that involves centring our gaze for just a second on Ike’s watching.
In that brief moment, we’re no longer looking outward at what Ike’s experiencing. Instead, we’re looking inward at Ike and how he acquires that experience – by watching. Less experienced writers can be tempted to overuse filter words. Indeed, it’s one of the most common problems I see in my editing studio. At sentence-level revision stage – whether that work’s being done by the writer themselves or with the help of a professional editor – it’s therefore worth watching out for them and assessing whether they’re impeding the novel’s pace. When filter words reduce momentum
Thrillers are supposed to thrill, and action-packed scenes such as escapes, fights, heists and chases need to be written with razor-sharp precision so that readers don’t start skimming.
Problematic filter words can appear anywhere in a sentence, but front-loading sentences with them is even more likely to rip the momentum out of the prose. If you want your readers to focus on the action, make sure that any you retain are earning their keep. Take a look at an excerpt from a published thriller that I’ve fiddled with. It’s a heist scene and the action takes place in a matter of seconds. The viewpoint character is coked up to his eyeballs and desperate, acting on impulse. He knew that under normal circumstances he would never put his hands on a lady. However, these were not normal circumstances. Not, he thought, by a long shot.
The three instances of filtering moderate the pace and draw our attention towards the narrator’s doing knowing, thinking and watching, none of which are as interesting as what he knows, thinks and watches. All those filter words act as barriers that the reader has to jump over in order to get to the action.
We could even argue that they introduce a sort of voyeurism – as if Ronnie is reflecting on the impact of his violence, almost in slow motion. But that’s not what’s going on here. Rather, he’s wired, out of control and operating in the moment. And that’s why the unadulterated version of Blacktop Wasteland (p. 113) – also by S.A. Cosby – is perfect: Under normal circumstances he would never put his hands on a lady. However, these were not normal circumstances. Not by a long shot.
The filter words have gone, and with them the unintended pathological introspection, but the momentum is restored. We're in the moment with Ronnie as he lashes out. It's no less violent but the pace of the prose now mirrors the action authentically.
When filter words make space for reflection
Sometimes, however, the author wants us to slow down, step back and focus inward on the acquisition of experience.
Let’s take a look at another example from Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, this one also from Chapter 2. The little girl sitting in her lap played with Mya's braids. Ike looked at the girl. Skin the color of honey with hair to match. Arianna had just turned three the week before her parents died. Did she have any inkling of what was happening? When Mya had told her that her daddies were asleep, she seemed to accept it without too much trouble. He envied the elasticity of her mind. She could wrap her head around this in a way that he couldn't.
The filter phrase is ‘looked at’, and it’s important. Ike is looking hard at what’s in front of him. As will be revealed later, this girl is his murdered son’s daughter. Ike recalls something he’d said to his son a few months earlier: ‘But that little girl, she gonna have it hard enough already. She's half Black. Her mama was somebody you paid to carry her, and she got two gay daddies. So now what?’
Ike and his wife will now be raising the little girl. Cosby wants to focus our attention inward for a moment on Ike’s reflection, and the filter word makes space for that. While filter words can be effective when they’re used to create a sense of introspection, littering prose with them will be disruptive and pull the reader out of the viewpoint character's headspace. In other words, the psychic or narrative distance will be widened and we’ll feel disconnected from the immediacy of the character’s experience. For that reason, always use filter words judiciously. In the above example, Cosby offers just a single nudge, and it’s enough. Summing up
Every filter word needs to be assessed on its own merits. Some will have a place in a novel because the author wants to introduce a sense of introspection into a viewpoint character’s narrative. Just bear in mind the following:
Further reading
Take a look at these related resources for editors and writers. They'll help you develop your fiction line craft:
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to thriller writer Andy Maslen about the creative-writing process.
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'Vivacity’ by Kevin MacLeod
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk to mystery writer David Unger about story creation and revision.
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'Vivacity’ by Kevin MacLeod
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise Harnby and Denise Cowle talk about zombie rules, and why they have no place in a professional editor's toolbox.
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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.
It's perfectly okay to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’ in crime fiction writing ... in any fiction writing, in fact. Doing so can enrich the narrative and dialogue, and inflect the prose with voice, mood and intention. The key is to make sure those conjunctions are being used purposefully and logically. This post shows you how.
What the style guides say
Here's what two industry-recognized style guides have to say on the matter.
New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press): You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect.
Chicago Manual of Style Online, 5.203 (Chicago University Press):
There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. 6 good reasons to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’
Great! We have the go-ahead from a couple of big hitters to use our two conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence. Now let’s dig a little deeper into why doing so can make fiction more effective. Here are my top six reasons:
Serving natural speech
When we speak in real life, conjunctions are often the first things out of our mouths. So it should be in novels that want to render speech authentically.
Fictional dialogue doesn’t replicate real-life speech completely – that would mean including a lot of boring stuff that one might hear at the bus stop. Rather, it’s a sort of hybrid that has the essence of reality but with the mundanity judiciously removed. It might sound like a cheat but readers thank authors who don’t bore them! Small nudges towards reality help with the authenticity goal, which is where our conjunctions come in handy. Here are a few examples for you: ‘And you will have no hesitation in doing what has to be done? You have no doubts?’ (At Risk, Stella Rimington, p. 187) ‘And where’s he getting the money from? You know the situation as well as I do. He isn’t on leave of absence from a university.’ (The Dream Archipelago, Christopher Priest, p. 227) “But your way makes more sense. So you think Maura was working with Rex?” Shortening narrative distance
Dialogue gives us the character’s speech; narrative gives us the character’s experience. When that’s a first-person narrative, it’s easy to feel close to the narrator. With a third-person narration, the reader can feel separated from the character, as if they’re on the outside looking in.
Authors who want to reduce that space between the reader and the character – called narrative distance or psychic distance – can experiment with a narration style that sounds like natural speech even though it’s not dialogue. Here’s a lovely example from Blake Crouch’s Recursion (p. 182). There's a part of him that wants to run down there, charge through, and shoot every fucking person he sees inside that hotel, ending with the man who put him in the chair. Meghan’s brain broke because of him. She is dead because of him. Hotel Memory needs to end.
Notice how the narration style is third person, though it doesn’t feel like it. Instead, we’re right inside the viewpoint character’s head.
The position of the conjunction in this example isn’t the sole reason why the narrative distance feels short – the free indirect speech above and beneath plays a huge part – but it certainly helps to give us a sense of the character’s mentally working out a problem. Introducing tension and suspense
Take a look at this excerpt from p. 21 of The Matlock Paper by Robert Ludlum.
Matlock walked to the small, rectangular window with the wire-enclosed glass. The police station was at the south end of the town of Carlyle, about a half a mile from the campus, the section of town considered industrialized. Still, there were trees along the streets. Carlyle was a very clean town, a neat town. The trees by the station house were pruned and shaped.
With that one word – the conjunction – Ludlum stops us in our tracks. Yes, we’re thinking, the town’s neat, it’s clean. All well and good. But then we realize that there’s more to it, for beneath the pruned trees lies a dark underbelly.
The ‘And’, positioned right up front, forces us to pay attention to it. It’s not any old conjunction. Rather, it’s loaded with suspense that drives the reader to ask a question that isn’t explicitly answered: What else is that ‘something’? Adding drama and modifying rhythm
In this excerpt from Parting Shot (p. 433), the author uses the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence to inject drama into a scene.
The new line makes the rhythm of the prose more staccato, but the ‘And’ at the beginning of the final line is what really packs a punch. The viewpoint character, Cory, is a killer. He ponders almost matter-of-factly who the threats are, and reaches his conclusion as he closes in on the cabin. Dolly Guntner certainly wasn't in a position to say anything bad about him.
If Linwood Barclay had omitted the conjunction, he’d have introduced a separation between two ideas: realizing what needs to be done, and when the killer is going to do it. Yet these two ideas are very much connected. The ‘And’ therefore fulfils its purpose as a conjunction – a joining word.
But there’s more. If he’d run the two ideas together with a conjunction between (‘It seemed clear what he had to do, and he'd have to do it fast.’), the line would have lost its wallop. The staccato rhythm (one that mirrors the cold calculation taking place in Cory’s head) is gone. Instead, the prose has flatlined; it seems almost mundane, like a stroll in the park rather than the planning of a murder. However, the ‘And’ reinforces this extra information – the deed must be done fast. The emphasis adds drama to the line. The final line is still connected to the clause it’s related to, but the mood-rich rhythm, and the drama that comes with it, is intact. Emphasizing the unexpected
An up-front ‘But’ is perfect for the author who want to emphasize the unexpected, surprise or absurdity. Take a look at this excerpt from Terry Pratchett’s Dodger (p. 170).
The boy said, 'I don't quite know exactly where Mister Charlie will be right now, but you could always ask the peelers.' He smiled. 'You can be sure that there will be a lot of them about.'
It’s true that omitting the ‘But’ would leave the meaning intact. However, adding the conjunction reinforces the Dodger’s emotional response to the boy’s suggestion – he’s taken by surprise because in times past, asking a peeler was exactly what he’d have done, without question, without fear.
And so that ‘But’ does more than act as a conjunction. With just three letters, we’re shown character mood. Making contrast explicit and suspenseful
David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks (p. 92) includes a smashing example how the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence reinforces a contrast with what’s gone before.
I won't be able to place this in any kind of context until I go through everything Sam has brought, though he says he didn't see a reply to Jacoby's questions. Certainly the fact that a man who was soon to be a murder victim experimenting in any way with his own DNA is at least curious, and something for me to look into carefully if I stay on the case.
That contrast is explicit because the ‘But’ acts as an interrupter. We’re deep in the POV character’s head regarding the murder victim, ruminating with our protagonist. The conjunction then shoves us out of that rumination. It’s not gentle; the ‘But’ is a big one – something’s up with Laurie.
Not that we know what. Rosenfelt doesn’t tell us yet. Instead, he makes us ask the question: Why? And with that question, just as with the Ludlum example above, we have suspense. Summing up
Feel free to pepper your prose with sentences that begin with ‘And’ and ‘But’. Anyone who tells you you’re on shaky ground grammatically knows less about grammar than you do!
It’s likely that the myth around positioning these conjunctions came about in a bid to nudge people away from stringing together clauses and sentences with no thought to creativity. And while such an intention makes sense, we have to recognize that imposing this zombie rule on writing can actually destroy the magic of prose. And on that note, I will sign off! (See what I did there?) More fiction editing guidance
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About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Want to use grammatical expletives in your crime, mystery and thriller fiction? These words serve as place holders or fillers in a sentence. They shift emphasis and can affect rhythm. Used injudiciously, however, they can be cluttering tension-wreckers. Here's how to strike a balance. 
What are expletives?Because expletives shift emphasis, they have a syntactic function. However, they don’t in themselves contribute anything to our understanding of the sentence. In other words, they don't have a semantic role. You might also see them called syntactic expletives. Common examples are:
Take a look at the following pair. The first sentence is introduced by an expletive.
When used well, expletives are enrichment tools that allow an author to play with a narrative voice’s register and the rhythm of sentences. When prose is overloaded with them, it can feel cluttered with filler words that add nothing but ink on the page. At best, they widen the narrative distance between the reader and the POV character; at worst, they flatten a sentence and destroy suspense and tension. Flat expletives that merit fixingToo much telling of what there is or was can rip the immediacy from a scene and encourage skimming. That’s a problem – it means the reader isn’t engaged and risks missing something. Furthermore, if they’re not performing their rhythmic or emphasis role, expletives make sentence navigation more difficult because all they're doing is cluttering the prose. Here's an example. Think I've overworked it? There are published books from mainstream presses with passages just like this made-up one. FLAT EXPLETIVE It was a tiny room. There was a light switch with rust-coloured smudged fingermarks on the melamine surface. Was that blood? There was a noise coming from beyond on the back wall. It was a high-pitched whimper. Then there was silence. She held her breath and tiptoed forward. The problem with the expletives in the passage above is that readers are bogged down in what there was rather than the viewpoint character's experience of discovery. Let's revise it to fix the problem. THE FIX The room was tiny. Rust-coloured fingermarks smudged the melamine surface of the light switch. Blood maybe. A noise came from beyond a door on the back wall. A high-pitched whimper. Then nothing. She held her breath and tiptoed forward. Notice how the narrative distance has been reduced in the revised passage. Now it's as if we're in the viewpoint character's head, moving with her second by second. We can focus on the room, the dried-blood fingermarks, the whimper, and the scream rather than the being of those things – their was-ness. Removing the expletives and swapping in stronger verbs (smudged, shattered) enables us to tighten up the prose and introduce immediacy. And now there's no need for the told 'suddenly' – we experience the suddenness through the in-the-moment shattering. Expletives that pack a punch As is always the case, obliterating expletives from a novel would be inappropriate because sometimes they're the perfect tool to help out with rhythm and emphasis. The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (p. 1) uses expletives galore, and masterfully at that. The repetition (anaphora) brings a steady rhythm to the passage that ensures the reader gives equal weight to the contrasting extremes – from best and worst to hope and despair. The expletives introduce a detached sense of reportage that forces us forward rather than allowing us to dwell on any of the heavens or hells on offer. It’s simultaneously mundane and monstrous, and that's why it's magical. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair [...] And here’s an example from Dog Tags (p. 1) where omission of the expletive would rip the energy from the opening first line of the chapter and interfere with our understanding of which words we’re supposed to emphasize. “Andy Carpenter, Lawyer to the Dogs.” Summing up Grammatical expletives are a normal part of language and have every right to be in a novel. Overloading can destroy tension and make for a laboured narrative, but a purposeful peppering can amplify character emotion, moderate rhythm, and make space for the introduction of big themes in small spaces without sensory clutter. Cited works and further reading
About Louise HarnbyLouise 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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
This post helps less experienced fiction writers and editors make sense of omniscient point of view, and work with this narrative style effectively.
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.
What is an omniscient point of view?
This viewpoint is probably the trickiest to master. Omniscient means all-knowing. It’s the most flexible because it gives the reader potential access to every character’s external and internal experiences. It also has the potential to be the least intimate if not handled well.
Imagine a futuristic news helicopter. Inside, our roving reporter shifts her camera from one person to another, and one setting to another. She’s also got some serious kit, stuff that enables her to tap everyone’s phones, TVs and computers. But that’s not all; the characters’ brains are bugged too; our reporter knows what they’re thinking. She can see, hear and smell it all! Says Sophie Playle: The narrator knows everything, and isn’t limited to the viewpoint of any single character. An omniscient narrator could be a character in the story (like a god or an enlightened person), or they could be an observing nonentity. Completely omniscient viewpoints are difficult to pull off well because the narrator needs to have reasons for imparting the knowledge they choose to impart in the order they choose to do so, otherwise the story will feel contrived [...] Omniscient narration and third person objective narration have similarities, but the key is looking for when the narrator knows more than it could objectively observe. Examples: Deeper knowledge than third-person narration
If you’ve read anything by Neil Gaiman, you’ll see a blatant external narrator in evidence with a depth of knowledge that defies the rules of a third-person viewpoint. Here’s an example from Neverwhere (p. 10).
He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more informative), to comprehend the city, a process which accelerated when he realized that the actual City of London itself was no bigger than a square mile [...]
The first ten words might appear to be a third-person viewpoint (‘He’ refers to Richard, the protagonist), but that’s not the case. What follows is a distinct narrative other, a voice that explains ‘white knowledge’.
In the second and third paragraphs, the all-knowing narrator offers historical information. Then in the final paragraph, we’re told more about Richard. The viewpoint was never third-person objective. It was omniscient all along. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, ‘the man’ takes centre stage in most of the sections such that we see what he sees and feel what he feels. It’s almost as if he’s the narrator, and once more we could be forgiven for thinking the viewpoint third person. But there’s more going on here. In the following extracts, notice the shift beyond what it’s possible for the man to see, think or know. He woke in the morning and turned over in the blanket and looked down the road through the trees the way they’d come in time to see the marchers four abreast. Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their necks. Red or orange, as close to red as they could find. He put his hand on the boy’s head. Shh, he said. (pp. 95–6) He wallowed into the ground and lay watching across his forearm. An army in tennis shoes, tramping. Carrying three-foot lengths of pipe with leather wrappings. [...] The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasselled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of trucksprings in some crude forge upcountry. The boy lay with his face in his arms, terrified. (p. 96)
In the first extract, only an all-knowing alternative narrator could be privy to the intent behind the marchers’ colour choice of scarves. In the second, the man watches the army, but it’s only an omniscient narrator who can know where their blades were forged and how the boy is feeling. Maybe that narrator is McCarthy; maybe it’s someone else. But it’s not the man.
Example: World-building backstory in a flash
Some genres – science fiction and fantasy for example – lend themselves well to omniscient narrators because they can provide critical world-building backstory quickly. Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters provides a fine example (pp. 1–2).
Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past. What omniscient is not
An omniscient viewpoint can be powerful but it needs to be controlled and used with purpose. If we’re accessing one character’s thoughts and experiences, and we jump to another character’s viewpoint, it can jar the reader. That's called head-hopping.
Imagine you’re listening to your best friend tell you about a difficult experience. Even though it didn’t happen to you, her description of the event helps you to imagine the challenges she faced, the emotions she grappled with. You’re thoroughly immersed and emotionally connected. Then someone else barges up to you both and tells you what it was like for them. Your friend butts back in to wrestle the telling back to her. Would the interruption annoy and frustrate you? Would you feel like your efforts to invest in your friend’s story were being thwarted? The impact is the same when it occurs in a book’s narrative (though not the dialogue, of course). That viewpoint ping pong is not omniscient POV. It’s third-person limited gone awry. Recommendation
I recommend caution. The beauty of fiction often lies in the unveiling, in the immersion. Overuse of an omniscient narrator can block this.
The all-seeing eye can be a powerful tool – as demonstrated by the examples above – but less experienced authors, particularly those writing commercial fiction such as thrillers and mysteries, risk accidental head-hopping, which will destroy the tension and distance the reader from the characters. Cited works and related reading
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Not sure where to place your speech tags? This guide shows you how to tell readers who’s speaking, not based on a set of rules but in respect of clarity, suspense, invisibility, and rhythm.
What is a dialogue tag?
Dialogue tags, or speech tags, are complementary short phrases that tell the reader who’s talking. They’re not always necessary, particularly if there are only two speakers in a scene, but when they are used, this is what they look like:
Said is often best because readers are so used to seeing it that it’s pretty much invisible and therefore less interruptive. What’s the rule about where tags go?
Dialogue tags can be placed after, between or before dialogue. Authors sometimes ask which position is best or whether there’s a rule.
There is no rule. All three positions have advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you want to achieve. Position: After dialogue
Readers are so used to seeing speech tags like said at the end of dialogue that they’re almost invisible. That allows the dialogue, rather than the speaking of the dialogue, to be the focus.
Below is a wee example from Recursion (p. 292). The speech takes centre stage; the doing of speech (screaming, in this case) comes afterwards. “Come on!” he screams.
Furthermore, when the tag comes after the dialogue, it can roll seamlessly into any supporting narrative, as shown in the example from The Ghost Fields (p. 194).
‘It’s very … evocative,’ says Ruth. This is true. The brushwork may be crude, the planes out of perspective and the figures barely more than stick men, but there’s something about the work of the unknown airman that brings back the past more effectively than any documentary or reconstruction.
There are a couple of potential disadvantages:
Position: Between dialogue
Placing speech tags between dialogue is also common and unlikely to jar the reader. Here are three reasons why it works:
Here are two examples in which the mid placement of the tag means the suspense isn't interfered with. The first is taken from The Ghost Fields (p. 194); the second is something I made up. ‘It’s not signed,’ says Frank, ‘but there’s something that may be a clue. “Thanks for holding the gun,” Tom said. “Now pull the trigger.”
In the first example, not having the speech tag at the end of the dialogue focuses the reader on one question: what’s the clue? Not: Frank’s the speaker.
In the second example, rejig the sentence so that Tom said comes after all the speech, and notice how this makes the wallop vanish from the line about pulling the trigger. Position: Before dialogue
Placement of the tag before the dialogue isn’t a no-no but it is a less common option and more noticeable.
A tag tells of speaking; dialogue shows character voice, mood and intention. When the speaker’s announced first, it’s a tap on the shoulder that draws attention to speaking being done. It expands what author and creative-writing expert Emma Darwin calls the ‘psychic distance’ between the reader and the speaker, which can flatten the mood. And, yet, this can also be its advantage. That tap introduces a more staccato rhythm that can stop a reader in their tracks. In this extract from Recursion (p. 292), the placement of the tag before the dialogue induces an acute sense of resignation – that dull thump in the pit of one’s stomach when the proverbial’s hit the fan. “That’s a Black Hawk,” he says. “Wonder what’s going on in town.” Not placing tags: Omission
There’s no need to include a speech tag if it’s adding nothing but clutter. In the following example from Recursion (p. 125), the author has omitted them because there are only two speakers. He lets the dialogue, and its punctuation, inject the voice, mood and intention into the scene rather than telling us who’s speaking and how they’re saying it.
Slade lifts his Champagne glass and polishes off the rest. Summing up
Placement of dialogue tags isn’t about rules. It’s about purpose:
For that reason, mixing up the position of speech tags can be effective. Let’s end with an extract from Out of Sight (pp. 135–7), which demonstrates the varied ways in which author Elmore Leonard handles his tagging: beginning, between, end, and omission. ‘But you think they’re coming back,’ Karen said. Cited works and further reading
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Not sure what a second-person narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your fiction writing? This post shows you how it works in a novel.
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.
There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a single character. Plus, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why. My aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations. Second-person narrative viewpoint
In second-person narrative POVs, the pronoun is ‘you’. This narration is intimate, but strangely so, as if the author is talking directly to the reader as a character.
That intrusive element is both its strength and its weakness. It’s powerful because it places readers at the heart of the story, and yet we – the ‘you’ – know less than the narrator. That can create a sense of immediacy, but almost amnesiac dislocation. We have to discover what we think, see, know and do. And if we don’t identify with the ‘you’ – if we feel implicated rather than attached – we can be pulled out of the story rather than brought deeper into it. Still, this controlling aspect of second person can have an advantage. Whereas first-person narrators tell you what they thought and did, second-person narrators tell us what we thought and did. This witnessing adds a level of reliability (even if we don’t like it). And readers aren’t daft. They know they’re not really the you-character, which means authors could use it as a tool to create surprise when the ‘you’ is unveiled later in the book. If you want your readers to feel connected but controlled, second-person POV might be just the ticket, but it’s difficult to pull off and rare that authors of contemporary commercial fiction write an entire novel in it (though check out Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins if you want to see a good example in action). More likely, you’ll see shorter-form use: dedicated chapters or other narrative forms such as diary entries, letters or other missives. Example: Curiosity, reliability and the complicit reader
In this example from Complicity (p. 9), Iain Banks uses the second-person viewpoint in which a narrator reports on the actions and thoughts of an unnamed serial killer addressed as ‘you’.
There is another faint crunching noise as the body spasms once and then goes limp. Blood spreads blackly from his mouth over the collar of his white shirt and starts to drip onto the pale marble of the steps. [...]
Think about how you feel as you read this. It’s as if you’re being addressed, as if you’re complicit. At the very least, the prose arouses curiosity – who is this ‘you’, and how is it that the narrator knows so much about them?
Banks doesn’t present the novel fully in second person; these sections fall between those of a first-person viewpoint character, journalist Cameron Colley. As such, readers are confronted by a juxtaposition of Cameron’s version of events and what was witnessed by the narrator. Recommendation
By all means, experiment with second-person point of view but understand its implications. If you want to draw your reader into the heart of your story, it’s a good choice. However, that connection can come at a price – a lack of control that could alienate your audience.
For that reason, consider the purpose of this narrative style and the extent to which you employ it. It might be better constrained – limited to chapters inhabited by specific viewpoint characters. If in doubt, rewrite your scene in an alternative narrative viewpoint so you can evaluate how this affects your perception of the story as a reader. Cited sources and related reading
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
This post explains when and how to indent your narrative and dialogue according to publishing-industry convention.
The purpose of first-line indents
Each new paragraph signifies a change or shift of some sort ... perhaps a new idea, piece of action, thought or speaker, even a moderation or acceleration of pace. Still, the prose in all those paragraphs within a section is connected.
Paragraph indents have two purposes in fiction:
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.
NARRATIVE LAYOUT The following example is taken from Part 5, Chapter 2, of Christopher Priest’s Inverted World (p. 287, 2010):
And here's an example from Part 2, Chapter 6, p. 147, which shows how the layout works the same after a section break:
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):
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):
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.
IMPACT OF LINE SPACING
Even if you've elected to set your book file with double line spacing (perhaps at the request of a publisher, agent or editor), the indentation convention applies. Here's the Recursion example again, tweaked to show what it would look like:
Indenting text that follows special elements
Your novel might include special elements such as letters, texts, reports, lists or newspaper articles. Authors can choose to set off these elements with wider line spacing, but how do we handle the text that comes after?
Again, it's conventional to indent text that follows this content, regardless of whether it's narrative or dialogue. That's because of the connective function; the text is part of the same scene. Here are some examples from commercial fiction pulled from my bookshelves.
It's not the case that full-out text is never used, or can't be used, but fiction readers are used to conventions. When a paragraph isn't indented, they assume it's a new section, which creates a tiny disconnect.
That's what I think's happened in the example below from Kate Hamer's The Girl in the Red Coat (p. 325, Faber & Faber, 2015). Of course, it took me only a split second to work out that the narrator is referring to the preceding letter, but it's a split second that took me away from the story because I'd assumed I was looking at a section break. My preference would be to indent 'I touch my finger [...]' because that text is part of the scene, not a new section. 
How to create a first-line indent in Word
Let's finish with some quick guidance on creating first-line indents.
Avoid using spaces and tabs to create indents in Word. Instead, create proper indents. There are several ways to do this.
OR
Create a new style for your full-out paragraphs using the same tools.
Free webinar
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.
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Non-viewpoint characters have emotions too. But how do we show them without head-hopping? The answer lies in mastering observable behaviour.
What is head-hopping?
When a reader can access the internal experiences (emotions, thoughts, memories) of more than one character in a chapter or section, head-hopping is usually in play.
The exception is if you’re tackling the tricky beast that is omniscient narration. It’s difficult to pull off and rarely used in contemporary commercial fiction. Here’s an example of what head-hopping looks like on the page. Jack is the viewpoint character and the narration style is third-person limited. The pebble bounces on the water seven, eight, no, nine times. Best ever, Jack thinks.
Notice the following:
How to enter a non-viewpoint character’s space without dropping viewpoint
There will be times when you want your reader to enter the emotional and physical space of a non-viewpoint character.
Mastering observable behaviour – showing us what the viewpoint character can see, and their interpretation of that behaviour – is one solution that will enable you to hold viewpoint. Here’s a recast of the Jack/Pete scene: The pebble bounces on the water seven, eight, no, nine times. Best ever, Jack thinks.
Notice the following:
Mastering observation
Mastering observation enables writers to retain viewpoint but not be restricted by it. Think about how non-viewpoint characters will move in a way that reflects their internal experience, or what they will look like. Here are a few examples:
Example 1 What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head:
Example 2 What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head:
Example 3 What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head:
Example 4 What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head:
Example 5 What the non-viewpoint character feels but cannot be told because we’re not in their head:
Summing up
If you’re writing in a third-person limited narration style, consider what the viewpoint character already knows, what they can observe in relation to a non-viewpoint character, and what they could infer from those observations. That will determine what they can report.
What they report can still allow readers to access the internal experience of the non-viewpoint character through a back door. And while that report will be biased, it will be immersive. About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Himself, herself, myself, themself ... check the usage of pronouns in your fiction. You might just be overworking them, such that you’re stating the obvious, modifying the pace, and reducing tension.
Reflexive pronouns can act as double tells by stating the obvious, and mar pace and tension.
Stating the obvious
When it comes to internal musings, authors can ditch the reflexive pronouns. Thoughts take place inside a person’s head and, by definition, are offered only for the thinker – unless there’s telepathy going on in the novel! Moderating pace and reducing tension
These are high-tension scenes. Max is in a shoot-out; Ali’s escaping danger. Every word stretches out the sentence. And as the sentence length loosens, so does the tension. Look what happens when we remove the pronouns:
The sentences shorten, the pace increases – and so does the tension. Usage that works
We shouldn’t omit all -self pronouns. There are occasions when a sentence works better with them. Sometimes they’re essential.
Clarity In some cases, the pronoun is necessary for clarity. The reader can’t be sure of what the verb’s object is without it. In the examples below, removing the pronouns could leave the reader with questions: Ashamed of what? A promise to whom? Stop what? Consider whom an expert?
Emphasis The pronoun can be used to emphasize the person being discussed. Omission would leave the sentence grammatically intact but change the mood and pacing. In this case, it’s a judgement call on the author’s part.
Sense Some sentences don’t make grammatical sense without a reflexive pronoun. Remove them and the writing leaves more than questions: it’s unreadable.
Reflexive pronouns: mood versus clutter
At the top of this post, I offered examples of how -self pronouns can reduce tension. There will be occasions when an author wants to do exactly that.
There’s a more staccato feel to the second version above that might jar if the author’s seeking a contemplative mood. Still, too much self-ing can make even a stress-free scene overly wordy so it’s always worth thinking about whether a leaner version would be more immersive and get the reader from A to B faster. In the first version of the triplets that follow, the pronouns introduce a chilled-out sense of laissez-faire to the movement. In the second I’ve omitted them. And in the third, I’ve ditched the mundane movement and focused on the essential beat.
It’s always worth an author spending a little time on thinking about how much micromanagement of a scene is necessary. Will the reader care about the chair discovery, or that Maxie had a hot drink while they were reading the letter, or that the protagonist was no longer on the sofa when she called Mel? Perhaps. If that stuff’s central to driving the novel forward, to reflecting mood, to grounding the character in the environment, the pronoun and the stage direction might be necessary. If it’s clutter that can be removed without damaging reader engagement, lean up the scene! Summing up
Use reflexive pronouns when they’re necessary for clarity, sense and emphasis. Otherwise, consider leaner prose that focuses on what the reader needs to know to move forward in the story.
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat with Brunella Costagliola, a specialist military writer and editor, about what makes a compelling military story.
Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 11
Listen to find out more about:
Contact Brunella
Editing bites
Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise talk to fellow editor Maya Berger about working on erotica and adult fiction.
Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 10
Listen to find out more about:
Contact Maya
Editing bites 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.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Louise and Denise chat about 18 blogs for authors and editors that offer guidance on various aspects of writing craft.
Click to listen to Season 4, Episode 7
Listen to find out more about:
Editing bites and other resources
Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Not sure if contractions are a good fit for your fiction’s dialogue? Here’s why they (nearly always) work.
Next time you’re in the pub with friends, at the dinner table with your family, or travelling on the bus, do a bit of people-listening. They’ll speak with contractions: you’re, they’re, I’m, don’t, hadn’t, can’t and so on.
Contractions are a normal part of speech. They help us communicate faster and improve the flow of a sentence. Watch the following videos and listen to the spoken words. They feature people with very different backgrounds, sharing different stories, and in situations that demand varying levels of formality.
The people talking have one thing in common: they use contractions when they speak ... most (though not all) of the time. That’s why when we want to write natural dialogue – dialogue that flows with the ease of real-life speech – contractions work. How contractions affect the flow of dialogue Take a look at this excerpt from No Dominion by Louise Welsh (Kindle edition, John Murray, 2017).
Here’s the contraction-free recast. It reads awkwardly, and leaves us unconvinced that what’s in our mind’s ear bears any relation to what we would have heard had this been real speech. And that means we’re questioning the authenticity of the story rather than immersing ourselves in it.
He settled himself on the chair. ‘I do not know where you have just come from, but round here nothing is odd.’ He emphasised the word, making it sound absurd. ‘People come, people go. Sometimes they need something. Sometimes they have got something I need. We trade and they go on their way.’
Contractions and genre Some authors avoid contractions because of the genre they’re writing in. You’re more likely to see this in historical fiction than contemporary commercial fiction but it’s not strictly genre-specific and is more an issue of authorial style. Here’s an excerpt from a contemporary psychological mystery, The Wych Elm (Penguin, 2019, p. 71). Tana French uses contractions in the narrative and dialogue. The speech sounds natural; the narrative that frames it is informal.
Compare this with Our Mutual Friend (Wordsworth Editions, 1997, p. 235). Dickens, writing literary fiction in the 1860s, still uses contractions in dialogue, although he avoids them in his more formal but wickedly tart narrative.
Now look at Ambrose Parry’s The Way of All Flesh (Canongate Books, 2018). The authors (Parry is the pseudonym used by Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman) don’t avoid contractions completely but the sparing usage does give the dialogue a more archaic feel. Here’s an excerpt from p. 259.
I doubt anyone would be surprised when I say that the setting is 1847. And so it works. However, if the novel were set in 2019, there’d be a problem. We’d consider those characters unrealistically pompous and the dialogue overblown. Contractions, pace and voice The decision to use or avoid contractions is a tool that authors can use to deepen character voice. Specific contracted forms might enable readers to imagine regional accents, social status and personality traits such as pomposity. P.G. Wodehouse is a master of dialogue. Bertie Wooster is a wealthy young idler from the 1920s. Jeeves is his savvy valet. The dialogue between the two pops off the page and Wodehouse uses or avoids contractions to make the characters’ voices distinct.
You can see it in action in The Inimitable Jeeves (Kindle version, Aegitus, 2019).
In Oliver Twist (Wordsworth Classics, 1992, p. 8), Dickens contracts is not (ain’t) and them (’em) to indicate the low social standing of Mrs Mann, who runs a workhouse into which orphaned children are farmed.
Contractions and their impact on stress and tone You can use or omit contractions in order to force where the stress falls in a sentence. Compare the following:
By not using a contraction in the second example, the stress on ‘cannot’ is harder. The change is subtle but evident. With can’t the mood is one of disbelief tempered with a whining tone; with cannot the disbelief remains but the tone is angry. Here’s another excerpt from The Way of All Flesh (p. 140). The speaker is a surgeon, Dr Ziegler.
Parry’s dialogue doesn’t just evoke a historical setting. The style of the speech affects the tone too. The voice is compassionate, the mood stoic. However, the lack of contractions renders the tone precise and careful. On p. 142, Raven – a medical student turned sleuth – talks with the matron about medical charlatanry:
Using there is forces the stress on is, and in consequence the tone is resigned. With there’s the stress would have fallen on worse, and we might have assumed a more conspiratorial tone, as if she were about to divulge a secret. Contractions and narration style If you’re wondering whether to reserve your contractions for dialogue only, consider who the narrator is. Let’s revisit Tana French (p. 1). The viewpoint character is a privileged man called Toby, the setting contemporary Dublin. What’s key here is that the narration viewpoint style is first person. It is Toby who reports the events of the mystery; the narrative voice belongs to him. His narration register is therefore the same as his dialogue register – relaxed, colloquial – and the author, accordingly, retains the contractions in the narrative.
For sections written in third-person limited, the narrative voice would likely mirror the viewpoint character’s style of speaking. However, if you shift to a third-person objective viewpoint, where the distance between the characters and the readers is greater, the narrative might handle contractions differently to dialogue. It's a style choice you'll have to make. Guidance from Chicago Still a little nervous? Here’s some sensible advice from The Chicago Manual of Style, section 5.105:
‘Most types of writing benefit from the use of contractions. If used thoughtfully, contractions in prose sound natural and relaxed and make reading more enjoyable. Be-verbs and most of the auxiliary verbs are contracted when followed by not: are not–aren’t, was not–wasn’t, cannot–can’t, could not–couldn’t, do not–don’t, and so on. A few, such as ought not–oughtn’t, look or sound awkward and are best avoided. Pronouns can be contracted with auxiliaries, with forms of have, and with some be-verbs. Think before using one of the less common contractions, which often don’t work well in prose, except perhaps in dialogue or quotations.’
Evaluate the sound Here are three ways to help you evaluate the effectiveness of contracted or contracted-free dialogue: 1. Read the dialogue aloud: Is it difficult or awkward to say it? Does it sound unnatural to your ear? Do you stumble? Does it feel laboured, like you’re forcing the flow? If so, recast it with contractions. If the revised version is smoother, and the integrity of the setting is retained, go with the contracted forms. 2. Ask someone else to read the dialogue: Objectivity is almost impossible when it comes to our own writing. If the plan is that no one but you will ever read your book, write your dialogue the way you want to write it and leave it at that. If, however, you’re writing for readers too, and want to give them the best experience possible, fresh eyes (and ears) will serve you well. You could even give your readers two versions of the dialogue sample – one with contractions and one without – and ask them which flows better and reads most naturally. 3. Head for YouTube: Dig out examples of speech by people whose backgrounds, environments and historical settings are similar to those of your characters. Watching characters in action will give you confidence to place on the page what can be heard from the mouths of those on the screen. Summing up Whether to use contractions or not in dialogue is a style choice. There are no rules. However, a style choice that renders dialogue stilted and unrealistic is not good dialogue.
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.
Fresh eyes on a piece of writing is ideal. Sometimes, however, the turnaround time for publication precludes it. Other times, the return on investment just won’t justify the cost of hiring a professional proofreader, especially when shorter-form content’s in play. Good enough has to be enough.
Here are 10 ideas to help you minimize errors and inconsistencies. 
When we’re too close to the content
Checking our own writing rarely produces the same level of quality as a fresh pair of eyes. We see what we think is on the page, not what is on the page. That's because we're so close to the content.
I'm a professional editor and I know that when I don't pass on my blog posts to one of my colleagues there are more likely to be mistakes. It's not that I don't know my craft but that I'm wearing a writer's hat. Sometimes, getting pro help isn't an option. So what can you do to minimize errors and inconsistencies? Here are 10 tips. 1. Create a style guide
Style guides help you keep track of your preferences, including hyphenation, capitalization, proper-noun spelling, figures and measurements, time and date format.
2. Use a page-proofs checklist
This pro-proofreading checklist (free when you sign up to The Editorial Letter) helps you spot and identify layout problems in designed page proofs (hard copy or PDF). It’s based on the house guidelines provided by the many mainstream publishers I've worked for.
Run PerfectIt
PerfectIt is affordable software that takes the headache out of consistency checking. And because it’s customizable, it will help you enforce your style preferences and save you time. It’s a must-have tool for writers and pro editors.
4. Use find-and-replace in Word
Microsoft Word’s onboard find-and-replace tool enables you to locate and fix problems in your document quickly. This free ebooklet, Formatting in Word: Find and Replace, includes a range of handy strings and wildcard searches.
4. Use find-and-replace in Word
Word's styles palette ensures the different elements of your text are formatted consistently. These tutorials shows you how to set up, assign and amend styles. It'll save you heaps of time whether you're working on business documents, web copy, short stories or novels.
6. Trade with a colleague
If you want fresh eyes but budget's an issue, swap quality-control checking with a colleague or friend in the same position. Pick someone who has a strong command of language, spelling and grammar.
Even if they're not a professional editor, they're wearing the hat of the reader, not the originator, and that means they'll spot things you missed. 7. Use tools that locate inconsistent spelling
Here are 2 tools to help you locate inconsistent spelling:
8. Run The Bookalyser
The Bookalyser analyses a text for inconsistencies, errors and poor style: 70 different tests across 17 report areas in about 20 seconds, for up to 200,000 words at once. It works on fiction and non-fiction, and for British and American English.
Run Word’s onboard Editor
Microsoft Word has an onboard document-checking tool that flags up potential spelling and grammar problems. It's not foolproof (no software is) but it's a second pair of digital eyes that's available at a click.
Go to the ribbon, click on the Review tab, and select the Editor icon. 10. Read it out loud
Read the text out loud. Your brain works faster than your mouth and you might well spot missing words, grammar flops and problems with sentence flow when you turn the written word into the spoken word!
Word also has an onboard narration tool that can do the speaking for you. Go the ribbon, choose the Review tab and select Read Aloud. About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
There are different types of novel editing: developmental editing, line editing, copyediting and proofreading. Revising in the right order is essential if you want your book to be in the best shape possible.
Other ways to access this information
Feel free to enjoy this article, or watch the complementary webinar and download the free ebook.
Developmental editing
Developmental editing comes first. This is big-picture work that involves looking at the story as a whole.
You’ll also hear it called structural editing, perhaps even content editing, and the base components always include plot, structure, characterization, pace, viewpoint, narrative style, and tense.
3 things you should know about developmental editing
Line editing
Line editing is the next step in the revision process and it is stylistic work.
A strong sentence elevates story; a poorly crafted one can bury it. This level of editing revises for style, sense, and flow. You might also hear line editing referred to as substantive editing or stylistic editing. Editors will be addressing the following:
3 things you should know about line editing
Copyediting
Copyediting is the technical side of sentence-level work. Editors will be addressing the following:
3 things you should know about copyediting
Proofreading
Proofreading is the last stage of the editing process prior to publication. Every novel, whether it’s being delivered in print or digitally, requires a final quality-control check.
A proofreader looks for literal errors and layout problems that slipped through previous rounds of revision or were introduced at design stage. Authors preparing for print can ask a proofreader to annotate page proofs. These are almost what a reader would see if they pulled the novel off the shelf. Others ask proofreaders to amend the raw text, either because they’re preparing for epublication or for audiobook narration. Proofreaders are more than typo hunters. They check for consistency of spelling, punctuation and grammar, but also for layout problems such as (but not limited to) indentation, line spacing, inconsistent chapter drops, missing page numbers, and font and heading styles. The remit is extensive (download a free checklist). The art of good proofreading lies in knowing when to change and when to leave well enough alone. A good proofreader should understand the impact of their revisions—not only in relation to the knock-on effect on other pages but also to the cost if a third-party designer/formatter is part of the team.
3 things you should know about proofreading
Which type of editing do you need?
Authors need to take their books through all the types of editing. That doesn’t mean hiring third party professionals for each stage. Writing groups, self-study courses, how-to books, and self-publishing organizations are all great sources of editorial support.
If you decide to work with a professional, invest in one who can help you where you’re weakest. You might be a great structural self-editor but prone to overwriting. Or you might have nailed line craft but need help with story development. And pay attention to the order of play when it comes to revision. Fixing plot holes at proofreading stage might damage previous rounds of editing. That’s a waste of time and money that every writer wants to avoid! About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Writing or editing in Microsoft Word on a PC? Save yourself time by learning these 27 keyboard shortcuts.
Read the shortcuts or download the PDF
If you don’t want to learn 27, learn just the first one: Save!
CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Are your readers bouncing from one character’s head to another in the same scene? You might be head-hopping. This article shows you how to spot it in your fiction writing, understand its impact, and fix it.
Holding viewpoint when writing in third-person limited
Take a look at this excerpt from In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin (p. 16, Orion Books, 2018). It’s a solid example of third-person limited viewpoint.
Rebus pushed open the wrought-iron gate. No sound from its hinges, the garden to either side of the flagstone path well tended. Two bins – one landfill, one garden waste – had already been placed on the pavement outside. None of the neighbours had got round to it yet. Rebus rang the doorbell and waited. The door was eventually opened by a man the same age as him, though he looked half a decade younger. Bill Rawlston had kept himself trim since retirement, and the eyes behind the half-moon spectacles retained their keen intelligence. Analysis: Tight third-person limited narration Rebus is the viewpoint character. That means the internal experiences we access are limited to his. For example:
We cannot get in Rawlston’s head. All we can do is consider his internal experiences via his observable and audible behaviour, and his dialogue. For example:
What head-hopping would look like
Here’s what that excerpt might look like if there was head-hopping going on:
Rebus pushed open the wrought-iron gate. No sound from its hinges, the garden to either side of the flagstone path well tended. Two bins – one landfill, one garden waste – had already been placed on the pavement outside. None of the neighbours had got round to it yet. Rebus rang the doorbell and waited. Analysis: Confused narration Notice how we bounce between the heads of Rebus and Rawlston. Now we have access to the internal experiences of both.
In that butchered version, the reader is forced to play a game of ping-pong on the page. Why head-hopping spoils fiction
Here are 4 reasons to hold viewpoint rather than head-hopping:
1. Head-hopping renders a story less immersive
In Rankin’s original prose, we are limited to the world of the novel as Rebus experiences it. That’s powerful because every word on the page is a step we take with Rebus, as Rebus. I get to be a male, Scottish detective for a few hours rather than a female, English book editor! In my butchered version, I take that first step with Rebus but then trip and fall into Rawlston. Because I’m bouncing between those characters’ internal experiences, I don’t have time to invest in either. And so I stay as lil’ ol’ me. I do like being me, but when I buy one of Rankin’s books I want to immerse myself in its world for a few hours at a time and dig deep under the skin of the viewpoint character. I can be me without paying fifteen quid for the privilege!
2. Head-hopping diminishes suspense
In the original text, Rankin keeps the suspense tight by allowing us to access only Rebus’s senses. Rawlston’s sombre expression, twitching mouth and curt responses make Rebus (and us) think, Does he want me here? Does he begrudge my presence? What’s going on in his head? Those questions demand answers and we seek them in the clues offered by the limited narrative. Because the limited viewpoint requires Rebus and the reader to make assumptions based on what’s observable and audible, there’s uncertainty. That’s what provides the suspense, and it compels us to keep reading in the hope that the truth will be unveiled. In my head-hopping version, the prose is flat. There are no questions. We know what everyone’s thinking because we’re in everyone’s head. Readers aren’t called upon to use their imagination – both characters’ internal experiences are spoon-fed to us.
3. Head-hopping is less authentic
Head-hopping reminds readers that they are in a story written by an author. We don’t get to suspend belief because the writing won’t allow us to immerse ourselves that deeply. In Rankin’s original prose, we walk through the world as if we are Rebus, and Rebus alone. That’s what happens in real life. I know only what I’m thinking, feeling, seeing and hearing. I can’t be sure than another’s perception is the same. Audio-visual signals help me make reasonable assumptions but I’m only ever in my own head … or Rebus’s if I’m reading a story about him because Rankin knows how to hold viewpoint. In my mangled version of the excerpt, there’s a reality flop. Now I’m everyone, which is ridiculous of course. Authenticity has fallen off a cliff.
4. Head-hopping can be confusing
When a writer head-hops, the reader has to keep track of whose thoughts and emotions are being experienced. When a reader doesn’t know where they are in a novel for even a few seconds, that’s a literary misfire. This is what happens in the head-hopping excerpt. For example, Rawlston walks down the hall and identifies Rebus through the peephole. We’re right with him, in his head. But what follows is jarring. That he reports on his spectacles sitting in front of keenly intelligent eyes is oddly self-aware. Of course, it’s not Rawlston’s perception; it’s Rebus’s. And once we realize that, the prose makes sense. But working that out is not where Rankin wants the reader’s attention. He’s telling us a story and he wants us to read it. That’s why he holds a tight limited viewpoint throughout. Head-hop check
Make a list of the characters in a chapter or scene. Identify the viewpoint character.
There can be more than one viewpoint character in a book but most commercial fiction authors separate them by chapters or sections. Here’s a quick way to check whether you’re holding viewpoint. Viewpoint characters: What the reader can access
Non-viewpoint characters: What the reader can access
Some examples to show you the way
Summing up
Even if your readers don’t know what head-hopping is, by removing it from your novel you’ll give them a more immersive, suspenseful and authentic journey through the world you’ve built.
Plus, you’ll ensure they’re reading your story, not trying to work out who’s telling it. About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
This post helps less experienced authors and editors understand how a third-person narrative viewpoint works in fiction, and the differences between objective and limited.
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.
Third-person limited POV
Along with third-person objective, this viewpoint is the one that most writers find easiest to master at the beginning of their journey. Furthermore, readers are used to encountering it in contemporary fiction. The pronouns of choice are ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘it’ and ‘they’.
Third-person limited is so called because it’s a deeper viewpoint that limits readers to a single character’s experience – what they see, hear, feel and think. Readers get to sit in their skin and that provides an immersive experience. It’s as if we’re them. Example: Intimacy and getting under the character’s skin Here are some examples from Mick Herron, Harry Brett and Louise Penny that demonstrate an intimate third-person limited narrative: For almost a minute that was that. Shirley could feel her watch ticking; could feel through the desk’s surface the computer struggling to return to life. Two pairs of feet tracked downstairs. Harper and Guy. She wondered where they were off to. (Dead Lions, p. 17) His mum pushed past him, bringing a cloud of thick night air seasoned with salt and something he couldn’t place. A perfume perhaps, but not his mother’s normal scent. (Time to Win, p. 321) The blurred figures at the far end of the long corridor seemed almost liquid, or smoke. There, but insubstantial. Fleeting. Fleeing.
The voices are distinctive. It’s not just dialogue that conveys how the viewpoint characters speak and think; it’s the narrative too.
However, it’s called third-person limited for a reason. Strictly speaking, what that character can’t see or know shouldn’t be reported. In the above examples, we’re left with questions – of destination in the first, of the origin of a smell in the second, and of the nature of the journey – because we don’t know any more than the viewpoint characters. Third-person limited is effective because an author doesn’t want to give everything away at once. The limitations over what can be known, and therefore divulged, allow the writer to control the unveiling of information via the viewpoint character. Recommendation I recommend you stick to a single character’s POV per chapter or section to avoid confusion or interruption. Mittelmark and Newman (p. 159) offer this wisdom: Sometimes an author slips into a different point of view for the space of a single paragraph, or even a sentence. This is especially jarring when the remaining novel is given from the point of view of a single character, whom we have come to regard as our second self. It gives the feeling of a fleeting and unexplained moment of telepathy, an uncomfortable intrusion of somebody else’s thoughts. When the protagonist’s point of view resumes, we move forward into the narrative warily, ready at any moment for a fresh assault on our minds.
That’s worth heeding. It means the reader’s trust has been lost, that they’ve been pulled out of the story rather than drawn further into it.
Trickier still is narrative ping pong, where within one section we bounce back and forth between the POVs of Character X and Character Y. Here’s a made-up example that demonstrates how things can go wrong. Jan ran down the road, her lungs screaming for air. She snatched a glance over her shoulder, hoping to Christ Melody was behind.
The problem with this kind of setup is that it ‘alienates the reader from both perspectives. She is unable to identify with either because there’s no telling when it will be yanked away’ (Mittelmark and Newman, p. 161).
In other words, the reader has been prevented from immersing themselves in the character’s version of the story. When you stay in the head of one character per chapter or section, you make your writing life and your reader’s journey easier. Third-person objective POV
If third-person limited provides intimacy – allowing us to explore a character’s emotions and hear their voice – third-person objective offers a more neutral flexibility when we need some distance to look around and beyond objectively.
Like its limited sister, writers find this easiest to master and readers are used to encountering it. The pronouns too are ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘it’ and ‘they’. It’s a useful viewpoint for the author who wants to convey descriptive information – height, weight, facial expression, environment. If you’re using this POV, practice your observation skills so that you understand how people move from place to place, what they wear, where they live, how they gesture, so that you can show what might be going on in their heads through what can be observed. The same can be said of the objects in your novel. How does light play on water or a brick building at various times of the day? What sounds might be audible in your environment? How do the seasons affect the flora and fauna? Third-person objective viewpoints are powerful because they force a writer to show rather than tell what’s being seen. That’s because we don’t have access to the internal thoughts of a character. Example: A more distant and descriptive narrative Here’s an example from David Baldacci’s The Fix (p. 3) that demonstrates third-person narration as observable description. Amos Decker trudged along alone. He was six-five and built like the football player he had once been. He’d been on a diet for several months now and had dropped a chunk of weight, but he could stand to lose quite a bit more. He was dressed in khaki pants stained at the cuff and a long, rumpled Ohio State Buckeyes pullover that concealed both his belly and the Glock 41 Gen4 pistol riding in a belt holster on his waistband. Example: Shown-not-told in action Here are some excerpts from Stephen King’s The Stand that demonstrate a close attention to the way things and people behave when observed. The Chevy jumped like an old dog that had been kicked and plowed away the hi-test pump. It snapped off and rolled away, spilling a few dribbles of gas. The nozzle came unhooked and lay glittering under the fluorescents. (p. 8) “Clock went red,” the man on the floor grunted, and then began to cough, racking chainlike explosions that send heavy mucus spraying from his mouth in long and ropy splatters. Hap leaned backward, grimacing desperately. (p. 11) She walked softly up behind him and laid both hands on his shoulders.
Objectivity allows the writer to explore in detail what would be unnatural for a character to report directly. Remember, we’re not accessing thoughts, opinions and emotions with an objective POV, just the stuff that any onlooker could see, hear or smell.
Objective is the key word here. Third-person objective viewpoints should focus on what could be known by a narrator witnessing that scene. When information is reported that moves beyond a floating camera that’s tracking the immediate environs and into a space where the narrator knows more than could possibly be witnessed by the character or the onlooker, omniscience is in play (more on that below). In some genres – crime fiction for example – this can be useful because the reader will be forced to reach their own conclusions as to the reasons for, or motivations behind, a particular event or behaviour. In other words, it’s mysterious. However, it can be distancing if overused and as a result contemporary commercial fiction writers rarely write entire novels from an objective POV because it’s reportage and we can’t get into the characters’ heads. It’s harder to understand what motivates them unless they express it through dialogue. A blend of limited and objective is a more likely choice. Recommendation Use third-person objective POV to create suspense, to make your reader wonder, and ask their own questions, and to provide scene-setting information, but blend with a limited viewpoint for deeper emotional engagement. In the first paragraph of the example below, Baldacci (The Fix, p. 3) uses third-person objective to give us background facts. In the second, he switches to limited to explain the character’s feelings. It’s a lovely fusion: His size fourteen shoes hit the pavement with noisy splats. His hair was, to put it kindly, dishevelled. Decker worked at the FBI on a joint task force. He was on his way to a meeting at the Hoover Building. Cited works and related reading
About Louise Harnby
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) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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