Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Does your novel need a glossary?

Posted January 29, 2009 by Gabrielle Tags: .

Including a glossary in your fiction is one of those topics that it’s difficult to find advice about on the web. Search “glossary” and “fiction” on Google and you’ll get about three million hits, but trying to refine a search so that you get “incorporating a glossary into your fiction” instead of “here’s a glossary of useful things relating to fiction” can be quite a challenge.

I was asked a question about including a glossary in a novel recently, and since my answer was relevant, I thought I would share it here, too.

My short answer is: don’t.

I won’t say “never,” because never has a way of coming back to bite people, but I will say that the situations in which I’d recommend it are extremely rare.

The situations in which you’d put a glossary in the front of a novel are even rarer.

It’s a bad idea to bog your readers down with a whole list of names before the book even begins. Readers spend the first couple chapters of a novel gathering in names and facts, trying to keep your characters straight and understand your world.

You may have noticed that when a prologue focuses on a time far in the future or past, it often centers around just one or two characters who’ll never be seen again. This is fine because it provides atmosphere without overwhelming readers. A whole glossary of names or foreign words that they feel obligated to remember, though, will leave their heads spinning before they even start the story proper.

It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? You’re giving them a glossary so that they won’t have to remember all those words and names! But the way the mind works, simply having them there in a list before the story even starts will make them feel daunting and important.

You should be able to introduce characters and foreign terms and concepts in such a way that your readers will be able to grasp each fully in its turn. They shouldn’t need to start out with a chart and go from there. After, for their own reference, perhaps, but it shouldn’t be necessary before.

Putting your glossary at the end of the book has its own inherent problems. Chief among them, making sure your readers know that it’s there as they read, so that it will do them some good. Having it listed in the table of contents is the best way to achieve that. They’ll see it listed, they’ll know they can reference it if they want to, but it won’t get in the way as they start your novel with fresh minds ready to meet new characters, accept knowledge about new worlds and integrate what’s important about each.

How do you know if your novel should have a glossary?

If it feels like you’re taking a short cut and relying on a bullet list instead of fleshing out those introductions and concepts in the body of your manuscript instead, then it probably is a short cut, and not in a good way. Let your writing speak for itself; that’s why you’re writing a novel in the first place, right?

If you’ve got a list of foreign words, concepts or characters that you can’t figure out how to introduce in any other way, then think harder. Experiment with different things. Try. If they still won’t fit in, are they really needed?

If you want to use a glossary to expand on concepts and characters that weren’t mentioned in your book, or that missed the cut, then you especially don’t need a glossary. It’s great that you’ve done all your research and created so much, but save it. Take pride in it. Maybe use it for your sequel. Save it for where it’s relevant.

It’s tempting to overload your readers with facts just because you’ve done your work and have the facts to share, but don’t. Only give them what they need. J.K. Rowling had alphabetical lists of every child in every class year at Hogwarts, but she only imparted them as far as was needed to instill a sense of alphabetical order until she got where she needed to go for the story to progress.

If you have a complex list of plants with botanical properties sprinkled through your novel, likewise a grimoire full of magical spells, an entire constructed language, or a convoluted multigenerational family tree, then speak to me about a glossary. It should aid your book, providing a concise reference to support something crucial from your pages and accumulate a referential list in one place. It should not replace your writing, be redundant, or offer information beyond what’s necessary for the enjoyment of your story. Even if your readers would be interested in the content, it’s okay to leave them wanting more.

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Good Parts and Other Parts

Posted January 26, 2009 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

When you first get the idea for a story, there are certain plot elements and scenes that spring to mind. Sometimes they’re pivotal moments. Sometimes they’re just fun moments. Regardless, they’re the moments you most want to write.

Some writers will do these scenes first, then drop them into place with a little refining when their time arrives in the manuscript. Others will keep them in mind, or simply outline them for later.

For today’s purposes, we’ll call these scenes the “good parts”. The parts you’re most looking forward to writing.

A first draft will often have two types of content: the “good parts” and the “other parts”. The other parts are the parts that need to happen to get to the good parts. They’re the bridges that link pivotal scenes together, or impart important information, or provide backstory and exposition and otherwise set things up.

You know exactly what I’m talking about, right? You can’t wait to write the confrontation between the monster and the heroine. But you know that first she has to go check out the abandoned building where it’s hiding so that it can see her, and her colleagues have to scoff at her for monster hunting so that she’ll be all alone for the confrontation you have in mind, and she has to go to the library and find clippings of vague and creepy stories about the monster that give her an idea what its weaknesses might be. You don’t especially want to write those parts, but you need to get through them to get to the part you do want to write.

If you’re the type of writer who hurries through the other parts to get writing on the good parts, that’s fine. For a first draft, it’s fine.

When you put that manuscript away for six months like Scott Sigler’s told you to do and you take it out of the drawer again, you’ll be able to tell the good parts from the other parts pretty easily. The good parts will be descriptive, lush and involved. They’ll draw you to keep turning the page. The other parts will be, well… utilitarian. Light on detail, heavy on marathon dialog or marathon movement sequences, without much combining of the two. You won’t know what anything looks like, sounds like or smells like, you’ll just know What Happens Next.

Here’s the thing, though: When you want to sell readers on your book and keep them engaged, all the parts have to be good parts. If you lose your readers in the in-between passages, they won’t stick around for that great scene you’ve got fifty pages from now. They won’t care what happens when the heroine meets the monster.

The rewrite is the time to identify the other parts and turn them into good parts. Make sure every scene is there for a reason, and make every scene a good scene. Don’t just go back in and sprinkle adjectives around, or toss gratuitous movement around the dialog and call it done. It’ll show. Choose words that add something to your story. Add description and ambiance where they belong. Give each scene something pivotal, something endearing, something humorous, something surprising… something special. Draw the reader in. Do something memorable. While in practice, every scene might not make it to become someone’s favorite scene, every scene should at least have the potential.

If a scene is a boring necessity to you, it’ll be boring to your reader. And it won’t be a necessity to them. There are plenty of other books for them to read out there that are interesting all the way through. Here’s a great goal for your rewrite: Don’t give your reader any hint at which scenes were easy or hard or interesting or dull for you. Cut out anything the story doesn’t need, and add life to anything your eye skips over as boring. Flesh out anything that’s necessary but that was undeveloped in your haste to get it on the page so that you could move on. And this should be the larger goal of your rewrite: make every part a good part.

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The painful ‘nowning’ process

Posted January 22, 2009 by admin Tags: , , , .

BUFFY: How do you get to be renowned? I mean, like, do you have to be ‘nowned’ first?
WILLOW: Yes, first there’s the painful ‘nowning’ process.

(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode 4.1 “The Freshman”)

Clever wording aside, the process of gaining renown is, often, a painful one. Yet, renown, or reputation, or recognition, or whatever you want to call it, is important to a writer’s career.

It’s rarely enough that your book stands out from the crowd; you have to stand out from the crowd, too. Name recognition is important when you’re trying to sell your product or your service. It’s important when you’re trying to sell your book to a publisher and then ultimately to the end reader.

It’s not enough to sit back and expect your publisher to sell you and make you a star. All else being equal, a publisher will select the author who already has that star power on their own. They’ll pick someone who knows notable authors who might provide blurbs for the book. They’ll pick award-winners, or authors who have been published in notable places, or whose podcasts attract tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers. You need contacts, credentials… you need renown. And you need to build that renown for yourself. Other people may be able to provide you with some of the opportunities, but no one else can do the legwork for you.

Over time, this blog will dip into several ways to build renown. For today, I’m going to focus on one.

“Award-winning author…” is a great thing to have in front of your name. “New York Times Bestselling…” is even better, “award-nominated” is a good place to start, but “award-winning” carries a nice amount of weight.

There are two ways to win awards. One is to sit back and wait for attention to come to you (the writing equivalent of being spotted by a talent scout or a recruiter). This can happen. It’s not very likely, and it’s not something you should count on. There is no award fairy to fly in your window and exchange the manuscript under your pillow for a trophy and a big check.

The actual process of winning awards is a more painful one, but considering that it’s a part of the painful nowning process, a little discomfort is certainly to be expected.

Submit your writing to contests.

There are a lot of scam contests out there. However, there are a lot of contests that aren’t scams, too.

Writer Beware has a great section on literary contests and how to tell the real ones from the scams. Preditors and Editors has an extensive list of writing contests, annotated with recommendations and warnings.

Poetry is also an option, if you don’t want to take your prose fiction off the market. About.Com links to an extensive collection of poetry contests (some of these contests sport multiple categories: they may other fiction and nonfiction writing categories in addition to poetry. Potentially worth a glance even for non-poets), a few essays about the reliability of contests, and their benefits and risks. Additionally, Absolute Write’s excellent advice on spotting poetry contest scams can be broadened to general literary contests.

Writers are often wary of even the most legitimate of contests, and with good reason:

Many contests have stipulations about simultaneous submissions and published works. You may end up taking your publishable work off the market if you submit it to a contest, losing time that you could be spending submitting to publishers. Additionally, there are very few contests out there that are notable and reputable enough to add to your renown. A publisher will not be impressed if you’ve won a spot in a zine they’ve never heard of.

And many contests charge an entry fee. These fees are used to reimburse the judges for their time, and to fund the prize pool, so many legitimate contests do have entry fees. Preditors and Editors advises against entering contests with entry fees, especially if the prize isn’t significantly more than the fee. It’s a fair recommendation—multiple submissions can add up quickly to a considerable expense that the new writer might not be able to justify or afford—but I would personally be more wary of a contest that didn’t have an entry fee.

The expenses inherent in a contest will have to be paid sooner or later, and I would be wary of the “later” (for example, will the publisher expect you to pay to have your submission published once you’ve won?) if I wasn’t asked for a small fee up front. Always, always read the entry rules and the fine print. If something seems fishy, ask. If the reward is publication of a book, make sure it’s with a reputable press, and that you won’t be expected to cover the costs.

All that being said, finding a small but reputable literary contest with renown of its own—literary journals run by university presses, or by publishers you’ve heard of, are often a safer bet—can be worth the expense. Winning a substantial prize may well make up for the initial entry fee investment, it might get your work in front of influential authors, depending on who the judges are, and the distribution you may receive through publication in a journal with a wide readership may be worth having withheld your work from traditional publication streams.

There are no easy answers, but it’s an option to be aware of. Ultimately, it’s up to you. Winning a writing contest, all by itself, will not be the springboard that launches your sudden success. Entering contests can be good practice. It can inspire you to write toward a deadline. And it can even, if you’re fortunate and if you’re careful to submit to reputable and noteworthy contests, lead to a little bit of money and a little bit of renown.

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In Homage to Mr. Poe

Posted January 19, 2009 by admin Tags: .

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. In his honor, Evil Editor is calling for short-short-short stories or scenes in the style of Mr. Poe.

The link is here. Reference works by Poe can be found here. The deadline is Sunday the 24th. The limit is 400 words.

Enter. Enjoy! I’ll be checking back to see what you come up with.

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Grammarphobic?

Posted January 15, 2009 by admin Tags: .

When it comes to commonly misunderstood rules of spelling or grammar (like whether to use “discreet” or “discrete”, “fewer” or “less”, or “as if it was” over “as if it were”), I’ve often found that a writer who is uncertain about the correct usage will alternate back and forth. It may be completely unintentional, but it sometimes comes across as trying to cover all your bases: “If I do this both ways, I’ll be right half the time!”

The most daunting part of researching all these nitpicky rules is knowing where to look. Thick, old reference books may be outdated, and often the words involved are too common to produce any useful search results—or the answers may be too contested for the results to be trustworthy.

The blog at grammarphobia.com is a great resource for editors and writers alike. You’ll find the answers to many of these sorts of issues, reliably researched and well cited. A convenient search bar helps you sort through the archives, and a contact link allows you to ask your question if it hasn’t already been covered.

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Editing Tests

Posted January 12, 2009 by admin Tags: , .

How Publishers Hire Editors

I should start with a disclaimer: I’ve never had to take an editing test. I’m at a point in my career where I’m kept pleasantly busy with my work for Dragon Moon Press, and my additional projects arrive through referrals—situations in which my work has already spoken for itself.

My experience with editing tests is from the other side, as an Editor-In-Charge. I’m now in a position to hire other freelance editors and delegate projects to them. I admit, it makes me very uncomfortable to do so.

I know the problems I’m likely to face in a manuscript. I feel confident that know how to ride the line between polishing up a sentence and moving it out of the author’s voice; what to mess with and what to leave alone. I know how to address an author in a friendly and non-confrontational way, yet still fight for an edit if it’ll make a stronger book.

I know my own level of attentiveness to detail. I don’t know anyone else’s, if I haven’t seen their work. Handing over a novel-length manuscript and hoping everything will be all right when I look at the proofs, isn’t a time-effective way to find out. Enter: the editing test.

An editing test should be an open-book test, because an open-book test displays your ability to find the answers you need, not your inherent knowledge. No editor edits in a reference-free vacuum. I don’t actually want to test how much you know. I want to test your ability to identify the things you need to check on, and your ability to use reference material to check on it. It’s more important that things stand out as “wrong” or “questionable” to you, than that you know offhand how to make them right. I don’t care if you know when to use “affect” or “as if it were” or if you can spell “Antietam”. I care that you know what to look up, and where to look it up. I care that correct words in incorrect contexts will stand out to you. I need you to be able to catch not only the obvious spelling mistakes, but the kinds of spelling mistakes that a spell-checker won’t find, too.

My editing tests aren’t straightforward grammar and punctuation multiple choice tests. I don’t request a writing sample, either. Seeing a finished product isn’t the same as seeing someone’s work, since I don’t know what state the manuscript was in before it came to them. I’ve edited some very clean manuscripts that have only needed a handful of corrections. I’ve also edited some manuscripts that have needed tough love. In my opinion, sending an editor a few pages or a very short chapter to mark up will paint a much better picture of that editor’s ability.

I want to see that all the spelling, punctuation and grammar errors are caught. I want to see if awkward or misleading phrases are recast or left alone. I want to sprinkle in a continuity error—maybe make someone stand, and then stand again once they’re already standing—to see if that’s caught, as well. I want to get a sense of the editor’s personality: are they going to be too timid to suggest changes, and simply proofread instead? Are they going to try to rewrite too much? Or will they hit that sweet middle ground?

How Writers Hire Editors

It’s important to note that, as a writer, hiring an editor is a very different process. An individual writer won’t be able to administer this sort of test to an editor. I’ve heard of cases where writers have tried to solicit a free “test” chapter each from a handful of editors, to end up with a finished product that’s been edited (or at least proofread) for free. Don’t do this. You will get an inconsistent book, and your name will be mumbled disapprovingly by a lot of annoyed editors who will never work with you again.

As an editor, I’m happy to look at a manuscript, or a sample of a manuscript. A sample is essential for me to provide an evaluation so that I can tell you what level of work the manuscript will need and what sort of rate I’d charge to do that work, but I won’t give free samples of the actual work.

Do ask for an editor’s credits and credentials. Ask if you can contact some of their clients for references. A good editor who has done good work and left happy clients behind them will have nothing to hide.

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Mascot: Editorcat

Posted January 8, 2009 by admin Tags: , .

I had a serious post in mind for today, but I saw this on icanhascheezburger last night and, well, I think this one speaks for itself.


I never have days like this, either.

Actually, I’m really fortunate right now. All my clients lately have been wonderful, eloquent, and easy to work with. May the trend continue!

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Old Books, Online

Posted January 5, 2009 by admin Tags: , .

Way, way back (or, at least, a long time ago as Internet history goes), there was Project Gutenberg. It began in 1971, with project founder Michael Hart typing in the Declaration of Independence, and slowly expanded to include other historical documents and out-of-copyright literature.

In 1991, Project Gutenberg took its current form. Its initial goal was to add one book per month. In 2006, with the help of volunteers around the world, it saw the addition of an average of 400 books per month, according to the general FAQ.

(As a proud citizen of the Internet, I’m pleased to say I did my part. The book I helped to transcribe is number 769 of the collection: Okakura’s The Book of Tea.)

If you’re a more recent arrival to the Internet, you might not be familiar with Project Gutenberg, but chances are good that you’ll know about Google Books.

Google started with the same idea: making out-of-copyright books available online. They’ve expanded the concept to include out-of-print books, and have come to a settlement with publishers and authors about the distribution of out-of-print but in-copyright material, as well as the distribution of current in-copyright and in-print books, as well.

For Google’s summary of their service: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/

The New York Times has a good article about the Google settlement, and what it means for researchers, readers, and publishers.

I think that anything that grants access to literature and information, while still acknowledging and respecting the rights of the owners of that information, is a good thing. Do I think this will kill paper publishing? No. Not at all.

What do you think?

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