Does your novel need a glossary?

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.

Tagged as: writing