Writing Invisibly

Posted March 8, 2010 by Gabrielle

A question I hear frequently from new writers is, “How do I know if my writing is good enough to try to get it published?” When you’re so close to your own work, it’s hard to have the distance to evaluate your writing and determine whether you’re really ready.

Writing should be invisible. You’ve probably heard that saying before. I know you’ve heard it here at the very least, because I know I mentioned it when I was talking about using the word “said.” It’s not always strictly true, but it makes a good guide when you’re starting out.

A psychology professor once described hypnosis to me as the state you get into when you’re so engrossed in a book that you’re not seeing the page or having a conscious sense of turning the pages, or when you’re so into a movie that you get sucked into the action on the screen and forget about the physical environment around you.

When writing is invisible, the words paint a picture and animate it, moving it forward and giving it life. When writing isn’t technically smooth enough, the reader is jolted from their imagination and focused back down to the page. They get bumped out of the story, even if they don’t see the speedbump that they’ve hit, or they can’t get into it to start with.

There are several problems that can keep that picture from forming. Maybe the environment isn’t full or vivid enough to form a clear mental picture, or maybe the point of view or the verb tense switches too many times for them to keep up. Maybe the actions are too heavy-handed and don’t seem to be coming from real motivation, or the characters aren’t three-dimensional enough to relate to. Maybe it just doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.

The quality of the writing itself is important, too, in that it needs to be of a certain level of proficiency. You can have the best plot ever, but if someone can’t understand what you’re trying to say, they’re never going to have a chance to appreciate the bigger picture.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re evaluating your writing on a technical level, to help your words stay invisible:

    1. Point of view

    In standard practice, a chapter or a chapter segment sticks to a single character’s point of view. The current Point of View (POV) character is the only one who can express thoughts and internal narrative. There are exceptions to the rule, but you have to know the rule before you can experiment with breaking it. Switching POV back and forth repeatedly without a section break or other delineation between characters looks sloppy and unintentional.

    2. Verb tense

    Once you pick past, present or future tense, commit to it and stay consistent. If a past tense manuscript dips into present tense and back within a single sentence, or within a paragraph, it’s going to be distracting to readers even if they can’t put a finger on the problem. To a publisher or an agent, it’s a red flag.

    3. Subject / verb agreement

    Know your singulars and plurals, and keep those consistent too. Sometimes these are tricky, and look wrong even when they’re correct. If you come upon one that will look wrong either way, there’s nothing wrong with doing a little bit of crafty rewording to avoid it entirely.

    4. Writing style

    The expectation for vocabulary level and tone is set very early in the manuscript. If the narrative changes, becoming more formal and using bigger words, or becoming simpler and more casual, that’s going to jolt the reader. Be aware of the reading level and style you’re creating, and be consistent. Any changes in it should be clearly deliberate, such as a switch between characters’ POV, and even then it’s best used sparingly.

    5. Spelling and punctuation

    Spell-check is a start, but it doesn’t catch everything. Typos that form other words can be devastating to your manuscript. A clear and obvious lack of understanding of grammatical rules (when to use “lay” vs. “lie”, or “whose” vs. “who’s”) can also sink you. Having a story to tell is only part of the recipe for writing. You also have to know your craft.

These are all basic elements of writing, but they all conspire to form the first impression you make on a reader. Once you’re confident that your writing is where it needs to be, you can turn your critical eye to your story:

    1. Tone of voice

    The way you present your narrative has to match the tone and flavor of the story, engage readers without annoying them, and move the plot along. A story with no narrative whatsoever will read like a screenplay: a lot of stage direction and dialogue with nothing to bridge it. A story with too conversational a tone runs the risk of bogging the reader down in detail or dragging down the pace. An overly explanatory tone has a risk of doing a lot of telling instead of showing, and may feel patronizing to the reader.

    2. Showing, telling, and show-and-tell

    If you tell someone how your character feels, you deny them the opportunity of feeling it along with the character. “He looked annoyed” doesn’t tell me a thing about the actual look on his face, or his body language. You’re denying yourself an opportunity to add detail and personality to your character.

    If you tell it and show it (He wondered what she meant. “What do you mean?” he asked, not understanding.), it’s redundant and patronizing, essentially telling your reader that you don’t trust them to be smart enough to pick up on your more subtle cues. If something’s displayed visibly or audibly, it doesn’t have to be explained in the narrative, too.

    3. Infodump

    There’s never a good place for a long, involved infodump, but the beginning of the story is the worst of the worst. Work a character’s description and history in with some subtlety and finesse. Nothing jolts me out of a story like a paragraph that starts, “Before I go on, I should stop and explain…” No! Don’t stop and explain! The explaining should be happening all the way through, in gradual little pieces that paint a full picture a brushstroke at a time.

    There’s also a tendency for a writer to want to explain their own pet interest in more intense depth than a story calls for. “I did all this research, and it’s really cool, so I’m going to SHARE IT ALL WITH YOU RIGHT NOW.” Be aware of your pet topics, and don’t be afraid to ask for a second opinion if you’re concerned that you might be delving into them in more detail than the reader will need or want to see.

    4. Breaking the fourth wall

    Speaking directly to the audience is a valid style choice, but if it doesn’t look like deliberate craft, it will just look sloppy. Above all, it reminds the reader that they’re reading a book, so it may lurch them out of the story. Beware of using too conversational a tone, starting sentences in the narrative with “Well,” or “So,” or even “Yes” and “No,” as if you’re talking to a person instead of weaving a tale. It can be done well, but most of the time it isn’t.

    5. Motivation

    Characters have reasons for what they do. Bad guys don’t usually think they’re bad. They have motives and goals they’re trying to accomplish, reasons for their tempers, and a life’s worth of history to make them behave the way they do. A cardboard archetype character — the bored student, the inept cop, the abusive authority figure with the short fuse — will look flat to the reader. Fill your characters out so that they can appear as sturdy from the side as they are head-on. Actions and dialogue that seem to come from nowhere really jolt me out of a manuscript. Readers are looking for an experience to relate to, and they will relate better to characters who feel real, who have realistic reactions to situations, and whose motives they can understand. All writing is a contrivance of the writer, but the skill is in not making it feel contrived.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

March Forth for Grammar

Posted March 4, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

Every day is Grammar Day around here, but today is special. Today is National Grammar Day.

We learn to hate in school, and then we learn to take it for granted out in the everyday world, but if ever there were a quiet, unsung hero that deserved a made-up holiday, grammar would be it. It governs the way we put words together so that we can express ourselves clearly and be understood. It impacts our impressions of the people around us. Even if you don’t make your living in the literary field, grammar is still key to your interactions with the world you live in.

And if that weren’t enough, without understanding of proper grammar, LOLcats wouldn’t be funny.

You use grammar every day. You speak, you read, maybe you write. Take a moment today to appreciate the rules by which words are strung together. Take a moment to look up one of those confusing rules of grammar and learn something new.

We fake it with grammar every day. Maybe you’ve never been sure when to use lay vs. lie. Maybe you aren’t sure when punctuation goes inside quotation marks. Maybe you’ve never known when to use single quotes vs. double quotes, or what a semi-colon is really for, or where to find an em dash on your keyboard, or whether e-mail is supposed to have a hyphen. That doesn’t stop you from taking your best guess and going on ahead, though, does it? Maybe you even alternate your usage deliberately, covering your bases, so that you’ll be guaranteed to be right at least half the time.

Today, stop and look up one of those things you’ve never been sure about. It’ll only take you a couple of minutes, and once you make the deliberate effort to learn the rule, I have a feeling you won’t forget it. You’ll remember it every time you come across it in your writing or your reading, and you’ll remember that National Grammar Day was the day you decided to stop guessing, take action, and find the answer.

Make it a Grammar Day tradition. Your writing will be stronger for it.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

Phrasing a First Impression

Posted March 1, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

When you’re submitting a query to an agent or a publisher, you already know that making a good first impression is key. You already know to address the query to the person you’re mailing, if you know their identity, and to leave things neutral but business-polite if you don’t.

A “Dear Submissions Editor” will make a better impression than an incorrect name or gender address. Personally, getting a “Dear Sir” query won’t automatically send someone’s letter to my trash folder, but it’ll set me on edge. Especially if it’s from someone who got my submissions address from some avenue where they could have, with one extra click, easily determined my name and/or gender (and learned that I’m not a sir!). Even worse, a letter addressed to another editor at another publisher, showing me that an author is sending out a big batch of submissions and forgetting to update the name field on the form letter.

The name field isn’t the only one you need to update. You need to request a result appropriate to the venue you’re querying. Remember that agents represent and publishers publish. It sounds obvious, but as a submissions editor, I receive a lot of queries “seeking representation” or “requesting review.” I don’t represent novels, and… review? Does that mean you want me to look it over, or that you want me to write you a review? Again, I’ve never trashed a query just for this — the queries that show this degree of inattention to detail usually have other problems as well — but it makes a poor impression and it’s a simple matter to check for it before you send out your letter.

Just as important as a proper, businesslike address and a request for the appropriate sort of result: the tone you set when you ask someone to look at your manuscript. Remember that you’re submitting to people who see lots and lots of potential books cross their desks. With the current state of our market and publishers feeling the strain of the economy, it’s a good bet that they’re not hurting for potential books. Especially if your manuscript is unsolicited, you’re asking the favor of a very busy person’s time and attention; they’re not asking for the favor of publishing your book. It’s important to keep in mind, and it’s important to reflect in your tone.

Compare “I am seeking a publisher for my novel” with “I would like to submit my novel for consideration.”

The former makes it sound like you’re auditioning publishing houses, testing them to see if they’ll be an adequate fit for your needs. Perhaps you’ll do them a favor and let them have a glimpse of your genius. My gut response: You’re seeking a publisher? Good for you. Hope you find one. Next!

Apply some humility and try the second approach. You’re requesting a few minutes of a busy person’s time. By asking them to consider you, you show a much more polite acknowledgement of that time than if you inform them that you’re considering them. Unless you have multiple offers pouring in, the decision isn’t yours to make. It’s theirs. That’s not to say you should bow and scrape, either. Melodrama usually won’t make a favorable impression. Just remember which way the power dynamic is flowing, and be respectful in your request for a publisher or an agent’s time.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

Five Quick Tips for Writing Better Dialogue

Posted February 25, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

1. Real people speaking in real conversations, especially in one-on-one situations, don’t use the name of the person they’re speaking to very often. They don’t need to. They might use them sparingly for emphasis, but they don’t do it in every sentence — they don’t need to. Be careful not to overuse names in your dialogue. It makes it feel unrealistic.

2. Real people speaking in real conversations use contractions. When modern characters speak more stiffly than modern people would speak, it can come across as stilted and, again, unrealistic. Unless you’re writing period fiction or employing a device to highlight the formality or alienness of a single character, let your characters use contractions. It will help the dialogue flow more realistically for the reader.

3. Think about your placement of commas. I find that commas are often underutilized in dialogue. If a phrase is set apart by a pause when you speak it, it should be set apart by a pause when you write it.

4. People use vocalizations and verbal devices to stall for time. People from different cultures and different native languages use different words: Um, er, eh… These are all a chance to add a little more color and character to your characters.

5.Try to represent a dialect or accent with clever use of patterns of speech instead of with overuse of creative spelling. A lot of heavy dialect spelling or a hefty sprinkling of apostrophes become tiresome to read very quickly. Use your devices wisely and thoughtfully, and don’t let them get in the way of your words.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

Solomon’s Grave on the Bram Stoker Final Ballot

Posted February 22, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , , , , .

SOLOMON’S GRAVE by Dan Keohane (Dragon Moon Press) is a finalist for the 2009 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. It was a pleasure to work with Dan on the book, and Dragon Moon and I wish him the best of luck.

Congrats, Dan!

A couple other notes:

Erik Buchanan shares his experience and insight with Michell Plested in a great interview on the latest “Get Published”, in advance of the release of COLD MAGICS, Erik’s second book with Dragon Moon Press.

Reminder: The Boom Effect auction for Tee Morris and his daughter is in just five days. Visit the site to see the lots up for auction and to get details about how to drop in and participate next Saturday!

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

The “Said” Trap

Posted February 18, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , , , , .

What’s the most common ‘mistake’ that you see writers make when attributing dialogue?

The biggest challenge with written dialogue as compared to spoken dialogue is this: When you (as a reader) can’t hear the words for yourself, you have no way to know who’s speaking, or how they’re speaking.

It’s easy (as a writer) to convey both of these things either too heavy-handedly, or too minimally. It’s tricky to get them right. It’s up to the writer to make these two bits of information clear, either explicitly or implicitly, so that the reader can follow along without getting confused or distracted from the story.

Done right, the word “said” becomes invisible to the reader. It gives them the information they need without getting in the way. It doesn’t interrupt a powerful moment or break the flow, it just helps the reader keep track of the speaker. It isn’t needed on every line, but there’s no strict technical rule that says you have to insert it every three lines, or every five lines. There’s no quota per page. Attribution should be as minimal as it can be without creating confusion and as frequent as it needs to be without getting in the way.

Sometimes a beat of action can serve as an attribution and impart the same information more smoothly and just as effectively, but it’s not good to go overboard with actions to identify speakers, either. They’re great to keep things moving during dialogue-heavy scenes, but a person doesn’t nod or smile or do something with his hands with every line, nor should we. If someone’s pouring a drink or putting a letter in an envelope, we don’t need to see every single step of the process, one bit at a time, each time they say a line. We just need the highlights. Overused, that sort of thing becomes just as unpolished and distracting as an overuse of “said.”

As to the word “said” itself, there are two schools of thought. One insists that “said” should be the only verb of utterance you ever use. The other focuses on avoiding it as much as possible and using more expressive words instead. Personally, I prefer a middle ground. I favor using “said” enough that it becomes invisible, but not clinging to it when another word is a better fit. I think “said” looks awkward after a question, or after an emphatic exclamation. I think “whispered” is cleaner than “she said in a whisper.” Said is a good default, but I think it isn’t always appropriate.

This leads to the second challenge of writing dialogue. In addition to telling the reader who’s speaking, it’s important to relate how they’re speaking, and it’s tricky to find that comfortable middle ground between over-telling and not conveying enough.

As a general rule, you shouldn’t need to resort to an adverb to tell the reader how a character feels. The word choice within the dialogue and the actions surrounding it should make it clear.

Look through your writing. If you see any adverbs in your attributions (like “she said anxiously”), circle or highlight them, and then go back about a page and start reading. That should give you enough to get into the moment. When you get to your circled adverb, think about what your character is doing that clues into that emotion. It’s an opportunity to show characterization, and it’s there to be taken advantage of. Does she have trouble keeping her gaze on the person she’s talking to? Does she fidget with her hands or shift her weight from foot to foot? There are plenty of different ways to show anxiety and everyone handles it slightly differently. Every character can, too.

Don’t think you can cheat your way out of adverbs by switching parts of speech. There’s no difference, for our purposes, between “she said anxiously” and “she was anxious”, “she felt anxious”, “I could tell she was anxious”, or “she was obviously anxious.” The root problem is the same: a missed opportunity to create a fuller picture for your reader. The last example is the most guilty of them all — it begs the question: What makes it obvious?

Keeping your verbs honest is just as important as keeping your adverbs honest. Verbs of utterance, also called verbs of attribution, are the verbs that actually convey ways of speaking. You can whisper, yell, groan or hiss a sentence, but you can’t laugh, smile, walk or headshake one. You can do those things before you speak, as you speak, or after you speak, but watch out for a tendency to make those actions interchangeable with “said.” They’re not. They’re a beat of action.

Paying careful attention to your writing and using actions, adverbs and verbs of utterance appropriately will make your writing more polished and will help your attribution flow more naturally.

  • Share/Bookmark
1 Comment

Your Five Minutes Start… Now!

Posted February 15, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , , , .

Thanks to the wonderful Laurie McLean and the rest of the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency, I had the fortune to spend my weekend at the San Francisco Writers Conference as an independent editor. For two days, my job was to advise writers in one-on-one sessions.

The catch? The sessions were only five minutes long.

Sign-up sheets were posted with each editor’s name and genre, and each attendee could sign up for a session with the editor of their choice. They could use the time to get a critique on their pitch, to get a critique on their first page, to ask questions… however they wanted to make the best use of their time.

For an extra $50, attendees could register for Sunday’s “speed-dating with the agents” session. That meant that their pitches had to be as refined as possible before Sunday. The five-minute sessions on Friday and Saturday were largely preparation for that. Writers had five minutes with us, but they only had three minutes with each agent. With just three minutes to get someone hooked, every moment counts.

I spoke with about twenty writers on Friday, and about thirty on Saturday. It was a whirlwind. It was dizzying. It was also incredibly rewarding.

I was the first editor to arrive, being the compulsively early type that I am, so I staked out the window table with the great view. It also happened to be the table in direct view of the door. My sign-in sheet said “YA, Fantasy, SF” but I also ended up speaking to writers of women’s lit, literary fiction, children’s fiction, short fiction, non-fiction essays… and each session was equally constructive, regardless of genre.

I could tell you fifty stories, one from each of those fifty quick sessions, and about forty of them would involve that amazing click of pieces falling into place. Some of them would involve even more rewarding epiphanies. A few might make their way into future blog posts (with the writers’ permissions), so stay tuned.

Most of the writers wanted to refine their pitches. Some of them had something already written and just needed feedback and a couple of word-choice recommendations. Some of them spent two or three minutes telling me what they had written about, in rambling, meandering language, and then I helped them pull out the most important points from what they’d just said. Three-minute explanations were quickly honed into thirty-second pitches: intriguing ideas expressed with powerful, evocative words.

A woman who sat down with a concern about how to market a collection of short stories with no cohesive theme, stood up five minutes later awed by the realization that there had been a linking thread between her stories all along — and a strong, intriguing one, at that.

Some of the writers wanted to know which genre or market I thought their manuscripts would best fit. Many asked me about the difference between middle grade and young adult. I drew heavily on this post by author Adrienne Kress, recommended reading for anyone else who might be curious about the answer.

For questions about the other edge of YA, I found myself referring writers to Scholastic’s Push imprint. Push prints some of the edgiest YA I’ve read — harsh, gritty, unapologetic and real. Murder, drug use, homelessness, pyromania, self-injury, sexual abuse… If you want to see how rough YA can get, read a few Push novels. I personally recommend starting with anything by my former colleague Brian James (gratuitous link to a review of his book DIRTY LIAR) and going from there.

Many asked me if I thought their concepts were viable. If the ideas sounded like a tough sell, we discussed how to slant the pitch or revise the content to make it more compelling.

I critiqued several first pages. I pointed out improbable simultaneous action, awkward dialogue, shifting perspective, punctuation, grammar and spelling issues; I discussed character voice, tone, age-appropriate vocabulary levels and whether the first line and choice of opening scene were compelling.

I discussed the “rules” of writing and when — and how — it’s acceptable to break them.

I loved the challenge of it, and the thrill of each success. But the real reward was the feedback. It felt great to be able to provide so much constructive advice to writers, especially in such a short time, and hear them tell me how helpful our few minutes of conversation had been. They were all so passionate, so focused and so ambitious that their energy was contagious and cumulative. By the end of each day I was exhausted and drained, but I still wanted to do more.

I had Sunday free to wander, so I checked back with some of the writers I’d spoken to. All of them reported nibbles; some reported larger bites. All of them were confident about their pitches and pleased with how the sessions had gone.

If you’re at a stage where you’re ready to show your writing to people in high places, and if you have the financial means to attend, I strongly recommend adding SFWC to your plans for 2011.

In addition to the agent and editor consultations, there are presentations and group sessions on a wide range of helpful topics. There are amazing networking opportunities and there’s time to explore some of the beauty and history of San Francisco. Space is limited and the conference sells out quickly, so if it’s the sort of opportunity that you think might benefit you, start thinking about it now.

And don’t think that this is a “mainstream fiction only” sort of event. It isn’t! Fiction, non-fiction, memoir, how-to, travel, romance, fantasy, science fiction, children’s, suspense, poetry… and I know for a fact that SF/F will be even more strongly represented next year. No matter your genre, if you’re ready to be published, there are people here who are ready to meet you.

  • Share/Bookmark
4 Comments

Reflections in the Stacks

Posted February 11, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: .

I’m sitting in a cozy chair in a bookstore down the street from where I live, as I’m writing this. It’s my first attempt to blog from my phone and we’ll see how it goes.

Walking in, I was struck pretty quickly by just how long it’s been since I wandered into a real, physical bookstore with time to kill, just to browse.

I go to bookstores fairly often. Borderlands, here in San Francisco, hosts lots of readings, signings and other events, and it’s become my “local” the way some people have a local pub. But I’m always going there with a purpose. To listen to a reading, see the cats, to meet clients or colleagues, to buy something specific or to escort an out-of-town guest who wants to buy a book for the trip home. But just to browse? Not very often at all.

Walking in, I was struck also by just how many books there are. That seems like a silly sort of epiphany to have in a bookstore, I suppose, especially if you’re in the book making business. Or maybe it might not seem so strange at all.

I’m surrounded by books all the time, in a way. I spend my days (and often my evenings, and my weekends…) with files that are destined to be books, and files that hope to be books. I write to people about books. I advise them and promote them and remind them to send their acknowledgements and dedications and blurbs. I keep up with the whole ebook debacle, and maybe spend more time reading about Agency Models and DRM than I should. I sleep and breathe books. It’s not the same, though, as walking through row after row of the finished product.

There’s a certain energy to it, probably because there’s a certain habit of working so intently with the raw materials that we lose sight of the finished product.

How do you feel when you walk through rows of books? Envious of their authors? Curious about their advances, or what specific obstacles were defeated to get each book where it is? Do you feel a renewed sense of determination and ambition? Do you look for the places on the shelves where your books would be filed? Do bookstores frustrate you, or inspire you?

Immersing yourself in the process and the work it takes to get there is a good thing, but stepping back and looking at the goal is a good thing, too. Books are what we’re all about. Take some time to appreciate them, what goes into them, how many of them there are… and what a fantastic thing it is–or will someday be–to see yours among them.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

Ten Tips for Formatting Your Electronic Submission

Posted February 8, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

When you’re sending a manuscript file electronically, there are some formatting decisions you have to make.

Some of the advice on formatting is fairly standard and easy to find. Most editors, publishers or agents will tell you to double-space between lines and single-space after a period, some will tell you what text font or size they prefer.

Standard wisdom, and I’ve said this myself, is that if there’s a guideline that isn’t mentioned, you don’t have to sweat it. It means that a little variation doesn’t matter. However, that’s not always true. Some standards are assumed and taken for granted. Others might impact the manuscript further down the line in ways you might not expect, or might just be extra work for you or someone else.

I thought I’d take a step back and cover some of the “unwritten” basics that you’re expected to already know.

    1. Don’t send your manuscript as a .pdf file. I saw a topic on a writers’ forum recently where someone asked whether publishers and editors prefer .pdf to .doc because it minimizes the risk of virus transmission. To me, .pdfs also minimize the risk of editing. A publisher isn’t going to take your document and make a book out of it as-is. They’re going to send it to the copyeditor, then to the layout/design staff. It needs to be in a format that takes up as little disk space as possible, and is as flexible as possible. I prefer MS Word-compatible .doc because it accepts tracked changes, and I use the “track changes” function to do line edits and margin comments.

    2. Don’t password-protect your file. See #1. Especially don’t password-protect your file and then neglect to pass along the password. Thank you for this nice lump of virtual coal, wish we could read it!

    3. Include your name, title, and e-mail address in the body of the file. Attachments are meant to detach. If a manuscript gets separated from that vital information, it’s just as devastating as if you leave off page numbers from your hardcopy manuscript and the pages meet someone’s floor. Good luck getting it all back where it belongs! Your title page is a good place for all that stuff, and putting last name / title / page number in the header of the document (so that it shows on every page) is good practice, too.

    4. Use the automated page number insertion tool, by the way. Don’t waste your time manually numbering every page. It’s too time-consuming and too unreliable — pagination can be shifted around too easily, by too many factors. Even a simple change in font can mess up all that work.

    5. Plain black text, on plain white background. Not gray, not off-black, not switching back and forth randomly, or for emphasis. Simple, boring, easy-on-the-eyes black text. Please.

    6. Tradition calls for emphasized words to be underlined in a manuscript instead of italicized, even though italics will be used in the final book. Historically, this was to make those instances stand out more clearly for the editors and typesetters. These days, underlining still makes those instances stand out more clearly, and it’s just one simple click in InDesign to convert them to italics in the final layout. Opinion will vary on this point, but I’d recommend playing it safe and doing it the old fashioned way unless instructed otherwise. At the least, it’ll make you look knowledgeable about the publishing process.

    7. For section breaks within chapters, a single hash mark (number sign (#)) centered on a new line is the standard. I advise against using a plain blank line because it’s too easy for that extra blank space to go away during the layout process. Remember that the symbol is there to signal the section break to the typesetter.

    You can get a little fancy with this and use three asterisks instead (* * *), but don’t get too fancy. There’s no need to pull out the dingbat fonts or make cute little ascii designs or anything like that. At worst, you’ll pick a font that your recipient doesn’t have and all they’ll see is a placeholder box or some messed up formatting. Even at best, that extra work is just going to go away when the manuscript goes to layout.

    8. Look at your hidden characters.

    The “show/hide all characters” option is usually indicated by a little paragraph-symbol character somewhere in the menu structure of your word processor. On mine, it looks like this:

    Activating this option will show spaces as dots, will show paragraph markings, and tabs, and page breaks, and all sorts of formatting goodness. It’s like looking at the back of a piece of needlepoint and seeing how evenly the stitches were made. If you make unusual formatting choices, “show all” will give you away. See #9 and #10, below.

    9. Indent your paragraphs with a single tab, or by going to the “format paragraph” menu and choosing to indent the first line by 0.5. Whichever you choose, make it standard throughout the manuscript. I’ve seen manuscripts indented with five spaces, like you might do on a typewriter. (Even on a typewriter, tab is more efficient!)

    Indenting by space bar feels sloppy to me, and I think it increases the risk of formatting error later in the layout process. Plus, it’s extra work for you. Just use tab, or set a global preference once and ignore it. Then, hitting return will automatically indent your next line.

    10. Since the word processor isn’t a typewriter, you also don’t need a carriage return at the end of every line. I just got a submission that did this. Every line was a fixed length with a “return” at the end of it. That’s fine for a set page width in Microsoft Word, but what happens if I change the font, or the text size? What happens if the copyeditor finds and corrects a repeated word on one line? What happens when the text is flowed into the layout program and changed in all sorts of ways, and now those paragraphs don’t look pristine and cohesive anymore? Letting your paragraphs flow will save time for you and for others down the line.

  • Share/Bookmark
0 Comments

The Last-Glance Editing Checklist

Posted February 4, 2010 by Gabrielle Tags: , .

Consistency is a big part of polish. Manuscripts with inconsistency issues will look sloppy and careless no matter how well they’re written. Not only do they make more work for a publisher, but they also suggest to publishers and agents that you aren’t serious enough to pay careful attention to your writing.

I recommend doing a quick “find” for these common issues before you send your manuscript out the door. I don’t recommend a global, automatic “find/replace all” — it’s quick enough to do a “find” on the one you don’t want and fix the few instances that come up. That way you can be confident that you’re not changing anything you don’t intend to change.

Spelling:

It’s common to see these spellings used interchangeably within the same manuscript. In the interest of polishing your work, pick the one appropriate for your region and make sure it’s used consistently.

* gray (US English) / grey (UK English)

* all right (US English) / alright (UK English)

* toward (US English) / towards (UK English)

* practice (noun and verb) (US English) / practice (noun) and practise (verb) (UK English)

* Out loud / aloud. The former is more common in the US, the latter is more common in the UK. I tend to make my recommendation based on time period, too — for something medieval in flavor I’ll recommend aloud because it sounds more formal; for something modern-day I’ll recommend out loud. Either way, I recommend choosing one to use consistently through the book. The only exception is in dialogue, and then only in a case where one character speaks notably more formally/informally than the rest.

* Compound words. Is it innkeeper, inn-keeper or inn keeper? Voicemail, voice-mail or voice mail? Be aware of your usage and make it consistent. Even better, take a moment to look these up instead of guessing.

* Add your character names, place names and invented “foreign” words to your word processor’s dictionary so that misspellings will stand out to you, then run a spellcheck.

* Also be alert for these words to watch out for, from a previous post. From studying and editing your own writing, you will quickly get a sense of which of these common misspellings you fall prey to, so that you know what to watch for in the future.

Mechanics:

* Standardize dashes. Whether you use em dashes or double hyphens, whether there are spaces around them or not, pick a standard and stick with it.

(Em dashes at the beginning or end of dialogue can confuse your quotation marks and make curly or “smart” quotes curl the wrong way. While you’re checking your dashes, keep an eye out for this, too.)

* Capitalization can sometimes depend on context. Titles like Mother, Father, Captain, King, Mayor, etc. are captialized when they’re used in place of (or with) someone’s name, but not when they refer to someone by their position (my mother, your father, the captain).

* Some words are trademarks or based on places and should always be capitalized, like Dumpster and Technicolor, and the O in Oxford shirt.

* Original places and concepts are often capitalized irregularly. If you’ve got a Great Hall or Dreamwalking or anything like that, make sure you’re consistent with it, too. And likewise if you use italics for original concepts.

* Make sure your manuscript doesn’t shift font or color. Especially make sure that it doesn’t do this several times. “Select all”, and then you can set a font and size and set the ink to black.

Last, But Not Least

This is very important. Start at the beginning of your document and do a find for the word “Chapter.” Make sure all your chapter numbers are in order, with no repetition and no skips. If you haven’t used the word “chapter” to denote your chapters, this will take a little more doing and concentration, but it’s still just as vital. If you’ve skipped a number, duplicated, or otherwise gotten out of sync, or if you reached “eight” and stopped breaking out new chapters altogether, it’s better if you find it than if someone else does.

  • Share/Bookmark
4 Comments