A Workout to Get Your Manuscript Publisher Ready

By Rachel Sweasey, Rhiza Press

Last week I supplied a list of steps to follow in order to refine your writing to the stage where it can be submitted to a traditional publisher, if that is your intention. This week, I flesh them out a little.

1. Read widely

Okay, so this really has to happen before you start writing. Read heaps of really great writing by successful authors. Work out what they’ve done that makes you sit up and think. Look at how they structure their stories, how they use POV, build characters, paint scenes. How does their writing make you feel? I’ve just finished editing Patricia Weerakoon’s Snowy Summer and I swear I could smell Sri Lankan spices and feel the chill of mountain air on my face. How did she do that? Ask those questions and then practice writing that way.

2. Work out why you’re writing what you’re writing

American author Harper Lee only ever wrote one book. It is an international bestseller that has sold more than 40 million copies. To Kill a Mockingbird is written with exquisite skill. Yet why did she never write again? “I only had one thing to say and I’ve said it,” she said.

As a Christian writer, you might believe you are called to write and publish one thing in particular. If that is the case then I believe God will bless you with success if you are true to your calling. However, there’s a big difference between that scenario and being a writer of faith who has a talent and a desire to write. What is the thing you have to say? If there’s one theme on your heart that you keep coming back to, then I’d say that might be it. And once you’ve worked out what you want to write and why you want to write it … start the work of writing.

3. Do some writing training, and then practice

Whatever stage of your writing journey you’re at there are probably some new tools you can add to your pencil case (unless you’re Kate Morton or Ian McEwan :))

There are all kinds of online courses, mountains of books full of tips (take a look at the Books for Writers site, and talks given by authors in bookshops and libraries. Every little piece of training can help you improve your writing. Having heard Margie Lawson speak at last year’s Omega conference, I’d recommend her courses.

Some of the training you’ll find will give you some basic tips that you can apply to every piece of writing. Here are my favourites:

1. Beware weak qualifying adverbs
2. Make certain that every word is working hard work.
3. Check for head-hopping
4. Remove unnecessary ‘telling’
5. Write a first page to die for
6. Start in the action
7. Carefully proofread each and every line

4. Apply all your training to your manuscript

Whether or not you do all your training before you start to write your main thing, or you’ve already completed a manuscript and now need to revisit and refine it, now’s the time to apply everything you’ve learned.

5. Befriend a beta-reader (or three)

Find some widely-read friends who will read your (best) work and give you honest feedback. So, probably don’t pick your mum (she’ll gush) or your spouse (you’ll fall out). Ask them to report back on specifics: which characters did they feel connected to? Did they feel engaged with the plot? How hard was it to read/put down?

6. Apply the beta-readers’ feedback to your manuscript

7. Engage a Professional Editor

No, you don’t have to marry one. But you will have to pay for their services. Once you are sure that you have written the one thing you need to write, in the best way you possibly can, and you’ve applied all the new learning you’ve just gained, and you’ve edited, and edited, and re-written, and edited after applying the feedback from your beta-readers, then engage a professional editor. You might only want to pay for a manuscript appraisal at first, and a good editor will give you a detailed appraisal that will help you work out the big things you need to work on: structure, character building, tone, POV etc.

A professional editor will also be able to honestly advise you whether or not you are likely to find a home for your work in a traditional publishing house, or whether you should pursue self-publishing instead. Either way, the expense will be worthwhile.

8. Next? You guessed it. Apply the advice of the professional editor.

9. Re-engage the professional editor to complete a full edit

This is possibly an expense you’ll balk at paying. But remember the process of refining gold. If your aim is to refine your work to be the best it can possibly be, this is an important step. And in the long-run I believe it will be money very well spent if your aim is to get your work published.

10. Enter a competition

This is one tip that may be new to you. Many published authors first found success with their work in writing competitions. Believe it or not, these competitions aren’t just out there for a little fun and to give out prizes. There are talent spotters involved in the reading and judging process. Entering competitions achieves several goals. You’ll discover if your work is as good as you think it is. You’ll hopefully get some feedback (though you may have to pay extra fees for this). You have to write and edit to a deadline (always good practice). And you may even be talent-spotted 

11. Find a Publishing House

Another fact that may not be as widely understood as it should for emerging writers: Not all publishing houses are the same. In order to find the best home for your manuscript you need to research publishers in much the same way you’d try to find adoptive parents for an orphan. Do they publish stories like yours? Have they already published any similar? Which of their published books is your MS similar to (but not TOO similar – if your story has already been done before, then you have some serious re-thinking to do). Have you read their submission criteria? Does your writing fit? Have you included anything that they state they don’t want?

Once you’ve found a home where your baby might settle and thrive, and after all of steps 1-10 have been followed, I think you might be ready to press ‘submit’ :)

About Rachel Sweasey

Rachel Sweasey is an editor at Rhiza Connect, the newly branded imprint of Rhiza Press dedicated to inspirational adult fiction for the faith-based market. She also edits the inspirational texts for Book Whispers, a consultancy that offers appraisal, editing, typesetting, printing, design, and marketing services. Rhiza Press also has a Young Adult imprint, Rhiza Edge. Rachel graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Composition. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and 3 children, has known Christ as her saviour since the age of 14, and serves in worship ministry in Wynnum Baptist Church.

Why You Might Want to Re-think Your Publishing Plans

Those of you who attended the 2017 Omega Writers Conference will remember Rachel Sweasey, fiction editor at Rhiza Press. We got chatting at the conference, and she offered to write a couple of posts for Australasian Christian Writers to share some tips on self-editing before you submit to a publisher. (I say offered. It's possible I twisted her arm. But only a little!) 

I've heard people say they don't need to edit their books before they submit them to a publisher, because the publisher will edit them anyway. That's only partly true. If a publisher offers you a contract to publish your book, they will edit it. But you improve your chances of getting that contract offer if you've done the groundwork first.

Today Rachel is going to briefly share her top tips for getting your manuscript ready for submission to a publisher ... and address an even more important question about our writing.

Welcome, Rachel!

By Rachel Sweasey

I have a somewhat bipolar relationship with my role at Rhiza Press. I’m so chuffed and proud to tell people I’m an editor in a publishing house. But then, too often, I wish I’d been a bit more vague when answering that ‘What do you do?’ question.

The trouble is that everyone seems to know someone who’s written something they want to get published, and for the most part, the writing is not publishable at all. 

The question I want to ask is “Why do to they want to be published?” Is it because that’s the only way they can imagine sharing their story? Or do they really believe they are the world’s next J.K.Rowling? I hate to sound negative, but they’re not. There is only one of each of us and J.K. is taken.

Unless you’re already an international bestselling author, then before submitting to a publisher your manuscript has to be refined to within a hairsbreadth of perfection. Take a look at the refining process for gold. There are at least 10 steps in the process from mining, through grinding, leaching, and filtering before even the fiery furnace stage, and on to the final product. Imagine going to a Jeweller and being shown a grubby lump of rock. “That there’s solid gold missus.” Yeah, right. We want to see the shiny blingy things.

Our writing must be refined to the same extent if we’re going to produce gold-star quality writing—and that’s what every publisher is looking for. Even if you intend to self-publish, the refining process is still important if you mean to sell your books, rather than use boxes of them as expensive patio furniture.

So what are some of the steps in refining your work?

A. Read widely
B. Work out why you’re writing what you’re writing
C. Do some writing training, and then practice
D. Apply all your training to your Manuscript
E. Befriend a Beta-Reader (or three)
F. Apply the Beta-Readers’ feedback
G. Engage a Professional Editor to complete a Manuscript Appraisal
H. Apply the advice of the Editor
I. Re-engage the Editor to complete a full edit
J. Enter a Competition
K. Find a Publishing House

… And then, hopefully, you’ll hear back from one... In time.

But taking all that advice aside, the biggest question I really want to ask writers at this stage in their journey is ‘Why do you write?’ Because maybe, just maybe publishing doesn’t have to be the end goal.

Being called to write, and being called to get that writing published are two very distinctive calls. For me? I’m called to sing. I’ve had a passion to sing all my life and I’ve been blessed with some gifting and lots of opportunity to minister. But has God called me to become a professional singer, cut DVD’s, and sell my voice on Spotify? Absolutely not, no way, at all, ever. But I’m called to sing, and I will sing will all my heart until my lungs collapse.

And it’s no different with writing. 

 If you have a talent or even a God-given gift to write then you absolutely must do that writing. You should dedicate your spare time (or all your time if God’s blessed you that much) to perfecting your writing, to listening for leading about what you should write, or who you should write to. There might be a platform by which others can be reached and blessed by your writing but that does not necessarily mean having a book published.

And if writing is your gift, you can and should still apply many of the same snippets of advice I’d give to writers who are intent on being published. Start with the basics of working on style, structure and grammar and share your work widely to gain feedback and make refinements.

And if you are doing what God has called you to do, the work your heart longs for and your hands ache to do, you will be blessed. But possibly not published ;)

Thank you, Rachel! That's great advice. Rachel will be back next Monday to expand on her list. Meanwhile, what do you think? Are we all called to be published? 

What other ways could we fulfill our calling to write and be published?

About Rachel Sweasey

Rachel Sweasey is an editor at Rhiza Connect, the newly branded imprint of Rhiza Press dedicated to inspirational adult fiction for the faith-based market. She also edits the inspirational texts for Book Whispers, a consultancy that offers appraisal, editing, typesetting, printing, design, and marketing services. Rhiza Press also has a Young Adult imprint, Rhiza Edge. Rachel graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Composition. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and 3 children, has known Christ as her saviour since the age of 14, and serves in worship ministry in Wynnum Baptist Church.

What Do I Do Next? (Part 2)

By Iola Goulton

Last week, I answered a question from a client: is my manuscript publishable? Yesterday, I started to answer her second question: what do I do next? The one-line summary is I said to delete all adverbs and overused words. If you’d like to check that out in more detail, click here.

Today I’m looking at three more issues I often see in manuscripts: interior monologue problems, repetition, and creative dialogue tags.

Repetition

Repetition can be an effective method of emphasis, a stylistic choice designed to enhance the writing. Margie Lawson is the expert in this area, and I do recommend her Deep Editing course for showing you what good repetition looks like (because showing is better than telling, right?).

But repetition is often unintentional. And unintentional repetition is usually bad repetition, whether it’s repetition of a single word, repetition of an effect, or repetition of something a little more complex, like sentence structure.

Simple sentences, complex sentences, sentences with clever rhetorical devices ... 

They all get repetitive if used too often, and risk boring the reader. Even if your readers can’t articulate what is wrong, they will subconsciously notice something is wrong, and it will affect their reading pleasure.

One common issue is –ing words. 

These indicate an ongoing action, so should only be used at the start of a sentence if there are two actions occurring at the same time. But a lot of new authors use them for consecutive actions, which is a physical impossibility. For example:

Gathering her hair back from around her shoulders, she tied it back into a ponytail.

GatherING indicates an ongoing action, while tiED which indicates a past action—which doesn’t make sense. It would be better written as:

She gathered her hair from around her shoulders and tied it back into a ponytail.

Other authors get the word order wrong, so the sentence becomes a dangling modifier, as Kathy Ide explains:

A “dangling modifier” is a phrase that does not clearly and sensibly modify the appropriate word. For example:

"Changing the oil every 3,000 miles, the Mustang seemed to run better."

The subject of this sentence is “the Mustang.” The modifying phrase is “Changing the oil . . .” A Mustang cannot change its own oil. So you’d want to rewrite that as something like:

"Changing the oil every 3,000 miles, Sandra found she got much better gas mileage.”

Another common and overused sentence structure is starting a sentence with as. Brown and King give this as examples of a sentence construction that weakens your writing:

Two common stylistic constructions are:

Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him.

and

As she pulled off her gloves, she turned to face him.

Both of these constructions [as and –ing] take a bit of action (“She pulled off her gloves”) and tuck it away into a dependent clause (“Pulling off her gloves”). This tends to place some of your action at one remove from your reader, to make the actions seem incidental, unimportant.

Again, use Ctrl-F or Ctrl-H to find and change offending sentences. Search for “As” and for “ing”. Any time these come up at the beginning of a sentence, revise the sentence to remove them.

Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are how we show the reader who is speaking. Back in high school, our English teachers encouraged us to use lots of creative dialogue tags to show the reader how the character was speaking: she cried, she thundered, she growled, she barked.

This advice is now outmoded, and there is no easy way to identify all the creative tags you may have used (after all, your English teacher wanted each one to be different!). So you’re going to have to do this the hard way: read your manuscript, and delete or change all but the following dialogue tags:

• Said
• Asked
• Whispered
• Shouted

Either replace your tags with one of these, or use an action beat so you don’t need a dialogue tag. I cover dialogue tags in more detail in this blog post, and I cover action beats and dialogue cues here.

Interior Monologue

Interior monologue is the thoughts of your character expressed in his or her own words. This means the interior monologue has to sound like your character—not like you. Does the interior monologue sound like something your character would say? If so, great. If not? It needs revising so it does. Again, there is no easy advice here. You know your characters better than anyone, so you know how they think and speak.

This might be an area where you ask for help from a friend—someone who knows you well enough to identify when your character stops sounding like your character and starts sounding like you.

Then What?

The next stage of editing after a Manuscript Assessment depends on the client. Some want another Manuscript Assessment (e.g. if they have undertaken major edits). With this second Manuscript Assessment, I read on the computer and use Word’s Comments feature to comment on what has been done well, and what still needs fixing.

Other authors are happy to move straight to the copyediting stage, either the full manuscript or a staged mentoring process, where I copyedit a portion of the manuscript, so they can see if they’ve understood and implemented my earlier suggestions.

It depends on the client, but the important thing is to work on your own revision and self-editing skills to fix the simple mechanical issues, which will allow your editor to make your work shine.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction. Visit my website at www.christianediting.co.nz to download a comprehensive list of publishers of Christian fiction. 

I also write contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist—find out more at www.iolagoulton.com.

You can also find me on:
Facebook (Author)
Facebook (Editing)
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter

What Do I Do Next? (Part 1)

By Iola Goulton

Last week, I answered a question from a client: Is my manuscript publishable? Today I’m going to answer her second question:

For background, this author has ticked off the basics. She has a solid plot with plenty of conflict (internal and external), and her main character has undergone significant character change by the end of the novel. Her structure is sound. The whole novel is written in the point of view of one character, with no headhopping or author intrusion.

Characterisation is solid, with a few minor tweaks needed (mostly arising from only having one viewpoint character—a good stylistic choice for a young adult/new adult novel, but one which limits the author’s ability to show what the antagonist is thinking).

I’ve provided her with a Manuscript Assessment

... which means I’ve read her novel and given her 8,000+ words of feedback. Some of that is specific suggestions, but I don’t provide an actual list of steps—partly because those steps are variable depending on how she wants to publish. There is no point in her paying me to copyedit a manuscript if she wants to submit to a publisher who might have different style preferences, e.g. … vs … vs . . . (any of which could be correct, depending on the publisher and their preferred style guide).

The manuscript isn’t yet ready to be submitted to a publisher, but there are a lot of things she can do to improve it. These changes will both increase her chances of getting a publishing contract (if that’s what she wants) and reduce my copyediting fees (if she decides to self-publish, or decides she does want a full copyedit before submitting to a publisher or agent. It’s not unheard of).

You might think this advice is specific to her manuscript, and it is. But I see many beginner manuscripts with these same errors … and some not-so-beginner manuscripts as well. And these are the errors that mean an agent or publisher will add your manuscript to the reject pile, as they indicate an author who hasn’t done their homework in regard to writing craft issues. The view is that if an author can’t get these mechanical issues right, they are likely to have other, more serious, issues which are going to be even harder to fix.

I’m not going to explain why these things are wrong (I did that in my letter to the client, and have discussed self-editing in some of my previous posts). Instead, I’m going to focus on how to fix these issues.

Today I’m looking at adverbs and overused words (sometimes called weasel words). I’ll be back tomorrow to cover interior monologue, repetition, and dialogue tags.

Adverbs

The easy way to find adverbs is through Word’s trusty Find and Replace feature: Click Ctrl-H to bring up the dialogue box

• Enter “ly” in both boxes (and keep your cursor in the Replace box)
• Click on More
• Click on the Replace button at the bottom right-hand corner
• Click Highlight, and Replace All

… and all your ly’s will turn yellow (or whatever colour you have the highlight selected to). Note this will pick up names like Emily, and will also pick up non-adverbs like silly.

Now you can work your way through the document and revise your manuscript to delete all the unnecessary adverbs.

But which are the unnecessary adverbs? Almost all of them.

• All adverbs in dialogue tags (if there are one or two you can’t bear to part with, leave them in and I’ll delete them for you). You may need to revise and strengthen the dialogue to show, rather than using the adverb to tell the reader how the speaker is feeling. Alternatively, show through action or body language.
• All adverbs in narrative or description. Again, you may need to revise the manuscript to show better.
• Most adverbs in dialogue—we do actually (!) use a lot of adverbs when we speak, so while adverbs may be indicative of the way a character speaks, we don’t want to overdo it.

Ideally (!), you’ll be left with no more than a handful of adverbs, and none of them will be telling where you should be showing.

Overused words

Most writers have words they use too often. These are often weak adjectives, which should either be deleted, or replaced with stronger adjectives. Examples include:

• Really
• Quite
• Only
• Just
• Very

In fact, there’s a quote about “very” …

Other weasel words are words which don’t add to the sentence—“that” is a common example. As a general rule, if the word can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence, it should be deleted.

Other common overused words include:

• Began (and begin)
• Start (and started)
• Sudden (all of a sudden or suddenly)

Sometimes these words are telling us what is already happening:

“I’m starting to come down with a headache.”

In real life, this means “I’ve got a headache.” So cut the excess.

Again, use Ctrl-F or Ctrl-H to find the offending words, and see how many can be deleted or replaced.

I’ll be back tomorrow to discuss interior monologue (briefly!), repetition, and dialogue tags.

 

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction. Visit my website at www.christianediting.co.nz to download a comprehensive list of publishers of Christian fiction. 

I also write contemporary Christian romance with a Kiwi twist—find out more at www.iolagoulton.com.

You can also find me on:
Facebook (Author)
Facebook (Editing)
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter

Atlanta Nights: Self-editing

By Iola Goulton

This post is part of a series illustrating some of the common fiction editing issues I see, using Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea as our example. For those of you who didn’t read my post introducing Travis Tea and his illustrious novel … you might want to go back and read the post.

The first obvious error in this passage is around the use of point of view, specifically, headhopping. We discussed this in a previous post, which you can find here: Interior Monologue.

There are also creative dialogue tags, which we discussed here, here and here, and last week we talked about description, and you can read that here. Today we're talking about self-editing, because good editing can be the difference between success and failure.

From Chapter Ten:

Irene Stevens starts to pertly walk into the Polo Club. She had long blonde hair and a voluptuous body. She was about 20. She was dressing in an expensive designer cerulean gown and not a bit of jewelry; her beauty needed no jewelry. She tried and signed the guest book.

She had come there from her hotel, where she had checked out that morning. She had driven here down the tortuous roads by all the Civil War monuments and past the pastures where they get the polo horses. They were all thoroughbreds and very beautiful. There had been flowers all along the way: roses and tulips and asters and crocuses and lilies and magnolias. She had managed to park her vehicle in the newest parking lot but she had been compiled to park it where the ferocious sunlight would infernally heat it up while she was leisurely enjoining the Polo Club. The soaring oak trees and maple trees had gloomily, dismally shaded the parking lot.

Elegantly, She walked up the stairs. The gown swished mysteriously about her legs. The sparkling mirror in the stairway considerately let her prudentially endeavor to carefully check her hair and jewelry. The artificial, incandescent light did not become her. It unflatteringly made her verdant dress and gold necklace look ghastly unbecoming.

This passage would make a great editing test. It’s 216 words, and has at least twenty errors. How many can you find?

Really. Reread the passage and count the errors. Write them down if you have time, so you can compare your list to mine.

Done? Then here we go.

1. “Starts” in the first line should be past tense, not present.
2. “Pertly” is a perfect example of why authors are encouraged to avoid adverbs: because so many use them badly. Delete.
3. There’s a point of view slip, from third person into omniscient. Women don’t walk around thinking of themselves as having long blonde hair (hey. We know what colour our hair is. We even know the real colour). We think of ourselves as “voluptuous” even less. Nor would we consider ourselves so beautiful as to not need jewelry. Delete.
4. Twenty, not 20 (spell out numbers under one hundred).
5. Order of adjectives: It should be an (determiner) expensive (opinion) cerulean (colour) designer (qualifier) gown (noun).
6. Better still, be specific. Have her wear a vintage Oscar de la Renta gown.
7. She “tried and signed the guest book”. She tried to sign? She turned and signed?
8. It’s morning? Why is she wearing a gown? Aren’t gowns evening wear?
9. Six sentences in a row starting with “she”. Starting consecutive sentences with the same word or words can be an effective rhetorical device (anaphora), but it’s hard to make that work with sentences starting with common words like he, she or the.
10. “Where they get the polo horses”. Keep? Pasture?
11. “Very beautiful”. Rather than using filler words like very, just, only, really or quite, find and use a specific adjective. Try breathtaking.
12. “Complied to park” her car. Required? Forced? Requested? This is why authors need beta readers and human editors: spell check picks up words which are spelled wrong, not correctly-spelled words used in the wrong context.
13. “Leisurely enjoining”. Enjoying. Again, the word is spelled correctly, so it’s not something spell check will pick up.
14. If the maple and oak trees are sheltering the parking lot, why is her car parked in the sun?
15. The way the "maple trees had gloomily, dismally shaded the parking lot" is two more reasons to bad adverb.
16. The second paragraph is too long (115 words). It should be shortened, or split in two. I'd delete the last two sentences, because they are unintelligible and don't add anything to the scene.
17. "Elegantly, She …" Another unnecessary adverb. Delete.
18. "Elegantly, She …" "She" shouldn't be capitalised.
19. "The gown swished mysteriously about her legs" is another POV slip (unless she's so vain and self-centred as to actually think this). And, yes, another adverb.
20. "The mirror let her…" Is this Harry Potter, that the mirrors have the right to allow or not allow people to use them?
21. "Artificial, incandescent light" is redundancy. All incandescent lights are artificial.
22. "[The mirror] unflatteringly made her …" Cut the adverb—it's the wrong word in this context.
23. "[The mirror] … made her verdant dress and gold necklace look ghastly unbecoming." Either ghastly or unbecoming, not both. Or put a comma between them (to indicate the dress looks both ghastly and unbecoming).
24. Her dress started off as cerulean (deep blue), then becomes verdant (green). Later on, it’s described as vermilion (red). I know shot silk can look different colours from different directions, but this?

Most of these errors are errors the author (or his/her beta readers) could have picked up. Some authors don't bother going through to edit for errors such as these, thinking their editor will correct them. I don't believe this is a good idea:

• If you submit writing like this to an agent or a reputable publisher, they'll reject you (a vanity press will probably accept you … and offer you an overpriced "editing" package which may or may not identify the problems).
  
  
• If you submit writing like this to a freelance editor (like me), they'll quote you a higher fee than if you had a cleaner manuscript, simply because it's going to take them longer to fix. And while they are focussing on the small errors (like compiled), they may well miss larger errors.
  
  As an example, it's taken me over an hour to note the mistakes in this short passage of less than a page. If you're paying your editor by the hour, that's a lot of time spent on things you could have fixed yourself. If you're paying your editor by the word, he or she or she would only have picked out the most obvious errors (e.g. 20, She) and moved on. Some editors charge as little as one cent a word, which means $2.16 for this passage … which means it's not going to get the level of editing it needs.

However, it’s not all bad. There are some things “Travis Tea” has done well:

• The scene starts with the name of the viewpoint character, so there’s no confusion over who is the POV character.
  
  
• The author uses polysyndeton, another rhetorical device in this sentence:

There had been flowers all along the way: roses and tulips and asters and crocuses and lilies and magnolias.

This may have been an accident. The sentence could also have been written using asyndeton:

There had been flowers all along the way: roses, tulips, asters, crocuses, lilies, magnolias.

If you'd like to know more about using rhetorical devices to improve your writing, I recommend Margie Lawson's Deep Editing course or lecture packet. For people wanting to self-edit their fiction better, I recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers and Revision and Self Editing for Publication.


Have I missed any editing issues? Do you have any questions about what I have picked up? Let me know in the comments.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2500.

Atlanta Nights: Action Beats and Dialogue Cues

By Iola Goulton

This post is part of a series illustrating some of the common fiction editing issues I see, using Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea as our example. For those of you who didn’t read my post introducing Travis Tea and his illustrious novel … you might want to go back and read the post. It will explain why I have no fear of upsetting the author with my critique. 

My previous posts have looked at the opening hook, interior monologue, point of view, dialogue and dialogue tags, and today I’m looking at two alternatives to dialogue tags: action beats, and dialogue cues.

Action Beats

Beats are used in fiction to break up the dialogue and provide a sense of progression and movement. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne and Dave King define beats as:

The bits of action interspersed throughout a scene, such as a character walking to a window …

Usually they involve physical gestures, although a short passage of interior monologue can also be considered a sort of internal beat.
While Browne & King recommend the inclusion of beats, they also caution against using so many beats that the pace of the scene is lost. I’ve seen manuscripts where there are no speaker attributions, but an action beat before or after every sentence of dialogue (sometimes before AND after). It gives a choppy feel to the dialogue, distracting the reader from what has been said to what is being done.

Yes, action beats are showing rather than telling, but too many and they become as offputting as creative speaker attributions (discussed in my previous post).

Another issue I often see is combining a speaker attribution and an action beat, as Atlanta Nights does:

“As you've probably heard Yvonne,” began Penelope Urbain. Seriously brushing a gleaming scarlet tress out of her tearful eye “Bruce has come home from the hospital after his accident.”

There is usually no need to have both. The purpose of a speaker attribution is simply to remind the reader who is speaking, which is also the purpose of the action beat. The difference is the speaker attribution (she said) is telling, while the action beat is showing.

The exception would be where the beat is expanding on the attribution in some way.

Dialogue Cues

Writing instructor Margie Lawson coined the term “dialogue cues” to refer to physiological reactions which give the reader a subliminal psychological cue as to what is going on underneath the scene. Dialogue cues create subtext, giving your reader the feeling she is literally reading between the lines as she’s picking up subliminal cues as to the thoughts and reactions of the characters … not from what is being said, but from what isn’t being said.

As a reader, the skillful use of subtext is what separates the good writers from the outstanding. To learn more about writing strong dialogue and dialogue cues, I recommend reading Margie Lawson’s lecture packets, Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues and Empowering Characters’ Emotions, both available from www.margielawson.com. (If you want more reasons why you should learn from Margie Lawson, read the recent posts from Dorothy Adamek and Andrea Grigg).

Here’s my improved version of the opening to Chapter Three of Atlanta Nights, incorporating improved dialogue tags, action beats, dialogue cues, and the dialogue changes discussed in my earlier post:

“Bruce has come home from the hospital after his accident.” Penelope Urbain brushed a scarlet tress across her face.

“You must be pleased. He was badly hurt.” Yvonne’s tone was the perfect blend of sympathy and encouragement. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she cared.

“Yes, and I’m thankful he’s home,” Penelope said. Deep breath. Don’t cry.

“We need to have a serious discussion about this.” Now Yvonne sounded earnest, even genuine, but what was there to discuss?

As you can see, I’ve also used the speaker attributions to provide some characterisation (well, I’ve attempted to. I’m a fiction editor, not a fiction writer!). The scene is from Penelope’s point of view, and these attributions show something of Yvonne’s character—or how I imagine Penelope sees Yvonne—and provide some insight into the relationship between the two women. Of course, this is open to interpretation: it could be that Yvonne is a genuine person, and Penelope has some emotional issues in her past that mean she misinterprets the actions of other women, which makes her an unreliable narrator.

I've attempted to follow the rules for dialogue tags, incorporating action beats, and attempting dialogue cues. What do you think? Can you suggest any improvements?

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2500.

Editing in pencil

Now that Camp NaNoWriMo has ended, my thoughts are turning to editing. Right now, I have two children's books, a short story anthology, and some fractured fairy tales sitting on my table calling for my editing pen.... or, rather, pencil.

For me, I find it easier to write a draft on the computer, then print it out and attack it with pencil. The pencil must be a sharp grey-lead pencil or it just doesn't seem to work quite as well.

 Printing out the story helps me to see it in a new light, especially if it's something that has been going around in my head for some time. It also means that I can easily change locations if I need to. It's not unusual to see me editing as I wait for the kids to come out of their various after school activities, though my kids start giving me a hard time if I'm reading the manuscript out loud.

My kids have also been known to pick up printed manuscripts, read them, and write their suggestions, also in a sharp grey-lead pencil. My 11 year old is great at picking up typos that I miss (and my editor misses), especially ones caused by auto correct.

I know that different people have different tools they use for editing. There are a lot of articles giving tips to authors on how to self edit to prove this. My essential tools are a print out of my manuscript and a sharp grey-lead pencil.

What are your essential editing tools?

Melissa Gijsbers lives in Melbourne and writes in between working as a bookkeeper and being the mother of two active boys. She is a blogger and author of flash fiction and children's books. Her first book, Swallow Me, NOW! is available now.

You can follow her writing journey at www.melissawrites.com.au and www.melissagijsbers.com

Atlanta Nights: Writing and Editing Dialogue Tags

By Iola Goulton

This post is part of a series illustrating some of the common fiction editing issues I see, using Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea as our example. For those of you who didn’t read my post introducing Travis Tea and his illustrious novel … you might want to go back and read the post. It will explain why I have no fear of upsetting the author with my critique.

My previous posts have looked at the opening hook, interior monologue, point of view and dialogue. Today we are looking at dialogue tags, which can also be referred to as speaker attributions: how the author shows the reader which character is speaking. Let’s see how Travis Tea deals with dialogue tags in the passage we looked at last time:

“As you've probably heard Yvonne,” began Penelope Urbain. Seriously brushing a gleaming scarlet tress out of her tearful eye “Bruce has come home from the hospital after his accident.”

“Yes you must be very happy,” said Yvonne sympathetically. “He was badly hurt in that auto accident.”

“Yes he was badly hurt,” responded Penelope honestly. “But he is home now and I am very happy about that.”

“We need to have a very serious discussion about this,” said Yvonne earnestly.“Yes. We have some very serious things to discuss,” agreed Penelope.

Now she sounded earnest, even genuine, but what was there to discuss?

Yes, the dialogue needs work (as previously discussed), but it’s made worse by the speaker attributions. Here are some tips to making your dialogue tags look professional (all quotations are from Chapter Five of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, Second Edition, Harper, 2004. If you don’t own it … you should.).

Try to avoid creative speaker attributions (e.g. began, responded, agreed)

When you’re writing speaker attributions the right verb is nearly always said. Verbs other than said tend to draw attention away from the dialogue.

The logical exceptions are asked for questions and whispered or shouted for a character who is whispering or shouting.

Why?

Creative speaker attributions are often trying to explain the dialogue, describing the dialogue when that explanation should be in the actual dialogue, in the action, or in the interior monologue. It’s telling when you should be showing. (Of course, if you write dialogue like Travis Tea, drawing attention away from the dialogue could be a good thing.)

Don’t use dialogue tags to explain the dialogue

If the explanation is in the dialogue, explaining the dialogue is unnecessary repetition. If the explanation isn’t in the dialogue, you’ve created a disconnect in the reader’s mind:

If you tell your readers she is astonished when her dialogue doesn’t show astonishment, then you’ve created an uncomfortable tension between your dialogue and your explanation. Your dialogue says one thing; your explanation, something slightly different… your readers will be aware, if only subconsciously, that something is wrong.

Avoid repetition and redundancy

It’s repetition to say “began Penelope”, which makes it redundant. These are the opening words of the chapter: of course she’s beginning (as an aside, you can probably delete any instance of characters starting to or beginning to throughout your manuscript. To misquote Yoda, do not merely begin. Do. If the character is interrupted, that will become obvious--we don’t need to be told).

Avoid Adverbs

Avoid using adverbs in your speaker attributions (e.g. sympathetically, earnestly), as these are, again, telling what should have already been shown:

Too many fiction writers pepper their dialogue with –ly’s … which is a good reason to cut virtually every one you write. Ly adverbs almost always catch the writer in the act of explaining dialogue—smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself. Again, if your dialogue doesn’t need the props, putting the props in will make it seem weak even when it isn’t. 

For example, “earnestly” is unnecessary because “serious” has already cued the reader in:

“We need to have a very serious discussion about this,” said Yvonne earnestly.

Ensure the words in your speaker attributions are the right way around

Place the character’s name or pronoun first in a speaker attribution (“Penelope said”). Reversing the two (“said Penelope”), though often done, is less professional. It has a slightly old-fashioned, first-grade reader flavour… after all, “said he” fell out of favor sometime during the Taft administration.
For reference, William Howard Taft was President of the USA between 1909 and 1913, so unless your book is set in the 1800’s …

Sometimes less is best

Don't feel you have to have a speaker attribution. Yes, "said x/said y"soon gets tired, and sometimes the best option is no dialogue tag.If it's clear who is speaking (as in this exchange between Penelope and Yvonne), you can safely leave tags off some of the dialogue. 

So here is the updated version:

“You must be pleased," Yvonne said. “He was badly hurt.” Yvonne’s tone was the perfect blend of sympathy and encouragement. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she cared.
“Yes, and I’m thankful he’s home,” Penelope said.
“We need to have a serious discussion about this."


Getting the dialogue tags right is straightforward, and makes your work look more professional. And don’t feel you have to use dialogue tags all the time. Vary your writing by including action beats and dialogue cues … which I’ll talk about in my next post.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2500.

Atlanta Nights: Writing and Editing Dialogue

By Iola Goulton

This post is part of a series illustrating some of the common fiction editing issues I see, using Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea as our example. For those of you who didn’t read my post introducing Travis Tea and his illustrious novel … you might want to go back and read the post.

My previous posts have looked at the opening hook, interior monologue, and point of view. Today we are looking at dialogue.

Good dialogue is important in a novel, because it is often the first thing a potential publisher will look at. Dialogue is one of the hardest things for authors to get right. The temptation is to write dialogue how we speak, but that’s a mistake. Our speech is full of um’s and er’s, small talk and changes of subject, none of which convert well to the page, and none of which point us towards any kind of information on story, character or theme.

Dialogue is not written how people speak: no one wants to read a court transcript.

The dialogue you’re trying to create has to be much more compressed, much more focused than real speech. In effect, dialogue is an artificial creation that sounds natural when you read it. Let’s look at some dialogue from Atlanta Nights, taken from the opening to Chapter Three:

“As you've probably heard Yvonne,” began Penelope Urbain. Seriously brushing a gleaming scarlet tress out of her tearful eye “Bruce has come home from the hospital after his accident.”
“Yes you must be very happy,” said Yvonne sympathetically. “He was badly hurt in that auto accident.”
“Yes he was badly hurt,” responded Penelope honestly. “But he is home now and I am very happy about that.”
“We need to have a very serious discussion about this,” said Yvonne earnestly.
“Yes. We have some very serious things to discuss,” agreed Penelope.

Well, no one is going to accuse this of sounding natural (even if we edit out the typos). So what’s wrong?

“As you’ve probably heard Yvonne”

If Yvonne has already heard, why is Penelope telling her?

Any time you see (or write) a phrase like “as you know” in dialogue, there are likely to be two problems. First, it is a signal the dialogue is repeating things the characters already know, and the only reason they’d do this (outside of a police station or courtroom) is in order to tell the reader.

Second, it is likely to be out of character—why tell someone what they already know? (Unless your character has an unfortunate personality quirk of continually repeating themselves). It's repetition.

As you can see, Atlanta Nights takes this repetition one step further by having Penelope echo what Yvonne has already said. The only saving grace is that Travis Tea keeps the backstory brief: I read one self-published novel where the author gave two generations of family history whenever she introduced a new character.

And why is Penelope calling Yvonne by name? They obviously have some relationship—they are close enough that Yvonne knows Bruce is out of hospital. Think about the last conversation you had with a friend. Did you call him or her by name? Probably not—it sounds unnatural. We call someone by name if we don’t know them well (partly to help us remember the name!), or to identify someone or attract their attention in a group.

So what would be better?

“Did you hear Bruce was home from hospital?” Penelope asked.

Simple and to the point. However, it could be improved by adding context (information about what else is happening in the room, perhaps through the use of an action beat) or subtext (perhaps through a dialogue cue, something that clues the reader in to Penelope’s state of mind). Good dialogue usually contains as much or even more subtext than it does text. More is going on under the surface than on it. No one would accuse Travis Tea of introducing subtext into this conversation.

The next part of the conversation continues the trend of the two women telling each other what they already know. It’s repetition. It’s redundant. It’s annoying. Very annoying. Particularly the repetition of “very”, which is an empty word (other empty words include just, quite, and really. Think about it: do they really add anything to the sentence? Or are they just filler? Quite often, the sentence would be stronger without the filler words).

Either cut the repetition, or edit it to add subtext and power.

“You must be pleased, said Yvonne sympathetically. “He was badly hurt.” Yvonne’s tone was the perfect blend of sympathy and encouragement. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she cared.
“Yes, and I’m thankful he’s home,” responded Penelope honestly.
“We need to have a serious discussion about this,” said Yvonne earnestly.

Better, but still not good. Why not? Because of the dialogue tags, which will be the subject of my next post.

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest  or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2500.

Pain: The Opening Hook in Atlanta Nights

This post is the first in a series illustrating some of the common fiction editing issues I see, using Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea as our object lesson in how not to write a novel. For those of you who didn’t read my post introducing Travis Tea and his illustrious novel … you might want to go back and read the post so you don’t think I’m ripping apart some poor author who tried their best to write a staggering work of genius.

Go ahead. I’ll wait. (Click here to read it.)

You’re back? Good.

We are going to start at the beginning (after all, what better place to start?). For those who have resisted the temptation to download a free copy of Atlanta Nights, here is the first page:

Pain.
Whispering voices.
Pain.
Pain. Pain. Pain.
Need pee--new pain--what are they sticking in me? . . .
Sleep.
Pain.
Whispering voices.
“As you know, Nurse Eastman, the government spooks controlling this hospital will not permit me to give this patient the care I think he needs.”
“Yes, doctor.” The voice was breathy, sweet, so sweet and sexy.

Yes, today’s post is about how not to start your novel, and there are several ways of considering this question. First is the good old journalistic standby:

Does the opening answer the key questions of who, what, when, where and why?

No. We don’t know who, what, when or why. We can guess at the where—a hospital, in Atlanta perhaps? Do we care enough to turn the page and find out? I’m inclined to say no, because there’s no apparent story.

Are you capturing the attention of your reader?

In Wired for Story, author Lisa Cron explains that as readers, we think in terms of story. She gives several questions to ask about your opening paragraph to ensure you are capturing the attention of your reader … in a good way:

• Do we know whose story it is? 
• Is something happening, beginning on the first page?
• Is there conflict in what's happening?
• Is something at stake on the first page? 
• Is there a sense that ‘not all is as it seems’?
• Can we glimpse the 'big picture'?

Atlanta Nights fails on almost all these questions: we don’t know who the protagonist is, not in the first (short) paragraph, and not even by the end of the first page. Nothing is happening—there is no action, and no conflict. Nothing is at stake, as we’ve got no idea who is in pain, or how serious it is. Is there a sense that not is all as it seems? It’s hard to say, as we know so little. Can we see the big picture? No.

The Storytelling Checklist

One blog I enjoy reading is Writer Unboxed (and not just because editing guru Dave King is a contributor). One regular feature is “Flog a Pro”, where the author—and commenters—read the anonymous first page of a recent New York Times bestselling novel, and see if it’s compelling enough to make you want to turn the page. The author of the series, Ray Rhamey, gives us a storytelling checklist:

Evaluate this opening page for how well it executes these six vital storytelling elements. While it’s not a requirement that all of them must be on the first page, I think writers have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are. The one vital ingredient not listed is professional-caliber writing, a given for every page.

• Story questions
• Tension (in the reader, not just the characters)
• Voice
• Clarity
• Scene-setting
• Character

One interesting thing that continually comes out in Ray’s posts is that many of the novels make the bestseller list purely because of the author. The writing, to someone who isn’t already a fan of that author, is often clunky and telling … much like the opening of Atlanta Nights. Ray’s chosen books might be bestsellers, but they aren’t not good enough to attract new readers.

So how does Atlanta Nights fare against this list? Well, it does raise a lot of story questions. Who is in hospital? Why? There is a clear voice … drugged-up, to be sure, but still a voice. The scene has been set—the protagonist (if that’s who he is) is in hospital (we assume the narrator is male, because he thinks the nurse has a sexy voice). But we have little idea of his character (crude, perhaps?),

And the writing is hardly professional calibre, with a steam-of-consciousness opening interrupted by an author intrusion (any time a character says, “As you know,” it’s almost certainly the author getting in the way of the narrator to pass over his or her opinions on a subject, whether relevant or not. But that’s a subject for next week … Interior Monologue.

For those who would like some good advice on how to begin a novel by hooking the reader, may I suggest a trip back into the Australasian Christian Writers archives, to an excellent series of posts from Anne Hamilton:

• Are You a Fisherman?
• Bait and Switch
• Reeling in Your Reader
• First Chapter Blues

How Should Atlanta Nights Start?

How should Atlanta Nights have started? The most obvious suggestion would be to start with the accident that put our painful protagonist in hospital (yes, I admit. I’ve read ahead, and know he was in a car accident). The obvious answer might not be the best answer (I haven’t read that far ahead). But regardless, a novel should start with action. Something should be happening.

What do you think? Does Atlanta Nights have a good opening hook? Would you turn the page? Why, or why not?

About Iola Goulton

I am a freelance editor specialising in Christian fiction, and you can find out more about my services at my website, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Tsu.

I love reading, and read and review around 150 Christian books each year on my blog. I'm a Top 25 Reviewer at Christian Book, in the Top 1% of reviewers at Goodreads, and have an Amazon Reviewer Rank that floats around 2500.

Five Strategies for Self-Editing

by Terry W. Ervin II

Editing, especially self-editing, is an important component in the writing process. Realizing there are different layers of editing, ranging from structural concerns down to catching typos, effective editing strategies are important to a novel’s potential success.

One of the banes of an author attempting to self-edit is failing to catch what would be easily identified in another writer’s work. The author’s mind knows what was intended. The character voices and narrative are playing out in the author’s head, masking mistakes.

Below are five methods an author might employ to combat overlooking errors, especially as a manuscript nears the end of the editing process.

Time Between Edits

Time away from a manuscript, hopefully working on another project, allows an author to return with fresh eyes and a mindset more attuned to catching errors at all levels. The distance of time, be it several weeks or months, offers a better perspective and possibly less emotional attachment to descriptions, dialogue and other parts that must be revised or cut.

Reading Orally

An author reading their work out loud, while slower than reading silently, will better enable the catching of errors. This is especially true of missing words or dialogue that just doesn’t sound right. The author doesn’t need to vocalize. Often, just moving the mouth and engaging the voice box is sufficient.

Changing Font

Many authors have a favorite font to write and even edit in. Switching fonts is a trick that makes the manuscript appear a bit foreign and new. It also resets the end of lines at the margins where mistakes are often overlooked as the eye shifts down to the next line. If changing fonts isn’t enough, switch the font size, say from 12 to 14 point.

Using Text Speak Programs

Again, this is a time-consuming process, but the programs are free and improving. While they lack inflection and occasionally mangle pronunciation, it’s like having someone read a novel back to the author. It may even be more effective than reading orally in catching missing words, switched tense or subject/verb agreement, or dialogue that is somehow off.

Print out the Manuscript

This is often the last step in completing a manuscript, as the expense of the necessary paper and ink can add up. This tactic steps up the changing of font, as it adds a new medium, even a tactile sense that alters the reading experience and engages the critical eye from a new angle. It’s more like ‘reading a book’ old school.


Yes, having others edit and proof a manuscript is invaluable. And the better prepared the manuscript is ahead of time, the better the end product. Why? Those taking on the task, be they knowledgeable friends, an author you’ve exchanged manuscripts with, a hired editor, or one assigned to your novel by your publisher, won’t be distracted by what the author could’ve addressed ahead of time. Thus, they can focus on more elusive elements, such as pacing, characterization and other concerns the author just couldn’t find.

About Terry W Ervin II

Terry W. Ervin II is an English and science teacher who enjoys writing fantasy and science fiction. His First Civilization’s Legacy Series (fantasy) includes FLANK HAWK, BLOOD SWORD, and SOUL FORGE.

Terry’s debut science fiction novel, RELIC TECH, is the first in the Crax War Chronicles. He is working on the sequel, RELIC RESCUE, which should be released in the Summer of 2015.

In addition to writing novels, Terry’s short stories have appeared in over a dozen anthologies, magazines and ezines. The genres range from science fiction and mystery to horror and inspirational. GENRE SHOTGUN is a collection containing all of his previously published short stories.

To contact Terry or learn more about his writing endeavors, visit his website at www.ervin-author.com, that of his publisher, Gryphonwood Press, and his blog, Up Around the Corner at uparoundthecorner.blogspot.com.