Photo by Sean Mason , via Flickr Oxford English Dictionaries online defines a sentence as ”A set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.” In fiction, an enormous amount of leeway is given in sentence length and structure according to the novel’s genre. Short sentences increase tension in thrillers that feature fast-paced scenes. Dialogue-heavy fiction gives the author an opportunity to play with fragments and short, snappy exchanges. The secret is to understand what a sentence is before messing around with it. One of greatest failings of modern education is the removal of sentence diagramming from the study of writing. Editor Linda Lane explored this topic in her Blood-Red Pencil post, Excuse Me, Please, I Need a Diagram . Linda noted, “Knowing the parts of speech helps us use words most effectively...

Image by Oliver Symens , via Flickr Not long ago, I came across a folder of materials I used while I was teaching at the University of St. Andrews. Among the files was a questionnaire I devised for my Creative Writing students to help them assess their own work from the perspective of an editor (or, as in this case, the members of their academic examining committee). There are four categories of five questions apiece: Plot,Characterization, Setting and Atmosphere, and The Writer’s Craft . It occurs to me that this self-assessment questionnaire might be helpful to fiction writers in general who are trying to gauge whether their manuscript is ready for submission. A) Plot Does the work feature a strong/striking central idea around which the action of the plot revolves? Is the central concept sufficiently robust to be conveyed in a single "pitched" paragraph? Is the action well-paced, reflecting a balance between incident and exposition? Does the main pl...

Identifying facts about the subject of this case study have been changed to protect the author's reputation.  I recently found myself stranded for four days with only one great story and one poorly edited novel at my disposal. Unfortunately both were found within the same covers. The fact that its issues were easily fixable, yet still evident in a book already published, is such a crying shame I want us all to learn from this case study. It was exactly my kind of story, the back cover copy suggested. Great title, lush cover. A hardback, with a price of $25.99, put out by a major traditional publisher, by an acquiring editor whose name is known and trusted in the industry. I opened it with great anticipation. Problems emerged on page one. Unfortunate word pairings At the end of the first paragraph, the author used a phrase such as “ran like a hare” immediately followed by an introduction to “Tad O’Hara.” Like most of the following issues, this is a remnant of the wri...

While editing, yes, be the "editor," but also be the "reader." What do you, as reader, think of the story? When I teach Writing for the Media, I talk a lot about audience. It's the first thing we talk about at the start of the semester, and as we move through our writing projects - traditional news stories, features, radio and TV commercial scripts, and mini advertising and public relations campaigns - I sprinkle audience across each project. From the pre-writing, research, legwork phases of their projects to the revising and editing, the students keep their focus on audience. Like I tell my students, we live in a fast-paced, technological society, and readers can go to any number of outlets - offline and online - to receive information. What are you going to do to make sure readers are reading you?  If the students aren't focused on their readers, those readers will definitely not be focused on them. Image by marin from FreeDigitalPhotos.net Fict...

This post first ran on Sunday, September 21, 2008. There are so many things to think about when you're writing a book--plot, characters, POV, opening hooks, chapter hooks, dialogue, narrative, show-don't tell, and on and on. Well, here's one more--the mood of the story. I'm not talking genre, like romance, mystery, horror, suspense, etc. A Romance can be eerie and gothic. Horror can be humorous. A Thriller can be tongue-in-cheek. By mood, I'm talking atmosphere of the book. Think about the atmosphere you want to create for the plot, the characters, the setting. Then establish that mood through your use of details, the way you put words and sentences together, your use of the senses. A character walks down a long hallway, dark and quiet. A clock sounds. Is it the deep bass bonging of a grandfather clock? Or is it the shrill clucking of a coo-coo clock? The setting of a scene is a lawyer's office. How do you, as the writer, furnish the room? Big, heavy ...

Jargon is the special language of each profession, sport or hobby. We can all spout words when talking about our current passion that make another person frown and say, “Huh?” When I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher years ago, I learned a completely new language that revolved around numbers. But even that wasn’t necessarily translatable by other law enforcement agencies. For example, in our community the code “211” meant there are no wants or warrants on an individual or license plate. We once received a call from a California agency, wondering how a small town in Montana could have so many armed robberies. Their code “211” meant robbery in progress. Jargon is sometimes merely doublespeak, and it is also often responsible for wordy, heavy-handed sentences. When it comes from government or business, we call it “bureaucratese.” It’s almost as if the writer has deliberately ignored every opportunity for clear, concise writing. Here’s an example : “The necessity for individuals to become separ...

Pacing is important to writing. And no, I don’t mean walking back and forth, trying to figure out ways not to sit down at the computer and write! Pacing is used to control the speed of the plot. Pacing is manipulating time. Most writing gurus these days advise to “arrive late and leave early.” By this, they mean, start in the middle of the action or with an element of suspense that will help prompt the reader to keep reading. You don’t need to set up the scene with lots of description and backstory. We don’t necessarily need to know what this person’s history is and how he/she got there, just to know that he/she is in some kind of problem or crisis and needs to solve it. A crisis moment has to be in what I call “real time”—written as if it is happening right now (even if you are using past tense). Summarizing or including it as a flashback does not create the same amount of tension. Summarizing is simply “telling” us what happened, rather than showing our character in trouble. Ba...

Most novels are written in third-person past tense: “He raced through the dark alley, the footsteps getting louder behind him.” First-person is another option: “As I put down the phone, I heard the doorbell ring.” Some new fiction writers opt to write their novel in first-person, as they think this will be easier. But writing a novel effectively and compellingly in first-person is a lot more difficult than it first appears. Some of the advantages to writing your novel in first-person are: 1. More like real life – we experience life around us only from our own point of view. 2. A direct connection from the narrator to the reader, so can create an immediate sense of intimacy and believability. 3. The narrator-character’s voice comes through more clearly, as it is expressed directly. 4. Can portray the POV character’s personality and world-view more easily. Some of the disadvantages of using first-person point of view and narration are: 1. Difficulty dramatizing scenes where ...

I asked my friend, and fellow Montana author to write a column about the value of editing when you self-publish. by Carol Buchanan Self-published author: God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana (2009 Spur award for Best first Novel) Gold Under Ice (Sequel to God’s Thunderbolt) Most writing coaches advise not to self-edit as you write because it stifles creativity. I don’t know what sort of editing they mean, because my reaction to that is “bunk.” I've just gone through NaNoWriMo, and I’m finding it very uncomfortable because I want to stop and answer the little voice in my head that asks if this character would really say that, or if these men would sit down in the middle of the morning and tell stories about another man. Surely there’s a better way to convey his character to the reader than by these stilted conversations, I tell myself. I want to answer those questions as I write because that’s my usual method. (So I put in notes to myself to be answered in later.) ...

Here is a handy checklist from Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. This is a book I recommend to my editing clients and something I like to look at for my own work every so often. • How many ing and as phrases do you write? Remember, the only ones that count are the ones that place a bit of action in a subordinate clause. • How about ly adverbs? Both tied to your dialogue and within your descriptions and narration. • Do you have a lot of short sentences, both within your dialogue and within your description and narration? • Do you use a lot of italics? We mean a lot of italics. And you don’t use many exclamation points, do you?!! • Are there any metaphors or flowery phrases you’re particularly proud of. Do they come at key times during your plot? If so, think about getting rid of them. • How much time have you spent moving your characters around? Do you cut from location to location, or do you fill in all the space in between? • How much detail...

First published on July 14, 2010, this post is one of the most useful we've ever offered! Thank you to Patricia Stoltey . Most of us who write spend as much time in the revision and self-editing phase as we do writing our first drafts. Since a large percentage of the contributors to this blog are editors, there's a lot of information here to help. Now that we've added a search bar, it's easy to find what you're looking for, whether it be advice on using adjectives and adverbs or different points of view on point of view. To give you a head start, here are the links to my series, Self-Editing One Step at a Time : 1. Charting the Novel Story Arc 2. How to Identify Dragging Narrative 3. Identifying and Eliminating Your Habit Words 4. Searching for More Silly Stuff 5. Weeding Out Unnecessary Adjectives and Adverbs 6. Cleaning Up Those Dialogue Tags 7. Analyzing Sentences for Redundancy and Wordiness 8. Fine-Tuning Sentence Structure 9. Read Your Ma...

Last night I was reading a self-published book that—ahem—could have used some more editing. Immediately apparent was the insidious use of the word “as.” Even if the typical reader wouldn’t pick this up right away, I assure you these two little letters have a way of undermining a reader’s confidence in an author. This is true for a few reasons. 1) Any word overuse is a problem. In a medium comprised of words, overuse suggests a limited lexicon and a dull imagination. The reader catches the stale whiff of laziness. Be cognizant of the choices you make. 2) The repeated use of this particular preposition sets up a lulling rhythm. You want to open your readers’ eyes to new thoughts and ideas, not close them. Here is one paragraph from the book I read, with nouns and verbs changed to protect the guilty: He unbuttoned his coat and tucked his long hair behind his ear as he sat down on the leather couch. The secretary ignored him as she tapped away on the keyboard for another minute until the m...

As you read back through your story looking for ways to improve it, stop and question each set of multiple modifiers. If all they provide superficial detail, as many such word sets do, reconsider their usage. Because if you let them, they can provide a window to deeper characterization. All you have to do is climb through. Let's say the first set you come to says that your character has “long stringy orange hair.” In your first draft, that visual image was enough—the movie of story was unreeling in your mind, you saw the character, you took notes. By applying three modifiers your subconscious suggested that this character's hair was a detail worthy of further consideration. In this draft you have an opportunity to do just that—and in doing so, uncover deeper meaning. Long. Stringy. Orange. It is unfair of you to ask your reader to sift through your verbiage to arrive at meaning. How is she to know what is the most important information if you as author don’t? Try paring tha...

For those writers who will be sending manuscripts electronically at any time during the submission or publication process, there is one more little housekeeping chore to be done: eliminate extra spaces and other formatting errors inadvertently added to the manuscript. On your Microsoft Word toolbar there is an icon that looks like the editing symbol for new paragraphs. If you click on that icon, your text will indicate spaces in your work as dots. You may have a perfectly formatted manuscript, but if you are an old-style typist like me, you’ll probably find a lot of extra spaces at the end of paragraphs and sometimes at the end of sentences within paragraphs. Since many manuscripts are now submitted electronically, and publishers/editors often require print-ready formatting from the authors at some point in the process, it’s wise to add this step to your self-editing procedures. If your publisher wants one space after a period instead of two (common when using fonts other than Co...

Sometimes we’re so focused on the big picture—our plot and characters—that we miss obvious clues that more editing is required. My July 16th, 2009 post, Look for the Silly Stuff: Exclamation Points , discussed the overuse of that popular punctuation mark. Here are a few other things you need to consider. 1. Bad grammar and lousy punctuation . If you don’t know the basic rules of grammar and punctuation, you need to take a class, buy a good book and study it, or choose one of many excellent online resources to hone your writing skills. I like Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips™ for Better Writing and her website by the same name. Guide to Grammar and Writing is a website sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation. I’ve found it to be very useful. 2. When Microsoft Word underlines a word in red , it means the software thinks you have misspelled the word. The error might be a typo. The word might really be misspelled. Or you may have used a correct wor...

Authors and editors will tell you that reading your manuscript aloud is one of the best ways to identify any remaining problems with awkward sentence structure, sentences that are too long, word repetitions, bad dialogue, and silly goofs. Maryann Miller posted two excellent articles on line editing in April, 2009. Line Editing: One and Line Editing – Part Two will give you great results if you go over your manuscript visually. However, if you follow that effort with another read, this time out loud, you will improve your manuscript. Why is that? When the writer reads to himself, his eye ignores and visually corrects the problems noted at the beginning of this post as well as typos, words or lines accidentally deleted during the revision process, and spacing and formatting errors. Reading aloud, however, forces the reader to look at words individually instead of seeing phrases and whole sentences at once. We often hear what we don’t see. Dialogue might look great on paper, bu...

Nicole Langan asks: "What are some helpful tips on how an author can train their own editing eye even when they've read their own work a million times?" Kathryn Craft replies: When looking at my own work for the umpteenth time, here’s the problem I run into: no matter how steely my intentions for self-editing, I am immediately caught up, once again, in my protagonist’s plight. I may have started out looking for continuity issues ( Continuity issues! Continuity issues! ), but by page four or five I am seduced once again by the story’s central drama. Sound familiar? The way to counter this is to engage your inner critic while simultaneously disrupting your reading response. To do this I find it imperative that I not read my story through in order. Your word processor’s “find” function can help you by targeting select issues while keeping you out of the intention-bending mire of your own prose. When the word processor plunks you down on a new page, address the issue ...

During this part of the self-editing process you will look at the structure of your individual sentences and then compare that structure to the surrounding paragraphs and pages. The purpose of this exercise is to: 1. Look for sentences which are too long. Bad: The day I walked down the hill from my apartment to the town center was the day I began my adventure in Tourettes-sur-Loup, a village in the South of France which is famous for its spring festival of violets and perches on the edge of a cliff as though hanging on for its very life. Better: The day I walked down the hill from my apartment to the town center was the day I began my adventure in the South of France. I was in Tourettes-sur-Loup, a village famous for its spring festival of violets. It perches on the edge of a cliff as though hanging on for its very life. 2. Find awkward sentences that might require a second reading to be clear. This may require correctly punctuating the sentence, or the sentence may need to b...