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Editing Update

I’m looking for regular editing work again. I take manuscripts that have been through at least an initial revision. Since I do content editing, expect a fair amount of rewriting, so having a polished book isn’t necessary at this stage.

I price by word count and in USD since most of my clients are not in Canada. $200 for 50k plus $100 USD for each 25k above that. A full edit is at least two passes, one to read and comment chapter by chapter on character and plot etc. Then a summary of strengths and weaknesses of the entire work at the end. I then expect the author to revise their book for the second pass where I look at how they’ve responded to my comments and make suggestions about prose to strengthen the story.

I am also doing manuscript assessments, which are detailed comments on the strengths and weakness of your book, and how you can work on them.

I can work on short stories. I charge $25 an hour for that and tend to blend the two passes.

If the author wants more passes through the work, that can be arranged for a negotiated price. I do offer an occasional coaching position which gives the author access to me for twelve months and unlimited passes through their work. That starts at $1500 and may go higher depending on the word count and how much interaction is needed.

I’ve been advertising through a couple of different sites, but word of mouth is still the best way of getting my services out there. If you recommend me to someone, ask them to let me know and I will give you 10% off your next editing bill.

While you’re here, check out the writing articles and see what’s new.

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Submitting to Anthologies or Magazines

I was inspired to write this based on my experience receiving submissions for my Bigfoot Country Anthology. It applies to any anthology or magazine submission. Read the requirements and be sure to send in a professional document that meets all the standards requested.

I have received close to a hundred stories for my Bigfoot Anthology, (Submissions closing February 1st, at midnight Pacific Standard Time) about a third of them required formatting for me to be able to read and comment easily. A lot of submission editors would summarily reject submission for not following guidelines. I asked for .docx files in standard submission format. If you aren’t sure what that means, do a search and find out.

Things like leaving all the previous changes on track changes so I’m trying to decipher what is the most recent text. To be honest I just accept all changes and work with that. When you submit, you want to submit a clean, final document ready for the editor’s comments.

A lot of people used tabs or multiple spaces instead of creating the indent using the ruler and using styles to keep the formatting consistent through the story. Using tabs or other means of indent means your editor has to go through every paragraph and fix the indent. It is a colossal waste of time.

Even worse were the few who simply dropped their story into the body of the email, meaning that every line had a paragraph break.

I like stories, so I went to the extra effort. It meant an extra fifteen to thirty minutes to put things right. It doesn’t sound like much time until you multiply it by thirty. I had the time to do that. If it had been two hundred stories or more, some calls for anthologies or magazines get thousands, anything that didn’t fit the submission requirements would have been rejected unread.

So please, do yourself and your story a favour. Format it correctly. Use styles. Save it in .docx, or whatever the editor is asking for. Make it so they open your story and start reading without needing to fix anything before hand.

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Writing Through a Slump

Hi, should have done this last week, but motivation to do things when nothing seems to be happening is difficult. Speaking about motivation, let’s look at the difference between a slump and writer’s block.  

A slump is when your writing slows down or drops in quality, and it is a general malaise. Nothing is working, everything is garbage.  What I do in a slump is write through it, then look at my mistakes and try to learn from them. Taking a day off isn’t a bad idea, but stay away from your writer’s garret too long and you’ll have trouble returning.  The other thing is to pay attention to what is going on in life around your writing. The pandemic, for instance, has made it hard for me to get going on my writing tasks for the day. Even though my life isn’t that terribly different than it was. You aren’t going to be able to fix everything, so maybe consider writing about what is haunting you instead of ignoring the ghost at the banquet.

A writer’s block, at least in my mind is very specific. I’m stuck at this particular scene. I’ve tried it twelve different ways and I still can’t make it work. The mind is blank, or at least fuzzy. The reason I suggest writer’s block is specific is it isn’t about being able to write, but being able to imagine. That makes it different from a slump. So what do I do about writer’s block? My first thing is to go to the story structure. If I can’t come up with a scene it is very often because I haven’t laid the groundwork.

K.M.Weiland ‘Making Writers into Authors’ blogger is a genius at explaining story structure.  (google her) If I’ve missed a plot point, or jumped over the inciting incident, my plotting brain calls a halt. But it also may be that classic actor’s question. What is the motivation? Have I established why the character is doing this? Does my character know? Does the reader know? Do I know? Action follows motivation, if you get it turned around it could lead to a dead end. Another problem may be you aren’t writing the story you think you are writing. I have heard it said that Erin Morgenstern starting working on a book, but the characters didn’t want anything to do with it, they wanted to run away to the circus. She listened to the characters, the result is The Night Circus.

With writer’s block taking a walk, changing up what you are writing are also effective methods to get past it.

As a professional writer, I am expected to produce stories, if I stop, I’m no longer a writer. Though I publish my own books, I have deadlines to meet decisions to make about where a series is going. So I rarely take more than day off unless it’s a planned vacation. Oddly, I enjoy my vacations better when I want to write, but don’t because I need rest.

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Those writing mistakes are a revision gold mine.

One of the frustrations of writing is going to revise and realizing how many writing mistakes you’ve made. Repeated words, too many adverbs, weak verbs, static description, the list goes on and on. Revision is a humbling experience.

But hold on, all is not lost. Those mistakes tell us something about what we were thinking when we were writing the story. As Stephen King says, first drafts are supposed to suck. This is where we pour out the story without stopping to worry about whether we’ve used ‘loquacious’ three times in this chapter.

I view the mistakes we make in the first draft as markers, holding a place for us, so we can go back in revision and write something closer to what our brains had in mind. When we are in the flow is not the time to worry about speech tags, adverbs and the rest, though as we gain experience, we will learn to make a whole new raft of mistakes.

I want to look at the kind of mistakes we make in more detail and suggest what it is they might be telling us about the story.

Dialogue

Dialogue is an essential element in story. It is possible to write a story without dialogue, just as it is possible to write a story that is nothing but. However for the average book, it is part of the three legged stool formed by dialogue, action and narrative.

What often happens, especially with new authors is that the dialogue is reported rather than shown. ‘Mary and Sue discussed where to eat supper and decided the new Thai-Bulgarian Fusion place would be a good idea.’ This is missing out on the opportunity to use the dialogue to show character and plot development. This isn’t to say that we always show dialogue, there are times when the characters are rehashing what we’ve already heard, so glossing over it is fine.

One of the first things to look at in our dialogue is how we use speech tags. Most sources suggest we use ‘said’ or ‘asked’ and only rarely use other tags. The theory is that ‘said’ and ‘asked’ disappear like punctuation and don’t detract from the speech. This doesn’t stop some writers from having characters bark, whine, moan, sigh or laugh words. I see ‘greet’ as a tag, though it is a class of verbs which needs an object and is probably more properly used as a beat. Or the author uses adverbs to tell us how things are said, so people speak hurriedly, angrily, lazily and so on.

So what do these alternate speech tags tell us? They are our attempt to express the manner in which the words are spoken, to evoke the emotion of the dialogue. The goal of dialogue is to have the emotion in the words being spoken, not in the tags. Tags are a way of telling, not showing. What we need to do is examine the speech and work on putting that emotion into the words, or alternatively to use a beat to show the emotion through action or facial expression and body language. Beats are also a great alternative to endless lines of ‘he said’.

There are a couple of reasons beats are a better choice than speech tags whether alternative tags or ones modified by adverbs.

The first reason is they show where tags tell. With a beat you can set the subtext by internal thought, or through emotion show by physical reaction or action. They add depth that the dialogue alone can’t achieve. This is why we use all those alternative and modifiers, our brain is telling us we need to anchor this conversation in the character and plot of the book.

The second reason is to prevent the dialogue from becoming talking heads disconnected from the rest of the book. Beats allow us to show the setting, move the plot forward, reveal character, all while the characters discuss what to eat for supper.

There is something we need to watch when we use beats, and that is what I call empty beats. This is most often a two word beat. He smiled. He shrugged. He laughed. The problem is that they don’t really tell us anything new about the character or the dialogue. A favourite is to show the character nodding or shaking their head after their words indicate whether they agree or disagree. Most often these beats need to be expanded to show more of what is going on in the character’s mind.

Exposition

We have all heard about the info dump. The large wall of text explaining some point the reader needs to know to get the story. The truth is the info dump is very rarely the best way to let the reader in on this information.

Very often, the information will show up in the appropriate place without the need to explain. The best place to insert information into the text is the last possible moment before it becomes relevant to the plot. If it is never relevant, you don’t need it. This is not to say that the info dump is a waste of words. It is a use tool for checking that the information needed does in fact show up at the right time. Even if it is information not needed by the reader, you as the author need to understand it in order to write the story.

Aside from the info dump, there are a couple of other ways we try to sneak the information into the story.

One is through dialogue. There is the ‘As you know Bob’ dialogue where two or more characters tell each other what they already know. Nobody talks that way unless they are being sarcastic. This is not to say you can’t hide the information in dialogue, but it needs to fill an authentic purpose. This brings us to the ‘Dumb Mechanic’ dialogue where one of the people does not know the information, and so it is new to them, and the reader. They need to actually not know for it to work, and it must only be information that they need in the moment.

Teaching and instruction is a form of the dumb mechanic, but needs to be used sparingly. Having an instructor begin the training of a newbie to sword play or other fighting technique is a good way to set up the basic terminology you are going to use later in fight scenes.

Another trick to slip information into dialogue legitimately is when a character needs to report on something to their boss or other person. A report needs to be detailed, and we can tailor it to say exactly what we need.

Authors also use internal thought to push exposition onto the reader. The character sits and thinks exhaustively about the history and customs of their land, only no one really thinks that way. We don’t stop and remind ourselves in orderly fashion of the information around us. What we do it think of the fraction of the knowledge that we need in that moment.

That is the secret of exposition whether it is broader knowledge of the story situation or backstory of the character. Drop it in hints at the moment when it is necessary to the plot. Very rarely is a substantial amount of information needed at a single moment.

When we spot info dumps or exposition in any of these forms, our task is to decide if it is necessary, then check to see that it shows up when it is needed. Odds are it appears naturally in dialogue or action without needing a lot of extra work from us.

One last thing to watch for is the temptation to explain a character’s motivation for an action or speech. Probably it is clear from the context, and it if isn’t, we can put something in to make it clear.

The main thing to keep in mind when it comes to information and inserting it into the story is we need to trust ourselves as authors. The necessary stuff is there. But we also need to trust the reader to get it without us laying it all out for them. Part of the fun of reading is connecting the dots.

Word Issues

Word issues include things like filler words – that, just, only, so, perhaps. They don’t add anything to the meaning of the sentence, but they slow down the story. Often we use the words out of habit, but they may also be a pointer to the need for more emphasis in that sentence. When we see the filler words, before we delete them and move on, we should ask ourselves what there is about that sentence which made us think we needed the extra word?

I use search and replace to replace the word with itself with track changes turned on. That will show us all 1497 times ‘that’ shows up in our novel, giving us the opportunity to reassess 1497 sentences to make them stronger. Use the same technique for other filler words, and we have checked a large portion of our writing.

Every author has a personal list of over-used words and phrases. Software like prowritingaid will highlight the most used words, but also two and three word phrases. These phrases may be habitual, but they are also a chance to reframe parts of our writing to make it stronger.

‘Seemed’ deserves a special mention in the list of over-used words. Most often it is used to hedge a character’s observation. We put it in because the character can’t actually know their friend is angry. The truth is we weaken our story by using it. Trust your character to know how to read the people around them. If they don’t know how to read the people or situation around them, you will want something much stronger than ‘seemed’ to show that.

The one place where ‘seemed’ is needed is when something is counter to reality. The floor seemed safe, but it collapsed under Bob’s weight.

Words which are similar to filler words and can be checked the same way are filter verbs. Filter verbs are verbs like ‘thought/felt/saw/heard’ and so on. They force the experience of the story through the character. Bob saw the car roaring toward him. We are seeing Bob see the car. What you want is ‘The car roared toward Bob.’ It is direct and immediate. In first person, or third person limited, the POV defines who is experiencing the world of the story. We don’t need to remind the reader it is being mediated through the character.

The exception, because there is always exceptions, is when the seeing/hearing etc is the result of a positive action by the character. ‘Bob listened carefully for sounds of movement, only hearing the scuttling of rats in the walls.’ He hears in response to his listening.

Weak nouns and verbs are another challenge. ‘Look’ and ‘walk’ often get adverbs attached to them to make them more effective. Walk briskly, looked angrily – that kind of thing. Once again search and replace is a way of checking, though it won’t pick up all of them. The goal here is to use a stronger verb, after all one can stroll, saunter, amble, stride, jog, or glare, stare, examine, scan etc. The weak verb is the easiest one to think of in the moment of composing the story, but they should be thought of as holding the place of a stronger verb.

One caveat is that we must be aware of the nuances evoked by similar words. A glance is different than a stare. A smirk is different than a smile. If you aren’t sure, check the dictionary meaning before you use it.

Nouns function in much the same way, though often it is about being specific. Hawk is more evocative than bird for example. If you are piling on adjectives, you may want to consider switching the noun for a more specific one.

When it comes to weak verbs, ‘was’ in all its iterations is king. The verb to be is a transitive verb, that is, it identifies one thing as another thing. ‘The leaf is green.’ It becomes a problem when was is used in place of an active verb. Anytime we can replace was with an active verb, we should do that.

‘Was’ also shows up in continual tense, that is ‘He was sitting.’ Continual tense is for when an action is interrupted, or when an action is carried on in the background. If neither of these conditions are met, we probably want the simple form of the verb.

‘Was’ is also part of the passive voice. ‘He was attacked.’ The simplest way of checking if we are writing the passive voice. The simplest test for passive voice is the zombie test. If we can add ‘by zombies’ at the end of the sentence and it makes sense, we are writing in passive voice.

Passive voice is not automatically evil and deserving of eradication, but it is used in limited situations. The first is when the doer of the action is unknown. ‘Bob was thrown down the stairs.’ If we don’t know who threw Bob down the stairs, and it isn’t important to know, passive voice is useful. The other case is when the action is more important that who accomplishes the action. If it doesn’t matter who threw Bob down the stairs, passive voice works.

What passive voice does is remove agency from the subject of the action. Bob has no choice about being thrown down the stairs.

The last place we tend to overuse ‘was’ is description. How often do we have our characters enter a room only to have a paragraph of sentences like ‘The room was large. Tables were covered with knick-knacks and dust. The feeble glow of the fire was hardly enough light to see the body splayed on the carpet.’ This is the character standing in the door and looking around at the room. That may be exactly what the character is doing, but such descriptions have the effect of stopping the action while the reader takes in the new setting. Usually we are better to have the character interact with the room to show what is important in the scene.

‘So many tables crowded the room they left little space for Bob to wind his way to the far end. Each bump sent knick-knacks clinking and clouds of dust into the air to tickle his nose. Stifling a sneeze, Bob knelt on the carpet where the dim light of a dying fire revealed a corpse staring reproachfully up at him.’

Whenever we can make description an active part of the story, we not only put the reader into the setting, we make the setting a part of the plot and it becomes like another character in that moment.

On last word issue – the over prevalence of pronouns.

‘He nailed the door shut. He ran down the hall. He skidded around the corner into the kitchen. He pushed the fridge in front of the kitchen window.’

It is easy in the heat of writing our draft to use a lot of pronouns. It is a quick way of getting the bones of the action into the story. However, we need to go back and take a hard look at any sentence starting with a pronoun. Action scenes are made up of more than a sequence of actions done by the character. A lot of pronouns suggests we’ve pulled away from the POV and are narrating the story. Our goal should be to pull in tighter and write the action, not the character acting.  

‘He nailed the door shut before sprinting down the hall. His feet lost their grip on the floor sending him crashing into the mirror. Glass dug into his skin in the scramble to get into the kitchen and move the fridge to cover the kitchen window.’

Emotion

Emotion is essential to a good story. The ability to evoke strong emotions in the reader can make the difference between the reader turning the page or not. Plot may start the reader, but emotion is what holds them.

The biggest mistake with emotion is to name them. ‘Bob is angry.’ Stating a character’s emotional state will not help the reader experience that emotion. The task then is to read through the story to find the places where we’ve named an emotion and look at how we can show it better. There are lot of resources on writing emotions, but the simple method of writing emotion is to write the effect of the emotion on the character. What happens to their body? How does their posture/expression change?

There is also a danger of using the same action to represent an emotion throughout the story. The reality is we react differently to emotions depending on the context, so anger won’t always cause clenched fists. Sadness won’t always result in tears. Work the context, and be prepared to make the emotional reaction of character ambivalent and complex.

Summary

As the song says, we are supposed to make mistakes. In writing those mistakes become place holders marking the spots our brain thinks need more work. Rather than getting depressed at the sheer volume of mistakes we need to correct, we should view this as an opportunity to assess and strengthen a significant portion of our work.

I have always found that as I am hunting down the repeated words or static descriptions, I find other things to work on. By the time I’ve been through the manuscript the three or four times needed to check all these things, I’ve not just fixed these issues, but areas where the plot is weak, or characters are acting strangely.

Working on these ‘mistakes’ is a gold mine for revision and will make our writing much more powerful.

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Hobson’s Choice – using ethical dilemmas in writing.

Hobson’s choice may have originated in the 1500s with an innkeeper who told customers they could have the horse closest to them, or none at all. In 1954 a movie was made with the title. While the original meaning was more  ‘take it or leave it, ‘ it now has the nuance of a choice between two bad things.

Do you choose to obey a kidnapper’s demand to kill someone, or let your family die? The choice between evils is compelling, especially with a time limit. It leaves your character scrambling to find a way out which doesn’t lead to either end.

This scenario is a bit like the infamous ‘Trolly Problem‘

The question is this. Do you pull the lever and kill one person, or stand by and let the trolley kill five people? This is a favourite argument starter in philosophy bars. Recently it has come under fire for being too extreme, and requiring a kind of cold calculation which is detrimental to compassion. It also removes the person at the switch’s agency (ability to choose).

A more mundane Hobson’s choice might be choosing between staying home and cleaning house because your partner is going to move out if you don’t, but your friends who want you to join them at the bar are ready to dump you if you don’t come. Do you lose your partner or your friends?

While a choice of evils is a powerful plot tool, there is an even greater problem, and this is the source of the stickiest ethical dilemmas faced by people in real life.

This is the choice between two good things. To illustrate, in social work, the primary goal of a social worker is to build self-determination in their clients. Interfering in a client’s right to make choices is contrary to everything a social worker should be. Also a major goal of social workers is to prevent harm. The only time a counsellor should break confidentiality is to report harm or potential harm to children around the client.

So a client comes to a counselling session and talks about their desire for a fresh start. They plan to leave their family and disappear. The other parent will continue to care for the children. The client believes it will be better for the family if they aren’t around.

The social worker knows from experience that the vanishing of a parent is a traumatic experience which will leave deep scars on all those left behind, but this is not a clear case of abandonment. The children will have a competent parent.

Do they respect the client’s desire to choose  a new path, however foolish, because they must make their own decisions, or does the social worker intervene to prevent the client from hurting their family by vanishing, but removes their client’s right to choose?

The reason this is more powerful than the choice between too evils is that people want good things. They would want to have both the right to choose and the assurance that their family won’t be hurt by their decisions.

Does a character act with loyalty to their liege, which they have been trained to see as the highest good, or act to save a person or people who will be harmed by their liege if they don’t do something?

The other powerful way to have a struggle between two goods is to have your antagonist want a good thing, but one which opposes the good thing your protagonist wants. The most common version of this is the choice between peace and order and freedom, but there are lots of others if you think about it.

When the antagonist’s goal is virtuous, but contradictory, it adds a level of complexity to the plot and emotion of the story. Is the protagonist right to stop them? Who is right? This kind of conflict also means the motivation of both antagonist and protagonist are clear. They both want to help, so you don’t have to come up with reasons for the antagonist to act despicably.

Another version of this is a common goal, but different paths to get there. Magneto and Professor X are a prime example of this. They want the best for mutants, but the way they plan to achieve it is very different.

Since we’re talking about ethics we show also talk about the foundational question of ethics. Is there a single set of rules which determines all moral and ethical behaviour?

People who use scriptures to decide between good and evil would fall until this category, for convenience we’ll call it ‘rules based ethics’. Put simply obeying the rules comes first. In the example above with the client planning to abandon their family the decision would be based on the application of the agency’s policy. Since there is no reportable harm to the children, the client must be allowed to abandon their family if that is their choice. People who don’t agree with them would call them legalists.

The people who want to look at the result of decisions and determine the greatest good created by each choice are utilitarians. Their choices are determined by the utility of the choice. What creates the greatest benefit for everyone involved? These are people who would consciously or not use game theory in making their decisions. People who disagree with them would suggest they use the ends to justify the means.

Putting a rules based person against a utilitarian is sure to create conflict.

There is one last group. They are utilitarian rule people. They work with a set of rules, be it company policy or the ten commandments, but they also recognize that some ethical decisions need thought outside the rules, and so they bring utilitarian methodology to bear on that problem. Put them into the mix and you have three people acting from very understandings of what is good. These people would be accused of sitting on the fence and having no firm beliefs.

Even if characters share the same goals, viewing the world through a utilitarian versus a rule based ethos will create conflict.

While it is great to set up an ethical conflict for your characters, it is also important to take care in the resolving of that conflict. Going back to Prof X and Magneto, they end up cooperating, but never really sorting out their argument. This is great if you have characters who will be bumping heads over a series of books.

If the conflict is within one character, like the social worker example, then it becomes more important to bring some conclusion to the problem. The process comes down to examining the hierarchy of needs, and how each response will or won’t fulfill the person or community’s needs. With the social worker struggling with self-determination versus the family’s health, they would work through each choice both from the viewpoint of their client and that of the client’s family.

They would probably involve the client in this process, so it becomes part of their self-determined choice.

When ethical decisions are made in a vacuum, that is without involving the people the decisions affect, they are very likely to produce horrific results. This can be used to heighten the stakes for your characters and world, especially over a series.

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The Art of Writing Reviews

Why write a review?

The first answer is that authors love reviews, most of a little more than we should. Good or bad, they show that someone read our book and cared enough to write down their thoughts.

The second answer is that it will make you a better writer for your own books. Reviewing requires you think critically about what you read. More than whether or not you liked it, but why. Answering that why will help you spot issues in your stories. Also learning what makes you like or dislike a book will help you write a book you like.

So here’s an article I wrote for a review blog:

I’m Alex McGilvery and I used to be a book reviewer. Celticfrogreviews has reviews of hundreds of books of many genres. Sadly, I’ve had to give it up after three decades, mostly because the reading and writing cut into my own work as author and editor.

This is my process for writing a book review. There are probably as many ways to write reviews as there are reviewers. The blogs (aside from mine) I wrote for liked between 250 and 350 words, but you don’t have to worry too much about length as long as the information is there.

First and most importantly, be honest. If you don’t like a book, say that, but to be useful to the reader you need to say why you didn’t like it. Was it the characters? The plot? The way the book was written? You should answer the same questions if you do like the book.  This could be a one sentence starter to the review to grab the reader’s interest.

The actual review for me starts with a brief summary of the plot of the first part of the book. Spoilers are bad for the author and the reader. Unless Joe dies in the first quarter of the book, don’t talk about how Joe’s death ruined the book for you. If the book is part of a series and Joe was a major character in earlier books, you might want to think about mentioning it at all. The purpose of the summary is not to give detailed information about the book in any case. It does a couple of things. It lets the person reading your review know you read the book, and it shows your take on the early going of the plot. Some people just quote the back matter, but I like using my own words.

Once you’ve got that snippet of where the book is going, I suggest you talk about the writing. Were the characters strong and believable? Was the plot a tired old trope, or something more interesting? Did the author’s writing style/voice enhance or get in the way of the story? This is a paragraph, not a detailed analysis of the book. I give just enough to support the conclusion I made at the beginning of the review. If you want to gush a bit about the book, here’s the place.

Now, I close off the review with my recommendation. Who will like this book? Even if I didn’t enjoy it, is there a group which might? I didn’t give stars on my blog, but I did on Amazon. It’s important to pay attention to what the stars mean. 5 stars is an extraordinary book. One which stands well above the crowd. 4 stars is an excellent book. 3 is good, 2 is not so good, 1 is a disaster.

In my opinion there is too much fuss made about having high reviews, 4 or 5 stars. If the average number of stars given to books generally is higher than 4, the meaning and purpose of the stars is destroyed. As a statistics professor said to me once, you can’t have more than half the population being above average.  So when you give out the stars, refer back to the first bit of advice. Be honest.

One last point, giving an honest low star review is not a catastrophe for the author. All books have poor reviews, because not every book will appeal to every person. If I’ve done my work as an author properly, there will be people who don’t like my book. This is a good thing. Those low reviews give credibility to the high reviews.


There you have it. Feel free to find your own style and voice in reviews, but most importantly, have fun.

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Hello, may I present…

Introducing a character to the reader is a bit like introducing that special someone to your parents. The temptation is to tell everything you know about them so the reader will love them as much as you do. 

The problem is that page and the extolling of the character’s looks, virtue, smarts and tough background story has derailed your plot. At the end of it the reader knows lots about the character, but they’ve lost the connection between character and story.

Here’s an example from a book I have in progress:

Frederick groaned as the cobbles dug into his back and looked up into Katerin’s brown eyes. She was not the delicate beauty of the other nobles in Lexburgh, her gown didn’t have nearly as many frills. Perhaps it was due to her, like him, being a scholarship student at her Academy. Katerin had appeared every time Vassily tortured him. He couldn’t guess at her reasoning, she risked her reputation each time she healed him. Yet here she was, again, that crooked smile on her face, as if she herself didn’t quite know why she was bending over him.

What have we learned about the plot of the story? Frederick is lying on the street, we know why since that is the prequel to this introduction. At the end of the introduction we’ve learned nothing new about Frederick. Even Katrin is mostly a sketch. Is she kind? Does she like Frederick?  We don’t know, but expanding on the paragraph to tell the reader how kind she is, and how she doesn’t really like Frederick but is somehow fascinated by him won’t do much more than delay further any revelation of plot.

Here’s what I wrote:

“Why do you let him do that?” Katerin crouched beside Frederick and put her hand on his chest sending warmth through to his battered heart. It beat more regularly and he could breathe normally.

“Why do you keep showing up to help me?” Frederick took Katerin’s offered hand and she pulled him to his feet.

“Let’s say, I’m not a fan of the Harnchev family.” She frowned, her deep brown eyes clouded before she shook her head and let go of his hand. “You need to move if you’re going to keep to your schedule.”

“You know about my schedule?” Frederick’s heart banged in his chest for a different reason.

“How long have I been stopping to help you?” She patted the same cheek Vassily slapped and walked briskly away. Frederick had followed her one time to watch her enter the girl’s version of the Academy on the far side of the huge green space which formed the center of Lexburg. The punishment for missing the first class was severe – ten soft lashes and then he had to run laps of the campus until he collapsed.

Now what have we learned from this introduction? We don’t know she’s on scholarship, but do we need that knowledge yet? Not really. We also get the bit on how she dresses, that may or may not be important to the plot. I’m somewhat infamous with my editors for not describing characters. So maybe the dress could find its way into the revision, but probably not.

The reason for that is I want show her emotional conflict. Note she doesn’t directly answer his question, instead she responds that she doesn’t like Vassily’s family. What we do get is she’s a healer of some kind. Her touch helps his heart and breathing.

She is familiar with Frederick’s schedule even if she doesn’t want to explain why. Perhaps her reason is not one Frederick would like, thus her walking away instead of answering directly.

As a bonus we learn some things about Frederick too. He is attracted to Katerin at some level. He appreciates her help, even as he doesn’t understand it. Katerin fascinates him enough to make him late for school, once.

At the same time we learn the schools are separated by a large green space, and at Frederick’s punishment at least is harsh. 

It could be argued that the bit about him following her is exposition, and I’d agree, but it also fits as immediate reflection by Frederick. He tried to learn more and it resulted in a painful lesson. So I’ll probably keep it in revision, but edit it to reveal more setting without taking anymore space.

The trick is to weave information into the story, make it part of the story. Not only do we meet Katerin, but we find out there is some conflict about what she is doing. I try to use dialogue as part of most of my character introductions. Even in the snippet before this one, Vassily gets lines to say to show us his character. (He’s a jerk.)

Now when I want to show more about Katerin, maybe about her relationship with her Academy, or her classmates, I’ll put her into another scene with more action and dialogue. The reader sees her and a bit more is revealed, but only as it is needed.

The same process works for setting, not that the character talks to the setting, but they can talk about it, or interact with it. Those cobbles under Frederick tell us a lot about Lexburgh. (I have them in a slightly different place in the revision)

Interaction with the setting could include a character shivering in the wind, pulling their collar up to try to stay dry in the rain, him tripping on holes in the road. The smell of horse manure, or the scent of blossoms. The sight of the Academy, the sounds of other students chattering. 

Because these are part of the character’s experience, the reader experiences them too, and the story keeps moving forward.

Now, what happens if we need more information right from the start? We make the scene longer and weave it in. Action, thought, dialogue all can show us what characters are like. Past actions of the character may affect the present moment of the POV character. Perhaps a memory of a mentor brought out by the experience. 

We do need to be careful with the reflection by a character as it can turn into exposition disguised as thought. The litmus test to decide if we are writing reflection or exposition is the emotional weight. The memory means something, it changes the emotional state of the person remembering. 

That brings us to the crux of the matter. If anything we’ve write does not move the story forward, either revealing plot or characters interacting with the plot, we need to cut it or rewrite it. That means a lot more work from us as storytellers, but our reader will thank us.

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Testimonial from Rebekah Lee Jenkins

I hired Alex for my second book, Hope in Oakland, because his work is meticulous.

If you are looking for a fantastic content editor, you found him and you should hire him immediately.

I learned early that your book is not your baby, it is your business. That means you want to release the best manuscript you are capable of writing.  The content edit is like the foundation of a house, skimp on this step, the whole structure will collapse. You can paint it any pretty colour you want but people will notice if the roof caves in and they will step away. Once you lose that reader they are gone forever. Not just them but everyone they would recommend your work to. This step is not something you skimp on. I wouldn’t dream of publishing a book without him.

Read on if you would like to know what he did for my books and my career.

In my first book he pointed out that my opening line for the novel was buried in the middle of chapter five. Yes. Chapter Five. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had released that book without his hard work. I should also mention my first book already had a content edit before I sent it to him to sort out the whole sorry mess. He restructured it and pointed out missing key scenes. That book, The Night They Came For Til, launched me into a writing career I am thrilled with, stunned by and desperately trying to keep up with.

Because I believe in giving credit where credit is due, I never, ever do an author night/interview without pointing out that Alex McGilvery is my editor and how to hire him. Ever. Because I know, every review that says “I could not put this book down” is a review we should share. I would have lost those readers somewhere in chapter three with a long flashback that didn’t drive the plot forward if he hadn’t restructured the entire thing! I had a good story that would have bored my readers to tears without his hard work.  Alex will pace your novel to be something people can’t put down. Of all the gifts he brings to the table that is the most invaluable.

The second book we finished, Hope in Oakland, was no exception. I had about 40 pages of repetition that I didn’t notice until he pointed it out and I was again missing key scenes.

As I said in my previous testimonial, this edit process will be exactly like a very detailed, very personal writing course. I learned a lot with my first book and I learned a lot with this book too. I appreciate that he tells you what you are doing wrong and what you are doing right. This has created more confidence in me and makes me excited to tackle a new project.

I can tell you from experience. If you chose to work with Alex you will be well on your way to producing the best book you can write and launching a very successful writing career. Don’t delay.

Happy editing!

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Styles and Formatting

Book Template

The link above will download an updated .docx file with paragraph styles I use most often defined. I’ve set them now so the proper style follows automatically so you don’t need to remember to change them. The advantage is you don’t have to wade through the dozens on the list to get what you want. You don’t need to preserve the text. Simply type, select the style and away you go. The article tells you how to customize the styles to suit your book and mood. If you need a style which isn’t on there, say for sub-sections in a chapter, select the styles pane on the far right of the Home Ribbon, then scroll down to find a style you want. Chose modify style and select ‘add to style ribbon’ for ease of access while working.

I’ve also set the margins and headers for what I use for most books going to print, for smaller books you may want slightly smaller margins.

Creating Styles for a template:

Create a paragraph, format it in the way you want, font, size, indent, spacing. Highlight it. Right click on the Style you want to modify, the select “modify from selection”.  Everything in that style will change to reflect your highlighted paragraph.

From this menu, you can control all the formatting for the style. Here’s where you check that your Headings aren’t bulleted lists.

I create the styles and formats I want for the book first, then I write the book in that format, so I don’t have to go back and change it. From here, you can format for both print and e-book, depending on what you do.

You need at least two styles, one for the body of your writing, called ‘body’ ‘default’ or ‘normal’. I like using ‘body’ and rename the modified style to that name. Then I know it’s my format, not the computer’s. If you already have a ‘body’ in your menu, modify from the Selection.

Make sure you don’t have any stray lines on the page which will stay in a different style if you click on them. This is so you don’t find your font etc. changed and you need to go back and fix it.

The other style you must have is ‘Heading 1’ which you will use for chapter headings. In Kindle, the software looks for Heading 1 to create the Table of Contents (TOC) You can have more control creating your own TOC, but we’ll get there if we have time.

Using styles, you can change your entire document from double spaced to single spaced, change the font, font size, margins, indent from one menu.

If you’ve already got the book written. Make a copy of the file, open the copy.

Your writing is probably in ‘body’ ‘normal’ or ‘default’ Clicking on a paragraph will highlight which style you’re in up in that style menu. From there you can format a sample paragraph, and modify the style of everything in that style the same as if you created the styles first.

Beware! Some word processors will overwrite italics or bold with regular text when you change the font. Double check. This is why you work on a copy at all times.

There are some issues we need to look at with already written text.

First is tabs. Ebooks do not work with tabs, so you need to take them all out. First in your ‘View’ Menu click on ‘show non-printing characters’ or ‘show invisibles’ You’ll see your document full of blue arrows and dots etc. The tab is a straight blue arrow pointing right. Highlight it, control ‘c’ to copy, then open the search and replace menu.

That’s the one that says ‘replace’. Advanced find and replace will work, but the extra options can be confusing.  Paste (control ‘v’) the tab into the ‘find’ bar. Leave the ‘replace’ bar empty. Click on ‘Replace All’. This should delete all the tabs from your document. Now you use styles to set the indent.

If you are a double space after period typer. You can do the same thing with the spaces. Select two blue dots, copy and paste into ‘find’ then into ‘replace’ backspace over one dot to delete it. ‘Replace All’ and all your double spaces will be single spaces.

Ebooks don’t play well with too many hard returns in a row. Those are the right angle arrows pointing left. If you’ve double hard returned between paragraphs, you may want to use Search and Replace to fix it.

If you use ellipsis … You’ll want to select an ellipsis, then replace it with an ellipsis you type in the replace bar. This will make sure the software doesn’t split them between lines. Same with n-dashes and m-dashes. N-dash is one hyphen, m-dash is two. Word will ask you which you want when you type so it makes it easier.

Now you’ve done all the formatting scroll through the entire document quickly to look for odd looking paragraphs. Make sure they are given the proper ‘body style’. Put page breaks before each chapter heading if you haven’t already.

Now you’re ready to upload to kindle.

Each site has its own formatting requirements. It is a good idea to look at them.  You will be guided through each step, and will have a chance to check your book before you click the ‘publish’ button.