writing advice

  • Developmental Editing, Writing Advice

    A warning about would-be editors

    I decided to write up a quick post to warn about some problems I’ve seen recently regarding editors. X (formerly Twitter) recently had writers talking about their experiences with editors. Some writers obviously do have problematic experiences and are rightly wary about working with another editor. However, I wanted to flag up a few issues.

    • Editors who are offering to return a manuscript in an unreasonably short period of time may be using AI, while charging YOU for time they never spent on your manuscript. Furthermore, they should not be feeding your copyrighted material into an AI without your permission in the first place. Consequently if you see someone offering a one week turnaround for a developmental edit of a full-length novel, reject it. Developmental edits, done properly, take weeks.
    • Also beware of writers who fancy themselves as editors because they ‘edited’ their own work. It is very common for these people to have no editorial training and no feedback from professional editors on their editorial work. Some of these writers are simply looking for a side gig to help cover their own publication costs, or they’re unaware of the sheer amount of work involved. If you want another writer to edit your work, ask them about their training or membership of a professional association. Some writers have undertaken training.

    I will probably add to this post when I have more time, and I will list some of the training you, as a writer, should be looking for in an editor. I will also include professional associations which have codes of conduct, including the Editorial Freelancers Association and The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. I’m personally a member of the EFA, one of the organisations I trained with. The Chartered Institute is more focused on copyediting and proofreading.

    If someone is offering to edit your work, and they have no training, no membership of a professional organisation, and they are offering a fast turnaround of your manuscript, WRITER BEWARE.

  • Writing Advice

    How copywork can improve your writing

    How copywork can improve your writing

    As a fiction editor, I sometimes see manuscripts which have fairly basic problems like dialogue formatting and other issues which are relatively easy to fix. While you can buy a book on how to write and format dialogue, and how to use dialogue tags and action beats, the best way to learn is to copy. Because copywork can improve your writing in a short space of time.

    And by copy, I don’t mean plagiarism.

    I mean copywork, an old method of teaching writing skills, and one used by famous writers from Robert Louis Stevenson, Benjamin Franklin, Jack London, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson.

    In the case of Thompson, he copied out The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms not to steal, but to learn how they were written and structured. It’s a good example of learning from the greats. You don’t have to write like them when it comes to your own writing, but you might learn from their techniques and narrative choices.

    Using copywork to improve dialogue writing

    For those who struggle with writing and laying out dialogue, you don’t need to copy out a whole story or novel to learn. You can simply choose dialogue scenes from novels you like, then write them out. Try doing it longhand. It forces you to think more about each word you’re writing down.

    That way you learn where the speech tags go, how they are punctuated, and when you can drop them altogether. You learn how to use action beats. You also learn how to write dialogue that doesn’t run on forever.

    Studying scenes in published books can teach you how to keep dialogue on track and succinct. You don’t need to show an entire conversation, for example. You can cut into the middle of a conversation and then exit before the meeting is over.

    How copywork teaches other writing skills

    Copywork can also teach you about basic formatting and indented paragraphs, the use of line breaks, use of punctuation, pacing, and more. You can examine how much an author describes the world of their novel or short story early on – whether they take time to feed in details, and whether they leave most things to the reader’s imagination.

    If you write historical novels, you can look at the opening pages of well-regarded books in the genre, and copy them out to see how much detail, info dumping, and world building there is. You can see how the writer introduces the main character(s) to the readers – in terms of telling versus showing.

    If you’re struggling to write a battle scene, you could find battle scenes in published novels and copy them out to see how the author choreographed the action, dialogue, point of view, internal dialogue, etc, to create a powerful and pacy scene.

    Copywork can teach you how the greats tackled basic writing skills. While you can read ‘how to’ books (and the best will include examples), copywork using targeted passages to solve particular weaknesses in your writing can go a long way to improving your skills and techniques.

    Again, this is not about stealing other people’s work. It’s about learning from the greats – learning technique, layout, rhythm, and more.

    Copywork exercise

    You can give yourself a regular copywork exercise by choosing a short passage – could be dialogue, opening scenes in a novel, more dramatic scenes – and copying them out longhand to study, word for word, how these passages work. If you struggle with writing tension or conflict, you could choose several relevant passages from published novels and copy them out to see what the author is doing that you’re missing.

    Are they using shorter sentences to drive pacing?

    What else might they be doing?

    While you can simply read the relevant passages slowly, it won’t have the same impact as writing them out. Writing longhand takes more time and thought.

    Need feedback on your novel?

    I’m a developmental editor currently open to new clients. I work with adult fiction – SF/H/F, historical, literary, thriller, and romance. I’ve worked on both standalone novels and series. I particularly enjoy working with newer writers and my manuscript critique and developmental editing packages have tiered options for different budgets.

    I offer a free sample edit. Check out my services page at the link below:

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  • Books, Developmental Editing, Writing Advice

    Too much internal dialogue?

    Too much internal dialogue?
    Too much internal dialogue?

    One of the mainstream published novels I read recently had far too much internal dialogue. Internal dialogue is the stream of thoughts, which can be in monologue or dialogue, that many people have in real life. Though, interestingly, not everyone experiences internal dialogue.

    In fiction, showing a viewpoint character’s thoughts is an excellent way to strengthen characterisation. We can see the character’s changing emotions and thoughts, the questions they ask themself, their hopes and doubts.

    Internal dialogue shows us the interior life of a character, adding an extra dimension to a story.

    However, too much will interrupt scenes, cause lengthy breaks in external dialogue or action which can lead to readers struggling to pick up the story again. Too much will also slow down pacing.

    Imagine a scene where a conversation is taking place, and the conversation is constantly interrupted by an extended section of internal dialogue. The character might ruminate over what’s being said, and that’s fine and good, but if it goes on too long the external scene becomes fragmented and hard to follow.

    In the case of the gothic thriller I was reading, the internal dialogue also added far too much unnecessary word count.

    I think part of the issue was that the author was often using internal dialogue to emphasise the stakes, as if they didn’t trust readers to work it out for themselves. But it would run on too long and become counterproductive.

    Stakes should add to tension and pacing in more dramatic scenes, but stringing out the internal dialogue actually blows the pace. The author’s editor could have suggested cutting it back. I could see loads of places where cutting it back would boost not just pacing but the stakes by keeping things more focused.

    I’ve read two books by this author and felt both were failed by the lack of proper developmental editing. There were also other issues including weak characterisation in relation to other characters. It was hard sometimes to tell the other characters apart. Less bloated sections of internal dialogue could have made room for better characters.

    After I finished both novels, I checked the Amazon reviews and many other readers had the same issues.

    Do you want feedback on your novel?

    I’m currently open to new clients. And I’m adding a new version of my Opening Chapters Edit service. Previously this was always a developmental edit, featuring a report and comments in the margins of your manuscript. However, I’m also offering a manuscript critique version. This is basically just a report with no margin comments.

    If you’re interested in either of these services, or a full developmental edit or manuscript critique, you can check out my services page here.

    Or you can email me at karen@indiecateditorial.com to discuss your manuscript and what you’re looking for.

    Why choose an opening chapters edit?

  • Books, Developmental Editing, Writing

    Narrative devices in Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life

    Narrative devices in Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life.

    Narrative devices in Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life.

    Story of Your Life is a 1998 Nebula-winning science fiction novella, later adapted as the film Arrival. Written by Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life takes a less than exciting idea – variational principles in physics – and transforms it into a moving story about a linguist encountering aliens, intimately woven around her own relationship with her daughter.

    It also addresses linguistics and the question of what we would do if we could see the future.

    Would we still make the same choices?

    Would we still have free will?

    What does it mean to remember the future?

    Structurally, the story plays out as a loop, beginning and ending in the same place. The main plot is a chronological sequence interspersed with future events deliberately shown out of order.

    As a result, the story’s structure represents the language of the aliens, whose perception of time is different from humans.

    WARNING: While this post deals primarily with technique, narrative devices and how they’re used to explore the themes of the story, SPOILERS may be present. I have not described the plot in detail, but read on at your own risk!

    Author Ted Chiang

    Ted Chiang is not a prolific author. And in spite of the success of his science fiction stories, he has never had a novel published, and each story takes a long time to write.

    He’s not concerned with a large body of work. Rather, he dives deep into the subject matter of each story, researching, making notes, before he even begins to write.

    In the case of Story of Your Life, he spent five years immersing himself in the field of linguistics before starting the novella.

    Interestingly, Chiang told one interviewer that he doesn’t start writing a story until he knows how it ends. He writes the ending first.

    Once he knows the final destination of the narrative, he can then build the rest.

    The beginning of a story is usually the second thing he writes. In Story of Your Life this particularly makes sense because the ending and beginning are so intimately connected.

    Chiang also writes key scenes and then fills in other scenes after that. In filling in, he might go back as well as forward in the narrative. It’s not a chronological form of story telling.

    Again, this style is particularly evident in Story of Your Life.

    The novella likely benefits from this approach because it fits with one of the central ideas of the story. The heptapod written language involves the aliens knowing the whole structure of their complicated sentences in advance. This connects to their perception of time, which is not linear or sequential.

    Chiang adopted a similar technique for this and other stories. He has to know his destination before he starts writing.

    Story premise

    A linguist is recruited to help the military and scientists communicate with aliens whose ships have appeared above Earth. The aliens are called heptapods. Communication takes place through the use of ‘looking glasses’ which allow the linguists and scientists to see the aliens.

    The narrator Louise is matched to work with a physicist, Gary. Because for humans to hopefully learn about alien technology and their understanding of physics, they first of all have to establish communication.

    Weaving through the story of learning the heptapod language are ideas about linguistics and how language affects human cognition.

    Additionally, it becomes apparent that the heptapods don’t have a linear understanding of time. Through learning the heptapod language, the main character starts to see the future, including the daughter who is not yet born. This raises questions about free will.

    The Heptapods

    The aliens in the novel are barrel-like with seven lidless eyes circling the body. They don’t need to turn round because with eyes on all sides, they have no front or back in the human sense.

    They have two languages – spoken and written. Initially, Louise tries to deal with their spoken language (Heptapod A). But progress is difficult.

    Realising they likely also have a written language (Heptapod B), she finds more success here, though it will take time to learn even the basics.

    The novella raises the issue of how to communicate in a completely new language, with no common foundations.

    But Heptapod B is also very different from human languages in the way it uses case markers and rotation to denote meaning.

    As time goes on, Louise learns more of the written language, which begins to impact the way she sees the world. Specifically, the way she sees time.

    And it becomes obvious that the heptapods themselves likely see time in a very different way from humans. As less sequential.

    The story explores the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that a person’s thinking and perception are affected by the grammatical and verbal structure of their language.

    An obvious example would be the many Inuit words for different types of snow. Most people in other climates have a more simplified perception of snow, and an easier way to describe it. Either because they don’t encounter snow as often, or their survival doesn’t depend on being able to identify the different types.

    In the story, by learning a non-sequential language, where the end point is already known, Louise starts to see her own life non-sequentially. Hence, she knows her daughter’s life from beginning to end, before she’s even born.

    But because her daughter will die tragically young, this raises the question of whether Louise could or would change the future.

    Does free will exist? Even though she knows the outcome, she is still compelled to move towards it.

    The use of tense and point of view

    The story is told in first-person voice, from the perspective of the central character, Louise. She starts from the point just before her daughter is conceived.

    The novel also ends at this point, circling back to the beginning.

    This present appears in present tense. From there her narrative looks back (past tense) to the arrival of both the aliens and those who recruit her to her new role communicating with the alien heptapods.

    But she also remembers the future with her daughter who won’t even be born until after the aliens depart. When Louise remembers the future, she does so in future tense:

    I remember one day during the summer when you’re sixteen...

    Note how she’s also addressing her daughter. The passages remembering the future appear in second person/future tense.

    It’s soon revealed however that she never gets the opportunity to tell her daughter the story of her life. Louise knows in advance that the right moment will never come.

    We learn near the beginning of the story that her daughter dies in an accident.

    Structure

    The first thing to note about the novella’s structure is that the sections set around the heptapods and the language acquisition issues are told in chronological order, in contrast to the future memories which are jumbled up.

    The main plot relating to communicating with the heptapods is somewhat heavy in ideas and theory.

    It’s not always the case, but some of these scenes are drier than those looking to the future.

    Scenes with the unnamed daughter bring light, emotion, and more humanity to the story.

    Chiang has balanced these elements well, leading to a solid structure and pace.

    The flash forward scenes weave in and out of the main narrative and while Louise tells us at the outset how this story ends, what packs the emotional punch at the end is seeing an entire life in fragments.

    It’s already clear that this story begins and ends in the same place.

    So what about the rest of the structure? If we were to adopt the structural breakdown that KM Weiland talks about in her book Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story, the structural points might be broken down as below.

    The resolution of the novel circles back to the opening hook. We learn on the second page of the story that spaceships have arrived. That’s definitely part of the opening hook. On the second last page of the story those ships depart and the final scene returns to the present, just before the daughter’s conception. Exactly where the story started.

    If we look to the inciting event being about 12.5% into the narrative, that would fit with Louise’s first sighting of the heptapods through the ‘looking glass’ devices. She has already been recruited to communicate with them near the beginning/opening hook. This is also where she starts working with Gary, and their working relationship will heavily impact her future.

    The first plot point (25%) introduces the logograms and the beginning of the writing system that will change the perception of any human who learns it.

    The first pinch point (37.5) reveals the nature of Heptapod B, a language with a grammar in two dimensions. A full fledged graphical language. Louise has made a breakthrough with the written language.

    Meanwhile the midpoint introduces Fermat’s Principle of Least Time where a ray of light takes the fastest route through water. After trying and failing to engage with the heptapods on physics, this is the first breakthrough. This is a variational principle. Gary is the one who explains it.

    The next structural point has the two of them discuss this principle and how it means the light ray has to know ahead of time where it will end up before it can choose the direction it will take.

    This strikes a chord with Louise who has already seen the heptapods write in real time. They too need to know in advance the direction the strokes in their complex logograms will take.

    Around the second plot point or 75% mark there is a question of whether it’s possible to know the future.

    The existence of free will seems to suggest otherwise.

    Yet Louise sees an object in front of her that will cause her daughter a minor injury in the future. Louise still feels compelled to reach for it and buy it. It feels right and instinctual.

    The 88% mark introduces subject of gift giving between humans and heptapods. By this time, thanks to learning a non-sequential language, Louise knows what will happen, just like the heptapods. She is merely playing her part and saying her lines as the story moves towards its conclusion.

    The military and government have their hopes that some new technology will be handed over. For them this would be their ultimate goal, the climax of the interaction which runs up to the resolution.

    For Louise, the gift is the knowledge of the future, not to mention her daughter who is an indirect consequence of the alien visitation. She will also start a relationship during this period.

    And so the story moves to its conclusion, circling back to the beginning.

    If this all sounds very dry, it’s because I’ve left out the more personal subplots that also tie in. In case you want to read the story yourself. Plus the thematic elements and linguistic breakthroughs are what actually happens at these percentage points.

    While you don’t have to hit these points, they are useful in analysing a story’s structure. Most of all, they are a good reminder that something needs to happen/change every so often.

    You cannot have long scenes and chapters where nothing happens.

    And when things do happen, they should be building on one another, as they do in Story of Your Life.

    Chiang’s structure and language/physics plot develops nicely to its conclusion, weaving together with the more emotional and personal story of Louise and her future daughter.

    Finally it all comes together in the resolution.

    The question of free will

    Since I didn’t write this post as a general review of the novella, I don’t want to get too much into themes. However, I did want to address the issue of whether free will is possible when you know the future already.

    One reason for addressing this is the very structure and narrative choices the author has made illustrates why Louise does not attempt to change the future, even though she knows the outcome.

    Normally, the idea of knowing the future so you can change it deals with something simple – you have an intuition/dream not to get on a plane because it will crash. If you believe this intuition, your choice doesn’t just extend to whether you save your own life, but whether you try to stop the plane from taking off.

    The problem is you don’t have the whole story of why the plane is in danger. You have an end prediction, with little to no context.

    In the case of Story of Your Life, sometime after she begins learning Heptapod B, Louise starts to see flashes of the future with her daughter. Even before her daughter is conceived, she has seen the whole of her daughter’s life.

    She has also felt the love and maternal bond she will have for this daughter, and she can see that in spite of knowing how her daughter’s life ends, it’s all still worth it.

    She is compelled to live out her fate. Just like the heptapods who enthusiastically interact with the linguists even though the aliens know everything the humans will say and do in advance. Knowing the future doesn’t seem to dampen the heptapod’s interest. In fact, going through with the action formalises it. Which relates to something else that comes up in the story – speech-act theory.

    Ted Chiang’s use of future tense scenes, interwoven with the main plot, makes Louise’s future with her daughter the most vibrant part of the novella.

    It also perfectly illustrates why Louise, having considered the question of free will when you know the future, still carries on the path that will lead to her losing her child.

    Because, as the novella shows clearly, Louise already knows and loves the child before she’s even conceived.

    No wonder she feels compelled to act out this future, with all the joys and sorrows she knows lie ahead.

    Like Fermat’s Principle of Least Time and the beam of light passing through water, Louise already knows her destination.

    What lessons can we learn from this novella?

    While point of view and tense are things all fiction writers deal with, they are usually not used to reinforce a theme or display an idea – certainly not the way Chiang used both in Story of Your Life.

    It’s certainly true that both can be approached in a more utilitarian way.

    In which case your safest bet would be third-person POV/past tense. This is a largely invisible combination that does not draw attention to itself and which is less likely to annoy readers.

    Alternatively, you can use first-person POV and past tense – another safe combination.

    You can certainly change tenses and points of view within a narrative, but there needs to be a good narrative reason.

    In Story of Your Life there are very good reasons.

    Likewise, Chiang’s particular method of putting together a story – starting with the end, then the beginning, then filling in the rest, will work for some people, but not everyone!

    In conclusion, it’s always worth looking at how a classic story has been constructed and why the author has chosen certain narrative devices. Especially an award-winning adapted novella that still impresses after a quarter of a century.

    Other related blog posts

    How editorial feedback changed Interview With the Vampire.

    How editorial feedback improved The Great Gatsby.

    When publishers drop the ball.

    Looking for feedback on your own story?

    Whether you’re writing a shorter narrative or a full novel, an objective eye and developmental feedback can give you useful insights into how to polish your final draft(s).

    I offer different options – report only, or report plus margin comments. You can check my services page below to see what’s available or let me know if you have custom requirements.

    Click here for my services page.