I saw your post regarding the em dash and spaces – have you done one on the ellipses? I often use them in place of an em dash to show an interruption in both dialog and narrative.
Thanks!
Hi!
Sorry it took me a while to answer this, it’s hard to find the time to write long posts. But no, we haven’t done a long post on ellipse usage similar to this post we did about em dashes and spaces. Similar to em dashes, using spaces with ellipses is a bit fuzzy. It can be hard to get solid guidance from CMoS on ellipses, too, because CMoS doesn’t really have any examples that link to how we use them in fiction. Their examples focus on their use in academia. Even their definition of what an ellipse IS ( “An ellipsis is a series of three dots used to signal the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage.”) doesn’t even acknowledge the way they are generally used in fiction to denote a trail-off or hesitation. There’s a single, brief section on ellipses in fiction and the hesitation/trailing off usage, but this section mostly just acknowledges this usage exists and doesn’t give much guidance.
The CMoS doesn’t use spaces around ellipses, but they do use some punctuation around it. For example, “What about…,” said James. would be grammatically correct according to CMoS. However, ellipse rules are an area where the DPP style guide (available here! though it actually doesn’t include most of the below detail on ellipses, oops…) deviates from the CMoS. Because there’s so little guidance, and what there is seems more like an after-thought, we made some of our own decisions about ellipse usage, as like. we’re fic writers. we fuckin’ love ellipses.
Our punctuation rules for ellipses:
In general, we opt for an ellipse if a section of text is left intentionally incomplete, specifically in a “trailing off,” “leaving the rest of what would be written implied,” “hesitation,” or other related usages. If the cut off is abrupt due to an interruption or some other “instant” reason the sentence ends, use an em dash instead.
If an ellipse is at the end of a sentence that would otherwise end in a period, we omit the period, because we feel this best indicates that the thought is left incomplete intentionally. Example: As for James, well…
If an ellipse is at the end of a sentence that would otherwise end in an exclamation point or question mark, we include the exclamation point or question mark, because we feel this best indicates the intended tone with which a reader should interpret the trailed-off thought. These should be omitted if the sentence looks like a question/exclamation but is not intended to be read with that inflection. Example: But what about…? Why would you…
If an ellipse is at the beginning of a sentence, we do not capitalize the first letter of the text that follows, because we feel this best indicates that some unwritten thought preceded it and what follows shouldn’t be interpreted as an entire sentence. In this instance, we do not use any spaces before or after the ellipse unless other grammar would require it. Example 1: …never mind, don’t worry about it. Example 2: That’s right. …but maybe we should worry about it a little.
If an ellipse is in the middle of a sentence, and the thought before the ellipse and the thought after the ellipse are directly connected, we do a lower case (not a capital) as the first letter of the second half, with a hair space between the ellipse and the second half of the sentence (this becomes a full space in epubs due to formatting concerns), because we feel this best indicates that the two thoughts are connected. Example: But you said…I mean…you told me it’d be different this time.
If an ellipse is in the middle of a sentence, and the thought before the ellipse and the thought after the ellipse are not connected, in the sense that there’s a full break in topic/thought denoted by the ellipse, then we use a full space, and the second half starts with a capital letter to denote that a new sentence has begun, because we feel this best indicates that a break has occurred. Example: I suppose I did… Anyway, we were talking about ellipses, not James, right?
(Regarding the previous two, obviously what counts as a new thought is subjective, there’s no hard-and-fast rule, so there’s wiggle on whether to capitalize or not.)
In dialogue cases, the above rules hold true, and also trump the “always use a comma with dialogue tags” rule, because honestly an … followed by a , just looks funny and isn’t any more or less clear than if the comma isn’t there. Example: “But I want to talk about James…” I trailed off. “…but you don’t, so I’ll leave it alone.”
Also in dialogue, if what follows the dialogue is a dialogue tag, we use lower case for the first letter outside the dialogue (Example: “Perhaps, since you’re so determined to talk about it…” they answered.). If what follows the dialogue is a separate action, we use upper case for the first letter outside the dialogue (Example: “Must you be so…” Frustrated, I scowled.) This matches our usual rules for capitalization after quotation marks.
If we did end up with a “scholarly” usage, for example in a found documents story where “outside materials” (still fictional, of course) were cited, I expect we’d follow the CMoS rules more closely, because they make more sense when an ellipse is being used in the way that CMoS clearly most expects an ellipse to be used – when citing a source that, for example, ends in a superfluous word as it’s being quoted. In cases like that, following the ellipse with a period is reasonable because in the source material, the sentence DID end, it didn’t just trail off into nothing. Like, if the original to-be-quoted line is “This is a sentence within a sentence.” and I cite it as “This is a sentence….” the fourth dot makes it clearer that material has been omitted. Probably to avoid any confusion with our other usages, I’d do something additional, like maybe use brackets. “This is a sentence […].” to indicate we’re using the ellipse in the “omitted text” way and not in the “trailing off/hesitating” way. It hasn’t come up yet, though, so I can’t say for sure.
I think those are the basics of how we’ve decided to handle these cases? Sorry if I’ve omitted an obvious one, I’m running through actual ellipses in our latest manuscript to try to jog my memory lmao.
Anyway, much as with em dashes, CMoS leaves enough unspecified that there’s room for an individual publishers and authors to make their own choices regarding ellipses and surrounded spaces and punctuation, and as long as whatever they choose is consistently applied, it’s all about equally acceptable. The above aren’t hard and fast rules, they’re just the decisions we’ve made with the situations we encounter most often.
…hokay, that’s everything I can think of right now. I hope this helps!
Did y’all know you can send us writing-related asks? We might be slow to reply, but we’ll get to ‘um eventually, so feel free to send ‘um our way!
Part 2 of a 2-part series of guest posts by Alec J. Marsh.Part 1, “Why Query Letters are Good, Actually,”came out last week; you can read it here!
Alec is also the author of Duck Prints Press’s forthcoming novella To Drive the Hundred Miles, about a young man coming home for the holidays and finding more than he expected. It’s coming out December 21st, 2022. They know what they’re talking about, as an author and about a writer-writing-about-writing, so read on and learn!
Now that you’ve read the first post in this series, and had a week to reflect on it… are you convinced yet? Are you ready to acquire the most important marketing skill of your career? Great!
If you’re primarily interested in how to pitch to Duck Prints Press specifically, there will be a full post about that coming out in the near future. But I promise, these skills will help you whatever your writing aspirations are.
1. The Really Boring Part
Most queries open with a paragraph called “metadata.” This is all the marketing stuff that you need to get out of the way so your agent/editor knows what kind of book it is. This includes
Title: Self-explanatory
Length: This is vitally important for traditional publishing. If you are a debut author and your story isn’t within the accepted range, you’ll get automatically rejected by most agents. There are very good industry reasons for that, but discussing that’s a different article. If you want to look at the averages, check out this link.
Genre and age range: This is practical for marketing and readership purposes, and it also puts the summary in context.
Comparative (or Comp) Titles: This is a tricky one, and a full discussion on selecting appropriate comparative titles could easily be its own separate blog post, but the short version is that you should pick titles that your book can be compared to. That can be descriptive—”Supernatural but set in Eastern Europe”—or genre—”For fans of Tamora Pierce”—or even trope based—”Sunshine/Grumpy romance set in a world of danger and magic.” There are a ton of options, but the main point is to position your story in the market and make it easy to pick up quickly.
Logline: This serves a similar purpose as the comp titles do and is meant to sum up one cool part of your story. It doesn’t have to sum up the entire story. For example, Gideon the Ninth sounds wild if you try to summarize the plot, but I’ve been able to convince all my friends to read it by saying simply, “it’s about lesbian necromancers in space.” That’s all you need! In casual conversation, this is often called your “elevator pitch.” Imagine you’re at a convention and you get into the elevator with your dream agent, and you have only the length of the elevator ride to sell them your novel. What do you say? That’s your logline.
***Both comp titles and logline are technically optional, and you don’t need both of them. It’s better to write something unique than to waste the space putting something in just because you think you need it.
2. The Biography
This usually goes at the end of the query. Don’t overthink it. If you have any credentials, put those in; relevant credentials can include past publications, editing jobs, or a creative writing degree. Then write one to two sentences that make you sound interesting. For example, I say that I like long walks in the fog (because I write moody fantasy) and have a history degree (because it inspires my fantasy world building).
3. The Body
I left this until the last because it’s the hardest and most important part. A killer summary will make up for dull metadata and a lackluster bio. But if the body of your query letter is weak, no MFA in the world will save you. This section should be 300 words maximum.
Your simplest formula for including what needs to be in this paragraph is four sentences: LEAD, OBJECTIVE, CONFLICT, TWIST. It’s simpler than you think to write the first draft. I promise. Let it be terrible, get it down, then edit it to a fine shine (much like you’ve already done with that novel!).
Lead: This is your main character. Name them and describe them by including their profession, skills, or other plot-relevant details.
Objective: What does your main character want? Try to make this as specific as possible. “Longs for acceptance” is vague and generic. “Wants to be accepted into the Book Guild” is specific and gives a reader clues about their personality and the setting. You can put in some information about motivation here too. Maybe her father was also a bookbinder and she needs to redeem the family name.
Conflict: Now we’re getting to the meat of it! Why can’t your main character get what they want? Again, try to be specific and don’t leave it to platitudes. If the bookbinders just don’t like her, that’s generic. If they don’t like her because they think she’s as corrupt as her father was and will bring ruin to them, that’s something a reader can really dig into. We have themes implied now! We understand this is a story about family ties, redemption, and preconceived notions, and you didn’t even need to spell that out.
Twist: This is the most nebulous part of the query. The twist can be a real plot twist, like her discovering that the bookbinding guild also sells occult books. It can be a cool thing about the setting, like the bookstore being on an airship. It can be the romantic subplot, if she falls in love with her rival apprentice. It can be the historical inspiration, if the book is set in a fantasy world reminiscent of Renaissance Italy. In short, what makes your book special? What’s going to prompt people to shove it in their friend’s faces? It’s similar to the logline in that way.
You can also put the twist at the beginning of the body paragraph, if it’s really cool. You can weave it throughout. You can put it at the end in a mic drop moment. Just make your book sound cool. That’s literally all this is!
And those three sections…are basically it! Doesn’t sound so scary now, right? Oh wait, it still does? Okay, then, here’s some more tips to help you!
Write down everything you need in a query in whatever order works for you. I do it like a sad, clunky mad libs just so it’s all on the page. It’s a lot of pressure to include all this important information AND make it pretty in one go.
Ask your beta readers to help! It’s hard to summarize your own stories when you’ve been living inside them for months. I’ve helped so many friends with their queries because they wrote something perfectly serviceable and technically correct that somehow still made their story sound frightfully boring. (This is not a condemnation of their skill as writers. The skills needed to write queries are completely different.)
Don’t use rhetorical questions. This is mostly personal taste, but I think they’re a waste of space. “Will she follow her heart?” is sort of useless when 99% of stories are about people following their heart. “She must choose between her ambition and the chance at true love” is so much more clear and includes more conflict.
The body of your query letter actually only needs to include the first 30-50% of the story in most cases—enough to leave the reader/agent/editor eager to know what happens next, and no more. This isn’t true if the twist is necessary to understanding why the story is exciting. Can you imagine trying to sell Gone Girl without including the twist that it was all a set up? That twist took the story from generic true crime to something truly original. So to some extent, you’ll need to use your judgment, but there’s rarely any need to try to fit the whole plot into that 300-word paragraph.
Above all, be specific.
Do not shy away from giving spoilers (again: BE SPECIFIC). “She finds information that may change everything,” are seven words that tell you nothing. If you say what the information is (“she finds a note from her father that makes it clear he was framed”), you’ll leave the reader desperate to know what the outcome will be, begging for the rest of the story.
Get the query competent and coherent, and then leave it for at least a week. This is good editing advice for any story, but it’s absolutely vital for a query. Because they’re so short and so much rides on them, every single word you write in the query has to be useful, and every sentence has to be clear, concise, and intriguing. Don’t rush this; it’s better to go slow and get it right then hurry along and face a pile of rejections.
Have a query beta reader who hasn’t read your story. Make sure it makes sense with no context. Revise it again. Leave it for another week. (I’m sorry. But I’m not really.)
I know this sounds like a lot. Query letters are hard, and the pressure makes it harder. Writing culture loves to hate on them, for good reason. But you learned to write a novel, something that takes years to master! You can learn to write a query letter too. I won’t pretend it’s easy, but it is a skill you can learn, and it’s worth it! With a single page, you can convince people to buy your book, and that’s magical!
You can learn more about Alec here; you can learn more about To Drive the Hundred Miles here, and read a teaser here. And, you can check out Alec’s two already-published erotica works Heart’s Scaffoldingand Study Hall.
Who we are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to help fanfiction authors navigate the complex process of bringing their original works from first draft to print, culminating in publishing their work under our imprint. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
Want to support the Press and get lots of our stories? Consider backing our Patreon or ko-fi monthly at a level that includes free stories, and read your fill!
Part One of a Two-part series of guest posts by Alec J. Marsh.
Hello, it’s me, Alec. I’m a new editor to Duck Prints Press and the resident corporate shill sellout. I love Duck Prints Press and their ethics (and will write an opinion piece soon on why they rock and you should submit to them). I also…. love traditional publishing.
I’m sorry! I know this makes me a trend-following sheep. I know it’s a hot take in the indie pub crowd. Traditional publishing absolutely has its flaws, and I could go on at length about them. I’m still aiming to get my novels traditionally published. I want to be able to find my book at a Barnes & Noble and be nominated for a Hugo. Sorry not sorry.
One of the worst parts of traditional publishing is the arcane hoops you have to jump through to participate. As anyone who has poked querying with a long, tentative stick knows, there are many requirements, and every agent’s website uses slightly different phrasing, and it’s a nightmare to navigate. It’s an extra nightmare if you’re neurodivergent and desperately seeking a clear, simple list of expectations. Unfortunately, the basic requirements are there for a reason. A GOOD reason. Learning the skills required to put together a good query package will serve you well, whether you want a ten-book deal with Tor, to sell hand-stapled zines at the local convention, or anything in between.
So let’s get into it!
The first thing you need in any submission process is a query letter. What is a query letter? In short, it’s a 3-5 paragraph essay about your book, yourself, and why a publisher should buy your work (and therefore why an agent should agree to represent you). You need to tell the agent the genre, the plot, and why this book is special. They are excruciating to write, because yes, you need to condense your book down to 300 words, maximum, and sell it at the same time.
But imagine, for a moment, that you’ve walked into Ye Olde Barnes & Noble. There, on the end cap, is a cool new fantasy book you’ve never heard of. The cover has a sword and a snake on it, and you like swords and snakes. But how is it different from the 20 other books with names like A Court of Swords and Snakes that have come out in the last five years? The first thing you do is pick the book up, turn to the back cover, and read.
You know what’s on the back cover?
Paragraph one: In a stunning tour de force, ACOSAS takes you through the glittering world of naga politics… (A teaser sentence)
Paragraph two: Princess Arya has always wanted to be a dancer. But when the evil northerners attack her kingdom… (A paragraph about the main character and the central conflict of the book)
Paragraph three: Alec J Marsh lives in the Pacific Northwest and has never seen a snake in the wild. (A biography of the author)
Guess what you just read? A query letter. In many cases, what’s in the blurb is actually pretty close to the exact query letter the author originally sent to their agent. Yes, really. Sometimes a query letter makes it from agent to editor to publicist to final copy.
They’re that important.
But Alec, I hear you say, I’m not planning to get trad published! Why do I need to do this? Well, indie and self-published people—you will need to write cover copy for your book. And you’ll almost certainly need to write it yourself. The good and the bad part of self-publishing is that you do everything yourself. Less meddling (good!), but less help (bad!). And here’s the hard truth: absolutely no one will spend a single one of their hard-earned dollars on “sex babes get pounded by space aliens” if the back cover says “lol I suck at summaries, I promise it’s good :)” It’s useless, and it’s disrespectful to the buyer’s time and money.
And that is why query letters are good, actually, for all writers, and are worth practicing how to create!
So go out there and sell your books, and you’ll accidentally write your query along the way.
In Installment Two…now that I’ve convinced you that you should write a query letter, I’ll go over how to actually, you know, do that. Coming soon!
A bit over a year ago, we posted our first Commonly Confused Words: Saucy Edition. Since then, we’ve spotted more very confused word usage, and we had some folks tell us some confusions they’d encountered, and now we’ve compiled those into Commonly Confused Saucy words TWO: Electric Boogaloo.
Often, which of these words an author uses marks the difference between a story being very sexy, and a story being very strange, so to all writers out there – it’s worth learning the differences, asking for help, or Googling if you’re not sure! *
fellate vs. filet vs. fillet vs. flay
fellate (verb): to perform fellatio on a person (as in: to perform oral stimulation on a person’s penis). For example: “Parting her lips, she eagerly fellated her boyfriend.”
vs.
filet (noun): a piece of lace, usually with a geometric design; OR, a French word for a cut of meat. For example: “My hobby is filet crochet.” For example: “I’d like to order the filet mignon, please.”
vs.
fillet (noun): the English spelling of the French word “filet,” referring to a cut of meat. For example: “The advert from the grocery store said fillet of fish is on sale.”
vs.
flay (verb): to remove the skin from a creature. For example: “The person screamed as the tortured flayed their skin from their body.” *
taut vs. taught
taut (adjective): pulled tight; alternatively, ship-shape. For example: “He pulled the rope taut and the sails unfurled.”
vs.
taught (verb): something an instructor presented to a learner in the past. For example: “She taught him how to pull the rope taut and unfurl the sales.” *
baited vs. bated vs. batted
baited (verb): many meanings, such as: to persecute or exasperate (”He baited them into attack by mocking them.”), to harass or attack by biting and tearing (”The dog baited the cat.”), to place bait (”The fisherman baited his hook.”), to entice or lure (”Good deals baited hopeful house hunters.”
vs.
bated (verb): to reduce the force or intensity of something; to take something away. For example: “She waited with bated breath.”
vs.
batted (verb): the act of using a bat against someone or something. For example: “The shortstop batted third in the line-up.” *
pore vs. poor vs. pour
pore (verb): to study or gaze at something intensely. For example: “He pored over the document.”
vs.
pore (noun): a small opening in the outer covering of an animal or plant. For example: “The close-up was so intense that you could see every pore on their nose.”
vs.
poor (adjective): to lack material resources. For example: “I can’t afford lunch because I’m too poor.”
vs.
pour (verb): to cause a liquid to flow in a stream, possibly from a container (”The juice pours from the pitcher.”), or can be used figuratively, for example “She poured out her feelings in a rush” or “The tycoon pours money into their investment.”) *
wither vs. writh vs. writhe
wither (verb): to lose vitality or freshness. For example: “After the flowers were cut, they withered quickly.”
vs.
writh (???): writh is not a word.
vs.
writhe (verb): to twist into folds, to twist until something distorts, to twist (a part of the body) as though in pain, to suffer keenly. For example: “He tickled my foot, and I writhed in discomfort.”
Do you love the nuts and bolts of writing? Have you always been confused by the difference between a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash? Do you want an easy-to-use, free resource to help you improve your technical skills related to spelling and grammar?
We are here to help!
After months of work, we’ve polished the Duck Prints Press style guide until it shone and shared it publicly on our website!
This valuable resource includes a ton of information, and we’re expanding it regularly. While it’s especially relevant to people working with us (especially our growing editor staff!), it can also be of general use to the authorly public. That said, though, always make sure that when you submit to a publisher you focus on their style guide, because no two publishers are going to resolve these issues in exactly the same way. And when we say “issues,” we mean “all those areas where the major style guides (we use the Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition) don’t offer unambiguous answers,” such as:
* Oxford commas (we use them) * How to handle capitalization around certain punctuation choices, especially in dialogue (…it depends on the circumstance) * Which interrobang to use (?! or !?) * When to spell out numbers versus when to use numerals (…it’s complicated) * Incorporating words that use accents and/or special characters (we always use special characters unless the author suggests we not) * Spacing around ellipses and em dashes (…again, it’s complicated)
…and many other incredibly tiny, fiddly editor things that 9 out of 10 readers won’t notice but that that tenth reader has very strong opinions about.
Ultimately, putting a clean, professional-looking manuscript out to the reading public requires that an editorial staff make decisions on all these kinds of issues and many others. It doesn’t so much matter which direction the staff goes (there’s not a huge difference between putting regular spaces versus thin spaces versus hair spaces around em dashes); what matters is that whatever choices are made, they’re implemented consistently. To ensure that consistency, we’ve written and now use this internal, Press-specific style guide.
And now, if you want, you can use that style guide too!
Happy writing, and feel free to let us know if you’ve got questions we haven’t addressed in the guide. Fiddly editory spelling and grammar is our jam!
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you already have a lot of the skills you need to be an editor. Even among full-time professionals, a lot of editing skill comes from reading a ton—you get an “eye” for when a sentence just doesn’t look right. The more you read professionally edited work, the better you get at it. (Fanfiction is incredible, obviously. But fanfiction has its own quirks, and the grammar and punctuation can vary, so I’m not confident recommending it as a way to brush up your instinctive grasp of when a sentence “looks right.”)
The specifics of what you do as an editor can vary a lot depending on what you’re editing and who you’re editing for, so in this post, I’ll be covering some of the basic principles that I think will be helpful no matter what type of editing you do. Broadly, I’ll be going over language-related tips and profession-related tips.
Language
I won’t be going over the nuts and bolts of grammar here, as a zillion good guides to it already exist online. Grammar Girl is my go-to free resource, and a lot of grammar and punctuation questions can be easily answered online or in a style guide from your library. I looked up the rules for commas a LOT in my first years of editing, and I still have to double-check them sometimes. A lot of the fiddly details differ between guides (how to write a.m. and p.m.; serial comma), but the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation stay the same across guides.
Professionally, those fiddly details are a big chunk of editing. Do you write out numbers less than 20? Less than 10? Do you capitalize titles like “President” all the time or only in certain situations? There’s no one right answer, which is one of the many reasons there’s no “right guide” to editing. A style guide will decide many of these questions for you. If you pick up editing as a profession, your employer will most likely have a style guide in mind. You may want to pick one for yourself if you do freelance editing. That way, you won’t have to re-decide on every job, and if you get repeat clients, you’ll be sure their text is consistent across all their documents. A “series bible” for fiction works on similar principles.
Whether you’re looking at those fiddly details or at the big picture, one principle of editing is to never take anything for granted. Someone says there’s five ancient orbs needed to defeat the dragon? You’d better count the orbs. Make sure every proper noun in the story (names of people, places, things) is spelled the same every single time. This is the kind of thing you’ll get quizzed on if you ever apply for a professional editing gig. Every editing job I’ve ever applied to has an “editing test” of at least a page, and it usually has at least one of those errors (if not both).
Another major thing to watch out for is colloquialisms, especially ones that mean multiple things. A short list of common errors I see:
“Since” should only relate to the passage of time; it does not mean “because.”
“While,” again, should only refer to time—two things happening simultaneously. “But,” “although,” “whereas,” and others are good substitutes for the other sense.
“Due to” does not mean “because of,” it means “caused by” (and I’ve seen some editors argue to not even use it for “caused by” and to only use it for when something is owed to someone).
“If” will often need to be replaced with “whether.”
Obviously with dialogue, that’s a whole nother story, but be careful about these in narration, even with a colloquial narrative. They can introduce unintentional double meanings.
When you’re moving from basic accuracy to style, you’ll often need to “tighten up” the language. This might be something you’re used to doing in your own writing. This doesn’t mean all prose should be sparse! But as an editor, part of your job is making sure that every word is contributing something, no matter whether the sentence is flowery or stark. One exercise is to go through and see if you can cut one word from every sentence. Depending on what type of editing you do, you’ll have different “filler words” to look out for. My personal demon is “just,” so I always do a search for that when I’m revising my own work. In my day job, the word “provide” often signals a clunky phrase that could be condensed into a single, better verb (e.g., “provides assistance” vs. “helps”).
You’ll look for a lot as you edit, so don’t feel like you have to do it all at once. A simple search can make sure you’ve caught issues like “while” and “since.” Other issues are best solved in their own read-through. For me, I try to do a read-through specifically for passive voice. I often skip over passive voice on my all-purpose read because, well, the sentence makes sense, doesn’t it? So my eye simply doesn’t catch it if I’m not on the lookout. As you edit, you’ll figure out what process works best for you.
And to wrap up the language section—checklists are your friend! I used to have a post-it of all the things I knew I struggled with, and I’d systematically search the document for those trip-ups after I did my first read. You can customize your own checklist with whatever snags give you trouble.
Professionalism
A huge part of editing as a professional is in how you interact with other people. Your whole job is telling people they’re wrong, after all, and you often have no control over whether they’ll listen to you. Everything you can do to make the criticism easier for them helps!
My favorite “one weird trick” that my first boss taught me is to turn every criticism into a question. If you’re suggesting a significant revision, “How about…?” is one of my favorite leads. If you have no idea what’s going on, do your best to figure out what might be causing the issue, then form a question around that. “Are there missing words here?” is kinder and more useful than “Huh?”
Essentially, your role as an editor is to advocate for the reader. This “reader stand-in” role can help frame critique as well. Will the reader understand this? If you’re in one of the more-technical editing jobs, that question may be completely necessary. As an editor for scientific research, I’m often editing documents meant for people who know way more about the subject matter than I do. The framing of “the reader” is also a useful tool in your toolbox for fiction. You may be editing something that you are not the target audience for. Or, on the other end of the scale, you may know without question that you’re reading something incomprehensible. The polite device of “the reader” helps add a level of depersonalization to the critique.
Unsurprisingly, for editing, communication is key before you even start work. “Editing” covers a huge range of possibilities. Make sure you and the author are on the same page. Do they want a proofread—only correcting glaring errors? Do they want you to improve the phrasing of sentences? It can go all the way up to practically rewriting the thing, if you’re working at a corporation and the authors aren’t professionals. This conversation beforehand will let you know whether you should make “artistic” suggestions as you read, whether you need to stick with nuts and bolts, or something in between.
If the author says they only need a proofread and you discover the whole thing is terrible, that’s when some tactful emails come into play. Never start doing a higher-level edit unless you’ve talked about it with the author first. You have much better odds of an affirmative if they feel like they’re collaborating with you–that you’re both in it together to make the best document possible. As far as the tactful emails go, be kind and be specific. If you have examples of what you’d like to correct, throw those in. It helps the author know what to expect and make an informed decision.
And sometimes the author says no, and that’s okay! You must wash your hands of it. It’s not your name on the thing, and if you don’t put it in your resume, it never will be (fresh out of college, I worked on a couple truly awful novels that nobody will ever know I worked on). Perfectionism is HARD to overcome, I know, but accepting the errors gets easier with practice.
And finally, if you’re still wondering, “Am I cut out to be an editor?” I would recommend the words of Neil Gaiman. In his excellent “Make Good Art” speech, he says that as a freelance artist, you need to do good work, do it on time, and be pleasant to work with. And then, he adds, “You don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine.” I recommend the whole thing if you ever want to battle imposter syndrome, because the same tenets apply to editing. At least I think they do. You don’t need to be the perfect editor—nobody is. But I guarantee that you have most of what you need already, and I hope this has helped.
Biography
Adrian Harley, one of Duck Prints Press’s editors, has been a full-time professional editor of scientific research for 10 years. Their freelance and ad-hoc editing has run the gamut from books to blog posts to family members’ cover letters. They’ve been published in Duck Prints Press’ And Seek (Not) to Alter Me and the forthcoming She Wears the Midnight Crown, as well as OFIC Magazine.
Want to learn more?
* Beware the Weasel Word has information and resources for “tightening up” language. * How to Ask for Feedback on Your Writing talks more about how, from a writer point of view, to help your editor understand what type(s) of editing you’re looking for. * Giving Quality, Motivating Feedback focuses on exactly what it says on the tin: how to give a writer feedback they’ll listen to. * What is an Alpha Reader? talks about what role alpha reader editors play and how to work with one.
A collaboratively written post by multiple members of Duck Prints Press. The input of every individual author has been used and lightly edited with permission and credited in the way they’ve requested.
Two days ago, a member of Duck Prints Press posed the following questions to our blogging team:
* Whether you publish under a pen name or your given name, what factored into your decision to use one or the other? * Was personal safety the primary reason behind deciding to use a pen name, or were there other reasons? * If you use your given name, do you feel safe? * What’s your advice for [creators] who are thinking about publishing original [work]?
A number of us replied, and we all felt that the compiled responses would make a good post to share, as “whether or not to use a pen name” is a recurring question we often get in-server, and is likely one many of y’all out there thinking of publishing your original work have pondered as well.
Do you publish under a pen name or use your given name, and what factors influenced your decision to use one or the other?
arialerendeair: I publish under a pseudonym and always will! I decided to go with names that riff off my fanfic name (Aria Lerendeair) – Aria L. Deair (for non-erotica) and Aria D. Leren (for erotica) because I’ve built a community and wanted it to be a bit of an in-joke when they find/buy my content. If someone were to find the story organically – they might get the name reference, they might not. It’s a fun way to create not-separation between the names and have one for the different genres!
B. T. Fish: I (try to) stay anonymous aside from necessary contracts because of personal safety as regards certain family members. I honestly don’t worry about strangers knowing who I am, but if I am aiming for anonymity I have to commit.
Annabeth Lynch: I use a pen name, but I plan on taking at least the first name as my legal name when possible. I won’t share that or my pen name with my family because 1) they don’t know I write, and I’m not content to share that with them at all, and 2) I don’t want them to know I’m queer. They likely wouldn’t be hellish about it but I would certainly be mocked. Also, now I live in the south and while I live in a liberal section because of the nearby colleges, the place I want to move after my husband’s schooling is ~liberal~ in a vague way but definitely not as good as where I am now. It’s one reason why I’m hesitant to try and get my books in bookstores that might want in-person events.
Dei Walker: I went with a pen name for the erotica I wrote for DPP (and I’ll keep with that), but the first name holds a link with my real name in some ways. My husband’s a teacher at a fairly prestigious private school, and there’s a degree of “yeah my wife writes smut” that’s okay with colleagues but isn’t okay if the parents find out about it if they use search engines to learn more about me.
Willa Blythe: I chose to use a pen name. One, my real name is kind of weirdly spelled and I don’t actually even use my first name because it is a very popular name from the 80s that my parents left a letter out of… I go by my middle name but I spell it differently than what’s on my birth certificate, and I’ve gone by this name since I was 18. Everyone in my life knows me as (NAME) save my family, and they know I go by that. It’s not a nickname, it’s my name, and that’s fine.
Anonymous: I decided to use a pen name for two reasons: 1) my name is incomprehensible to English speakers – not only is it hard to pronounce, but it also uses special characters; 2) I’m a primary teacher in a small town where gossip goes wild (for example, when I decided to go part-time so I have more time for writing it was going around that I was pregnant ) so I don’t want anyone to find out that I’m queer and write queer romance. There are idiots out there who wouldn’t want me to teach their kids because of that. I eventually came up with a pen name that is a word play on my legal name so it still feels like me, and the people I want to know would recognize it as me but strangers are unlikely to make the connection.
Nina Waters ( unforth ): I publish under a pen name because people always mispronounce my last name and my understanding is that it’s better to make a pen name people can pronounce. Back when I was still considering trad pub, I was planning to use multiple pen names so I could write across genres. Nina Waters was gonna be spec fic and romance, but I love historical drama type stuff too and like. Those sell better with a male name on them? So I was gonna use either C. P. Houck (so, my actual initials and last name) or Charles (or maybe Chuck) P. Houck, since Charles is a family name (my uncle, my grandfather, and my great grandfather on my dad’s side are all Charles’s). That all said, when I decided to go the small Press creation route instead, there was basically no way to keep my real name out of things since as the owner I have to put it on all official paperwork, which means it’s filed with the government and a matter of public record. Since anyone could access it, there didn’t seem to be much point in keeping it a secret/separate.
Was personal safety the primary reason behind deciding to use a pen name? What other reasons influenced your decisions?
(some authors included their answers to this in their replies above)
Nina Waters: Not really, though I did originally concoct the Nina Waters name for a really silly version of personal safety? I was writing a thing based on my unrequited feelings for someone and I obviously couldn’t put that under my real name without risking them figuring it out, so I needed a pen name. I never did finish that project lmao and now I would never bother but the pen name stuck.
arialerendeair: Part of [why I use a pen name] is because I was doxxed (and received threats) from a non-writing community almost a decade ago. I’m not afraid of attaching my real name to my works – I’m proud of them! But with the very real possibility of that happening again at some point in the future, I didn’t want to risk it!
Willa Blythe: There was an additional reason that using a pen name was important to me, though. When I wrote fan fiction, I was the victim of a targeted hate campaign aimed at people who wrote fanfiction about a certain character. I wrote fic that I loved and I stayed in my corner, but I got aggressive and hateful messages constantly about not only myself but also my young son, for the crime of choosing to write about a young man of color instead of the overwhelmingly popular white m/m ship in that fandom. It was alarming, especially when people I didn’t know sent me messages about my workplace and my movements there. Prior to that, I’d been pretty open online. I’m not now. I take doxxing very seriously. My son’s safety, but also my own and my roommate’s, are of huge importance. I write about things people don’t love: complicated queer relationships, critiques of capitalism and white supremacy, critiques of religion and spiritual practices, etc. I have to do what is necessary to create distance between my real life, my fandom life, and my writing life. That said… I’ve done more to separate my fandom and writing identities than my real and writing identities, for a variety of reasons. It’s complicated, but as much as I love fandom, it does breed a certain kind of entitlement that my personal friends and family just don’t have.
If you use your given name, do you feel safe?
owlishintergalactic: My wife and I had a huge conversation about the implications of me writing under my wallet name. I am quite politically involved in the Early Childhood Education and Early Childhood Special Education sectors in my county and state. This is a sector where being openly LGBTQ can cause problems with a particular subset of parents and voters. Yet, we don’t believe we should have to hide who we are and that we are LGBTQ – like many other parents in our state. We decided, in the end, that since I don’t write anything more racy than “mature,” it makes sense to build my platform using my real name. My writing is a part of me. It is a part of my advocacy. It’s my profession. But it is a risk, and it’s mitigated some because I live in one of the most open and inclusive communities in the US. For the most part, though, I do almost all of my online work under a variation of Owlish because it creates a layer of protection between me and the internet masses who don’t always have the best intentions.
Nina Waters: I. uh. Mostly? I definitely worry about it. I’ve been thinking about getting a P. O. Box for the business so I at least don’t have to use my real address all the time too. I worry that if someone took offense to the kind of work I do, they could go after my children, and that scares the crap out of me. In retrospect I wish I’d worked a little harder to keep my identities separate, but they were already mostly merged by the time I had kids and I’d have had to completely restart with new screen names and everything, so it felt like it was already too late by the time the business became public.
What’s your advice for [creators] who are thinking about publishing original [work]?
Nina Waters: The advice I give to people in the Press is if they’re even a LITTLE unsure, they should use a pen name. At any time when they decide they’re comfortable they can always switch to using their real name, but once the genie’s out of the bottle there’s no putting it back.
arialerendeair: There are a great many reasons to choose to use a pseud! For your own personal reasons, for reasons involving your spouse, your family, your activism work, because the internet is a scary place sometimes and many grew up in the web safety diligence era. If you are picking up a pseud for any reason at all – great! They can be fun, they can be punny, (is it a coincidence that D is the middle initial for my pseud that I write erotica under? Nope!) and they can be a chance to reinvent yourself for an audience that doesn’t know you yet. There’s a power in being able to shape a persona – and sometimes it’s fun to grab that and see where it leads!
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Do you – yes, you, the person reading this! – use a pen name for publishing your art, fiction, or other types of creations? Have you kept your fandom, creation, and meatspace selves separate? We’d love to hear your answers to the above questions, so feel free to reblog and weigh in!
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Have a question? Feel free to drop us an ask any time!
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It’s time for another crash course in writing! This time, we’ll be discussing the outline of a dystopian book. Ernest Hemingway gave my favorite description of being an author: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” So set up that typewriter and let’s start bleeding.
Before we begin breaking down this structure as it applies specifically to dystopian stories, a little background on the three-act structure. I’ve written about this structure as it applies to romance and mystery. Most Western novels are written with this structure, which is separated into three sections. First, the beginning, aptly named the Setup, is the first 25% of the story. The second act is called the Confrontation, taking up half the story, 25%-75%. The last quarter of the story, from 75% to 100%, is the Resolution. This is the novel in its most basic form. It’s a good measure of how the story needs to progress, but there’s a lot of wiggle room in such a broad system. Also, what should happen in each of these sections varies by genre, hence this series of posts. This time, we’re going to break down the acts into plot points and show approximately which events should go in each section when you’re writing a dystopian story.
Dystopian novels usually clock in at 60,000 to 120,000 words, so we’ll base the word count on the average, which is 90,000. Though dystopian novels are often turned into series, for simplicity’s sake we’ll work with the idea that this novel is a stand-alone. This same structure can be used on a larger scale for a series if desired, though – just recalculate the word counts appropriately.
The Setup
This act is about laying the foundation of the novel. This is where your hook should be, right at the beginning. Additionally, the reader should get a glimpse of the main character(s) in their average life and develop a baseline understanding of how the world works. In a dystopian novel, some aspect of society or the world is exaggerated and therefore causing problems for the characters. The main two causes of a dystopia are a man-made disaster or a natural disaster or descent of society. Readers will want to know what caused your specific dystopia to come about and how these events have affected the populous.
At the 12% mark (approximately 10,800 words in), the inciting incident should occur. After the world is established in the reader’s head, it’s time to introduce the crux of the plot. In dystopian books, because this subgenre can be used in multiple larger genres (like sci-fi or fantasy) there’s a lot of room to work with different types of stories you can tell. Regardless of which direction you choose to write in, the inciting incident should affect all the main characters and function as a call to action that they will undoubtedly rise to – whether because they want to incite change or because there’s no other option left to them.
By 20% (18,000 words) of the way in, all the important characters should have been introduced. This goal is a little flexible because worldbuilding takes a little longer in dystopian novels, but you shouldn’t take much longer than this. The other characters will need the remaining word count to really make an impact on the plot! You don’t want to run the risk of a seeming deus-ex-machina solution by waiting to introduce a crucial character only at the critical moment.
The Setup ends at 25% (22,500 words), when the first major plot point should occur. This is where the story starts to pick up and the heroes’ journey begins. They embark on their mission or escape their bonds, or they’ve learned some hint about how to fix the world, or they or someone they know comes down with the illness plaguing the world – whatever needs to happen to move them into the next stage of the story.
The Confrontation
This is the meat of the story. It makes up roughly half of the whole novel and includes most of the build-up. Now is the time to ratchet up the tension and help the reader get their bearings in the developing story situation. This part will contain most of the important plot points except the three C’s (more on those later) since, in dystopian stories, the first act is will usually be focused on world- and character-building.
At about 37% (33,300 words) is the first pinch point, and is also usually a good excuse to give a little more backstory. Anything that connects the main character(s) to the main “problem” of the story should be brought up. Were they present when the military rolled through to institute a police state? Was their mother instrumental in the creation of the disease? What does the state of the world now mean to them, and what do they plan to do about it? Clear up some of the past for the readers!
50% (45,000 words) is the midpoint. As in most genres, this is the time for a false high or a false low. A false high would be a point in the story when it looks as though the journey is coming to end, when the characters appear on the verge of being victorious and winning the day only to be crushed under the weight of finding out they’re only halfway done. On the flip side, a false low would be when all looks hopeless until they find something or someone that will help them rise up and take their victory.
Around 62% (55,800 words) comes the second pinch point. This can take a few different forms. It could be another chance for you to reveal the backstory, like a flashback, or, if – for example – you’re writing a romantic subplot, this could be a moment that brings the couple together and increases intimacy. This pinch point should mainly further the secondary plot, whatever thing(s) your character(s) is struggling with beyond the main conflict.
The end of act two comes with the second plot point at 75% (67,500 words). This is when the stakes are raised to an all-time high. We’re approaching the end now and the characters should feel the pressure. Unfortunately for them, this is also when things should go sideways. The worst possible thing happens, but it doesn’t deter them (at least, not for long).
The Resolution
We’re almost done, and you’ve reached the action-packed, fast-paced part of the book. This is where the three C’s I mentioned earlier come in. The C’s stand for Crisis, Climax, and Conclusion.
The Crisis kicks off at roughly the 87% point (78,300 words) of the story. Having overcome the problems from the second plot point that ended the Confrontation, the characters are thrust once again into danger, whether by circumstance or by their own actions. This is also when they often learn a life lesson that will be important to overcoming their adversaries.
The turnaround from the Crisis to the Climax is quick, coming in at 90% (81,000 words). The big showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist, who is usually the perpetrator of the problem(s) plaguing the world. A large chunk of the book should be taken up by this fight, with guns blazing and all the new technology introduced in this world brought out to play.
When reading the Conclusion (the final few thousand words), readers will want to know how the world is after the perpetrator of the suffering has been removed from the picture. This can also be an epilogue if you prefer a more in-depth look at where the characters are now.
And that’s the whole book! The three-act structure outline for a dystopian story has more room for interpretation/changes because it can be applied across multiple genres and scenarios, but that just makes it more fun! Remember that while this is a general guide, you are who makes your book. No one can write the same thing the exact same way you would, and that’s what makes it special. Until next time, happy bleeding!
Do you have problems beginning that new story percolating in your head? Are you feeling afflicted with writer’s block? Are you stuck on a scene with no idea how to move forward? Do you feel that your current ideas are stale and trite? Perhaps the Disney method can help you!
If you work in business or design, you might have heard of it before. The Walt Disney method is a creative strategy designed to find and develop unconventional ideas. While inspired by the way Walt Disney worked, the method itself was proposed by Robert Dilts in 1994.
In the Walt Disney method, the creator divides thmself into three separate roles: the Dreamer, the Realist, and the Critic. These three roles must work separately in three stages:
First, the Dreamer brainstorms ideas in a focused way. The more the better. No limits or restraint. There are no “bad”, “stupid”, or “impossible” ideas; you can embrace the crazy and the stupid as much as you want. It’s still a focused brainstorm: you’re dreaming for an objective, say, a new amusement park attraction, ways to get your characters out of a pinch, the funniest and/or most character-focused problems you can add to your story… anything you need ideas for.
Instead of sitting down and writing or typing your ideas, walk around and record yourself saying your ideas out loud. Speak without pause for 5 or 10 minutes. Look above the horizon to stimulate your creative brain. Some business websites recommend setting up different rooms for each stage of the process, so why not try a change of space? Go outside or to a room different from the one you usually work in.
Once you’ve got loads of ideas, it’s the Realist’s turn. The job of the Realist is to look at the Dreamer’s ideas and think: How do we make them possible? The Realist doesn’t say “No”. It’s not the Realist’s job to say whether an idea is bad or won’t work. In this role, you must assume anything is possible and limit yourself to asking: How can I execute this? For our amusement park example, the Realist would select and bring in specialists who could make plans to turn a crazy idea into a real ride.
Listen to the recording you made in the previous step. Without discarding any ideas, start with the most interesting or promising ones, and develop them. Write a rough draft or the details of what would happen in a scene. Do the necessary research. Reorganize scenes as needed. Try working on a whiteboard with markers and post-its: a place where you can stand up and look at your ideas in front of you.
Once you have a solid proposal, or in a writer’s case, a complete first draft, the Critic comes in. The Critic’s job is to detect and correct flaws, mistakes, and risks (something crucial if you’re making an amusement park ride!). This is the moment to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work, what stays and what goes.
Sit down with the printed-out draft on the desk, where you can look down at it, and use a red pen to mark places that need re-working or any contradictions in the narrative. Tighten the phrasing and clear up confusing details. Clean up the draft.
The stages then repeat as needed: for more ideas, go back to the Dreamer, then develop them, then edit again.
The changes in position help to change your own perspective on the work, to dream or execute or evaluate more objectively.
You probably already do something similar in your writing process: you have an idea, make an outline, write a first draft, then a second, a third and fourth and so on. You have alpha and beta readers who help brainstorm ideas, develop them, and correct the draft.
Personally, the most helpful takeaway of this model is the neat separation of the roles. The Dreamer and the Critic cannot work in the same stage: criticism stifles creativity. When I’m outlining, brainstorming, or writing a rough draft, it helps me to keep this in mind. If I find myself getting judgmental about my story, I take a deep breath and tell the Critic to shut the fuck up. Whenever I’m blocked, I’ve found it often comes from me being too critical in a stage of the process when I need to be dreaming or just executing.
Of course, the three roles are equally important in the creative process. Without the Dreamer we wouldn’t have new ideas; without the realist we would never do anything with them; without the Critic the work wouldn’t be as clean and clear as it can be.
I have used this method before to write a stand-up comedy routine, which requires a lot of crazy ideas and well-developed set-ups and punchlines, but it can work for any creative needs. I have also applied the brainstorming method to develop the heist in my upcoming story in She Wears the Midnight Crown, as well as to think up character-based conflicts for previous fanfiction and original stories.
As with any other strategy or method, it’s up to you to try it, use what works for you and discard what doesn’t. I hope this can help you if you’re stuck, or at least inspires you to try something different!
Have you ever used the Walt Disney method? How was your experience? Would you do anything differently? Are there any other methods that work better for you that you’d like to recommend? Let us know!
It can be daunting to ask for feedback on our work. Past negative experiences, horror stories from friends, fear of people disliking something we’ve worked so hard on, uncertainty about what to input to ask for, and many other factors can make it seem easier to write our stories alone rather than show them to another person.
Once you understand how to ask for feedback, however, sharing your works-in-progress can become a valuable tool for gathering information and honing your craft. So if you’re struggling with your work in progress, hoping to publish or publicize your story in some way, or are looking to develop your writerly skills, read on to learn how to ask for the right feedback for your needs!
This is the second in a series of posts about the Three-Act structure, written by guest blogger Annabeth Lynch. You can read the first post, Romance Novels, here.
Writing can be a difficult undertaking. Like most anything that’s worth doing, it’ll test your skills and determination. Ernest Hemingway gave my favorite description of being an author: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” It’s beneficial to have a game plan to help you move along, even if you’re a pantser like me.
Are you ready to bleed? Good. Let’s start with the breakdown of the three-act structure. It basically separates the story into the beginning, the middle, and the end. They’re formally known as the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution. The Setup takes the first quarter up to the first 25% of the full story length, the Confrontation is the middle half from 25% of the total word count to about 75%, and the Resolution makes up the last quarter, from about the 75% point to the end at 100%. This is a Western story composition, a typical structure across genres. I’ve already made a post about this structure in relation to the romance genre here, but though it follows the same rules, the plot points are different. What follows are the basic guidelines for a mystery novel, including the approximate word count at each milestone. Mystery novels are typically 80,000 to 90,000 and we’ll be working based on an expected word count of 90,000.
The Setup
This is where you lay the groundwork for your novel. As always, it should begin with your hook–the situation or goal that lures in your readers. After that, it’s time to begin your world and character building. Here you should establish the baseline for your world, anything that makes it different from the real world, and the reader should also get a feel for your character(s) and their routine. This part sets the tone for the rest of the book.
At the 12% mark (10,800 words in) is the inciting incident. In mystery novels, this will be the crime that will be investigated–the call to action that your amateur or professional sleuth will undoubtedly rise to. Whether they accept it right off the bat or after careful consideration, it shouldn’t take much longer than this point for them to decide to take action.
By 20% of the way in (18,000 words), all important characters should be introduced. As this is a mystery book, they don’t need to be introduced directly–the reader just needs to know they exist. For example, if you don’t want the antagonist to be someone that is actively on the page, that’s fine, but the reader must know that they exist, even if only as a mysterious “someone” committing the crime. Of course, it can also be someone that already has a name and has shown up in the protagonist’s life!
The first major plot point comes around 25% (22,500 words) into the book, at the end of the Setup. This is where the stakes are raised and the case starts to become personal to the protagonist. Whether it’s something small, like the antagonist goading them, or big, like a friend falling victim, it needs to be something that will cause the protagonist to feel closer to the investigation and throw more of themselves into it.
The Confrontation
This act is most of the book and includes almost all of the build-up and a fair amount of the action. This is the meat of the story. Tension and suspense are going to be thick here; now is not the time to skimp on detail. Senses are going to be your best friends during this section; your readers are going to want to feel like they are also solving this crime. Does the protagonist have goosebumps? Is the hair on the back of their neck standing up? The readers want to know it all!
At about 37% (33,300 words) is the first pinch point. This is usually when another person falls victim to the antagonist, but it can also be a good place for a look into the antagonist’s life. Perhaps we see a glimpse of them or get a piece of information about them as a person. Either way, one of the bigger clues should be dropped here, bringing the main character(s) one step closer to solving the mystery.
50% (45,000 words) is the midpoint. This is when your false high or false low comes in. A false high makes it look like the protagonist is going to be victorious and solve the case, but it turns out to have been misleading and they are back to square one. False lows are the opposite, making it seem like there’s no hope of ever catching the criminal just before they make a breakthrough in the case. In addition, this is typically when we discover the antagonist’s reason(s) for committing these heinous crimes and what motivates them.
Around 62% (55,800 words) comes the second pinch point. Here is another chance to get a look at the person committing the crime(s), whether through another victim or because the main character has gained more understanding or insight. This is also a good time for any development in an internal plot or goal for your protagonist, or for character growth that will ultimately help them solve the case.
The second plot point comes into play at 75% (67,500 words), or the end of act two. This raises the stakes of the plot to their peak. This is usually the part where we see the main character recommitting to solving the case (especially if they were discouraged by the false low or the high stakes). It should become clear at this point that the protagonist is going to have to confront (see what I did there?) the antagonist and possibly they should start plotting out how they will go about it. The plan usually doesn’t go as expected, but that’s a problem for the next part.
The Resolution
You’re getting close to the end now! This part is action-packed and, for the most part, fast-paced. Things are going to be falling into place, and setting up for a good ending. This section is comprised of the three C’s: Crisis, Climax, and Conclusion.
The Crisis kicks off at 87% (approximately 78,300 words). Now is when the big questions that have been posed throughout the story are answered. Will the antagonist win and get away with it all? Will the protagonist do what it takes to win? Are they strong enough to face what must be done? This is also when the main character figures out their overarching problems and learns the life lesson that the Setup posed.
The Climax comes quickly after the crisis, at 90% (81,000 words). All the clues should fall into place to reveal the culprit, and the showdown between the protagonist and antagonist finally occurs. Usually, there’s a moment where the main character looks to be beaten by the villain, with no hope to escape. There are many ways this can be solved–cleverness on the part of the protagonist, or rescue by close friends, or even teaming up with potential or past victims. However you go about it, it should be satisfying and connect to the core of the story lesson, goal, and the life issues previously introduced, such as the character embracing themselves or trusting others.
By the end, readers are looking for a view of how life is now that the criminal has been stopped. Conclusions often offer a glimpse of how the main character is doing and, most importantly, whether justice was served or if the antagonist weaseled out of it (which is often the case in multi-book series). This can also be an epilogue if you’re partial to them.
You did it! That’s the whole book!
I hope this is helpful for anyone struggling with the bones of a mystery story. Remember, this is just a general guide and you can modify/edit/reject any parts of this that you don’t like. You make your story interesting and unique! Don’t underestimate the power of your own input. Until next time, happy bleeding!
This is the first in a series of posts about the Three-Act structure, written by guest blogger Annabeth Lynch.
Writing a book can be daunting. Ernest Hemingway gave my favorite description of being an author: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” It’s a big project that takes a lot of determination, especially if your goal is to write to meet a fast-paced challenge like NaNoWriMo. It’s beneficial to have a game plan to help you move along, even if you’re a pantser like me.
An understanding of the three-act novel structure can really help with basic planning. This structure breaks a story up into three primary sections: the beginning, middle, and end. Usually, the first act is called the Setup, the second act is the Confrontation, and the third and final act is the Resolution. The Setup is the first 25% of the story, the Confrontation is the middle 25%-75%, and the Resolution is the last quarter, 75%-100%. Across all genres, most stories follow this structure, which makes it a great plan to follow, but there are a lot of details that just knowing the names and approximate lengths of the acts doesn’t cover. Especially, the common landmarks that mark the transitions between the acts are often different between genres. In this article – the first in a series discussing how to apply the three-act novel structure to different genres – we’ll go over the more in-depth structure of a romance novel (which are usually approximately 90,000 words long). For simplicity’s sake, this will be written as if the romance only involves two parties (e.g., isn’t poly and/or harem and/or reverse harem) and that the development and advancement of the relationship is the main plot.
Act 1: The Setup
This act lays the groundwork for the novel. It should, of course, start with your story hook – the situation or goal that will draw your readers into the story. Then, proceed with your world and character building. We should see your character(s) in their normal life, get a baseline of how the world works if the story includes fantasy or science fiction elements, and see their routine.
By the 12% mark (approximately 10,800 words into a 90,000-word novel), the main couple should have had their meet-cute (or meet-ugly) and reacted accordingly. This can result in them deciding to pursue the relationship or rejecting it, whichever your story calls for. This should directly cause them to accept or reject the call, e.g. wanting or not wanting the relationship.
20% into the book (approximately 18,000 words in) is typically the latest a main character should be introduced. Any character who is important to the plot should be actively involved in the story by this point. They need time to work their magic too!
The 25% mark – the end of the Setup act (approximately 22,500 words in) – is when the first plot point is introduced. This is where the couple is essentially “stuck” together. One or more major events that change their lives will, by this point, also cause them (often force them, if they’re antagonistic initially) to need to spend more time together, furthering both the “main” arc of the plot and their romance/relationship. The reason they are spending time together will serve as an important element for the second act, so it will need to be a consistent reason to meet up.
Act 2: The Confrontation
This is the meat of the story. Over the following 45,000 words (roughly half of the entire story by length) is when the romantic tension builds. The couple spends increasing amounts of time together, growing closer and building mutual trust. Doubts about each other and/or the relationship and/or the problem introduced at the end of the Setup and will lead to the final conflict should also grow in proportion.
Around 37% of the way through (approximately 33,300 words in) is the first “pinch point” of the story. This is where there should be a scene that builds intimacy. It could be something physical and discrete, such as a first kiss, or something more interpersonal, such as a demonstration of the increasing trust between the characters. Whatever occurs, it changes the way the prospective romantic partners see each other and takes them deeper into the relationship. This is an important plot point and shouldn’t be overlooked.
50% (approximately 45,000 words in) is the story’s midpoint. Congratulate yourself on making it this far! Now is the time to up the stakes. This is usually accomplished by bringing the characters to a false high or false low. A false high makes it look like the couple are on their way to a “happily ever after,” whereas a false low threatens that the characters may never end up together. Regardless, the result is that your characters do some introspection or get advice that causes them to decide what they really want in terms of the relationship, and how that does and will influence the daily life we got a glimpse of during the Setup.
At 62% (approximately 55,800 words in) the second pinch point comes into play. Events at the second pinch point more often are driven by internal forces/feelings/reflection – a look into the mind of the main characters as they struggle with the circumstances around their relationship. They have to overcome their own preconceptions to earn their love story. If you choose a false high, the other shoe should drop and separate them. Whenever things give them pause, though, the characters’ issues should resolve by them finding their way back to each other.
The end of act two, the Confrontation, comes at the 75% mark (approximately 67,500 words in) with the second major plot development. This will be a point when the stakes reach an all-time high. All the simmering conflict should boil over, and the worst possible thing(s) happens. This is often a breakup, where it looks like the couple will never end up together. Trust is broken and their differences appear unfixable due to one or both of them rejecting their true feelings.
Act 3: The Resolution
During this act is when all the questions that have been raised throughout the book are answered, and the couple comes together again. I like to call this act the “triple C’s”, the Crisis, the Climax, and the Conclusion.
The crisis comes at about the 87% mark (approximately 78,300 words in). Your characters work through their feelings and decide if the relationship is worth the effort (this is a romance novel: they’ll decide that it is). They’ll face their own flaws and learn a life lesson, which will usually also give them the answer to their current non-relationship problems.
There’s a quick turnaround between the crisis and the climax, which should come at about 90% into the book (approximately 81,000 words in). Often, this involves a grand gesture by one member of the pairing toward the other, but that isn’t required. Either way, this is the point in the story when one of them admits their love for the other. Readers will be on the edge of their seats, waiting to see if they get back together.
By the ending, the characters have decided to be together and the readers want the “happily ever after” or “happy for now” ending. Conclusions often include a snapshot of their future, a hint of how they’re doing together, and how they’ve put in the work to achieve their dreams (both in terms of the relationship and any external goals introduced earlier in the book). This can sometimes be an epilogue as well.
And you’re done! That’s the whole book!
I hope this helps anyone struggling with developing and/or utilizing a basic framework suitable for structuring a romance novel. This is a general guide, but don’t be afraid to mix it up and make it yours. Remember, you make your story special, unique, and engaging!
This post was written in reply to an ask received on Tumblr. The ask:
Thank you for the quotation marks + punctuation post! That’s one of the top trouble areas I see when I beta read. (Understandable—there are tons of possibilities/rules.) I noticed in the em dashes section, example 2, there are no spaces between the dialogue and em dashes. Is that a hard-and-fast rule, or does it depend on preference/style guide? This is something I utilize in my writing so I would love to know if I’m getting it right, or if it’s simply a matter of being consistent. Thanks again!
The answer:
Ah! Yeah, whether to put spaces is a choice. Some places use hair spaces, some thin spaces, some non-breaking spaces, some full spaces. Duck Prints Press opts for no spaces around em dashes in most cases.* Out of curiosity, I just checked CMoS—while I couldn’t find a place that explicitly said “do it this way”…well, in all their examples of em dash use, they do NOT put spaces around the em dashes, so I’d say that at least in CMoS the most grammatically correct usage would be to not put spaces on either side of the em dash.
*In most cases = virtually always in narrative, one major exception in dialog. When we use an em dash to denote interruption, sometimes there will be a full space after.
Ex. 1: “No matter where you go—no matter what you do—I’ll always be here for you.”
Explanation: this is a usage of an em dash that mirrors em dash usage in regular narrative text—essentially a form of parenthetical/aside—so it gets em dashes with no spaces.
Ex. 2: “I just said don’t—”
Explanation: this is the end of the quoted dialog. It would be heckin’ weird to put a space between the em dash and the closing quotation mark.
Ex. 3: “Why don’t—why don’t we just not?”
Explanation: this is self-interruption but the sentence that continues is the same as/part of the same sentence that was interrupted, so we don’t use a space. Our intention is to denote that the part before and after the em dash are still part of the same, like, context/concept. It’s the continuation of the same idea.
Ex. 4: “Look, I just— Don’t start with me, okay!”
Explanation: here’s the case where we use a space (our space case? lmao). It’s self-interruption, but when the the speaker resumes, it’s neither a parenthetical aside nor a continuation of the same sentence. It’s a brand new sentence. To help make that clear, we use a space there (and a capital letter.
Bonus—Ex. 5: Just as he was about to speak, I cut in— “Don’t say it!”
Explanation: this is about the only case I can think of where I’d use a space after an em dash in narrative/descriptive text, and it’s also to make interruption clear. Stylistically, a lot of writers will never even use this kind of phrasing, but it’s a permissible stylistic choice to write narrative interruption this way, and when people opt to do it, we do put a space between the end of the description and the start of the dialog, for the same reason as in Ex. 4—it’s a new sentence and it’s clearer with the space.
Contrast with: Just as he started to speak—”I already know,” I expected he’d say—I interrupted him and said, “Don’t say it.”
In this one, though there is a dialog piece/quoted material within the em dashes, it IS a parenthetical aside, so there’s no space.
Bonus—Ex. 6: “Whatever you do”—he waggled a finger in my face—”don’t go in the forest.”
Explanation: when an action is inserted in the middle of dialog, it’s essentially a parenthetical aside, just it’s a non-dialog parenthetical shoved into a dialog chunk, so it follows the same rules as an em dash aside would in other cases—so no spaces.
Again, this is one of those areas where there’s no hard-and-fast rule, and I’d expect different Press’ internal style guides to handle this em dash + space usage in different ways, but this is how I’ve opted to handle it, as lead editor at Duck Prints Press.
(the key, in the end, is consistency—if you pick one way and always do it that way, I doubt anyone is gonna give you shit, though you should expect that if you then submit that to a Press, the Press will edit it to match their preferred style to ensure uniformity within and across their publications).
Thank you so much for sending an ask! It’s always exciting when we actually get editing/writing asks. As a reminder, y’all, anyone reading this, always feel free to send us questions like this! We are grammar pedants and we are only to happy to be pedantic on whatever SPAG topic you’d like to know more about!
There are numerous quirky quotation mark placement + punctuation rules. For the common cases, such as basic dialog, most people know what to do, but we often see people get the less common cases incorrect, so we’ve put together a quick guide to help out!
Note that this post is written according to standard US English usage. The rules are different for other English dialects!
Basic—Punctuation + Quotation Marks in Dialog:
When writing dialog, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks in the vast majority of cases. (Almost always, but I know if I say “always” someone will find an exception, ‘cause there’s always an exception, because English, why?)
Ex. 1: “Thank you,” she said.
Ex. 2: “Thank you.” She reached out and shook my hand.
Ex. 3: “Thank you!” she said.
Ex. 4: “Thank you?” she said uncertainly.
Ex. 5: “Thank you…” she muttered.
Ex. 6: “Thank y—” A loud pop interrupted her.
Essentially: If the punctuation is part of what’s being said (is demonstrating some aspect of how the dialog has been said) then it goes inside the quotation marks. (The most common exception relates to em dashes—more on that below!)
Intermediate—Punctuation + Quotation Marks in Narrative Text:
In narrative/descriptive text, the placement of punctuation depends on two factors:
a. Which punctuation is in question
b. The nature of the text within the quotation marks.
The basic rules are (this is paraphrased from CMoS 17th Ed.):
Periods: always inside the quotation marks
Ex.: The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold is called “kintsugi.”
Commas: always inside the quotation marks
Ex.: The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold is called “kintsugi,” and the practice originated in Japan.
Semi-colon: always outside the quotation marks
Ex.: The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold is called “kintsugi”; it is also called “kintsukuroi.”
Colon: always outside the quotation marks
Ex.: Other materials can be used for the art of repairing cracked pottery with gold, usually called “kintsugi”: silver and platinum are also sometimes utilized.
Question Marks: depends on what is in quotes. If the quoted material includes the question mark, then it goes inside of the quotes; otherwise, it goes outside the quotation marks.
Ex. 1: Is the art of repairing cracked pottery with gold called “kintsugi”?
Explanation: “kintsugi” isn’t a question, the entire phrase is the question, so the question mark goes outside the quotation marks.
Ex. 2: The article is entitled “Do you have questions about repairing cracked pottery with gold?”
Explanation: the title of the article is itself a question—the question mark is part of the quoted material, and therefore goes inside the quotation marks.
Exclamation Points: work the same way as Question Marks.
Ex. 1: I just learned that the art of repairing cracked pottery with gold is called “kintsugi”!
Ex. 2: The article is entitled “Everything you ever wanted to know about ‘kintsugi’ but hadn’t thought to ask!”
Em Dash: depends on what is in the quotes. If the purpose of the em dash is to denote that the words themselves are being interrupted, the em dash goes inside the quotation marks. If the purpose of the em dash is to mark that a specific action (sans dialog tag!) is interrupting the dialog, then the em dashes go outside. (Sorry this is a little challenging to describe, hopefully the examples help make it clear.)
Ex. 1: “The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold is called—” She broke off when she saw I was holding up a sign that said “kintsugi,” indicating that I already knew.
Explanation: the dialog itself is what is breaking off—in this case because the speaker is being interrupted—so the em dash goes inside the quotation marks.
Ex. 2: “The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold”—she held up a beautiful bowl that appeared to have once been broken, a tracery of gleaming gilding showing where the fault lines once were—“is called ‘kintsugi.’”
Explanation: when an action is interjected into the middle of a line of dialog, the em dashes go on the outside of the quotes.
Ex. 3: “The art of repairing cracked pottery with gold,” she explained as she held up a beautiful bowl, “is called ‘kintsugi.’”
Explanation: this instance has a dialog tag, so commas are used instead of em dashes. The first comma goes within the quotation marks, the second outside.
Advanced—Punctuation + Nested Quotation Marks in Dialog:
Sometimes, a character quotes something they’ve heard. In cases like this, the writer needs to use nested quotation marks (in standard US English, that’s double quotes “” for the first “layer” of dialog and single quotes ‘’ for the second “layer”). The relationship of the punctuation to the nested quote depends on what’s being said. When the dialog is nested, where the punctuation goes follows the same rules as in the “Intermediate—Punctuation + Quotation Marks in Narrative Text” section just above.
Ex. 1: “Did she say ‘Thank you’?” she asked.
Ex. 2: “Did he say ‘Thank you’ to you?” she asked
Ex. 3: “Did he say ‘Thank you,’ or did he say ‘tanks for you’?” she asked
Ex. 4: “How dare he say ‘Thank you’!” she exclaimed.
Ex. 5: “He said ‘Thank you,’” she replied.
Ex. 6: “He said ‘Thank you,’ I think?” she replied.
Ex. 7: “He said ‘Thanks’ and also ‘good luck.’” She nodded as she explained.
Ex. 8: “Actually, he said ‘Thanks!’” she replied.
Ex. 9: “Actually, he asked ‘Should I thank them?’” she replied.
Other Uses of Quotation Marks
Quotation marks can also be used when identifying the titles of works, scare quotes, defining words in foreign languages, etc. Regardless of the uses, the above rules about punctuation placement apply.
Uh...so, apologies to our handful of peeps on Dreamwdith, but the Rich Text editor isn't working on my Desktop, and I flat out don't have time to hand-code the html formatting for this week's writing advice post, so I'm just going to link it instead. *sweat drop*
The last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of editing, which also means I’ve been doing a lot of small changes to ensure that the documents are print and e-book ready. Preparing manuscripts involves doing a lot of tiny, fiddly tweaks to make sure that spelling, grammar, and formatting are uniform across all the stories in an anthology, are accurate to the authors’ intentions, and look nice in all the formats we’ll be offering (print, PDF, ePub, and Mobi). None of the changes are complicated, but making them all is surprisingly time consuming—I usually spend about 30 minutes “cleaning up” each story with modifications that are largely invisible to a writer and reader, but still essential to produce a polished finished book.
Each Press and Publisher will handle these formatting things in slightly different ways—while some of these (such as “when do I use a hyphen vs. an en dash vs. an em dash?”) others are publisher-discretion. If you are submitting a manuscript and want to look like you’ve really, really paid attention, consider making some of these changes yourself—but make sure you check if the place you’re submitting to has a public style guide first, and if they do, anything they say in their style guide takes precedence! (Duck Prints Press doesn’t have a guide yet—we’ve been working on one, but it keeps getting back-burnered in favor completing more timely tasks).
This post is written from our point of view—which is to say, I wrote it specifically for how we at DPP handle these formatting matters—but it can provide some general guidelines, especially if you are submitting to a publication that hasn’t provided a style guide. Even if what you do based on this guide doesn’t match what they do, at least by being consistent in your own submission, you demonstrate that you were paying attention! (But: NEVER do any of the below if it contradicts the submission information and/or style guide provided by a different publisher!!)
Note that to really do most of these tweaks, you’ll want to use an actual word processor. Google docs doesn’t have the functionality for the most fiddly bits. Despite its downsides, DPP currently uses Microsoft Office 365, and this guide is primarily written with Word in mind. If you also use Microsoft, here’s a couple quick tutorials—you’ll need to know how to do these two things in order to do…all the rest.
Tutorial 1: Inserting Special Characters
1. Go to the “Insert” Menu
2. Go to “Insert Symbol”
3. If, like me, you use the same 4 special characters over and over, the symbol you’re looking for will most likely be in the “recently used” list that pops up. But, if it’s not there, pick “More Symbols.” That opens a screen that looks like this:
4. While you could scroll through this list until you find what you want, it’s much easier to go to the bottom boxes I circled in red, where it says “Character Code.” Enter the 4-digit-and-letter code for the character you want. This way, you can be sure you actually get the character you want. Make sure that the “from” field matches the code type you’re using—I pretty much entirely use unicode, and that’s what I reference/include numbers for in this post. (Usually, googling “(name of the character you want) unicode” will get you the number.)
5. Note that not every character is available in every font; if you want to be sure you can access the maximum number of characters, I recommend using Arial or Calibri.
Tutorial 2: Turning on Mark-up
1. Go to the “Home” menu
2. In the “Paragraph” section, find the ¶ option; if your menu is drop-down it might be called “Show/Hide ¶” (in Word, it can also be turned on with ctrl + * )
3. Show ¶.
4. Profit. (okay, no, not really.)
Tutorial 2a: Using Mark-Up to Find Weird Formatting
Are there tab indents where there shouldn’t be? Extra spaces? Superfluous paragraph breaks? Turn on “Show ¶” and tada, you can see all the usually “invisible” formatting! This is essential for spotting a lot of problems, so it’s worth taking a peek at for your own work. Here’s an example of what it looks like when you do this (using an early draft/outline of this post!)
Dots are regular spaces. Circles are non-breaking spaces. Forward facing arrows are tabs. ¶ is a standard paragraph break. There’s a bunch of other symbols, too, but those are the ones that come up most often. I’ve labeled a couple others on the above image, to help you have an idea what you’re looking for. You’ll need this information to help you trouble-shoot some of the things below. If there’s a symbol on yours and you’re not sure what it is, I recommend Google.
So, you’ve got a handle on the above…on to all the formatting tweaks your editor and/or typesetter does that you may have never even considered as an essential part of publishing!
Getting Rid of Bad/Published-Book-Inappropriate Formatting
Tabs: published manuscripts doesn’t use tabs to make space. They make a huge formatting/spacing mess. Instead, we use paragraph formatting -> first line indentation -> (whatever indent amount the publisher has chosen as standard —we use 0.25”). If I get a manuscript that’s used tabbing—if you’ve used tab indents and want them gone—I get rid of it with a find-and-replace.
Find: ^t
Replace with: (blank)
Tada, all tabs gone!
Paragraphs: people who add lines between their paragraphs by making extra paragraphs used to be the bain of my editorial existence…until I figured out how to remove the extra paragraph breaks with a single button click. There should only be one paragraph break after every paragraph; if there are multiple, then…
Find: ^p^p
Replace with: ^p
Tada, all paragraph-paragraph breaks now only have one paragraph break!
Set Up Base Formatting
At least for editing/manuscript preparation, I start by getting the whole document into one, consistent format. I personally use:
Font: Arial
Size: 11
Paragraph Indentation: 0.25”
Line Spacing: 1.15
Space Before Paragraphs: 0
Space After Paragraphs: 0
Alignment: left
Justification: none (note: when formatting for print, right justification will ultimately be re-added in most cases, though there’s been a bit of a move away from that because justification can make it for people with certain forms of neuro-divergence to read; when formatting for e-book, never use right justification!!)
(If you know you always use the same base, you can also set it up as a “style” so you can do all the above with one click!)
Ultimately, even after doing the last three steps, there’s going to come a point where—to be absolutely sure that no janky formatting gets into the manuscript—I take the entire document and nuke all the formatting. When that time comes, any italicization, bolding, or other base-text-type modifications will also be lost. To make sure it’s not actually lost, I mark all words for which special formatting is used with a highlighting color. Which color to use is obviously arbitrary; here’s my preference:
Italics: yellow highlighting
Bold: green highlighting
Bold and Italics: purple highlighting
Strikethrough: blue highlighting
Strikethrough and Italics: red highlighting
(Those are all the ones I’ve had to do, and I add new colors as they actually come up in our printing.)
Epistolary or Other Non-Prose Writing Passages
Every Press is going to handle this differently; your best bet as a writer is to just make sure your intentions are super clear and be open to whatever your chosen publisher has as their “standard” for handling stories that include non-prose sections such as letters, text messages, schedules, poems, bulleted lists, charts, etc. From an “editor/formatter” point of view, I mark weird formatting spots (and special characters, which I discuss next) with comments so that I can find them again.
Did you know that, depending on which word processor you use, your quotation marks and apostrophes may not format uniformly? For example, if you write in Word (and haven’t turned off auto-formatting), your quotation marks will auto-switch from just two straight lines side-by-side into a pretty curly thing:
“
On the other hand, if you write on Google Docs from mobile, it will never auto-format your quotation marks. They’re called straight quotes or, sometimes, “dumb” quotes, and they look like this:
"
This is especially stark and frustrating if you do some of your writing in gdocs from mobile and some from desktop; then, you’ll end up with a document where some of the marks are auto-curved and others aren’t. Leaving them this way makes for a disjointed, inelegant look, and should be changed.
Industry standard is curly quotes.
One of the first things I do when I open a new manuscript to format for print-readiness is a find-and-replace to make sure that all of the apostrophes and quotation marks are formatted the same way. If you put an unformatted (“straight quote”) quotation mark in the “find” field and a formatted/curly one in the “replace” field, tada, every quotation mark fixed at once! And the same for apostrophes.
Directional Apostrophes
Speaking of apostrophes—one side effect of the ‘curly’ apostrophes is that they’re directional: an “open quote” curly apostrophe doesn’t look the same as a “close quote” curly apostrophe. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem. If you’re writing dialog, the ‘curly’ quotes will auto-format to the correct directions and the beginning and end of your quote. If you’re writing a contraction, same—the apostrophe will auto-format the correct ‘curl’ direction for your contraction. But, did you know? There are cases where using a lead-in apostrophe is necessary, but if it’s formatted in the ‘lead-in’ direction, it’ll be wrong! These are cases where auto-format will think you “need” a forward facing apostrophe, but you actually are supposed to use a backward facing one. The two most common instances of this are:
When using slang formed by dropping the first syllable. For example: ’tis, ’til, and ’cause.
When writing shortened years. For example: ’98, ’12, ’45.
(Can’t figure out how to force the right curve? You’ve got two choices: find one pointing the way you need, ctrl-c copy it, then paste it where needed; or you can get it from the Insert Symbol menu, unicode: 2019)
Hyphens vs. En Dashes vs. Em Dashes
Before I was a professional editor, I had the idea that figuring out when to use a hyphen vs. an en dash vs. an em dash was super complicated and inscrutable, but it’s actually easy to know which is appropriate in the majority of cases.
Case 1: you are writing a compound word. Compound words get hyphens. Now, what words get hyphenated, and when, and which don’t, is a completely separate issue, and not one I’m going to get into here. This post isn’t about grammar, it’s literally about formatting, and for formatting purposes, if you know you need to connect two or more words with little lines, the little lines you want to string those words together with is a hyphen. This is a hyphen: - (unicode: 2010)
Case 2: you are writing a range of numbers, dates, or times. You want an en dash. This is just about the only time when you want an en dash. This is an en dash: – (unicode: 2013)
Case 3: you are writing a sentence interjection—like this one!—or you’re indicating an interruption in dialog. You want an em dash. There are plenty of other cases when you should use an em dash, but those are the most common in fiction writing. This is an em dash: — (unicode: 2014)
Reference a style guide or tailor a google search if you’ve got something quirky going on and you’re not sure which type of dash to use.
Types of Spaces
Believe it or not, not all spaces are created equal. In fact, there are four used often, and some others to boot. The most common ones are:
Hair space: this is teeny tiny. Unicode: 200A
Thin space: this is roughly half the size of a normal space. Unicode: 2009
Normal space: the one we know and love. Unicode: 0020
Non-breaking space: a special kind of space that, when used, indicates to the document software/printer/e-reader, “even if this is at the end of a line of text, do not break the text here to start the next line: this ‘space’ should be treated as a fixed character for line-breaking purposes.” Also called an nbsp. Unicode: 00A0
Usually, you should be using, normal spaces, but depending on how your printer/publisher chooses to format things, others may be used. For example, some places put thin spaces on either side of em dashes. Here at Duck Prints Press, we put hair spaces after ellipses (…in some cases…) and we use nbsps in cases such as “When we’re quoting something ‘and there’s a sub quote that ends the sentence.’ “ (as in, there’d be an nbsp between the ‘ and “.)
Spaces and Formatting
As the existence of the nbsp implies, spaces can play funny with formatting, which is part of why in the age of digital the double space after periods has largely gone away—two space were important when typing on a type-writer, but when working in digital text it’s superfluous and can cause formatting issues. So, for example, I always do a find “ ” (two spaces) and replace it with “ ” (one space) for the entire document.
It’s also necessary to remove extra spaces at the end of paragraphs. Yes, every single one. Why? Because, especially if it’s an nbsp, it can actually make the manuscript longer. Picture it: you’ve got the end of a sentence, then a period, then an nbsp, then a paragraph break. This tells the e-reader that space HAS to be kept with that period and the last word. To do that, e-readers will bump the word onto a new line…solely because the space was there! And, while you might think this doesn’t come up much…if a trailing space is left at the end of a paragraph in gdocs, and that paragraph is copied and pasted in Word, every one of those spaces will be converted into nbsps. I once reduced a twenty-page document by half a page by removing all the trailing nbsps. Cutting them is important! Even if the space inserted isn’t an nbsp, it’s still important to get rid of it, because if that end space is what causes a line on an e-reader to be too long, bumping that extra single space to a new line will result in a blank line between paragraphs. Considering that e-book text size can be increased or decreased depending on device and reader, the only way to prevent extra spaces at the ends of paragraphs from dotting your document with blank lines is to delete every single one. By hand. I have done this t.h.o.u.s.a.n.d.s. of times seriously, you want to make your text formatters day? Please don’t leave spaces at the ends of paragraphs, I’m begging you. (and if you know ANY faster way to get rid of these TELL ME PLEASE!)
Ellipses
Here’s a simple and obvious one. Find all the … and replace them with …
Scene Breaks
Whoever is doing typesetting is probably going to use something pretty and/or fancy for marking scene breaks. The way you can make this easiest for them is to format all scene breaks in the same way, and simpler is better. For example, our default way to mark a scene break is:
…the end of the previous scene, with a paragraph break after it.
# (adding text here only because Tumblr is weird about scene breaks)
The start of the next scene.
No extra paragraph breaks, only one symbol that’s unlikely to have been used elsewhere in the document, easy to read and follow. Just using extra paragraph breaks can be confusing, using lots of characters is annoying (and a nightmare for screen readers)—you don’t want your editor to be guessing, so do something straightforward and stick to it.
Capitalization Quirks
Honestly? The section of this post about "times you don’t realize you need a capital letter but actually do” and “times you think you need a capital letter but actually don’t” got so long that I’ve decided to break it out into a separate post; that one will come out next week, so stay tuned.
Remove All Formatting
Once I’ve done all that…changed all the little stuff, marked anything unusual/stylistic (special characters, non-prose, italics, etc.), and gotten everything cleaned up…I go to the “home” menu -> “styles” -> “clear formatting.” This gets read of all formatting, including anything wonky/weird/broken/undesired that I may have missed. The notes and other changes I’ve done make sure that I don’t lose any information I need to format the document correctly, and just to be absolutely positive, there’s a reason I do this now in the process, instead of after the last step, which is…
Actually Finishing Editing
…because if I HAVE made a mistake, when I do my final editing pass and send the document to the author for final approval, they will hopefully notice anything that got lost in the process!
Long story short? Check your own documents for weird formatting stuff before submitting your stories, and save an editor and/or make a typesetter’s day!
Hey everyone! This is Aria, one of the resident fandom olds here to bring you a guest blog post this week. The topic is near and dear to my heart, so let’s dive straight into talking about that ever-ominous thundercloud - Writing Advice!
Writing advice is a tricky subject for many authors - what works for one clearly doesn’t work for another, and what’s essential for one genre might not even apply to another genre . (Certain authors can pry adverbs from my cold, dead hands.) It doesn't matter who is offering it, where, or when: it is an industry truism that writing advice is as varied as writers themselves.
With that in mind, I asked ten different authors for writing advice, in the hope to highlight just how different we all are, even when approaching the same question.
The question I posed to everyone individually (so no one would get worried if they gave the same answer), was as follows: What is one piece of writing/writerly advice you hold as a Universal Constant? That no matter what you are writing or what you are working on still holds true?
As I hoped, the advice is as varied as the authors are!
Hmm I think for me, the Universal Constant is that [my writing has] got to make me feel good. Not necessarily happy, because I've definitely written through tears before, but it's got to make me feel...satisfied, or give me catharsis, or lead me towards a goal I'm passionate about (looking at you, med school essays!).
Even if [my writing is] for school, getting things done feels good, and for creative writing, I want to feel like I've stretched my writing brain or accomplished something cool -- if I'm not getting that feeling, it's time for a break and maybe a new plan of attack.
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Hermit:
"You can't think your way out of a writer's block. Most of the time you need to write yourself out of a thinking block.” - John Rogers
When a story is fighting me this is often the solution. Either the scene is going against the characterization, the characters are lacking agency/being too passive, or I went wrong three sentences back; the answer to getting the story flowing is to write it differently and see how that feels. Rather than try to force an existing scene by coming up with better justification for an OOC (Out of Character) passage or diving into a new research rabbit hole.
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Shadaras:
I don't know where this advice first came from (it's one of those things that just gets passed around until it's from the general writer mindscape, especially in fandom spaces), but this is the advice I tend to ground myself in: "Write what you want to read." What that means can vary depending on context, of course, but it gives a guiding point to return to when I'm stuck.
The thing I want to read could be a specific character dynamic, or leaning into descriptions of the environment, or a plot beat I really want to hit, or even (in a nonfiction context) just the clearest explanation of an event/rule I know how to give. Writing what I want to read means that I'm going to enjoy myself more, and that means that I'm going to be able to write much more easily, and that makes it more likely I'll finish stories and be able to share them with other people - and then I can find people who like the same things in stories I do, and we all win!
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Annabeth Lynch:
The most constant advice that I really try to keep in mind is that sure, someone else may have written it, but not you. Everyone has unique experiences, and that makes your writing unique. No one can write something the exact way you would. It's my favorite advice I've ever gotten, and I feel that it's always relevant.
Writing by habit is often easier than waiting for the muse. When I feel out of practice in my writing, I find that starting again is an uphill climb, but setting a daily goal helps me get back into the flow. That goal could be just writing at all or a certain (achievable) number of words. That way, I know I've reached the goal not when I've hit a certain quality of writing, but when I sat down at the keys. Exercising my writing muscles (even when I'm afraid to) makes the creativity flow so much better than avoiding the ominous blank page!
[My writing advice is] that you have to finish. And I don't mean that you have to finish everything that you write; I've got easily a dozen stories or more that are either unfinished or never made it past the first draft. But if you're writing with the goal of sharing your stories with an audience, be that via fanfic or original fiction or what have you, I really think one of the best things you can do is learn to finish them. This quote about it in particular is one that I've held close to my heart for years:
“Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don’t talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.” — E. L. Konigsburg
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Sanne Burg:
I think my universal constant is that I write because I want to write, and I create for myself. That means not caring what other people think of the topics I write [about], as long as I'm behind whatever it is I'm writing. (It also means that I know when I'm forcing it and that I need to stop when writing becomes a chore rather than something for fun or a hobby.)
I think the one [piece of writing advice] that has been truest for me, regardless of what I'm working on, is that if something isn't working [I should] step away from it for a bit and go work on something else. Usually if there's a problem, I need to let it percolate in the back of my head instead of banging my head against a wall.
Focus on the feeling. If you can write the feeling so that it's filling you from the tips of your toes to the hair on your head, then you're on the right track. People don't care half as much about the setting and wording as they do about the feeling.
When people say "step inside your character", I think what they mean is "let your character feel and feel along with them until feelings come out on your page and stab your reader's eyeballs until they're feeling right along with you." Everything else can be edited later, as long as you capture and express the emotions.
Fall in love with your characters. If you don't love them, no one else will. And yes, this includes the antagonists and every single side character. And while you're doing that, remember that every single character thinks they are the star of their own narrative, so let them tell you what it is, even if it's not the main storyline. Let them come alive.
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Wonderfully said, everyone! I’m going to add my answer to the question as well, because sometimes, I’ve needed this reminder far more than I’ll admit!
Don’t be afraid to write badly. Or poorly, or lazily. (Take that, Mr. Adverb-Hater.) There is a freedom I never realized before in allowing myself to write “badly:” to overuse certain words, phrases, and even styles as I write my rough draft. When I remember not to focus on the minutiae of a story, I can focus on the bigger problems, and fix the small ones later. Once the words are on the page, they can be fixed, but they have to be put on the page first. Write badly, edit, learn, get better, and write again.
Writing advice as a topic is a mix of controversial and contradictory; all advice should be applied in moderation rather than treated as an endless stream of syrup being poured over a stack of pancakes. (And now I want pancakes…) It’s always all right if advice doesn’t apply to you - but understanding why the advice is given is important. There are other authors out there who might need the advice that isn’t right for you.
When I set out to write this blog post, I had two goals. The first was I wanted to highlight how varied writing advice and tips can be. The second one was for everyone reading it to walk away with one piece of advice that they could hold to heart because it fit them. I accomplished the first, but the second is entirely up to every author reading this.
The one consistent theme through all of this advice comes down to two words: Keep Writing. Whether that’s daydreaming about your story or putting the words down on the page, write.
Keep writing.
Last, but not least, I’ll leave you all with the same question, because I know there are more answers out there that we all would love to hear:
What is one piece of writing/writerly advice you hold as a Universal Constant? That no matter what you are writing, what you are working on, still holds true.
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