Thursday Technicalities: Sentence Structure and Its Impact

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 Ariel Paiement1 Comment

Introduction

This week, we’re going to take a look at sentence structure. This is where we’ll start for our discussions on the grammar side of writing. If you haven’t already, you should go read my last Thursday Technicalities post on grammar and why it’s important. Once you’ve done that, come back and take a look at sentence structure with me in this article.

Types of Sentence Structures

Some of you may have learned this while others may not have. So, I’m going to briefly discuss the types of sentence structures. Then we’ll take a look at how those structures can be used to create various effects in your writing. That’s the really interesting part that everyone’s actually curious about, right?

First on the list, we have the simple sentence. This consists of a subject and a predicate (one subject, one verb). This would include sentences such as “I run.” or “He plays.” These sentences shouldn’t have a conjunction or a dependent clause.

Next on the list, there’s compound. This sentence structure takes two independent clauses (these would be things that stand on their own as simple sentences), and combines them with a coordinating conjunction (ie: and, or, but, not, etc.).

Third on the list, you have your complex sentence. Here, you have your independent clause, but you tack on a dependent clause. It might read something like this: “If Stacy goes to the mall, I will come.” In this instance, If Stacy goes to the mall is dependent on the independent clause, I will come. So, it’s complex.

Last on the list, we have the compound-complex sentence. This one more or less combines the compound and the complex sentence structures, as the name implies. You’ll need at least two independent clauses and a dependent clause to form this type of sentence structure. The sentence contains both conjunctions and subordinators.

For example, “If Stacy goes to the mall, I will come, and Rob will too,” is a compound-complex sentence. If Stacy goes to the mall forms your dependent clause. I will come is an independent clause. And is the conjunction, and Rob will too is another independent clause. If, in this case, is the subordinator as it is introducing the dependent clause.

Using Sentence Structure for Impact

Now for the fun part. It hardly does much good to know what the sentence structure options are if you don’t know how to effectively use them. So, what does sentence structure do to your story?

Pacing

The first very obvious thing it will do to your story has to do with pacing. Imagine you’re working on a scene that’s tense. Maybe it’s a romantic scene where the couple has finally taken a leap and the guy proposed to the girl. Or, maybe it’s an action scene and there’s a car chase going on.

What kind of sentence structure do you think is best for this? What you choose will convey the urgency or take away from it. If you choose to use a lot of long sentences (such as your compound-complex sentence structure), you’ll bog yourself down. It doesn’t read quickly, and the reader starts to lose focus or interest without even knowing why.

Here’s why. Your writing may be good, but if you didn’t choose a sentence structure to convey the energy of the scene, it just feels off to the reader. It doesn’t grab their attention, and it quickly makes them fall asleep when they should be on the edge of their seat with anticipation.

As a general rule of thumb, you want to use more shorter and choppier sentences for fast-paced scenes and longer, smoother ones for the slower, richer scenes. This helps create a pacing that strings the reader along with you as you weave the story for them.

Changing Things Up

One thing that many beginning writers (and even more advanced writers, in some cases) struggle with is repetition in sentence structure. Maybe the writer prefers short, simple sentences or is prone to long-winded compound-complex sentences that span an entire paragraph. Likely, we’ve all seen authors who fall somewhere on that spectrum.

But there’s one thing that repetitiveness assures. Boredom and irritation. Sentence structure helps to alleviate that when used with variety and wisely.

If you’ve had a lot of short, choppy sentences all in a row, it helps the reader if you throw in a longer sentence to give them a minute to catch their breath. Going back to the earlier point about pacing, you don’t want to create the wrong feeling for the piece, but you also don’t want to entirely wear the reader out or put them to sleep.

Whether you’ve had long, elegant sentences or short, simple ones, using another sentence structure opposite of the previously used structure in the right place can help to give readers a chance to rest or keep them from falling asleep.

Sound and Feel

In a word, sentence structure affects your overall aesthetic. How you say things matters, and sentence structure is interwoven in the very fabric of what you’ve said and how.

This means that if you choose the right sentence structure, the piece will flow in the readers’ minds as they read. It will feel natural, not forced. It will be a beautiful thing, a work of art instead of some words slapped hastily on a page.

One thing I recommend to those who are wondering if their sentence structure feels right is to read it aloud. Doing this forces you not to skip words or try to insert things into the text mentally as you read. Your brain does these things automatically when you edit, so it takes time to train it not to. One of the easiest ways to do that is to read it out loud, either to yourself or to someone else.

It may feel awkward at first to do so, but I promise it helps. As a bonus, it helps you catch other problems or mistakes as well. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve caught a spelling mistake or grammar error simply because I was reading something to someone else. Don’t be afraid of it not being perfect. It won’t be. Never will be, in fact. And that’s okay. You’re not the first to write an awful rough draft, and you won’t be the last. It’s a rough draft for a reason.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it for today! I hope this post has proved helpful. Do you have any other ways that sentence structure has affected your writing? If you do, feel free to leave it in the comments below! If you have any questions, you can leave them in the comments as well, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thursday Technicalities: Grammar and Why It’s Important

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Hey, everyone! Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about grammar. I know, I know… It’s one of the least enjoyable things about writing for lots of people. In fact, I can’t think of any other area of editing or critiquing others’ writing where I’ve been told more times not to pay attention to it in favor of critiquing something else.

So, today we’re going to talk about it and why you need it.

Why Does It Matter?

Lots of beginning writers and even ones who have been writing for a long while seem to feel grammar isn’t as important as the story. In one way, they’re right. In another, they’re very, very wrong.

How can it be both at once? Simple. It’s true that a story with impeccable grammar but terrible plot and characters won’t go anywhere. But at the same time, it’s also true that how you use grammar to tell that story will either shoot your publishing dreams in the foot or make your book stand out that much more.

Grammar matters.

Plain and simple. Whether you hate it or not, it matters. If you can’t write proper sentences or follow the rules, you can’t break them. Or at least, you can’t do so in a way that makes anyone want to keep reading. A few grammar mistakes here and there may not cost you much, but if you decide that proofreading and grammar don’t matter, you’re going to pay dearly in readers.

In a way, grammar is the bedrock of your novel. You have to have it to form the structure and the framework that is the story. Sure, it’s not the part of the house everyone notices. It isn’t necessarily flashy or ornate. Maybe it’s not even fun to look at. But it is necessary or the house topples.

Conclusion

Take the time to really understand the basics of grammar. If you don’t already, do so. I understand that it’s difficult and can sometimes be a bit confusing, especially if English isn’t your first language. But if you’re going to write in English (or your native tongue, even) understand the rules for doing so. It’s going to be one more tool in your tool box, and it’s going to make your writing that much more pleasurable to read because the grammar won’t intrude on the story.

It will set the stage, just as it’s supposed to. But it won’t overshadow the actors on that stage because it is done correctly. That is the importance of grammar.

In upcoming Thursday Technicalities posts, we’ll go over some of the grammar rules that can have a big impact on your story. I’ll show you how these aspects can be used as tools to tell your story your way. Until next time, everyone! Have a great rest of your week.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you have them.

Thursday Technicalities: Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 Ariel Paiement1 Comment

Last week, we went over dialogue tags and action beats. This week we’re going to talk formatting and the do’s and don’ts when it comes to dialogue! So let’s get started.

Dialogue Do’s

Do make sure your dialogue is paragraphed properly. Each time the speaker changes, the dialogue of the new speaker starts a new paragraph. Ie:

“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn, Damien.” Lucy crossed her arms.
“Because I can be? Seeing you upset is too much fun to pass up.”

Do use proper punctuation for dialogue tags vs action beats. Ie:

Dialogue tags:
“What do you mean she isn’t here? She promised,” Evan muttered.
or
“I thought you were going on vacation. You,” Jane said, “have a serious issue with sticking to your plans.”
Action beats:
“I don’t understand. You’re leaving?” Maria toyed with the hem of her t-shirt. “Why?”
or
“What’s the problem? You didn’t object before.” Carson leaned against the car door.

The key is that dialogue tags use commas to end the last sentence of dialogue before the tag while action beats use periods.

Do make sure to use action beats and dialogue tags only as needed. They’re not for propping up weak dialogue. For further discussion of this, read my post on Dialogue Tags vs Action Beats.
Do make it sound as natural as possible. You want it to mimic how people speak in real life without including redundant or pointless information. The occasional uh or um is fine, but the key is not to overdo it. We’re simulating real life, not copying it word-for-word.
Do read it out loud! This is the quickest way to catch stiff or otherwise bad dialogue. Your mind might not catch it, but your ear most likely will.
Do realize that dialogue tells us a lot about the character. Make good use of this as a technique to characterize your various characters and differentiate between them.

Dialogue Don’ts

Don’t overdo it with the action beats or dialogue tags. It will make your strong dialogue look weak and the piece overall look like an amateur wrote it.
Don’t use it as a way to tell the reader everything. If you can show it in a scene, do so. Only tell things through dialogue when it’s essential to do so.
Don’t have every character speak in the same way. We should be able to differentiate between at least the main characters by the way they talk and act.
Don’t use single quotation marks for dialogue. As a general rule of thumb, double quotes are the appropriate way to denote something as dialogue.
Don’t italicize or bold individual words in the dialogue for emphasis unless it’s absolutely necessary. And it almost never is because you can usually find a way to word things that will make it clear what is important to the character speaking without the use of italics or bold words.
Don’t have dialogue that stretches over a page in length. As a general rule, readers will lose interest if a character is on a monologue for that long. Besides, pages of dialogue from one character or even a few usually indicates an imbalance in the writing and telling instead of showing, neither of which are good.
Don’t write it exactly how you or someone else would talk. The goal is to write something that sounds like it could’ve been said by a real person without all the extra fluff that often occurs in real, everyday dialogue. Basically, cut all the boring stuff and get straight to the good stuff.
Don’t use semi-colons or colons in dialogue. Just don’t. Dashes or commas work fine. Periods too. But not semi-colons or colons.

Conclusion

These should be enough to get you started on dialogue. There are more advanced concepts that I may discuss later on at some point, but if you follow the rules of thumb given above, you should be alright. Above all, writing good dialogue takes practice. It’s not easy, but it is worth investing your time into. So just spend time listening to how people talk and then translate that into dialogue snippets just to practice.

Have a question I didn’t answer? Feel free to leave it in the comments for me. I’ll do my best to help out!

Thursday Technicalities: Dialogue Tags & Action Beats

February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 Ariel Paiement

Introduction

This week, we’re going to take a look at dialogue. I’ve seen so many writers do this wrong, and to be fair, it’s hard to figure out sometimes. The rules don’t work the same way as regular sentence rules do. And then there’s the dialogue tags and actions beats to worry about!

Assuming a beginner knows how to use a tag or beat and when, punctuation often gets messed up. More often then not, beginning (and even intermediate) writers don’t know what a tag versus a beat is or when to use them, and punctuation is definitely a struggle.

So, for those of you who have always struggled with this topic or are just starting out and need direction, we’ll break it down one piece at a time and make this a little easier.

This week, we’re just going to focus on tags and beats because that’s already enough information to process without adding anything else. Next week, we’ll talk about some other aspects of dialogue that are important.

Tags vs. Beats

To start out, let’s cover tags vs beats. You can’t punctuate your dialogue correctly if you don’t know the difference because they aren’t dealt with the same way.

Beats

Now that we’ve covered what a dialogue tag is and when to use them, let’s take a look at beats. Beats are actions that the speaker performs. They go with the dialogue in the same paragraph because the dialogue and the action belong to the same person.

Consider the same example I used earlier but with action beats instead of dialogue tags:

“Megan.” Dane slammed his book down on the end table. “Megan, could you please calm down and listen? I can explain.”

“Dane slammed his book down on the end table” is the action beat here. Notice that you can use an action beat to break up sections of dialogue if it makes sense to do so.

Just like dialogue tags, beats have their own pitfalls. Using too many can be as detrimental to your dialogue’s pacing as too many dialogue tags are. Let’s look at the example I gave with the dialogue between Mary and Eric again with action beats added in.

“Anna said she couldn’t come.” Mary crossed her arms.
“Why not?” Eric leaned against the kitchen door-frame.
“Because she’s busy. Or so she claims.” She paced the kitchen with a sigh.
“She’s always busy.” Eric ran a hand through his hair.
“I know. But what am I supposed to do?” Mary stopped pacing and faced him. “Drag her out of the apartment?”
“Yes, if that’s what it takes.” Eric pushed away from the doorway and stalked off.

Exhausting, right? It doesn’t read smoothly at all, and it’s honestly an eye sore. So how could we clean this example up and use the right amount of action? The key is to use the action beats to help set the scene. They should be reminders of where the characters are or what they’re doing, but they shouldn’t intrude on your dialogue.

If they are, you’ve got a problem. Either your dialogue is too weak to stand alone, or it’s going to appear weak because you tacked on an action beat unnecessarily.

Let’s look at that example again and see how it might be done better.

“Anna said she couldn’t come.” Mary eyed Eric as he came in from the yard.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s busy. Or so she claims.”
“What’s new? She’s always busy.”
“I know. But what am I supposed to do?” Mary crossed her arms. “Drag her out of the apartment?”
He shrugged. “If that’s what it takes.”

In this case, you no longer use so many action beats, but the effect is much better. The middle sections don’t need the support of action beats because the dialogue conveys the speakers’ emotions and intent on its own. But you do need some clarification of what they’re doing on occasion just to remind the reader that the characters are more than talking heads.

Conclusion

That’s a crash course in dialogue tags versus action beats. For those who are just starting out or aren’t completely solid on this, I hope this has helped. For those of you who already know how this works, next week’s article on dialogue may provide more useful information.

I know this can be somewhat confusing at first, so if anyone has questions, please feel free to drop them in the comments below! I or someone else who’s comfortable with the topic can help answer them for you.

Thursday Technicalities – Formatting for Ebook

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This week, we’re taking a brief break from the discussion about weaving world-building into the story because I recently did a guest post on illustrator_aesthetics’ blog regarding formatting for ebooks. I thought you all might benefit from it, so that’s what this post is regarding. If you want to learn more about the cover design and graphics side of book design, go check out the illustrator_aesthetics’ blog here. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the guest post that I did on her blog!

INTRODUCTION

First of all, I want to thank Anne for inviting me to guest post on Illustrator Aesthetic’s blog. I’ve been asked to share a bit about ebook formatting. There’s quite a bit that goes into it, but let’s just get into it, and I’ll do my best to break it down a piece at a time.

KINDLE REQUIREMENTS

The first order of business is to understand what the requirements are for formatting in the first place. We’ll focus on Kindle’s requirements since it’s the most popular ebook option, but I’ll also go over some of the differences between Kindle’s Mobi files and Epub files for other platforms.

To begin with, Kindle only supports specific display fonts. It won’t display fancy font properly. I’ve been told that some programs can override that, but in my experience, nothing I’ve used has been able to, even if you embed fonts, which I’ll explain in a moment. So when you’re talking about formatting for an ebook, no fancy fonts. You need to use system-based fonts or else install the Kindle plugin for Word (if that’s the program you’re using) to give special effects to fonts. If you don’t use Word, there’s another way to do this, but when you’re doing your initial file formatting, don’t include any fancy fonts.

Second, no page numbers. This probably should be one of those obvious things, but Kindle won’t display page numbers because there’s not a lot of reason for it. The page numbers don’t correspond to the actual page number in the paperback, so just skip this. This also means you should skip page numbers in your table of contents.

Include a table of contents. This allows your Kindle book to give readers an option to navigate through the book conveniently. The table of contents needs to include the hyperlinks to each chapter header. If you’re using Word, you can easily make this work. Other programs will usually have different ways of achieving it, but since Word is what I use, that’s mainly what we’ll cover in this article.

Avoid drop caps and pictures. Kindle just does not like these. You can make it work, but it’s really difficult to get pictures in particular to do what they’re supposed to. Drop caps can be inserted using Amazon’s Kindle Create later on, but in your initial document, avoid them. It’s asking for Kindle to mess your entire manuscript up.

FORMATTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

As I mentioned earlier, I use Microsoft Word, so we’ll mainly focus on that. I also use Scrivener as I’m writing, so I often end up exporting from that program to Word. Unfortunately, the Microsoft version of Scrivener doesn’t allow its users to edit as many settings in exporting as Mac’s version, so it makes it impossible to avoid having to do more formatting adjustments in another program anyway.

When it comes to Word, you’re given a really handy tool for quick formatting in the form of styles. You can create your own custom styles to make formatting easier, and then you can apply those custom styles to your manuscript’s paragraphs. In particular, using headings on the style menu allows you to quickly format your chapter headings so that they show up with the proper hyperlinks on your table of contents.

Beyond that, when you use styles, particularly ones you created, you’re able to make changes to the style itself and update all paragraphs with that style applied all at once. This becomes really handy when you’re dealing with over 300 pages of text. No one wants to spend eight hours going through and trying to catch every error in style.

I will note that using styles does sometimes mess up italics if you have entire sections in italics but don’t have a different style with the italics built in. So, you’ll want to double check your italics to be sure those weren’t changed. If they were, you can fix it, but you may have to mess around with it to make sure that only those sections are changed and not the rest of the paragraphs with that style.

Finally, note that you shouldn’t have any sort of section breaks in a document formatted for Kindle. Kindle and Epub files are meant to be formatted for streamlined reading experiences, so avoid any of those kinds of breaks. Page breaks are fine. Also avoid a bunch of extra blank lines that were put in with the enter key. Kindle typically removes them, so if you need extra space between the top of the page and the chapter header, say, you’ll need to use the “add space before” option to move it down the page.

ADDING EMBELLISHMENTS

When it comes to adding nicer fonts, images, or drop-caps, you can do it one of two ways using Word. Either you can install Kindle’s extension for Word and use that to make chapter headings, drop-caps, and images blend properly, or you can go ahead and use Amazon’s Kindle Create app to do it. Neither is better, per-se, but if you need more options to make last minute adjustments, I’d recommend the extension for Word. If you don’t, Kindle Create might be a little simpler to deal with. The nice thing about Kindle Create is that it makes it easy to save it in a package that can be uploaded straight to KDP and put into Mobi format without the hassle of trying to save pdfs or make things look just right from a document they didn’t convert well.

Make sure you preview the ebook before you hit publish or release for pre-order though. Even with the Kindle Create app, your file still might not convert quite right, so you want to make sure nothing looks off before you publish it.

EPUB VS. MOBI

Your Epub files are often a bit more flexible than Mobi. The formatting requirements are a tiny bit less stringent, and—in my experience—easier to work with when it comes to your drop caps or pictures. They still don’t really allow for a bunch of fancier fonts, but if you save it in either a pdf file or a Word document (which one you use depends on the publishing site), it usually converts a little bit easier than Kindle’s does. Generally, I’ve used epub files for Barnes and Noble’s Nook or for Kobo’s ebook platform.

CLOSING REMARKS

Formatting your manuscript for Kindle or Epub isn’t always simple. Even when you’ve done your best to keep things simple and streamlined, things can still go wrong. You’re probably going to have to adjust things or tweak stuff here and there to make it work just right. But using the tips above can make that job easier, especially if you use Word to format. From personal experience, I know exactly what it’s like to want to tear your hair out because Word’s formatting doesn’t want to mesh well with Kindle or Epub. The tips above help to fix some of those issues.

That’s it for this week’s Thursday Technicalities post. I hope it’s been helpful for you guys, particularly for those who have experienced the nightmares of trying to format for ebooks using Word! At some point, I’ll talk a bit about paperback formatting too because that’s a whole other ball game. But for now, we’ll leave it at this!

Thursday Technicalities: Weaving World-Building Into Your Story – Through Your Character’s Eyes

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Introduction

This week, we’re going to talk about weaving world-building into the story through your character’s eyes. There are multiple ways to go about weaving your world into the story, but one of the best ways is through your character. So let’s talk about how.

dISCOVERIES

The first way you can go about weaving your world into the story is to allow your readers to discovery it alongside your characters. When you have characters who haven’t experienced the world before, it’s a lot more acceptable to show more of the world in a way that’s overt instead of hidden in the lines between the action. Characters’ confusion over things in their world suddenly make sense because they don’t know anything about what’s around them to begin with.

Interactions

What if you don’t have a character who’s new to the world just like the reader is? You can still world-build and weave that building into the story. One great method for this is to develop the reader’s understanding of the world via interactions between your world and your character.

This method strongly goes back to the idea that your world is its own character with its own personality. No one person or world will interact the same way with each other. This method requires you to know a few things. You need to know your character, know your world, and know how your character views the world. These three determine how your character and your world will interact together.

Interactions can happen a lot of ways. It can happen through the character’s meeting with various creatures in the world. Or, maybe your character is a healer and spends much of their time gathering plants and supplies from nature. They might be an adventurer who has to brave the elements and the difficulties of terrain to reach their goal. Really, the possibilities are endless and allow you plenty of room to show the world to your reader. But the key with this method is that you should treat it the same way you treat an interaction between two characters. You won’t info dump on the reader because an interaction between two characters only reveals bits and pieces of both individuals, not everything. Instead, you’ll reveal only what is relevant to the interaction/scene and the story as a whole. Reveal what needs to be revealed then and no more.

The one difference between this method and an interaction between characters is that you may reveal things about the world that aren’t necessarily serving a specific purpose to the plot. At times, you may choose to reveal things about the world in interactions simply to make the world itself feel richer and more alive or even to reveal something about the person interacting with the world.

Happenings

The final main method for weaving world-building in has more to do with sentence-level inclusions and events. These may not be interactions with your main characters specifically, but they typically affect the character in some way or another. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be seeing it as the readers since you can’t show us what your viewpoint characters don’t see unless you’re using omniscient POV.

With this method, your world-building will be less obvious. It might be a common phrase that’s used by the inhabitants of the world or a common creature that is seen all over the place. It might be some sort of distant report of a creature terrorizing villages on the outskirts of a kingdom. Maybe it’s a brief mention of terrain in an area a character is occupying. One way or another, this world-building method usually doesn’t involve intrusive or overt mentions of the world. This is more subtle and is like the spice added to a dish. It makes everything read better, but your reader won’t notice the individual additions: only the whole of the writing’s flavor.

Conclusion

This type of world-building is more complex than what we often think of as world-building, but it’s also vastly more effective than what we usually see in most writing these days. It takes practice and instinct to do this well, but the instincts surrounding what type of weaving to use and how can be developed the more you write using the methods I’ve given here and in the previous post on this topic.

Thursday Technicalities: World Building Tools – Weaving Together Plot and World

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Introduction

This seemed like a fitting place to begin a new series on Thursday Technicalities since we talk about world building tools on Saturday Setups and since I was just discussing where I learned most of what I know in my newsletter this week. So, yes, we’re going to talk about more world building tools, but this time, we’re going to start examining ways to really weave world building into your story and how you can bring your world to life.

A lot goes into world building writing. There’s lots of room for failure, but it’s not always so easy to succeed at this. Sure, there are lots of ways to weave world building into the story, lots of ways to show your reader this world you’ve built, and lots of ways to world build and many more tips for world building. But more often than not, those methods aren’t used by authors. Worlds either end up flat because the author decided they wanted to flavor their romance/adventure/thriller/etc with fantasy instead of flavoring their fantasy with those other things, or they end up flat because the author didn’t weave the world into the story well and ended up info-dumping, which drives readers nuts. Neither way is a pretty way to die. So, let’s start into how you can avoid this.

Beginnings

For world building to truly work well, you have to understand that what you choose to do outside the story will probably be way more than what you’ll ever show in the story if you take the conventional approach. Now, it doesn’t have to be that way, but usually it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But while a series might have room for you to show your reader a picture of your whole world and all the cool things you put into it, a single book will not. This means that when you’re actually considering your world building in light of your novel, you need to do so with the very beginning of the book: when you start working on that kernel of an idea known as your plot.

There are really two, maybe three, ways this happens.

First, you may have a plot but not necessarily the world. In this case, you’re able to start building the world and the plot together. If you’re taking this approach, you can use an approach that Holly Lisle’s world-building course calls SANE world building. You build what you need when you need it and no more (unless you’re just doing it for fun). This approach is good if you’re the sort of person who feels like you can’t start writing until you have every detail of the world nailed down. You’ll never get anywhere doing that, so approaching world building writing as a part of building your plot can help you to tie the two together without going insane or never writing a single word of the story on paper.

Second, you may have the idea for a world, but not a story. This can happen to those of us who love world building writing because we conceive an idea for some sort of power system, magic system, or other world-based structure, but we don’t necessarily have the characters and the stories that are going to populate it. However, in this instance, the world building itself often gives rise to the story. When I was doing my undergrad in accounting, a friend and I came up with a story idea and were co-writing. However, she was taking a long time to do anything on her end, and I was bored, so I started doing world building writing for a bunch of random things and history-related stuff for the world. (Yeah, I know. Nerdy. But I was in accounting, and that was really, really boring.) Long story short, as I was developing the history, I ended up with the idea for Rith’s Disciple, which led to a vague desire to fill out the history following it. When I joined Wattpad’s ONC contest, that desire combined with a really good prompt resulted in Bane of Ashkarith.

Finally, though perhaps not always as common, sometimes you have the idea for a world and a story idea, which leads to further stories. This happened with Bane of Ashkarith. I already had the world established, as I mentioned above, but the history I’d developed for the world gave rise to Bane of Ashkarith and the rest of the series that I’m working on. All of the stories are literally just histories of the famous people from the world’s past. Readers wouldn’t necessarily pick up on that right away unless they knew me and had read about the background behind the series, but because of the combination of the idea for a world and a story together, I ended up with an entire series. Nice when that happens, right?

Expanding our Understanding

I think the other important world building tip for world building enthusiasts (and those who hate it too) to realize is this: world building is more than creating languages, building races, and making up fantastical creatures or cool tech. It’s way more.

Have you ever thought about how strange it would be to us if metal striking stone made a hissing sound instead of a clink? Or what if, when you stepped on grass in the summer, it crunched like gravel but stepping on gravel was soundless? What if the sky was purple, not blue?

When you’re creating a world, building it includes little details. These details can be split into three areas, really. Set, objects that act as props for the set, and mechanisms/methods by which things work.

tHREE aREAS OF pLOT-oRIENTED wORLD-bUILDING

Set is pretty straightforward. Having a sky that’s purple instead of blue is a set item. It sets your world apart from others. Lots of things could be part of the set. Anything from the color of the sky to the way water looks lapping on the sand to the sand itself could be a part of set. To clarify, set is different from your prop objects in that props are things people bring onto the stage. They’re objects like pens, candles, food on a table, or the table itself. Your set is anything that occurs there naturally like trees, bushes, deer paths, bodies of water, and so on.

Your props and objects are just as varied as set. But they’re also a part of world building writing, something Holly Lisle points out in her course on the topic. People don’t often think that props are as important to the stage you’re building for the story as the story or the big flashy fantasy creatures being installed, but they are. The objects around us say a lot about who we are and why we are the way we are. They are our insight into those around us and even into the world. What is there can sometimes be as important as what’s not. If everyone uses candles and not flashlights, that tells you something about the world. If stone doesn’t exist much of anywhere, but people build everything with wood, it says a lot about the set without you ever having to come out and say anything. Objects can also help us to understand the more immaterial mechanisms and rules in place surrounding the world. Those rules have to act upon an object, person, or part of the set. So we can often see them in action and learn those rules of order by observing what they act upon. This can help us to avoid info-dumping or becoming too obtrusive with our world.

Objects carry a lot of weight in the world, though. In a story, if you show us an object, particularly if you show it to us independent of any human interaction, we’ll assume it’s important. Now, maybe you put it there intentionally to tell us what kind of person occupies the space it’s in. Or, maybe it plays some larger role in the story as a whole. Only you know that and can decide. But, the fact remains that if you put it there, it needs to serve a purpose. If it doesn’t serve one, don’t put it in. That’s what leads to overwriting, purple prose, and bored or confused readers. None of those are good, so just don’t do it.

Mechanisms and rules are far less obvious than the first two, but no less important. Mechanisms and rules are what tell us that on Earth, when you drop a coin on a concrete surface, it clinks or gives off a ringing noise. It doesn’t purr because that would be breaking the rules. Mechanisms tell us that healthy grass should bend under our feet and spring back when we step on it in the summer time. It isn’t going to turn into a bunch of deadly spikes and stab the bottoms of our shoes or our feet. If we didn’t have mechanisms and rules to keep things organized and somewhat predictable, then everything would devolve into chaos. Your world is no different in this regard.

The main method for showing mechanisms and rules, however, is different than it was for the first two categories of practical, plot-oriented world-building. For mechanisms and rules, you generally end up showing them when they’re in use on objects, interacting with the set, or affecting a character. They’re seen subtly, but even though most readers don’t immediately pick up on it all the time, they’ll expect it to be a trend unless you’ve made it clear what just happened was really weird.

For example, in the first chapter of Pathway of the Moon, I show my main character, Leo, scaling a wall using shadows to stick himself to the wall. He proceeds to do the same on the way back out of the castle after a successful execution of his target. This sets a precedent or a rule for his magic. Shadows allow those who can use them to stick themselves to different surfaces. I didn’t represent it as an odd thing or something that other shadow users couldn’t utilize, so the reader will anticipate that it’s normal for the world and the character, and if I use it again, they won’t find it odd. These kinds of encounters help to flesh out and build the world for the readers without them even noticing or realizing that you have.

Conclusion

In upcoming posts, I’ll go into some more specific writing tips for slipping world building into your story and talk about the techniques. The point of this post was simply to help you to understand some basics on how you can begin weaving the two together. It is by no means an exhaustive thesis on the subject. I hope that it’s been useful to you, and I hope you’ll stick with me as we explore some of the various ways myself and other authors utilize to develop worlds that readers can delve into and enjoy in their own rights because of their individuality and fresh perspectives.

Thursday Technicalities: Self-Editing

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Last week, we talked about the types of edits that can be acquired when you’re ready for an editor. But what if you can’t afford an editor or just want to make sure the edit will take less time so you don’t have to pay as much? As an editor, I always encourage people to get an editor before publishing, particularly self-publishing, but I also understand that not everyone has the money to do that. So what can you do if you’re in that situation? You can self-edit.

Basics of Self-Editing

To begin with, let me say this. Self-editing means nothing if you don’t have a clue how to do it. This is why I recommend that authors find an editor who can help them in this area. Why? Because frankly, most authors can’t do both. There’s no shame in that. They’re not bad writers because of it, certainly. I’ve helped out plenty of people who had great ideas and even an okay execution of the idea, but they didn’t know how to edit it so that it would truly come to life. So, chances are pretty high that you may not have any idea how to edit, even if you know your way around writing a story well enough.

If you’re in that situation, again, there’s no reason for embarrassment. It’s a normal situation to be in. You should, however, take the time to learn about editing. I know it takes time and that time is often in short supply for all of us, but self-editing means you are going to be your own editor, and whether or not readers can really enjoy the story depends entirely upon not just how well you write but also how well you can edit.

This post can’t possibly cover everything you need to know about self-editing. There’s simply far too much to cover, and you’re not going to be able to learn it all overnight. You should approach this with the basic understanding that self-editing is your doing the same things an editor would do. Since that requires a lot of knowledge, the rest of the post will be going over resources you can use to learn how to be a better self-editor. You have to learn and practice editing the same way you had to learn and practice writing. The two are related but separate competencies, and they require very different mindsets and knowledge bases.

Resources

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King: This one is a really good book to start with if you have no self-editing experience. It’s at the top of the list because it’s more modern than book two on the list but still covers a good mix of basic and advanced topics. It’s well-organized and moves from simple to complex.
Strunk and White’s Elements of Style by Strunk and White: You should read this if you read nothing else. It’s a bit drier than Browne and King’s book listed above, but it’s just as relevant, and you’ll learn a lot, particularly about the grammar and style portions of editing that every editor should know. I recommend it to both authors and to those asking me for editing advice. For all its dryness, the book is still indispensable, and once you’ve read through it once, you can continue to use it as a reference while editing.
Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell: This comes from a bit more of a writing perspective based on the pieces I’ve looked through for reference. I’m reading through it in its entirety now, and it’s packed with useful examples, information, and pieces of advice from editors and authors who have experience in the field. Bell also has a pretty good sense of humor, in my opinion, and it comes out in the way he says things or the selections he chooses for examples. This one’s definitely not a terribly difficult read either.
Woe is I: A Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O’Conner: I haven’t personally read this one, but it’s a national best-seller recommended by editors for people looking to self-edit. It focuses more on the sentence-level edit, something every book benefits from but often doesn’t get. Welcome to the world where you agonize over every page, paragraph, sentence, and word in your book. Fun stuff, right? In all seriousness though, this book is well-known for being a humorous, fun approach to teaching you what you need to know about grammar and sentence-level edits.
Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection by Shani Raja: This is an online course with Udemy written by an ex-Wall Street Journal editor. I’ve gone through almost half the course, and it’s been one of the most valuable resources I’ve ever come across. It’ll teach you how to do a deep edit like some of the world’s top editors do. The course example and practice assignment focuses mainly on non-fiction, but I’ve found that the principles are fairly easy to apply to fiction of any sort as well.

Conclusion

I hope the resources I’ve provided help you out in your self-editing journey. It’s not an easy area to master, frankly, but the resources above have been some of the most useful ones I’ve come across in my time both freelance editing and self-editing. Whatever you choose to do, I wish you best of luck with your piece!

Thursday Technicalities – Types of Edits

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Introduction

Editing. Doesn’t everyone just love it? Well, some of us do. If you’re like me, one of your favorite parts of the writing process is actually the rewriting and editing stage, at least when there’s not a huge time crunch. I know, I know. It’s weird. Most writers really can’t stand this process, and most writers don’t have a clue how to go about it. Now, most of us are capable enough of catching the stray grammar error or glaring plot hole, but many times, writers–and even published authors–don’t know what it takes to make their book publish-worthy material. That’s the job of their editor.

Which begs the question. How do you know what kind of edit your work needs if you’ve never done this or if you haven’t worked with an editor before? I’m glad you asked because that’s what today’s discussion is all about! Let’s get right into it.

If you’re a beginning writer, chances are you need a deep edit. A deep edit goes through several stages and looks at everything from story structure and big picture stuff to the gritty details of sentence structure and word choice. This is a quite extensive edit, and most freelance editors I’ve spoken to specialize in specific areas, so a deep edit from one editor may be difficult to achieve. This means that, often, a beginner writer may need to find two or even three editors to look at the piece. This obviously isn’t the most fun thing to work with, but if you can find one or two editors who are able to compliment each other’s skill sets to give your piece a well-rounded edit, that’s usually easiest. For those of you in this situation, the key is to look for an editor or editors who note that they’re good with content editing, structural editing, style editing, and presentation editing. For fiction, these areas may not be presented exactly with these titles, so read on to find out what kinds of things fall under each so you have a better idea of what you’re looking for.

If you’re not a beginning writer, you probably know what areas you struggle with frequently. Chances are you don’t struggle with all of them, though you may struggle with more than one. So I’m going to break down the stages of deep editing for both you and the beginners wanting to know what each stage entails. This way, you will have a better idea of what skill set you need to find in an editor to give your book an edit best fit for it.

Content Edit

A content edit is the first step a deep editor takes in editing a piece. In fiction, a content edit is going to take a look at the purpose of the piece, the genre it’s in, and what it contains. The point of this level of editing is essentially to ensure that every major point in the book or story revolves around the purpose, genre, and main idea of the story. This kind of edit gets rid of scenes that might be unnecessary or repetitions of previous scenes that made the point already. It will eliminate rambling and make the piece more concise. It will also focus on adding anything that’s missing. Practically speaking, a content edit is focusing mostly on the plot of the story in fiction and making sure that the book’s scenes make that plot work from beginning to end.

Structure Edit

With this type of edit, the editor is going to shift gears to look at the angle and narrative structure. Depending on the work, there may not be any particular angle, but there will be a narrative structure. This type of editing will make sure that each point in the narrative structure is ordered elegantly and works smoothly with the others.

Style Edit

Here, we start getting into the finer details. A style editor is going to look over the work to remove clutter in your scenes, paragraphs, and sentences. This edit fine tunes and refines the work so that the narrative style really shines. This one is, perhaps, one of the more difficult edits to do because it calls for someone who will really dig down into the piece to look at things like word choices, sentence structure, and pacing using more technical avenues like paragraph and sentence lengths. Having done this before, I can attest to how much work this is. Sometimes, it can be a hard call on whether something is clutter or necessary and whether to use one word instead of another in a specific sentence. However, these changes can make a huge difference in a piece, so if you can’t do this yourself, find someone who can.

Please note that an edit like this doesn’t focus on fixing grammatical errors or presenting things in a clean, professional way on the page. That’s saved for a presentation edit. What this edit will do is improve your narrative style, make your ending resonate with the reader, make your middle flow from paragraph to paragraph seemingly effortlessly, and make your beginning arresting to the reader. If that’s what your book is missing, this is the type of edit you need, so find an editor who specializes in this area.

Presentation Edit

Last editing stage, everyone! In this stage, your editor will worry about the nitty-gritty details of grammar and punctuation. They’re going to look for those pesky misplaced commas or fix misspellings. They’ll read it through to make sure that any leftover sentences that might trip readers up are removed, and they’ll trim the sentences you don’t need if necessary. This stage cleans up your manuscript and makes it ready for presenting in its final form to your reader. If you’re able to do the first three types of edits on your own, it may still pay off to have someone do this sort of edit for a piece. As humans, we’re prone to error, so having someone else take a quick look through our work to clean up any missed problems is usually a very wise decision.

Conclusion

I hope this has been informative for you all! Next week, we’ll start talking about some of the specifics on knowing where your work is at, knowing when to self-edit, and knowing who to hire when you need an editor. This area is one that I see a lot of uncertainty about, particularly with writers new to the editing process, and a lot of mistakes can be made. My hope is that, in the upcoming weeks, I can take some of the stress and confusion out of the process for you!

Thursday Technicalities – Sorting It Out: Constructive or Destructive?

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

We talked about how to find critiquers and beta-readers as well as about how to figure out what kind you need, but let’s talk about one last important thing regarding this area before we move on to a new discussion. You have to know how to sort out the constructive feedback you get from the destructive feedback. So let’s dive in and talk about each.

Constructive Criticism

We’ll start with constructive feedback or criticism. This is, obviously, the kind you want, but sometimes it can be hard to tell whether something is constructive or not. Not everyone who offers destructive feedback is a troll or someone who just hates you and your book. Many times, they’re very well-intentioned and think they’re helping. So, how do you know the difference in those cases?

First, constructive feedback is going to be relevant. It will be commentary on areas that don’t fit the needs of your audience, things that are just outright incorrect (usually grammatically), or areas that aren’t clear. This by no means an exhaustive list, but typically, constructive criticism is going to focus more on what is wrong than specific ways to fix it. The ways of fixing it come as you have a discussion with the individual offering the feedback. While that individual may offer some ideas for how you might go about fixing something, they may not always know, so more questions are typically necessary to figure out what the best solution for the problem will be.

Please note that we’re talking about people doing more of a high-level review of your book. They themselves may not be writers, and they very rarely are editors. You want your critique partner or beta-reader to be someone from your audience, not someone looking at your book for how to make it read like a best-seller. An editor, if you have chosen well, will know enough about writing and, ideally, your genre to know whether or not something will work to make your fiction marketable, not just a bunch of text you put together in a semi-useful way. The editor does a different job from a critique partner or beta-reader, so you won’t handle that interaction exactly the same way.

Second, constructive feedback will be specific. What do I mean by that? Well, you’re trying to make sure everything in your book is clear, engaging, and focused. A reader will notice points in the book where this isn’t the case, and if you’re getting good feedback from a beta-reader or critiquer, they will too, and they will make note of it. They will not offer you a general, vague opinion of the book. That’s something a general reader might do, but it’s not much use to you if you need to fix anything.

Finally, constructive feedback will be an honest assessment. And by honest, I mean frank about the good and the bad. Constructive feedback has to recognize both what you’re doing well and what you’re not so that you can keep the good and fix the bad. If all it points out is the good stuff or only the bad, you’re imbalanced in your perspective. Only good things will result in an inflated view of how good the book really is. But overwhelming commentary on all of the bad undermines your confidence, causes you to write poorly, and results in you–most often–changing even those things that weren’t bad to start. The person offering the feedback will, of course, have their own biases, but you want to find someone who will offer their opinion in addition to clear feedback on things that are obviously working well or working poorly. You don’t want them to try to change the entire point of the story, but you do want them to help you see what you may not.

Destructive Feedback

In most ways, destructive feedback is the opposite of constructive feedback. So we’ll just briefly go over what signs to watch for with destructive feedback. Destructive feedback will often be feedback that tries to change the heart of the story. It isn’t correcting a problem that actually is real. Instead, it’s just feedback on everything the reader personally didn’t like about the book and an essay on what they would write if they were you. That’s clearly not helpful, and if you follow that kind of advice, your book will change with every reader. You’ll end up destroying anything that was good about the book to start.

Destructive feedback is also feedback that’s irrelevant, too general, or unbalanced. Any of these can derail a book and the entire story you were trying to tell. Allowing someone who predominantly offers this kind of feedback to influence your decision-making process is extremely unwise.

A Word of Caution

Please know that many people give a mix of the two kinds of feedback. Unless they really just hated the story, they’re probably going to have some feedback that is helpful and constructive with some feedback that is destructive mixed in there as well. It’s just how this sort of thing tends to work because everyone has different ideas of what makes a good book. Not everything you have will be their preference, even if it might not be a problem. That’s why getting a few different people to critique or beta-read is extremely useful for writers.

In the end, unless someone is only giving you destructive feedback, don’t toss them out as a possible option simply because you see some destructive feedback in the mix. Be fair and be realistic. If you were reviewing something for someone, you’d have a mix of feedback too. And if you were the one doing it, you wouldn’t think twice. A mix of feedback would be acceptable. So, afford your critiquers and beta-readers the same leniency you’d give yourself here. Just make sure that, when you look at the feedback, you sort through to see what you should keep and what you should toss.

Conclusion

That’s it for today’s Thursday Technicalities. I hope this has been helpful for you all! This also concludes the section on critiquers and beta-readers. On upcoming Thursday Technicalities, we’ll be discussing editors and the principles surrounding the editing process. I hope to see you all join me for those posts as I know this is an area that many authors are unsure about, particularly when it comes to self-published authors. Until then, have a great week!