Writers in the Storm

Julie Glover

Whether the manuscript is a historical romance, an urban fantasy, or a contemporary teen novel, I've learned to expect certain errors when copyediting. They are so common and understandable that they appear in most manuscripts—including my own.

It's a good idea for writers to look for these mistakes themselves, before handing the manuscript over to a copyeditor. Why?

• Mistakes can slip by even the keenest copyeditor's eye, so catching them ourselves means less likelihood of errors in the final product.
• Some editors charge by the hour or offer clean manuscript discounts, so you can save money by doing a bit more prep work yourself.
• We can improve our own mastery of language and grammar, making us better prose writers in the future.

With that in mind, let's get to the top ten corrections I commonly make. (And be sure to read to the end, because the last one is the most prevalent!)

Two Spaces vs. One Space

If you ever used a typewriter, then you learned to put two spaces between sentences. That break was important when each letter was the same size, but with the use of word processors and scalable fonts, those two spaces are neither necessary nor visually appealing. Every style guide recommends and every prominent publisher uses a single space between sentences.

Habits die hard though. Even if you've switched to that single space, your muscle memory might slide in an extra space now and then. You might be surprised how many have gotten into your book without your knowledge.

Run the Find & Replace function in whatever software you're using. Type two spaces into the Find, one space into the Replace, and Replace All.

Spaces at Beginning of Paragraph

Did you notice the extra space at the beginning of this paragraph?

Those extra spaces tend to show up at the beginning of paragraphs a few times in most manuscripts I've seen, and they may appear even more obvious in print.

Use that Find & Replace function again, this time typing in the formatting character for a paragraph break (^p in Word) followed by a space. Then put only the paragraph break in the Replace box (^p) and Replace All.

Extraneous Words

So we often begin sentences with extraneous words. And while that's okay now and again, we can overuse those beginnings. Then the flow begins to bog down, or character dialogue sounds too much alike across characters.

The words I began each of the sentences with in the prior paragraph—so, and, then—are some of the most common culprits. But you may have your own repetitive sentence openers.

Becoming aware of this tendency is the best long-term fix, so you can self-correct as you write or in early edits. However, you can also scan the manuscript's left margin, looking for those common words and then choosing which ones to keep and which ones to delete.

Homophones

Homophones are words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings. Because they sound the same, we often confuse one word's spelling for another. Want an example of homophones? Here you go.

Other common homophones include:

• passed/past
• brake/break
• die/dye
• hear/here
• road/rode
• steal/steel
• to/too/two

Different writers tend to confuse different homonyms. Knowing your own I mix up those words tendency can help you know which words to run a search for later to make sure you used the spelling you intended to use.

Comma with then

Let's look at a familiar sentence construction and ask whether it needs a comma:

• Susie shifted her weight from one foot to another then sighed.

What if the sentence was:

• Suzie sighed then shifted her weight from one foot to another.

In both circumstances, what's really meant is and then. That is, two separate activities occurred sequentially, first one and then the other. Accordingly, both sentences should have a comma before the word then.

When then is used as a shorthand for and then, a comma usually precedes the adverb....

She filled in the last square in Sunday’s puzzle, then yawned.

Chicago Manual of Style 6.23. See also 6.57.

Now, not all thens require a comma! For instance:

• Then she headed to the beach.
• Tests were then handed out.
• She moved closer and then kissed him.

But it doesn't take long to run a search for the word then and check for commas where they should be.

Titles

Let's say you have a character who is a sheriff and resides in Badland County. Is he the Sheriff of Badland County or the sheriff of Badland County? What if you address him directly or by name?

Titles can be difficult, whether it's sheriff, queen, or master of the third realm. But here's the quick scoop to getting it right:

• When referring to the office alone, use lowercase: I called the sheriff. I listened to the queen. I bowed to the master.
• When referring to the official office title, use uppercase: Charles was elected Sheriff of Badland County. She was now Queen of Cluetopia. I had a crush on the Master of the Third Realm.
• When addressing the person solely by title, use uppercase: Hey, Sheriff! Tea for you, Queen? Wassup, Master?

Sometimes your story will dictate a different approach for a particular title. For instance, in our Muse Island series, my coauthor and I chose to capitalize the m in Muse whenever referring to an individual. However, that was a conscious style choice to indicate the authority and personality of this magical energy source.

If you have characters with titles, go hunting for them and make sure you use the proper capitalization. If you make a different style choice, be consistent.

Words Spelled Two Ways

These are not homophones but rather words with the same meaning and two accepted spellings. In this case, it doesn't matter which one you choose, as long as you use the same one throughout the book.

Some examples:

• adviser/advisor
• ax/axe
• barbecue/barbeque
• donut/doughnut
• leaped/leapt
• whiskey/whisky

You can find lists of words spelled two ways here, here, here, or by searching the internet. See which ones you use often and run searches for those words with both spellings, double-checking for consistency.

Direction vs. Region

Heading southwest isn't the same as heading to the Southwest. Cardinal and ordinal direction words (e.g., north, northeast) can be used for direction or region. But if it's a direction, it's lowercase, and if it's a region, it's uppercase.

For example, if penning a novel set in my home state, I could write:

We left West Texas and headed east on I-10. The road turned south taking us toward Central Texas and a fresh start.

Consider the regions of your chosen setting, whether factual or fictional, and make sure you capitalize accordingly.

Oxford Comma

When it comes to the Oxford, or serial, comma, I ask for and follow my client's preference. For myself...

Either way, a writer should be consistent and clear. That is, if you're going with the Oxford comma, make sure to use it throughout. If you're not going with the Oxford, be consistent in leaving it out unless doing so confuses your message.

• With Oxford comma: We ate toast, butter, and jam.
• Without Oxford comma: We ate toast, butter and jam.
• Needs the comma no matter what: We ate toast and jam, bacon and sausage, and pancakes and syrup.

Now you're hardly going to search for every comma or every and to check for consistent usage, but a fair number of writers haven't decided which approach to use. Pick one, use it as much as you remember to, and inform your copyeditor of your preference.

(Though if you want to do it right, go Oxford comma. ~wink~)

Who Is Speaking?

What's the number one thing I write over and over in the margin of manuscripts? "I don't know who's talking here."

In dialogue that goes back and forth or gets interrupted by action, internal dialogue, or exposition, it's easy to lose track of who's speaking. Let's look at an example.

Twila sat at the table. "I ordered a bottle of wine at the bar."
Craig smiled. "We can probably get through a bottle."
"The bottle's for me, mister. Get your own."
"Long day, huh?"
"Long life."
When she wasn't overworking, Twila was complaining about her schedule. Sometimes, she did both.
The waiter delivered the bottle, two glasses, and poured.
"So I guess this means we are sharing, even if that wasn't the original plan," she said.

With that last sentence, it could have been Twila or Craig speaking. You don't know until the very end! But if you simply move "she said" to earlier in the sentence:

The waiter delivered the bottle, two glasses, and poured.
"So," she said, "I guess this means we are sharing, even if that wasn't the original plan.

Scan your manuscript for large chunks of dialogue and read through those sections. See if there's any place where the speaker might not be clear. If needed, move the dialogue tag or cue earlier to avoid confusion.

Finding and correcting these mistakes will take additional time at first, but over time, your prose will be cleaner and clearer as you write and edit.

---

Julie Glover is an award-winning author of mysteries and young adult fiction. She also writes supernatural suspense under the pen name Jules Lynn.

She is currently working on book five in that series, which begins with Mark of the Gods.

When not writing, she collects boots, practices rampant sarcasm, and advocates for good grammar and the addition of the interrobang as a much-needed punctuation mark.

Image credits: Lorenzo Cafaro and Gerd Altmann from Pixabay, Polena Zimmerman from Pexels

By Janice Hardy
@Janice_Hardy

A shallow scene keeps readers from diving into the story.

Years ago, when I was editing my debut novel for my agent (The Shifter for those curious), I struggled to fix a few weak areas in the beginning. I kept looking at ways to make it more.

More exciting. More tense. More mysterious.

But it kept getting less interesting.

After a few back and forths with ideas and outlines, my agent and I got on the phone to hash out directions to go. I suggested even more “more” ideas, then she stopped and dropped the best advice she ever gave me.

“Don’t go wider—go deeper.”

My problem was, I kept trying to add “stuff” to the story when the story was working overall. It was just a few scenes here and there that needed tweaking. Adding things that didn’t support what I’d already written didn’t work.

It wasn’t until I started drilling down into my themes, my premise, and my scenes that I found the right path to take to fix my “needs a little work” beginning. That path led to a three-book deal with Harper Collins, so I’m glad I listened.

“Going deeper” is all about pulling out the good stuff in your story.

It’s digging into the characters’ emotions, their goals, their fears, their hopes and dreams, and then taking advantage of it to make their lives miserable. Until you give them that happy ending of course. We’re not monsters (unless we write horror, then that’s a perk).

We all want rich scenes that grab a reader, so here are five ways to go deeper with your scenes and provide those extra layers of awesome.

1. Use Subtext to Suggest Things Unsaid

What a character isn’t saying is often more fascinating than what’s being said. Your subtext can not only add interesting layers to a scene, but can also help with description. The character’s body language and gestures will mean something, and won’t be an empty smile or brush of the hair.

• Are your characters avoiding a topic of conversation?
• Is there additional meaning lurking under a conversation they are having?
• Does their body language not match what they’re saying?
• Are you suggesting there’s more to what’s going on than the obvious?

If your characters are upfront and 100% honest all the time, you’re missing chances to create tension, mystery, and conflict in that scene.

2. Drop Hints of Things to Come (or Things Hidden)

Hide clues in plain sight, so when they become important later, readers have already seen them. For example, you might know that vase in the foyer is the key to who killed Grandma, so a simple moment when Cousin Joe bumps into it and it clinks is all you need to suggest there’s something inside that vase. The reveal of the hidden key at the end will feel inevitable and surprising instead of out of the blue, and you’ll look like a genius.

It’s also a great way to bring your setting and world into the action, and avoid infodumps and heavy descriptive passages.

• Can you drop any odd comments into conversations?
• Can anyone discover strange things?
• Can clues be sitting on shelves or desks and be part of the general “room description” with no special focus on them?
• Can the characters interact with something in a benign or causal way that they’ll need later on?

Looking at what’s in a scene and what the characters use is also a useful way to take what’s already there and give it more meaning later. For example, if you need a weapon in Chapter Fourteen, show the protagonist near or using a garden trowel in Chapter Three.

3. Use the Setting Instead of Just Walking Through it

There’s a lot of inherent conflict in a setting, as well as thematic opportunities. The right setting can change a character’s emotions, which can make them behave differently or make mistakes they ordinarily wouldn’t. If you need to knock a character off-kilter, the right setting could be a way to do it.

• Are you putting the characters in the worst possible place for something to happen?
• Is there a better setting that adds to the theme or makes an internal conflict harder?
• Does the setting foreshadow anything?
• How does the setting emotionally affect the characters?

If your scene could happen anywhere and nothing in it changes, then it’s not serving your story as well as it could.

4. Embrace All the Senses, Not Just Sight and Hearing

Creating a rich and vibrant scene puts readers in that scene, and gives you a chance to write something beyond the same old vanilla lines we all use. For example, smell is connected to memory, and memories can evoke emotions, so it’s a handy trigger if you need your character to remember something at the right time. Textures can also add a whole layer to a character struggling to find their way in the dark.

• What smells might add to the scene?
• Do any trigger a memory?
• Is there food to taste?
• What interesting textures are there to touch?
• Can one sense suggest the opposite of what the rest of the senses are saying?

Don’t forget to look at the whole scene and imagine how a character might experience it. Unusual descriptions from non-typical senses bring originality to the story and the writing.

5. Make Connections to the Rest of the Novel

Scenes shouldn’t happen in a vacuum, and they’re stronger when they connect to other moments in the story. This is particularly useful when plotting, and can make the novel feel tight and well-crafted. Maybe that throwaway line could be a clue, or a walk-on character might play a bigger role, or a secret has farther-reaching consequences that expected.

• What scenes might mirror another scene or event?
• Can you make a casual comment link back to something that suggests it’s not casual at all?
• Are there any details that shed light on a character’s past?
• Can you combine any minor characters into one that influences the story?

After your first draft is done, look at the little details, throwaway lines, and small moments in your story and see if any would work well together. If you have any plot holes you need to fill, or subplots to create or flesh out, these little details and moments could be the perfect fix.

Deep scenes lead to deep stories readers can get lost in. 

It doesn’t take a lot of work to craft a rich scene. Even a few lines can add depth and provide new layers of interest for your readers.

How deep do you go in your scenes? Do you have examples of places where an author dove to the perfect level of "deep?"

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

by Karen DebonisSipping my coffee in the dining room one recent morning, I checked my email, and my life and identity changed with a click.

“Michael,” I yelled to my husband in the kitchen. “I got an offer of publication.”

He joined me in the dining room, and I pointed to my computer screen and read aloud:

"Thank you for submitting your work, Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived, to Apprentice House Press. We have reviewed your manuscript and feel it is a great fit for our press. Is the manuscript still available for publication? If so, we will prepare and share a contract for your review.”

That was fast, I thought, before I turned into a blubbering mess.

Except it wasn’t fast. Yes, I’d sent my latest batch of queries to fifteen agents and five small presses only weeks before. But I’d started the process over twenty years before.

Perspective

When I announced my good news on social media, several writers reached out to me to inquire about my success. “How did you get such an impressive number of Twitter followers?” one writer asked.

I have less than 7,000 followers. That doesn’t feel impressive and certainly hadn’t been big enough to attract an agent. But I get it. Compared to a newbie, I am in the big leagues.

But in October 2016, when I joined Twitter—something I never imagined doing—I had zero followers. At the time, I couldn’t imagine having even 100 followers. Why would anyone follow me, a #TwitterNobody?

Six years later, with my signed contract as real as the Velveteen Rabbit, I’m no longer a newbie. I have experience to share.

My Publication Timeline

Here is a loose timeline of the journey from everyday mom to pubbed. I went from knowing nothing to knowing enough to get a book deal. I’ll include wisdom and tips I learned along the way and gained in hindsight.

If you are in your “know nothing” stage as a writer, I hope this gives you encouragement that someday you, too, will meet your writing and publishing goals.

1997 – The Beginning

My eleven-year-old son, Matthew, was diagnosed with a brain tumor after three years of misdiagnoses of his cognitive, physical, and emotional deterioration. He survived. We all did, but in many ways, our story had just begun.

1999-2001 – The First Step to a Memoir

After repeatedly hearing “You should write a book” from well-meaning friends, I saw an ad in the local newspaper about a memoir writing class taught by Marion Roach, then an unknown to me. I hadn’t written anything more creative than a resume since high school, but, with dreams of sitting on Oprah’s stage, I signed up.

I knew nothing. And I had unexpected pockets of ignorance.

• I didn’t know that “its” to show possession had no apostrophe. (I must have been absent that day in high school.)
• I had to re-learn what a gerund was.
• I didn’t know, what “point of view” meant
• I learned the difference between a protagonist and an antagonist.
• I wouldn’t have known a cliche if it hit me over the head.

Practice Makes Perfect

I took Marion’s class three times over the next two years, gaining a little ground each time. I read and studied memoirs to learn my craft and squeezed writing in when I could.

But I never considered myself a writer.

I loved my career as a health educator, and I had no intention of wearing any other hat. Even when I had two short personal essays published in the local paper, I knew writing wasn’t my calling. I was simply a person with a story to tell, and my chosen medium was prose.

Lessons Learned in Hindsight

You’ll likely never appear on a set with Oprah or a podcast with Brene Brown. You probably won’t achieve the success of Cheryl Strayed (Wild) or Stephanie Land (Maid). But if having those dreams motivates you, keep them alive and use them to your advantage. 

If you prove me wrong, let me know and I’ll buy you a drink.

2001-2005 – The Story Continues

Matthew’s recovery was more difficult than expected, so I left my full-time school counseling job in 2001 to coach and mentor him through his graduation from high school.

I wrote during the day when he and my younger son Stephen were in school, and I joined a critique group that met at Barnes & Noble. The other writers—all retired men writing fiction—were very nice and well-intentioned as they critiqued my writing, then analyzed my life’s story.

I often left there and went on a chocolate binge. A few years later, I attended a five-day writing retreat, which I left in tears after day three. My story was too painful, too fresh to be so fully immersed in it. 

Hindsight Tips:

• Memoir and personal stories often dredge up the worst of our lives, the worst of our selves. Be gentle with yourself as you write, and, while it’s good to write about your experience while it’s fresh, know that you’ll need distance to fully understand the deeper story.
• Be sure your critique group adheres to the guideline of commenting on the writing, not the writer or the writers’ life.
• Some writers who pen only fiction (present company here at WITS excluded) don’t fully grasp the nature of memoir. Find a memoirist-only critique group if possible.

2006-2008 – The Step-Away

We moved and the dinosaur of a computer containing my 300-page manuscript got stashed in the attic for some reason.  

I stopped writing. Completely.

Matthew had graduated from high school and, although he still struggled with short-term memory and information processing, he attended college away from home. There is a recovery period needed for traumatic situations, and I was in one.  I couldn’t bring myself to relive these painful years on the page. 

Hindsight Tips:

• If you are a serious writer who practices your craft regularly, you probably have at least one WIP in the drawer. (Translation for newbies: a Work In Progress saved somewhere where you seldom look at it.) As long as you’re writing something, there’s no rush to revive an old manuscript.
• If you have not yet claimed the “writer” moniker and stopped writing completely, like I did, don’t let years go by without opening the drawer for a cursory look. I wish I had written an annual life update of even one page during my long hiatus.

2008-2016 – The Writing-Less Years

I happily rejoined the workforce, and Matthew graduated from college. For him, adulting was a revolving door of jobs, his poor executive functioning getting him fired or causing him to quit. I rarely thought about my book; it was enough to live the story every day.

Hindsight Tips:

• In memoir, often the story ain’t over til’ it’s over and done and processed. If you’re avoiding working on your WIP, it could be that you still haven’t gained enough perspective on it.
  
  In The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative, author Vivian Gornick says, “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”

Your insight and wisdom about your story need time to develop.

2016-2020 – Starting Again

Matthew finally landed his first full-time job with good benefits at about the time my ongoing health issues forced me to quit my job,

The universe had given me time to finish my book!

I told friends I’d need six months to revise and update my manuscript and got started.

[You can stop laughing now.]

I took virtual classes on writing personal essays, query letters, loglines, and pitches. My essay rejections accumulated, interspersed with rare acceptances from low-tiered publications. 

What the heck is a Writing Platform?

Now, in addition to learning how to write better, I also took on the endless task of creating a writing platform online. I read and studied and bought a domain and created a website called The Well Nested Life.

I didn’t really know what a blog was, but I started one, posting a story every week for a year. My audience was family and friends and a handful of others writers on Medium.

I had a Facebook page but needed a friend to show me how to use it. I bought a book to learn Twitter, and I watched YouTube videos on Instagram. Remember, everyone starts somewhere with zero followers. I was just like everyone else.

I learned the difference between an em dash and an en dash, discovered that two spaces after a period was now taboo, and became pro-Oxford comma.

Hindsight Tips:

• You will quickly learn how much you don’t know. Be a sponge.

2020 – Learning to be a “Real Writer”

By now, I had a website under my own name, which makes it far easier for people to find me. It still took me time to call myself a writer, as you can see on my calling cards.

Spending time on social media, my platform inched along. One thousand Twitter followers, then two, then three. A few hundred on Facebook. A few dozen on Instagram.

The Agent Hunt

I had culled a list of literary agents and started querying in batches.

By the end of 2020, I’d received a smattering of form rejection letters, which I printed and folded into origami roses. At the same time, I joined a memoir critique group.

When I reread my first chapter to submit to the group, the writing that seemed so good now looked amateurish. It wasn’t “done” as I had thought. So, chapter by chapter, I revised, submitted, and revised again.

I hired a manuscript editor, and who knew there were so many types of editing?

I learned, grew, engaged, connected. Boosted other writers. Took more classes and webinars. Submitted. Created a webinar and a newsletter.

And through it all I Liked and Shared and Retweeted. Four thousand followers, then five.

2022 – Published at Last

My twenty-plus years of pre-published due diligence ended when I signed my contract this month.

Now, I’m embarking on a new journey with new tasks: marketing and PR. Once again, I’m starting from scratch. I know nothing, and I can’t afford a publicist. The more I read about positioning and promotion and sales, the more I panic and negative thoughts try to take over.

I can’t do this! I don’t know anything! I’ll never do it right and my book will be a flop.

But the long journey to get here helps me breathe. It virtually slaps my face. The voice of writerly wisdom tells me: You wrote a book. Your book is going to be published.

You can do anything.

How long has your publication journey taken? What are milestones from your own life stand out to you after reading this post? Do you have any "hindsight tips" to share?

About Karen

Karen DeBonis writes about motherhood, people-pleasing, and personal growth, the entangled mix told in her memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived, forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in spring 2023.

A happy empty-nester, Karen lives in an old house in upstate New York with her husband of forty years. You can find more of her work at www.karendebonis.com.