Posts Tagged ‘research’

Conflux 9

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

It’s always great to head off to Canberra’s annual Conflux, where I can catch up with friends and make new ones.  It’s a chance to find out what everyone’s up to and celebrate successes. There are parties and gatherings and just all-round fun.

Mark Timmony, Karen Miller and Kaaron Warren

Mark Timmony, Karen Miller and Kaaron Warren

But for me it is also a chance to learn. Conflux may be a speculative fiction convention that draws and encourages fans of all flavours, but more than anything it is a celebration of writing; bringing together authors and publishers and readers in one spot. For all that I already spend a lot of time reading books and blogs about genre, writing, and publishing; events such as Conflux are an opportunity to hear experts and folks in the field speaking in person about their passion.

It’s a chance for me as an editor to discover what makes the worlds I wander through work so well, and to learn how writers understand their processes – so I can talk to them in their own terms when I am editing their words.

It’s also a chance for me to share the pearls of wisdom I pick up with other writers who may not yet have discovered writing communities or online resources. My incessant livetweeting during these events[i] is intended as much to help spread the word to them as it is to record/report the event as it happens. And spending time attending panels and talking to industry folk keeps me armed with the latest information to help new writers who often turn to me and other publishing professionals for advice.

This Conflux I not only followed panels, but also participated (because I was momentarily brave when filling out my registration form). I spent a late night with Patty Jansen, Ian Nicholls and Satima Flavell mumbling to a bleary-eyed audience of ten about whether self-publishers need editors (you can probably guess what I think about that). I think we mostly made sense, and even if we didn’t all agree, no one punched anyone and we’re all still friends. I also got to ramble about social media etiquette at the end of the con with Russell Farr, Zena Shapter, Alan Baxter and Alex Adsett. My favourite part of that was Jason Fischer repeatedly putting his hand up and prefacing every question with a promise not to pun. (Although I am pro-pun, as anyone who’s ever had to edit my magazine and newspaper heads can attest, so I was all for it…)

I also did my first pitching session for Etopia Press! That was an adrenaline-pumping  hour – who knew five minutes could go so quickly? I can’t speak for the writers, but I really enjoyed that session as I met some lovely writers, heard some fantastic stories, and can’t wait to read more. I also chatted about pitching and the process thereof to a few people later on, so maybe I’ll blog on that topic down the track…

Topics I followed through the con…

Small press: I work with small, medium and mainstream publishers so this was a particularly interesting series of conversations, not least because so many innovative things are coming from small press in this changing publishing landscape. The mainstream versus small press smackdown highlighted the different considerations and approaches publishers and small press take – and the different challenges they face and the opportunities for their authors. There was a strong sense that small press like Ticonderoga have been able to take more risks and follow their hearts on “artier” projects in ways that mainstream publishers, driven by the bottom line, cannot. Marc Gascoigne described Angry Robot as medium press and was keen to take advantage of the ability to move faster than larger publishers on publishing projects and even marketing and promotional ideas.

Fantasy: I read and edit so much in this genre, and there are so many sub-genres within it – and they’re constantly changing and expanding.

Duncan Lay and KJ Taylor prepare to launch each other's books!

Duncan Lay and KJ Taylor prepare to launch each other’s books!

The panel examining the success and visibility of women in fantasy was particularly fascinating as this seemed to vary depending on country and subgenre. Indeed, while this panel was taking place, *this article*  was going around Twitter; and many people have since been discussing the Strange Horizons survey. It was especially interesting to hear Trudi discuss her unexpected success in Poland, where she says publisher support and promotion meant her book tours made her feel like Stephanie Meyers.

Young Adult: Again this is a topic I followed as a fan and as an editor. Arguments about YA and what constitutes a YA novel seemed to permeate the whole convention – and you can log on to Twitter at any time of the day or night and bump into people discussing the subject. As the YA explosion panel explained, the fact that so many books originally published as “adult” titles have since been rebranded as “YA” only adds to the confusion.  Garth Nix pointed out that it’s no surprise so many adults enjoy YA fiction – the word “adult” is right there in the name. The panel ultimately concluded that YA is story-driven and this will always appeal to readers.

Crime: It was a twist to see the “crime tropes” panel pop up in a speculative fiction convention, but the reason for this soon became clear with a quick poll that confirmed everyone present, speculative fiction readers all, also read crime. The success of last year’s first GenreCon already made it obvious that most genre readers probably cross the streams fairly readily, but it was impossible to determine from this sample crowd whether as many readers of crime also cross back to science fiction. This talk covered the difficulty of categorising crime novels when so many cross genres – Daniel O’Malley making the point that in “anything ‘other world’ a single drop will make it so, but a drop of blood does not make a book a crime novel” – and quickly led on to book covers and bookshop shelving (a topic which came up numerous times during and after the convention; frustrating more than one bookseller.)

Co-author Lisa Hannett and cover artist Kathleen Jennings model their beautiful 'Midnight and Moonshine'

Co-author Lisa Hannett and cover artist Kathleen Jennings model their beautiful ‘Midnight and Moonshine’

Short story: I’m starting to edit more of these now I am working with digital presses – which have begun to accept and publish shorter works – so I was keen to learn from the experts what makes a short story successful and how the process differs for the writer compared with writing a novel. Lisa Hannett described short stories as “evoking more than they explain” and it was interesting to hear the panel describe the importance of the first paragraph or two of a short story – rather than the first line. Jonathan Strahan admitted a good first line made him suspicious as he’d then anticipate two pages wasted on justifying such an opening.

The business side of writing: In “facing reality” terms, this was one of the most valuable panels I attended. I often hear from new writers who plan, based on the first draft of the first thing they’ve ever written, to quit their job and live off their income as a writer. I know enough to talk them out of this,(!) but this panel took it to the next step. This was about the reality of being a career writer once you have been published. In many ways it was similar to workshops I have co-presented for freelance editors – the focus being less on the actual work you do (writing or editing) and more on the reality of what that life means: you will be running a small business. And you will be working alone. You have to be prepared, you have to be organised, and you have to know yourself. Karen Miller pointed out that while writing is a solo endeavour, publishing is a team sport and you need to know the roles of all the publishing people you work with. All the panellists agreed that publishing was just one step in a writing career and shouldn’t be the end goal because actually being published involves a lot of work and effort on the writer’s part.

Guests of Honour: I tried to attend as many guest of honour presentations as I could, although I missed more than I would have liked. Karen Miller’s photo presentation stood out in particular, showing how valuable a research trip can be and how differently a “standard” tourist tour of the castles and exhibits of Europe can be, viewed through a writer’s eyes. Under Karen’s guidance, stunning shots of a romantic, mist-swathed glassy river became the potential scene for a bloody ambush; an intricately engraved helm featuring the moulding of a bearded face became the enchanted armour for a king and so on. She showed us pictures of elaborate (and decrepit) doorways and encouraged us to imagine what sort of occupant might reside beyond, and further: how difficult (or how easy) others may find it to enter through such deceptively restrictive openings. The presence of tourists in the ancient dwellings served to add perspective – providing a measure by which we could see how humans have changed in height and girth (or not) and the challenges a character (and thus a writer) may face maneuvering within any given space.

Books about these places are easy to find, but Karen’s photo presentation made it obvious that these realities are much clearer when seen in pictures.[ii]

I also signed up to attend my first ever kaffeeklatsch – with Angry Robot’s Marc Gascoigne. I think everyone has been watching Angry Robot closely since they started as they’ve certainly been trying exciting new things and publishing fantastic titles – lots of Australian authors among them. Angry Robot are extremely online-savvy and one of the most important things I took away from the conversation, given the number of authors I have heard bemoaning the need to be on a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etc. was that the only thing that is a must-have for any author is a website. Nearly all publishers feature pages for their authors, but Marc pointed out that readers will go to Google, not a publisher, for the latest information about their favourite author. An author can keep all their information on their own site and be the obvious, official place for readers to go. Additional social media: blogging, Twitter etc. should only be undertaken with genuine interest. As our later social media panel discussed: readers and followers can instantly tell if you’re faking or marketing, so if you aren’t interested, don’t have time, or can’t be bothered: don’t do it – concentrate on the writing!

Angry Robots

The “Angry Robot family”: Marc Gascoigne, Jo Anderton, Ingrid Jonach, Kaaron Warren

I think all the authors at the chat[iii] liked the idea of Angry Robot’s inclusive approach to publishing, which both Marc and his authors described as a kind of “family” with AR authors
encouraged to join in on their email loop for discussions about releases and covers, launches and signings. More than one writer mentioned later how isolated they had found their own publishing experience by contrast.

For myself, I think it’s imperative that any future office[iv] I move into comes equipped with underfloor caves like the AR offices. And cobbled streets outside, too. Or inside. I’m not picky.

 

In all this was another fabulous con. I met some wonderful new people and learned far more than I could ever condense into a single post. (Even one as epically long as this.) And I haven’t even touched on all the launches, readings and parties that took place between and after panels. Once again, this was a weekend of fun and enrichment that reconfirmed to me how lucky I am to work with the books and stories I love to read.

 

[i] Apologies to everyone who has been bombarded during this month’s Bothersome Words Conference Tweeting Extravaganza.

[ii] Or real life. I think we could all justify a holiday to somewhere that would help with our next writing/editing project: yes/yes?

[iii] And at the Angry Robot Hour held later in the con… I may have stalked Angry Robot a little bit…

[iv] House.

Latest additions to Mount ToBeRead, courtesy of Conflux.

Latest additions to Mount ToBeRead, courtesy of Conflux.

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Posted in Authors, Editing, fantasy, fiction, publishing, Reading, science fiction, speculative fiction, Writing | 1 Comment »

Watch your language

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

My mother used to call me a slut.

One step into my bedroom and she’d cast her eyes despairingly to the ceiling and berate me for my sluttish behaviour. It wasn’t until we’d lived in Australia for several years that things changed and she would comment only on the untidiness of my room.

This was not because of any change in behaviour on my part (despite my parents’ best efforts to get me to “do something about that pigsty”) but because they’d finally worked out that the word had an entirely different meaning in this country than it had back home.

Fast forward a few years and this particular word is almost universally used primarily in the “immoral” sense.

Language, then, is important. It’s important when you’re a schoolkid trying to fit in – even if you appear to speak the same language as your peers, slightly different word choices can lead to embarrassment if not actual miscommunication – and it’s important if you’re a writer, trying to set a scene.

This time last year, I wrote a similar post on building worlds. Lately I’ve read a lot of stories set in places that are clearly foreign to the authors writing them, so I’d like to return to the theme of worldbuilding from a language perspective.

The internet has made it easy to research countries and cities, and even different industries. With enough time and effort it can be relatively straightforward to build up a fictional set of characters livingfootpath in a real-world place. But picking up those subtle language differences is not so easy – and it’s not always obvious that there are differences, unless you’re looking for them.

The most common issue encountered in my writing/reading/editing bubble is the use of American English when a scene, its characters and even the narrator are intended to be English or Australian – and this differentiation must certainly work the other way for American readers/writers/editors.

Often, people flag footpath versus sidewalk as the most obvious writer “tell”, but there are more subtle differences of which to be aware. For example:

Once they have traversed the walkway of their choice, do your characters buy their groceries from a shop or a store? And how do they carry their shopping home – in bags or sacks?

Do they snack on biscuits or crackers? If they tuck into a packet of chips, does that mean a steaming hot bag of fries or a nice pack of crisps?

Do they take cream or milk in their tea? Or do they prefer a nice bottle of fizz? Or pop? Or just a plain old soft drink?

Where do they live? In a house or a cottage? Or perhaps they prefer a more urban lifestyle and they’ve shacked up in a flat/apartment/unit/condo…

Clothing can be a conundrum, too. If a character puts their pants on, does that mean he has his trousers on or that she’s clad in nowt but her knickers? If they’re sporting a rather fetching vest, should this include a pocket-watch adornment, or is this another word for undershirt?

Narration, as well as dVestsialogue, will need to fit too. Natural style for a UK or Australian speaker is usually:  “come and sit down,” or “go and get your sister,” where US style is to drop the and: “come sit down, ” or “go get your sister,”* – subtle but notable differences. US style also allows for gotten and anyways, which are not typical of UK or Australian English.**

From an editing standpoint (because we tend to check these things) this goes even further. Are any of your characters experts in their field? It’s important to not only know the language of their industry but how the experts use it – including their colloquialisms and jargon. This can be key to your story and it’s vital to note that the manner in which the public commonly uses an industry’s terms is not necessarily the way the experts wield the same words.

IT is a perfect example here, where terms are commonly misused by everyday folk and it’s easy to assume that tech experts will use the same colloquialisms, when in fact they are as precise as any doctor with their wording, even when they bandy jargon about.***

Do your research. If you’re setting your story somewhere with which you are unfamiliar, don’t just rely on the interwebs to show you where that country town is or how many Tube stops are involved in your characters’ travels. Concentrate on the language as well as the layout of your world.

If you can’t visit your intended setting, watch television shows and read books from that area – they’ll give you a good feel for dialogue and language culture. If your story is set in a specific time, be it the distant past or the present, do the same and take note of how words and language may have changed – even a couple of years can make a difference. If you’re going to write about a field or industry outside your own experience, don’t just talk to experts about their work – check that your fictional expert is using the jargon correctly, too.

The right language adds fine detail to your worldbuilding. Get it right and your reader will be an armchair traveller, mentally meandering the streets  you describe with the ease and familiarity of a local (which, of course, they may well be!). Get one word wrong and they can be as easily thrown out of the story. The believability is strained, the narration rings false. If those details are wrong, thinks the reader, what else is untrustworthy in this tale?

How do you craft your language? And what words throw you out of a story?

*    And yes, there’d be different punctuation here as well. I’m not entering that argument here.

**   Of course there is some slipover. Americanisms and UKisms and Aussieisms cross oceans and borders with merry abandon. But unless it has been adopted into common use, an editor will likely adjust for local style. So even though, for example, “gotten” is being adopted into colloquial use in this country, it’s totes not something many editors would let pass just yet.

***  For more information on this, speak to any IT guru you know who has had to help someone fix anything on their computer. (This will be *every* IT guru you know.) Ask if you can watch next time someone asks for tech help. Marvel at the array of facial expressions deployed by said expert as they try to translate what *exactly* this person means when they say their computer is “broken” and describes the elements involved.

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Genre-ly speaking

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

There’s been a lot of chat about genre on the interwebs lately; in particular, people have been discussing the question of whether one should write according to genre – and according to what sells both to readers and to publishers in the first place – or whether it’s okay to write what you want and hold firm to the belief that someone somewhere will recognise the deep-seated brilliance of your creation, genre (and markets) be damned.

This seems a rather multi-layered question and there are so many different answers and aspects to consider.

Genre is confusing

Genre often means more inside the industry than out. Even passionate readers may only be aware of some of the broader categories and this can cause problems, particularly in areas such as speculative fiction, which most readers I speak to think of as “science fiction and fantasy” – assuming they have even heard the alternative term at all.* There is an understanding among readers that the “science fiction and fantasy” section of a bookshop will also include horror, all the vampire and werewolf fiction they desire, urban and paranormal fantasy, supernatural fiction, and anything else that seems a bit “otherworldly”.
That said, there can be confusion over books that, due to their themes or certain narrative devices, fall neatly under “speculative fiction” and thus find themselves duly shelved with other, more obviously fantastical or science fictional titles. This categorisation may not work well for readers who don’t quite know how to relate to what seems to be, for example, a straight-up detective novel with subtle supernatural elements.

It’s hard to know whether this is a problem of marketing or categorisation. Would such a title do better in general fiction? Would the author be better advised not to write the book at all or to adjust the writing to fit genre conventions? This last seems a great disservice to the original story, but what’s more important – the creation or the success? Are there similar problems in the crime genre which also has various subsets?

When contemplating genre, it’s important to consider who you think will be your main readers – but keep in mind you can’t actually control your audience. For example, YA, or young adult, fiction seems to be growing in popularity, but the definitions of “young adult” differ slightly from country to country (and possibly publisher to publisher). Depending on the title, it’s generally accepted that it’s not just “young adults” but also actual adults who will read YA, as well as children, depending on the book. I recently heard an industry expert say that not only does the Australian publishing industry not call this genre “YA”,** but also that he thought it was really sad that so many grown women (in particular) were reading – and becoming obsessed by – YA novels such as Twilight and other popular series because they were intended for children and he felt they should be kept that way.***

This seems like the voice of someone who would certainly like to keep distinct lines between genres, at least when it comes to distinguishing between adult and children’s titles, but honestly it just doesn’t always seem that clear-cut. I have worked on a number of titles for adults that have later been described in reviews as “young adult novels” – to the author’s surprise and, if the cover labelling is anything to go by, presumably the publisher’s as well.

***

So how do you decide what to write, genre-wise, if you already have a plot and a story in mind? And how does this relate to the common writing advice that’s already bandied about?

Write what you know

This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be an expert, but surely the genre, and indeed the subject matter, should be something you care about and are interested in?****
Writing is not a quick process and it is certainly not a get-rich-quick career. Why would you saddle yourself with a genre and style in which you have no interest? It would be immeasurably hard to write such a thing as well as something you were passionate about and, assuming you were successful, any publisher would be likely to require you to continue to write in that genre, at least initially – thus you would effectively have written yourself into a corner.

Assuming results in donkeys

Or something. There are certainly some clear-cut lines with genre, but there are also books that have crossed those boundaries. If you make assumptions about the publisher or the market and deliberately rework your ideal book to fit more comfortably into an established genre, you are denying the publisher (and your readers) an opportunity to see beyond that. Sometimes categorising isn’t obvious and sometimes publishers slip genre titles into general fiction or even (shhh) literary fiction. The Time Traveller’s Wife, for example, is a successful novel that has been slotted into “general fiction” in most bookshops, but given the time travel elements is certainly speculative fiction, despite the romance within. Sir Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, often says in interviews that he was under the impression that he was simply writing satire until being categorised as a fantasy writer. Elizabeth George is an established crime writer, but it’s the romantic back story of her characters that gets her readers most up-in-arms.

Trying to adhere too neatly to genre conventions in order to fit can be a mistake. Readers will see straight through it if you aren’t genuine, and it’s important to remember that there’s a reason other books have so easily crossed genre or slipped into “general” or even literary fiction. Russell Davies talks about this in A Writer’s Tale, pointing out that even his comedies have tragic or sad moments and vice versa. His suggestion is that this is what life is like – if the audience is to believe the story, you have to add a dose of reality and that means not being all one thing all the time. This applies to any story if you want it to stop falling flat. It’s where the secondary and tertiary storylines can come in so handily: the romance back story in the crime novel, the tragic spy thriller set in the fantasy novel etc can add depth to a tale that might otherwise feel too two-dimensional if forced to sit wholely trapped within a single convention.

Note, though, that all this still has to be true to you as a writer, to the story you believe in, or it will ring hollow and the reader – not to mention the sharp-eyed editor – will find you out. Genre is about much more than making sure you follow a few conventions. You have build it from the ground up. It will be reflected in the language you use, the world that you build, the characters you choose and their motivations, the plot itself and the interactions between the characters. It will be there in the rules you follow and it will be evident in the rules and conventions you break, the things you don’t show. While it’s true that some genres sell better than others, in the end it comes down to story. A good story told well will always sell better than a humdrum tale told half-heartedly.

What do you think? Should writers “write to fit” or just let the story flow as it will?

There has already been some discussion on this here: Kylie Mason: In Which I use the Words Genre and Convention (following the first Genre Cage Fight at Shearer’s) and here:  Zena Shapter: Should Genre Mean Something Special to You Or Not?

 

*Mostly they haven’t. Hands up those of you in the industry who have heard the old “but all fiction is speculative” line more than five times?

**Which may be news to the authors, editors and publishers I see online regularly discussing the genre using that term.

***Admittedly, said expert visibly cringed when discussing the wave of YA vampire fiction that was in the New York Times bestsellers list at the time and said he didn’t understand any of it, so perhaps not the most unbiased of opinions on that front…

****At this point I find it comforting, salient and, frankly, amusing to turn to Mitchell and Webb to illustrate this point with their series of screenwriter sketches, including this one which proves that you really will do better if you know and care about, for example, spy drama, rather than just making up what you think is required to fit the genre: Mitchell and Webb – Spy Service 


 

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How to build worlds

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

When it comes to setting the scene in a book, everyone will tell you the worldbuilding is important. This is true no matter what sort of book you’re writing or which genre you’re writing in.

If you’re writing a fantasy novel, of course people tend to focus more closely on the worldbuilding since it is expected that you will be inventing new, make-believe worlds with your words. But it is just as important to create a believable world if you’re writing a memoir or autobiography: you have to recreate the world of your past, bring real people and landscapes to life for today’s reader.

Similarly, even if you’re working between these two extremes, creating a fictional story set in the real world, you still need to focus on piecing the foundations together. Things need to make sense. They must be believable and consistent and well-rounded. The biggest mistake a writer can make is to assume that their own knowledge or view of things is enough to for an entire world.* We all have our blind spots and biases, and these can easily be revealed in the worldbuilding if care isn’t taken.

The devil, they say, is in the details. They can make or break the story. As the author, by presenting the reader with your words, your vision, your world, you’re asking the reader to suspend disbelief and let go of this world to enter yours (even if the story is set in this world, and even if what they’re reading is “true” rather than fiction). So, you have to give them enough information to experience that world – and you have to maintain their interest in your world throughout the story.

Add enough detail and the world you have created is brought to life. Leave too much out and the entire story can seem shallow. Lose track of even the most insignificant-seeming fact and the entire plot can fall apart. **

Worldbuilding and the speculative fiction focus has already been mentioned. The skill it takes to create these fantastical places is widely recognised by fans of the genre. These authors are not just creating a land or planet complete with landscapes and townships, but also ecosystems, cultures, politics, language, magic – entirely different states of being. Ideally, everything that makes the world run on every level has to have been thought out as it affects every character and the way they interact with each other and the plot at large. The author needs to keep hold of every strand that they’ve used to weave this world together if they are to keep the reader convinced with every page they turn.

All this attention to detail gives a sense of realism to even the most incredible of tales. If the world works, the story works. But if some of the details feel off, if the worldbuilding isn’t strong enough, the whole story can come crashing down. Unless it is a plot point, nothing is more distracting than finding a character possessing skills or achieving feats that the very rules of the invented world insist should be impossible. A reader will snap out of a story in an instant if, for example, the shapeshifter who couldn’t touch metal in the first three books of a series is unharmed by several silver bullets in the fourth because the author forgot that particular clause.

Consistency and attention to detail is just as important in less fantastical novels. Action thrillers that otherwise show extreme attention to detail when it comes to science, technology and military power can fall apart if, for example, the political scenes depicting world leaders gathering to combat the major common threat (aliens, terrorists etc.) only show the US President and his security force in action – leaving out any further mention of the other supposedly powerful “leaders”.

Such a situation suggests the author has cribbed from US-centric Hollywood movies, rather than researching how global political leaders might react to crises. It doesn’t matter how convincing the aliens are, how believable the technology, or how tightly-written the gun-fights if the scenes most easily imagined in our world are the ones that are merely sketched over. Such a contrast in the level of detail is likely to pull the reader out of the story. It suggests a lack of authority and mastery on the author’s part and the mirage can be shattered.

Research, then, can be key to ensuring that details and your own narrow knowledge base don’t let you down. But there’s more to it than merely adding and enforcing those details. It’s not just about creating a world – you have to make it believable and it has to make sense.

If your world is different to ours in some way, if it breaks the laws of nature or physics, you might do well to familiarise yourself with the consequences of such a change. How would that affect day-to-day life? Geography? Trade? Buildings and cities? Education? Politics? Family life?

If you’re writing non-fiction, think about your audience and consider whether you’re writing about something that will be different for them – are you writing about a different time? A different country? Again, how is life different in that world to this one?

It’s also worth ensuring you’re familiar with the genre in which you write, even if (or especially if) you plan to break all the perceived rules of those who have written before you. It’s worth knowing in advance if the concepts and characters you think you have invented are actually featured heavily in World of Warcraft or bear an uncanny resemblance to a well-known Celtic myth, even if it is entirely coincidental. Whether or not these similarities are acknowledged in your world are themselves  important in the building.

* Unless you’re writing a dystopia. Or utopia, depending on ego size and confidence/tendency towards tyranny…

**Of course, add too much detail and you leave no blanks for the reader’s imagination to fill in. There’s a lot to be said for hinting at information. Worldbuilding doesn’t necessarily mean giving all the facts, figures and measurements of a world or city. That way page-skipping lies.

What are your tips for worldbuilding? And have you seen any major slip-ups? What pulls you out of a writer’s world?


 


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How stories are distilled

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

One of the best tricks a writer can learn is how to make the research they have done for one specific book or article work for a completely different publication. An even better trick is to figure out a way to make that research work for several different pieces.

One of the keys to working this out is understanding the audience for the text you’re writing so you can identify the best way to present your words. The slant, style and content of a piece may suit one publication but be completely inappropriate for another, leaving you with perhaps pages of research and hours of interview recording left unused.

If you can identify a fresh angle or approach to this same information, your otherwise wasted notes can easily become the makings of a completely different piece that you can send elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, editors need pretty much the same skill set.

The editor needs to be just as aware of audience (though perhaps this seems obvious, given that I’ve said before the editor is there to ensure a written piece works for the reader and the publisher as well as conveying the author’s message).

But this goes further.

Freelance editors for example, like many freelance writers, often work for multiple publications and need to be aware of the different requirements of each editor*, each publication (or publishing house)** and, of course, the audience. They need to take care that the approach of the text they are working on suits the reader and the publication not just when it arrives fresh from the writer, but also once it has been edited.

Subediting magazines or newspapers, often the editor will be required not only to edit, but to cut – sometimes substantially – a piece of writing to fit a layout. This might mean cutting a 1500-word piece down to 500 words, all while keeping the soul and voice of the piece intact. While this involves some rewriting on the editor’s part (hopefully without it being noticeable) the editor must always keep in mind the audience for whom the piece is intended.

One thousand words is a lot to cut from any piece and so the editor must get into much the same mindset to subedit as the writer did in order to write it in the first place.

They need to consider the angle and approach of the piece.

It becomes a precision procedure. That travel story, told from a personal perspective, may contain all sorts of amusing details. So what do you cut and what do you keep? You can change the slant of the whole story, without any rewrites, just by cutting those thousand words.

If, for example, you’re subediting for a travel magazine, you need to keep in mind that the reader might want to recreate the author’s journey and would be more interested in the facts and figures of the trip than the amusing asides.

But the same story in the lifestyle section of a newspaper might be intended as light Sunday brunch reading, for which the entertaining, relatable stories about other hotel guests and getting lost in a foreign city are more suited.

In effect, the subeditor repeats the story distilling process that the writer did at the start.

For each piece, a subeditor needs to determine the most salient details to keep; those most relevant to that particular publication and its readers, discarding spare text that doesn’t fit either stylistically or thematically. At the same time, the editor needs to weave the remainder together, hiding any gaps and reworking the text so it appears this is how it was written in the first place.

This is the invisible craft at work once more.

What are the most pieces you have ever got from a single piece of research? Have you ever been mis-edited (rather like being misquoted)?


*Different editors have different, personal style preferences. (Usually comma-related.) It’s worth finding out what these are before you start marking up pages. While every editor knows that even venturing the word “comma” in an editorial department is a bit like yelling “fire”, I once worked for two different magazines in the same publishing house at the same time. The two editors had completely opposing views on comma usage. Fun times.

** Beyond content, you, as editor, need to know what the “house rules” are for that publication or publishing house. Em-dash or en-dash? And would that be with or without spaces? What’s the general feeling on ellipses? Which dictionary do they use? Which style guide? Do they have a house
style guide? ***

*** Don’t be fooled by these last trick questions. Of course you also need to know if the editorial department actually uses and adheres to these guides. Including the house style. Rather than, say, some alternative style a particularly scary chief editor once implemented that everyone has since soaked up by osmosis or passed on with secret, trembling handshakes…


 

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You keep using that word…

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

One of the reasons to hire an editor, even if you have run an automated spelling and grammar checker over your document, is to get that all-important second pair of eyes looking over your work. As a second reader, the editor will pick up if you have overused a particular word and they’ll see, where a spellchecker won’t, if you are using the word incorrectly.

Most of us have a particular “tic”, a preferred word that we use frequently. It might be different depending on whether we’re having a conversation (or even who we’re talking to), or whether we’re writing an email or a book or blog post. It may even be different every time. But it’s the sort of thing we are unlikely to pick up ourselves. And unless someone tells us, we may never realise that we’re repeatedly using a certain word incorrectly.

This is where an editor comes in.

Unlike Microsoft Word, your human editor will call you out on attempts to have your action hero bring his fighter jet in for a daredevil landing right inside a wardrobe (ie: on a clothes hanger) when it would be far more advisable to pull in to an aircraft-sized hangar.

If every one of your characters is described as having glowing eyes and skin, and you’re not writing a supernatural or sci-fi thriller, your editor may suggest alternative ways to highlight their features.

When a scene depicts someone in a suit with a separate bathroom, it’s your editor, not spellcheck, who will advise either adding an “e” to clarify that you meant “suite” or adding detail to explain how the catheter arrangement works with the pinstripe.

Often it is the way a character speaks or conducts him- or herself that gives away the tic. In an attempt to avoid overusing “said”, many writers will use action to keep things moving. This is an effective technique, so long as it is not overdone and as long as those tics are kept in check. Again, the editor is there to ensure that a character who “snorts” in response to every comment doesn’t come across as having a drug habit (unless he’s meant to) or that others don’t “shrug” their way through every exchange and seem disinterested.

Punctuation can reveal similar “tics” and it’s only during that close editorial read that it becomes obvious every second sentence ends with an exclamation point or ellipsis that lends the story a jumpy or disjointed flow. Your editor can help smooth these out so that the dramatic effect isn’t lost and the text stays even.

Of course there are ways to try and catch these things yourself. Letting your work rest before you read over it allows your brain to “reboot” and you become your own “fresh eyes”. And becoming friends with your dictionary (and thesaurus) also helps, although yes, that seems obvious. But editors use them all the time.* Even the ones who are themselves “walking dictionaries” use actual dictionaries. Probably even more than other people because they are paranoid about getting caught out. After all, if you’re going to spend your life nitpicking other people’s words you want to make sure you get it right!**

But when all’s said and done, there’s nothing like that second pair of eyes to pick up the things you don’t know you’ve missed.

Do you have any writing tics? Spotted any anywhere?  Let us know below!


* Apart from the editors I once met who refused to use dictionaries on the grounds that if a word needed to be looked up then a different word should be chosen. As a word nerd I am still troubled by this years later.

** Seriously, there is no sound like the tone of glee in someone’s voice when they believe they have found an error in an editor’s work. This is possibly understandable. But still…


 

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Fact-checking across the universe

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

One of the things I love about my job is the information-gathering aspect. I love snaffling up little factoids and random pearls of wisdom, which is just as well, because at times the task of editing falls squarely in the realm of fact checking.

In this case, it helps to love research.*

How much fact-checking a particular job may entail depends upon a great many things. Not least are the subject matter and genre, the style of publication, the expectations of author and publisher and, let’s not forget, the budget and deadline.

Different publications work in different ways and may have entirely different expectations. I have worked for magazines where the fact-checking portion of the sub-editing role could take days for a single travel article, such was the accuracy required. I would spend hours checking map books and atlases, perusing the internet, and finally on the phone to hotels overseas (in different time zones, speaking to people whose first language was certainly not English) confirming: the transfer vehicle was a coach and it was blue, the precise direction it took from the airport (including road names), the colour of the marble in the hotel foyer, the time at which the towels were put on the sun lounges around the pool, and the kinds of cocktails available in a bar.

And no, I am not exaggerating.

This contrasted mightily with a stint at a major newspaper, where I expected similar levels of checking would be necessary. Here timing was everything and journalists were assumed to have been correct in all details. In this particular department, sub-editors were not encouraged to check anything but major facts or obvious potential errors.

Books are different again.

The fact-checking element is slipped in wherever timing allows and is different probably for every book, never mind for every editor or publisher. And there are always facts to be checked, no matter how fantastical a tale the author has woven.

While non-fiction and academic works have obvious fact-checking requirements, I have edited crime novels that, for me, meant checking Tube stops and car park locations**, never mind murder techniques (and yes, I check those too, but not Dexter-style). I have researched Ninja weaponry on a surprising number of occasions*** as well as helicopter treads. I edit fantasy, which means ensuring that facts hold up within invented worlds – sometimes this means tracking back through an entire series to make sure the magic works as it should. And yes, I mean facts, as opposed to consistency; a subtle difference.

At the end of all this, my brain is usually bursting with information, none of which is any use to anyone, except possibly the author, who already knows far more about the topic anyway. I forget all of it before I can use it at a trivia night and nine times out of ten, everything was perfectly accurate in the first place.

But this is another one of those invisible jobs an editor does. Next time you pick up something to read, even if it’s just a quick flick through a magazine article, remember, not only did the author pour his or her heart and soul into the words on the page, but at least one editor probably spent countless hours double-checking the facts as well as the spelling.


*It is, admittedly, less helpful to get so involved in a topic that you veer off entirely and become, for one week only, a self-described expert on 16th century building materials when you only needed to know whether it was acceptable for an author to use that word once as a passing reference.

** All hail Google maps! (And, indeed, the interwebs in general.)

*** Seriously, when you combine some of the things I have had to research over time, I have to wonder if I am on a watch list somewhere. Although I am probably in good company, since I am checking other people’s work.



 

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