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Why You Don’t Suck: An Editor’s Guide

When writing a book, authors are often plagued with the question of does this suck? Do I suck? It is crucial that you remember that is probably not the case.

Our very own Harrison Demchick offers four impactful ideas you should keep in mind as you draft and edit your book. He also stresses the importance of knowing your first draft isn’t perfect and it is going through the editing stages that you perfect your novel. You can see his insights on his guest post for Positive Writer.

Head over to Bryan Hutchinson’s incredibly helpful blog to read the full post, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you enjoy the article!

Don’t Abandon Your Book – Edit & Revise It! Webinar with NaNoWriMo and AutoCrit

So you won at NaNoWriMo. Congratulations! Finishing a 50,000 word (or more) draft is a huge accomplishment. But what are you going to do with it now? Don’t just abandon your book–edit and revise it!

Join expert publishing consultant Ally Machate for a special webcast hosted jointly by NaNoWriMo and AutoCrit as we explore how to move your manuscript toward completion and publication. We’ll talk about taking those next steps with your draft, including how to approach your revision process, what it looks like to work through a book with an aim toward publication, and more.

Plus get an inside peek at how to edit and revise through the self-editing process as Ally and AutoCrit co-owner Kevin Pruemer work through an excerpt of a NaNoWriMo draft using AutoCrit, an amazingly robust online tool that helps you revise your manuscript with confidence.

Now that the event is over, you can still get access to this free webinar recording. Click here.

5 Undervalued Tips that Will Make Your Dialogue Stronger

Dialogue is tricky. Some people happen to have an ear for the rhythm and cadences of human language. Some people don’t. If you want to make your dialogue stronger, though, there are techniques you can rely on to improve your written conversations. Dialogue is not only about the words within the quotation marks or the rhythm that guides them. If you’re looking for ways to make your dialogue stronger on the page, consider these five less-often discussed tips.

Make Your Dialogue Stronger Through Setting

What does dialogue have to do with setting? Well, a conversation in a work of fiction or memoir doesn’t take place in a void. It isn’t a radio play—that is, something only to be heard. A conversation is also observed, and that means establishing the specific time and place—the setting—in which it occurs.

As a book editor, I’ve read scenes where dialogue goes for pages and pages before a setting is established—and others where the setting is never established at all. Without setting, readers lack context for dialogue. They can’t see it the way you intend because you’ve omitted basic information like characters present in the scene and the nature of the room. (A conversation is very different in the close quarters of an elevator versus an open field.) No matter how pithy the dialogue may be, if readers can’t “see” your scene, it’s difficult to engage with it.

Utilize Physical Action

Another way to ensure that your dialogue is seen and not just heard is to emphasize physical activity. But the reason is not simply to provide more specific detail (although that is important). An effective and authentic conversation is built on body language as much as it is on spoken language.

Consider a simple line of dialogue: “I’m fine.” Said calmly, with a contented smile, this can be a genuine statement of a character’s wellbeing. Said with a hand on someone’s shoulder, it can convey reassurance or insistence—which may be cause for doubt. Said with arms folded, shoulders stiffened, and eyes directed toward the pavement, it may suggest frustration. It could even be an outright lie.

Notice how the words in these examples don’t change, but the body language changes everything.

People don’t always say what they mean. In fact, they often don’t. That’s why body language is such a great tool to make your dialogue stronger. It enables you to convey what words alone cannot: the subtext and emotional undercurrents of a conversation.

Consider Sentence Structure

The way dialogue is structured can have a surprisingly significant impact on how it’s read. We can see this through what one might call reversed dialogue structure:

Jason said, “This doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

Kira said, “Says you!”

The exchange would be exactly the same in words spoken and action stated if the attributions—“Jason said” and “Kira said”—followed versus preceded the dialogue. Yet reversed structure, as above, reads as less natural. It draws attention to the attribution rather than the dialogue and creates a likely unintended pause before each line. It slows the rhythm—especially with respect to dialogue intended as an immediate response, like Kira’s “Says you!”

This doesn’t mean attribution can never come first, because depending on action and the tone and flow of the scene, such adjustments may make sense. But utilizing reversed dialogue structure as the norm results in awkward writing, and therefore awkward reading.

Structure is also important with respect to the timing of your attribution—that is, if you wait too long in a monologue to identify the speaker, readers may not read your dialogue in the intended voice. If you want to make your dialogue stronger, the structure of your sentences needs to keep everything clear and flowing smoothly.

Use Rhythm to Convey Tone

We don’t want Kira’s response above to be immediate for its own sake. The timing of her dialogue also suggests her tone. It conveys frustration, perhaps, or anger, when she snaps back quickly in response to Jason.

Conversations, in general, can be provided a rhythm that conveys different tones and emotions. To make your dialogue stronger, learn to manage that rhythm more deliberately. I’ve read drafts from authors in which arguments between two characters were organized in competing monologues as you might see in a televised debate. Each character would wait for the other to finish making their detailed point before leaping into their own well-considered rebuttal.

But that’s not the rhythm of natural conversation. When people are angry at one another, you don’t see detailed, patient arguments. Typically anger leads to shorter sentences and interruptions, or your characters might talk over one another. So the length and frequency of their dialogue, and the rhythm that results, can convey tone every bit as well as the words within the quotation marks. (Body language helps here as well.)

Avoid Distracting Tendencies

A lot of novice authors utilize particular recurring tendencies that, though minor in isolation, become distracting when repeated. One of the most common is the use of names in dialogue. Let’s apply that to our dialogue above:

“This doesn’t seem like a good idea, Kira,” said Jason.

“Says you, Jason!” said Kira.

Certainly, there are times where rhythm and context make the presence of characters’ names in dialogue entirely natural. But names in dialogue are frequently overused. In one-on-one conversation especially, people don’t say one another’s names aloud all that often. They already know to whom they’re speaking.

Even more common is a concept called fear of said. This refers to overuse of synonyms for “said,” like “explained,” “voiced,” “stated,” “spoke,” etc. The concern is that “said,” when repeated, will become redundant. It’s true that any word can be overused, but readers are programmed from years of reading to ignore “said”—and that’s good because it ensures that focus remains on the dialogue, not the attribution. With these synonyms, focus instead turns to the attribution, and as with reversed dialogue structure, that’s ultimately a distraction.

Some words convey something genuinely different, like “yelled.” And middle grade and young adult fiction allow more leeway for synonyms. But more often than not, if you want to make your dialogue stronger, “said” is best.

Do you have any other tips on how to make your dialogue stronger? Share them in the comments below!

Harrison Demchick came up in the world of small press publishing, working along the way on more than two dozen published novels and memoirs, several of which have been optioned for film. He is an award-winning, twice-optioned screenwriter, and the author of literary horror novel The Listeners. He’s part of The Writer’s Ally team as a developmental editor of fiction and memoir, for which he’s currently accepting new clients.

How to Make the Theme the Backbone of a Thrilling Story

Theme is one of the most nebulous concepts in writing—yet theme can also clarify your story. It can bring disparate concepts together. Some authors even write specifically to communicate a theme or message. As I’ve seen often in my work as a book editor, though, it’s not always easy to understand how to use theme effectively. So let’s see if we can wrap our hands and minds around one of writing’s subtlest components. Read on to learn how to use theme in your stories.

What is Theme?

The question of what theme is may seem basic, but the truth is that a lot of writers don’t really understand it. Frequently people will say a story has themes of love, or war, or family. But these aren’t themes. These are subjects.

[Tweet “Frequently people will say a story has themes of love, or war, or family. But these aren’t themes; they’re subjects.”]

Think of it this way: Theme is not a word. It’s a sentence.

So love is not a theme. But love conquers all is. War and family are not themes, but war destroys family or family is the only defense against war could be very compelling themes.

In other words, theme is subject plus movement.

This is important because a story isn’t just about a subject either. A story has an outcome and consequences. A story develops and moves. If theme is to reflect narrative, or to be revealed through narrative, then it needs to do the same.

How Character Reveals Theme (and Vice Versa)

But how does narrative reveal theme? Wondering how to use theme to clarify narrative? Often, the clearest reflection of theme in a narrative comes in your character arc.

[Tweet “Often, the clearest reflection of theme in a narrative comes in your character arc.”]

A well-constructed character will have a goal defined by things they consciously want and things they unconsciously need. Such a character also typically has a flaw that he or she needs to overcome to reach those wants and needs. The resulting change in the character over the course of the story is, of course, our character arc. And the lesson learned, so to speak, is often our theme.

For example, what did our protagonist need to develop into a well-realized person and overcome his rivals to achieve his impossible dream? Was it love? Well, then, his experience demonstrates the theme that love conquers all. Or maybe our protagonist has amazing super-powers from which she’s spent her whole life running before finally using them to save the nation—and only in doing so does she feel purposeful and fulfilled. Maybe that indicates that only when you stop running can you find what you’re looking for. Or that you can’t hide from your destiny.

How to Use Theme to Clarify Narrative

So theme relates to character arc. But how does it apply to the rest of the manuscript? Well, if this idea is what your protagonist’s story is about, it’s probably what the entire novel should be about. If you have subplots, they should in some way reflect this theme.

Maybe there’s a friend or an antagonist who falls short or dies because he could never stop running and hiding, or because he refused to embrace his destiny. Maybe our protagonist’s transformation from the cynicism of fear to the optimism of hope is reflected also in society, with the nation itself finding its purpose. Once you have a sense of what your story is about at its core—and really, that’s what theme is—you can apply that understanding in all sorts of ways to bring definition to the narrative.

Of course, it works the other way around too. If your character arc is ambiguous, or if you have too many disconnected subplots, then clarifying your story may relate to deciding what themes to address. Ultimately this points to another important consideration when writing thematically.

Theme is Subtext

The reason we want a character arc to reveal theme, and a narrative to reflect theme, is that theme is intended to be subtext. Most often, you don’t come right out and say that this story is about how love conquers all. You let the idea inform the way you write the story. Then you let the story reveal these ideas to readers.

In other words, like so much in writing, theme is showing vs. telling.

This is especially important to keep in mind when it comes to message stories. Some people write stories, novels, screenplays, and so forth specifically to communicate a message or lesson. They may aim to show kids that drugs are not the answer, or to convey the power of Christianity, or to advocate for free healthcare.

And if you’re rolling your eyes, it’s probably because you’ve encountered stories before that were too busy lecturing you to be compelling, much less convincing.

It’s important to remember that stories are indeed first and foremost stories. Readers are going to tune out if the “story” reads as a lecture. And that defeats the entire purpose of using fiction to convey a message: to deliver important information in a more palatable way.

It’s also important not to deify characters or institutions that support your ideas and vilify those that don’t. That’s just another form of lecturing or insisting upon your point. Readers who already agree with you will love it, but anyone in the middle—the readers you actually mean to convince—will be turned away by the overly simplified, surface-level characterization. No one wants a 300-page soapbox when they were expecting a story.

So, don’t tell. Show. Guide. When you remember that a message, like any other theme, is best communicated as subtext, the resulting narrative will present a far more convincing argument. And it will read as a better story.

[Tweet “Don’t tell. Show. Guide. When you remember that a message, like any other theme, is best communicated as subtext, the resulting narrative will present a far more convincing argument and read as a better story.”]

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It’s not essential to have a theme in mind when you begin writing. But most well-written manuscripts, by intention or not, have coherent and consistent ideas at their core. If your work-in-progress feels scattered and unfocused, then it’s probably worth your time to consider your use (or misuse) of theme.

Are there any particular themes that recur in your writing? Do you have further tips on how to use theme as a writing tool? Let me know in the comments below!

How to Revise and Improve Your Narrative Structure

Through the last couple months, we’ve compared the causation that underlies narrative structure to a massive domino rally, filled with twists, turns, and dramatic moments set into motion through the tipping of a single domino. This is how narrative works: Each plot beat following the inciting incident is the effect of what precedes it and the cause of what follows.

But what happens when you need to make changes?

You will, of course. There’s no such thing as a perfect first draft. You may want to clarify the character arc of your protagonist, or resolve an improbable, illogical plot development. Or you may want to show more clearly the obstacles responsible for our understanding of conflict and tension. You may have to rewrite the climax completely.

[Tweet “There’s no such thing as a perfect first draft.”]

But a domino rally is hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of pieces placed precisely and painstakingly one after the other. How do you rearrange anything without screwing up everything? If every domino is essential, then doesn’t changing one inevitably change the whole?

It does—and that’s the challenge and the point of revision. Change is good. But it is a problem to lose sight of narrative structure in the course of your revisions. So in this third installment in our series on cause and effect, we’ll address implementing revisions without endangering your narrative structure through three important considerations.

[Missed the first part of this series? Start here.]

Identify the Inciting Incident

We know from the first article in this series that the single domino that sets the rest into motion is our inciting incident. Recently in the course of my book editing, I worked with an author who, in an early draft, had a perfectly well-defined inciting incident: the moment the protagonist met her idol. Everything that followed had its basis in developing that relationship.

But during her revision, she felt a need to provide more context for each character. She wanted to show how the status quo eventually disrupted by the inciting incident came to be. She wanted to define the relationships between the protagonist and other characters so that readers could understand how the inciting incident affects them.

When I saw the revised draft, the inciting incident didn’t appear until a third of the way through the novel. And that means the story didn’t begin until a third of the way through the novel.

What happened? The author lost track of the inciting incident, and in so doing forgot what story she wanted to tell.

This is surprisingly easy to do, especially given how often a revision can and should entail major changes. When you add material without regard to narrative structure, you run the risk of throwing off your story’s balance. This is especially risky with the inciting incident. When you devote more pages to the status quo, you delay the inciting incident and wind up with too much opening exposition.

[Tweet “When you add material without regard to narrative structure, you run the risk of throwing off your story’s balance.”]

In light of that, it’s important to keep in mind that even basically well-constructed scenes can be exposition when they precede the actual start of the narrative (for an excellent guide to story openings, check out Les Edgerton’s Hooked). So even when things are happening, if those things are not the story, they don’t resolve our issues with narrative structure. That’s why you need to ensure that whatever changes you make, you’re still clear on how your story begins and maintain the causal connection between inciting incident and the start of rising action.

Don’t Add. Build.

But it’s not only the connection between inciting incident and rising action we need to maintain. We also want to keep in mind what we discussed in the last installment of this series: the danger of effect without cause and cause without effect.

It’s not uncommon in the course of writing and revising to determine that the story you’ve written simply isn’t exciting enough. If it doesn’t grab you, it probably isn’t going to grab the reader. So you add more. More explosions…car chases…more of whatever fits your story.

But we know by now that energy and excitement don’t come from action alone. Energy and excitement are built through the causation of a narrative. If you simply add plot beats to the story, inevitably you’re going to disrupt the chain of cause and effect. And even if the chain of cause and effect is not disrupted, if the plot carries on as if those new beats were never added at all, then we will have cause without effect. And that still weakens the narrative by slowing the progression of the story.

So, take the time to determine how preceding events in the manuscript lead to your new plot idea. Consider what ramifications the new plot beat has on what follows it. You’re not throwing rocks onto a pile. You’re building a house.

The Earlier the Setup, the Better the Payoff

We’ve learned that most everything that happens in a novel should emerge naturally through the process of cause and effect. But sometimes that chain can be a little too obvious. It all depends on how near to the payoff (effect) we establish the setup (cause).

Suppose the scenario of a protagonist meeting her idol was not the inciting incident, but rather a major plot point later in the novel. If this idol, and the protagonist’s desire to meet her, were mentioned only, say, five pages earlier, then the moment it happens may emerge naturally through the chain of cause and effect, but it still won’t be very impactful. And the development will be obvious and predictable. If the protagonist has been dreaming of this through the entire novel, though, the scene becomes a lot more meaningful.

[Tweet “Setup and payoff is long-distance cause and effect.”]

Setup and payoff is long-distance cause and effect. It’s a seed planted in the fall that bears fruit in the spring. The best twists and the most affecting revelations are the results of details and plot points placed carefully through the natural progression of a narrative structure. So, if you’re looking to strengthen your major plot points or craft new ones, consider what changes you can make early in the novel to add more meaning to your later developments.

Revision and Narrative Structure

Certainly, problems can emerge if you revise without structure in mind. It’s important to remember that, when well-guided and carefully considered, revision makes narrative structure stronger. In other words, don’t be afraid of rearranging your dominoes! But don’t set out to rearrange all those dominoes unless, or until, you have a plan to make it better.

[Tweet “Don’t set out to rearrange all those dominoes unless, or until, you have a plan to make it better.”]

As a book editor, I almost always recommend outlining as part of the revision process. It’s a great way to nail down exactly what you want to do and ensure that you keep track of all your plot beats, inciting incident and setup included, en route to building a better narrative structure.

In the fourth and final installment of our series on cause and effect, we’ll discuss the role conflict and tension plays in narrative structure. For now, though, let’s talk about revision. How do you approach the revision process? Share your best tips in the Comments section below!

To read the next and last article in this series, click here.

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Why You Don’t Suck: An Editor’s Guide

Don’t Abandon Your Book – Edit & Revise It! Webinar with NaNoWriMo and AutoCrit