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Giving feedback on a beta read

Dear Editor | How Do I Give Critical Feedback on a Beta Read?

It’s an awkward situation. An author friend has asked you to beta-read their book, and you agreed. But it needs work. What do you say when giving feedback?

Here are four possible approaches to giving feedback:

    • Be complimentary
    • Be clueless
    • Be complimentary and critical
    • Be critical

Be Complimentary

Personally, I don’t think being complimentary is a great idea. The point of a beta read is to find what needs improving in the story—and there is always something that can be improved. It doesn’t serve the writer or future paying readers if the beta reader only gives positive feedback … even if that’s what the writer wants. A writer has to be teachable, and someone who only wants compliments but no criticism isn’t teachable. And you’re not helping the writer grow if you only share the good news.

Be Clueless

I had one situation where an author approached me to review their book (I also have a book review blog. It helps me stay up-to-date with trends in Christian fiction). The story showed potential, but the editing was beyond awful—to the point where the novel was actually difficult to read.

I went back to the author and said they appeared to have sent me the unedited version, not the final version. I’d be happy to review the final version, but this version had too many errors for me to read and review fairly, because I’d have to mention the errors in my review.

I’m a freelance editor. It’s going to reflect badly on my editing skills if I give a stellar review to a book with obvious plot, character, or editing issues. Anyway, I never heard back from the author. I can only guess this was the final published version (edited or not). I suppose I could have offered the author my editing services, but I don’t want to give the impression I review books as a way of soliciting editing work. Because I don’t. (But if you want to hire me, email me via the About page.)

Be Complimentary and Critical

One piece of advice I often see is to use the compliment sandwich when giving feedback:

  • Say something nice
  • Give feedback on something that can be improved
  • Say something else nice

I’ve heard this is the approach used by Toastmasters: when giving feedback, members have to find two things the speaker has done well for every suggestion for improvement. Employee performance reviews often take this approach.

I’ve found two potential issues with this approach:
  1. The person may hear (or read) the compliment at the beginning of the feedback and the compliment at the end, but discard the critical feedback in the middle of the sandwich. That pretty much misses the point of giving feedback.
  2. The compliment can come across as patronising: if I say you know how to write a grammatically correct sentence, you’re likely to think that’s a compliment for the sake of giving a compliment. After all, can’t everyone write a grammatically correct sentence? Actually, no. At least, not based on some of the books I’ve read.
As a result, I don’t use the compliment sandwich.

As a freelance editor, clients are paying me to help them improve their manuscripts. It’s not good use of my time or my clients’ money for me to spend twice as much time telling them what they’re doing well as I spend telling them what needs to improve.

But that’s not to say you shouldn’t use the compliment sandwich in beta reading. It might be the best approach for you, depending on your relationship with the author in question.

Be Critical

You might think this is easy for me to say. After all, I’m an editor. People are paying me to make their writing better—to criticise. And I’m a reviewer. Publishers offer me ebooks so I can provide an honest review.

But it’s not that easy.

I’m told some freelance editors hesitate to criticise, hesitate to “bite the hand that feeds them.” (I missed that memo.)

I also know from experience that when some authors say “honest review”, they mean “complimentary review”. I’ve seen authors ask for honest reviews, checked out the Kindle sample, and realised the last thing they want is an honest review*. Sure, they need one. But they don’t want one.

*For example, the “authors” who can’t write a grammatically correct sentence.

But this is where we get to the nuts and bolts of the question: how do you give critical feedback on a beta read?

This partly depends on how the author sees a beta read.

Some authors use beta readers as first readers, to identify and iron out developmental issues such as plot and characterisation issues. Other authors use beta readers after the book has been edited, to act as unpaid proofreaders, or first reviewers.

Neither approach is wrong—or right.

But it might help to know which approach the author has taken before offering feedback. If the author is using beta readers to test an early version of the manuscript, then my view is that any and all feedback should be welcome. But the feedback should focus on the big picture:

  • Is there a clear story question?
  • Is there a clear three-act (or four-act, or six-stage) structure?
  • Is there a clear character arc, including character goals, motivation, and conflict?
  • Does the novel meet genre expectations?
  • Does the author use point of view correctly?
  • Does the author show rather than telling?
  • Are there any recurring writing issues the author should be aware of?

For example, provide a manuscript assessment service (a form of paid beta read). I often receive manuscripts where the writing is solid, but the main character has no clear goal, there is no clear structure, there is a lot of repetition, and the author consistently gets the punctuation of dialogue wrong.

But it’s not all bad: this is all fixable. I can see the potential for a plot, a structure, and a clear character GMC, but they are hidden behind excessive repetition.

If the book you’ve beta read is an early version, then the author should be expecting feedback on these basic issues. As a reader, you should expect the writing to need work—it hasn’t been line edited or copyedited, so it will need work.

But what if you’re not the first reader? What if you know the book has already been edited, and it’s still not stellar?

This is where giving feedback gets difficult.

Is the fault with the writing or with the editing?

If you’re beta reading an edited book, you have to ask: is the problem with the writing or with the editing? Or both?

It could be that the author didn’t know what kind of editing the novel needed, so hired the wrong kind of editor. It could be that the author hired the cheapest editor (who proofread when the novel needed a line editor).

Or it could be that the author hired an excellent editor, then ignored the editor’s feedback. I’ve had this happen. I’ve copyedited or proofread books where I’ve given the author advice on how to improve the book, and they’ve chosen to ignore me.

If an author is self-publishing, the editing is the author’s responsibility. They write the book. They select the editor. They choose whether to accept or reject the editor’s advice.

(Traditional publishing is another matter. The author is under contract, and the publisher won’t publish a novel that doesn’t meet their standards. That might mean the author has to allow changes they don’t agree with.)

So it’s important to know whether you’re a first reader or a last reader before you give feedback, so you can concentrate on the right things.

Giving Feedback

Here are my tips for giving feedback:

State Your Assumptions

If you’re assuming the manuscript hasn’t been edited, say so. It’s kinder than saying it hasn’t been edited well (even if that’s what you think). Then cite specific examples and sources of areas that need editing, so the author knows this isn’t you being mean. It’s you sharing knowledge.

Be Clear

Giving feedback is not a time for obfuscation or eregious advice. Say what you mean, and say it clearly.

Cite Sources

If you’re giving feedback on a technical craft issue (e.g. plot, structure, characterisation, or point of view), then cite the source of your advice. Where possible, quote from a relevant craft book from a recognised author or publisher (e.g. James Scott Bell or Writer’s Digest) rather than random blog posts or Pinterest pins (which might be wrong … like that “101 alternatives to ‘said'” pin).

Cite Examples

If there were parts of the manuscript which puzzled you e.g you couldn’t tell which character was speaking, or you didn’t understand something, then cite the exact example. It doesn’t help the author if you say you didn’t understand some things. It does help if you quote specific sentences and say what you didn’t understand.

Focus on the Writing

Critiquing a manuscript is just that. Critiquing a manuscript. Critique the writing, but do not critique the writer (which is one of the reasons I don’t edit non-fiction—it’s a lot easier to stick to critiquing the writing in fiction!

Finally …

Finally (or first), remind the author that all professional writers go through an extensive revision and editing process. It’s only the amateur who thinks a novel can be written in two weeks, and published the next. Seeking feedback from trusted advisors is an important and necessary part of being a professional writer.

The author friend who asked you to beta read is already several steps ahead of the pack. They’ve completed a manuscript. They’ve asked for feedback. Now they need to assess that feedback (from you, and from others), and incorporate the best feedback into their manuscript.

I hope that helps! What questions or suggestions do you have about beta-reading?

Seven Works Creators Can't Copyright—And Why Not

Copyright for Writers | Seven Works Creators Can’t Copyright

Over the last four weeks, I’ve covered various aspects of copyright and copyright law:

This week I’m discussing seven works creators can’t copyright—and why not.

Note: I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. You get legal advice by consulting a lawyer qualified in the specific legal area, and licensed to practice in your location. There are common principles in international copyright law, but the application of those principles does vary by jurisdiction.

Copyright law is a branch of intellectual property (IP) law, which applies internationally. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (part of the United Nations) defines intellectual property as “creations of the mind”, and divides IP into five types:

  • Copyright
  • Patents
  • Trademarks
  • Industrial designs
  • Geographic indicators

Copyright is covered internationally under the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, while patents, trademarks, and industrial designs are covered under the 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Intellectual Property.

These four types of works are protected under other forms of intellectual property law, and therefore can’t be copyrighted:

Patents

Patents protect inventions and machines, from the invention of the light bulb (one of Thomas  Edison’s many patents) to nanotechnology. A patent is a generally a new way of doing something, or a new technical solution to a problem. Patent applications are dealt with by specialist patent attorneys.

Patents must offer workable solutions. The idea of a perpetual motion machine has been around for centuries, but no one has yet invented and patented such a machine. Equally, the warp drive or faster-than-light engine is a staple of science fiction, but has yet to be invented.

Trademarks

Trademarks inform consumers the product or service comes from a particular company. For example, Nike manufactures footwear and clothing with the “swoosh” design. Coca-Cola manufactures drinks with the “dynamic ribbon device”.

Trademark law also includes service marks, which identifies and protects the provider of a service.

Industrial Designs

Industrial designs can also be protected by intellectual property law, including shape, colour, patterns, lines, features, or the ornamental or aesthetic aspect. Note that not all designs are protected. Many fashion designs are not protected, as they are not deemed sufficiently original. (This explains how chain stores can get away with selling cheap mass-produced copies of designer clothes).

Geographic Indicators

Geographic indicators inform consumers the product comes from a particular place, and the “qualities, characteristics or reputation of the product should be essentially due to the place of origin“. For example, champagne must come from the Champagne region of France. Otherwise it’s sparkling wine.

What Else Can’t be Copyrighted?

Section 102 of the U.S. Copyright Act states:

Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression … In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.

To be able to be protected by copyright, something must be:

  • Original
  • Tangible (i.e. written or recorded in a form that can be copied)

Copyright is therefore limited to the tangible expression of original works. This excludes ideas, titles and names, and recipes (among other things).

Ideas

Ideas can’t be copyrighted because they are not tangible. And they may not be original—how can we know if they are not written down?

As the US Copyright Office says:

You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in your description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in your written or artistic work.

Titles and Names

Titles and names (e.g. character names or pen names) aren’t subject to copyright. They are considered too short to be original.

However, you may be able to trademark a series title or a character name if you can show an original and unique use. For example, you might be able to trademark a unique word or phrase in a custom font, but you can’t trademark a word in common usage in your genre and expect to be able to enforce it.

Recipes

Have you ever visited Pinterest looking for a recipe? You find what looks like a good recipe and click through to the website, where you have to wade through what seems like the blogger’s entire life story before you get to the good stuff: the list of ingredients and the instructions.

Bloggers do this because the list of ingredients isn’t subject to copyright. Even the instructions are only subject to copyright if there is something creative about them (e.g. saying “cream the butter and the sugar” isn’t deemed creative, but posting a photograph or a video of creaming the butter and the sugar is).

What is subject to copyright is the blogger’s life story, and the accompanying photographs, which is why a Pinterest recipe is so much more than a recipe.

Conclusion

Copyright protects the author’s expression, but not the underlying facts, ideas, or theories, no matter now novel those may be … what counts is not quality or novelty but only that the work be original.
(Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, 4.5)

These aren’t the only seven works creators can’t copyright, but I think they are the most common. If you want to find out more, then click here to read Works Not Covered by Copyright from the US Copyright Office.

Copyright for Writers: Using Images in Blog Posts (Legally)

Copyright for Writers: Using Images in Blog Posts

Images in blog posts can be a great way to break up the text and make the reading experience more user friendly. But we can’t just use any images in blog posts.

(Note: This is not legal advice. I’m not a lawyer. I’ve never played one on TV. This is my interpretation of the doctrine of fair use, based on my reading of the Chicago Manual of Style, and blog posts written by lawyers. Caveat Emptor.)

Using Images Online

Many people will tell you that you can copy and use any image you find online. Others will tell you certain images or photographs are copyright-free.

They are wrong, as some bloggers have discovered at great cost.

All images on the internet are copyright.

Even photographs of old paintings. The paintings themselves are no longer under copyright, but the photographs are. Using these images without permission is a breach of copyright, in the same way as pirating a book or a movie is a breach of copyright.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property. It means the creator of a piece of content owns that content (apart from exceptions like a work for hire arrangement, which means your employer probably owns the copyright to any content you produce as a part of your normal employee duties).

As a blogger and writer, you want people to respect your copyright rights. You don’t want to find someone has pirated your ebook, plagiarised your paperback, or copied your blog post verbatim.

So it’s only fair that you need to respect the copyright rights of other creators—writers, illustrators, photographers, anyone who creates copyrighted material and shares it online or in real life.

This means you need to make sure you have the right to use any and all images.

Images You Can Use on Blog Posts

Your Own Photographs

If you took the photograph, you own the copyright, and you’re usually safe to use the picture. The exception might be if you’re using a picture of a famous building—some buildings are trademarked and can’t be reproduced commercially (e.g. on a book cover) without permission.

For example, the London Eye can be included as part of a skyline shot, but can’t be the main focus pf the photo. Nor can you use photographs taken from inside the Eye without permission. And while photographs of the Eiffel Tower in daytime are permissible, photographs of the nightly illuminations are not—they are copyrighted.

Note that you have to take the photo yourself in order to own the copyright and the right to use the picture. If a monkey takes a photo on your camera, the monkey may own the copyright on the image (Seriously. The court case is ongoing).

Photos You Own

You can use photos taken by someone else, but for which you have purchased the rights. If you plan to use the image commercially (e.g. on a book cover), make sure your contract includes commercial rights (and check the number of copies, and whether it includes Print on Demand). If the photo includes a model, make sure the photographer has the correct model release form.

Rights to photographs taken by someone else may be exclusive—or not. An exclusive right means the photographer can’t sell that image to anyone else. Non-exclusive rights may mean “your” cover image shows up on other books.

Free Photos from Stock Sites

You can find free photos at sites like Canva, MorgueBay, Pixabay and Unsplash. These sites use a Creative Commons 0 (zero) licence, which means:

you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer

Other sites might require you to ask permission and/or provide attribution to the photographer and/or site. Check what acknowledgement is required the first time you use a new site, and get it right.

However, many of the photos on these free sites include photos that depict trademarked or copyrighted objects. For example, Unsplash has hundreds of pictures of Apple products. Use these pictures at your own risk.

Canva has a list of 73 sites offering free photos. As an added bonus, they’ve ranked the sites in terms of the size of the gallery, searchability, and whether attribution is required.

There are many terms you need to understand before using images from a free or paid stock site. This blog post from ACES: The Society for Editing discusses the terms relating to images and permissions.

Photos from Paid Stock Sites

There are many stock photography sites offering a range of images, at a range of prices. Most stock sites will allow you to download a watermarked version of the image for free, but you shouldn’t use this version for your blog post. When it comes to blog posts, you need to ensure you get the official version, the one with no watermarks.

Charges for photos vary by site, and depend on the size of the photo, and the intended use. A book cover needs a high-resolution photo, and needs a commercial licence that covers all formats of the book, and a large number of copies. A blog post only needs a low-resolution photo (which is quicker to load).

Most paid stock sites charge per download, and some charge more for better-quality photos. Some sites offer credits or bundles, with the unit cost decreasing the more you buy. Some sites operate on a subscription model.

StoryBlocks.com

I use StoryBlocks.com, which costs USD 99 for an unlimited annual subscription (there is also a USD 49 subscription which allows you to download five images a month). Their selection isn’t as big as some of the more expensive sites, and they don’t have many images that would be suitable for book covers. But it’s a great resource for images for blog posts or memes.

StoryBlocks offer a 100% royalty free worldwide licence in perpetuity, and $20,000 in indemnification coverage (which gives me a level of confidence in their photos that I no longer have with sites like Unsplash). Click here to view their full licence agreement.

Lightstock

I also use Lightstock—it’s great for cheese-free Christian images. It is a paid site, but you can sign up to their email newsletter and they’ll send you a link to their free download of the week. This is a cost-effective way of building up a library of photos suitable for Bible memes or photos to accompany devotional posts. The only catch is we all get the same free photo each week—there is no choice. But it’s free (unless you want to pay as you go or subscribe), and the images are beautiful.

The Fair Use Exception to Copyright Law

The doctrine of fair use is entrenched in copyright law, and does allow copyrighted content to be used under certain conditions. For example, it’s acceptable to quote from another author’s work or reproduce small amounts of graphic or pictorial material for the purposes of review or criticism.

The same fair use exceptions apply for images as they do for written content. But the application is a little different. I can’t copy someone else’s book cover. But I might be able to purchase the same photo from a stock photo site, which will mean our covers have a similar look. Yes, this is why big publishers spend big bucks on customised photo shoots for book covers.

Quote from The Space Between Words

I can (and do) use thumbnail images book covers in memes. I consider this fair use, as I’m promoting their book. If an author or publisher didn’t want me to promote their books, I would stop. (But that would be short-sighted: user-generated content is considered a sign of social proof, and many major brands actively solicit and promote user-generated content).

Do you use images on your blog posts? Where do you obtain your images?

#WriteTip or #BadWritingAdvice: Keep Backstory to the Back of the Story

#WriteTip or #BadWritingAdvice? Keep Backstory to the Back of the Story

Keep Backstory to the Back of the Story

#WriteTip or #BadWritingAdvice?

There are many “rules” to writing good fiction. One of them is to keep backstory to the back of the story—specifically, don’t use any backstory in the first fifty pages.

Is this a good writing tip, or more bad writing advice? Don’t we need to introduce our characters to the reader at the beginning of the story? Don’t we need to give enough of their personal character history to enable the reader to understand what’s going on?

As with many pieces of writing advice, the answer is yes. And no. Or no, and yes, depending on which way you prefer to look at the issue.

What is Backstory?

Backstory is anything that happens before our story begins. The reader doesn’t need to know the character’s entire life history … although the author does. Yes, the reader needs to know some of the character’s personal history. The trick with writing great fiction is understanding what the reader needs to know, and when.

One of the first writing craft books I read was How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark. One of the quotes I copied was this:

Know what the chase is, and cut to it. Do not write hundreds of pages explaining… why the characters are living the way they are when the story begins, or what past events made the characters into people who would have that story.

I thought this was ridiculous. Surely no author would be so … so … stupid? So naive?

But by some strange quirk of fate, the very next novel I read had exactly this problem. I’m not going to embarrass the author by naming them, or telling you the title, or even the genre. I don’t remember much about the story. What I do remember is that whenever a new character was introduced, the author took the opportunity to share that character’s life story.

And the story of how their parents met and married.

And sometimes even the story of how their grandparents met and married, and how many children they had, and when, and where, and why, and …

And none of this information had any relevance to the story at hand. It was well written. It was interesting. But it was irrelevant to the present story (which is probably why I’ve forgotten the basics of the actual story).

Yes, some authors have a problem with backstory.

That’s not to say you can’t use backstory at the beginning of a novel. You can introduce some backstory. In fact, you have to use introduce some backstory to give the reader an understanding of your main character’s goals and motivations, which influence their central internal and external conflicts. You may need to use backstory to give your reader a reason to care about your character.

But flip-flopping between the past and the present at the beginning of the story can leave you with a novel that confuses readers. Instead, ensure your opening clarifies:

  • Who is the main character?
  • What does the main character want?
  • Why does s/he want that?
  • When is this story set?
  • Where is this story set?

And answer these questions in the present timeline of the story.

Lay out actions in sequential order. Don’t jump backward or forward in the story. If you do, you’ll interrupt the flow of time and disconcert your reader .
– Janalyn Voigt, via WordServeWaterCooler.com

In Media Res

The use of backstory often relates to a common writing issue: new writers often start their story in the wrong place. Novels should start in media res—in the middle of the thing.

Your novel itself begins “in the middle of the thing”—the “thing” being the story. What starts on page one is the second half of the story, where the plot kicks in.
– Lisa Cron, Story Genius, Chapter 2

But characters don’t emerge fully formed on the page. They have personal histories, just like real people. They have likes and dislikes, just like real people. Some of that is directly relevant to the novel’s plot, and some is not. But without the backstory, there is no present story.

Your protagonist doesn’t start from “neutral”. He starts from a very particular place, with very particular, deeply held beliefs that your novel is going to force him to call into question.
– Lisa Cron, Story Genius, Chapter 3

Your character has a backstory.

In fact, all your characters have their own backstory, and that backstory is what influences their lives in the present (or in whatever “present” your novel is set, whether that’s the past, the present, or the future).

As a writer, you need to know this backstory. You need to know what has formed your protagonist and antagonist into the characters you are writing. In Story Genius, Lisa Cron recommends you do write three story-specific backstory scenes. But these aren’t included in the final manuscript. The information in the scenes might be, but the scenes themselves are not.

Margie Lawson uses the illustration of a pane of glass. Imagine writing all your backstory on a large pane of glass, them dropping the glass so it smashes into slivers. Then pick up those slivers, one at a time, and insert them into your story.

A sliver at a time. Not the entire window. At the time when it best serves the story to reveal that information.

An Example of Good Backstory

I’ve recently read A Dangerous Legacy by Elizabeth Camden. Much of the first chapter is backstory, but it’s written well and integrated into the present scene (well, the novel’s present. It’s historical fiction). Here’s an example:

They lived on the fourth floor of a brownstone walk-up that had once been a prestigious building, but had fallen on hard times in recent decades. Much like her own family.

Just two sentences, but a lot of backstory. What do we learn?

  • The setting—where the point of view character lives (a brownstone walk-up in Greenwich Village, New York).
  • A brief description that hints rather than tells—once prestigious hints the building is in a state of disrepair without telling us about the peeling paint or the chipped bricks.
  • A sliver of backstory—her own family has fallen on hard times.
  • A hint at timing—the problem goes back decades.

Clever. Very clever.

It’s also shown in the voice of the character, not the voice of the author.

This paragraph illustrates that we can—and even should—use backstory in the beginning of the story. But we need to sliver it in, not dump it. The author could then have gone on to describe exactly how the family fell on hard times—and she does. But not here, because it’s not relevant to the story at this point.

So here are four tips for writing backstory:

  • Know the backstory of your main characters.
  • Know how their backstory contributes to the present story.
  • Include only what is relevant to the story.
  • Include backstory as slivers.

What tips or questions do you have about backstory?

Introducing Write!

Introducing Write! (An #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop post)

This post is part of the monthly Author ToolBox Blog Hop, organised by Raimey Gallant. We now have over 40 blogs participating. To find more Blog Hop posts:

Introducing Write!

You know how you sometimes read product reviews where the influencer got given a free copy of the product, and they keep it a couple of weeks and maybe use it a couple of times, then write a glowing five star review?

This is not that kind of review.

I was offered a free copy of Write! to trial and see if I’d like to write a review. I liked the idea of the product, so I agreed. But I’ve taken a little longer to review Write! Ten months, and I’ve been using Write! constantly in that time.

Write is a minimalist online text editor (what we used to call a word processor back when I started using computers).

Write! is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It’s easy to learn, simple to use, and the autosave facility with online backup makes it almost impossible to lose your documents.

First, a bit of background. I’ve been using Microsoft Word since around 1993. My employer at the time sent my team on a two-day training course, so I’ve always been confident with the basic and more advanced features of Word, including performing mail merges and creating and using style sheets. Word later introduced features like Track Changes, which have been invaluable in my editing work.

If those are features you are looking for, then stick with Word. Write! is not for you.

Word is great for letters and reports. But it has a lot of extra functionality which means it doesn’t play nice with the kind of lightweight machine I like to use when I travel or write away from home. Light in weight, and light in functionality. So I wanted a matching lightweight word processor I could use away from home.

When I started writing, everyone said Scrivener was the best programme to use. There was the notecard feature. The ability to compile ebook and print files. The drag-and-drop feature which means you can move scenes easily.

I bought Scrivener. I bought the expensive training programme. But I’m not a Scrivener convert. The fancy ideas which sold me on the concept are all things I can do in Word using Styles. (Well, except for compiling print and ebook files. But I can do that for free through Draft2Digital.) Maybe Word isn’t as efficient as in Scrivener, but Word doesn’t have the Scrivener learning curve. It beat me.

If you’ve learned Scrivener and love it, then stick with Scrivener. Write! is not for you.

But I still wanted a simple word processing programme I could use when I’m out and about. Something easy to learn that I could use on my very basic travel PC. (A cheap 32GB tablet-with-clunky-keyboard that replaced my Microsoft Surface, which had Microsoft Office … but no memory left to download Scrivener or store files).

I didn’t want to use Google Docs, because I often want to write somewhere with no internet connection. That helps me not be distracted by Facebook and endless cat memes. I also wanted a product where the letters appear on screen as fast as I type them … not my experience with Google Docs.

So when I was offered a review copy of Write! I was keen to try it out.

The first test was simple: could I load it on my machine?

Yes. I have Write! loaded on the world’s cheapest and ugliest Microsoft tablet. If it loads on this, it should load on anything.

Is Write! easy to use?

Yes. It uses the same keyboard commands as Word and other word processors, which makes them easy to remember (e.g. Ctrl-B or Cmd-B for Bold text).

That was a real plus for me. I don’t want to have to learn another programme. Write! is perfect for me, because it uses the commands I already use automatically.

Basic Formatting

Write! also has basic formatting tools:

  • Cut, copy, and paste
  • Left, centre, and right alignment
  • Bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough font
  • Heading and subhead styles

You can’t customise the heading and subhead styles in Write! the way you can in Word or WordPress, but that doesn’t matter—I see this as a drafting tool, not a publishing tool. An H2 heading in Write! will convert to the customised H2 heading in Word or WordPress. That’s all I need it to do.

SpellCheck

Write! has a basic spellchecker. It’s not as sophisticated as the Word spellchecker (no grammar), but I find the Word spellcheck isn’t right all the time, especially not when it comes to whether a word should have a hyphen or not. And I’m not interested in a grammar checker. I don’t want my computer to question my artistic decision to start a sentence with a conjunction, split an infinitive, or use a sentence fragment.

Autosave

Write! is cloud-based, and everything automatically saves to the hard drive, and to the cloud (when the machine has internet access). Each document is therefore available on all the PCs you have Write! installed on. The screens even look the same, unlike with Windows Online (where I’d lose files because I couldn’t remember where I’d saved it, or Windows “accidentally” saved it to the wrong place).

The fact all files are automatically saved is a big plus for me. Yes, yes, I know Word has an autosave function. But it doesn’t always work (says the sad voice of experience).

Additional Features

Write! also has some additional features which are both simple and useful. There is a focus mode, which lowlights everything except the paragraph you are working on:

Screenshot from Write!

You can also collapse and expand headings to make it easier to navigate through a long document:

Screenshot from Write!
With heading collapsed …

 

… and with headings expanded.

And there is that (optional) handy little side bar on the right which highlights the part of the document you are currently working on.

Can you use Write! for long documents, like a manuscript for a novel?

Yes, as long as you use the H1 and H2 styles to separate out the different scenes or chapters. But you have to do that in Word or Scrivener anyway … I haven’t used Write! for anything longer than 30,000 words. This is mostly because I found that while my H1 and H2 headings translate from Write! into Word, the reverse wasn’t true.

And yes, there is an export function: you can export from Write! to html, docx, pdf, txt, and other file types.

Can you use Write! for multiple documents?

Yes. I routinely keep all my draft blog posts open. You can click into a single document using the header bar, or use Ctrl-Tab to move through all the open documents.

Is there a Mac version?

Yes. Write! is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Is Write! free?

No. But at $24.95 for a lifetime licence, it’s a lot cheaper than many of the alternatives (and there is no requirement to upgrade to get the premium features, as with some “free” apps), and a lot cheaper than, say, Scrivener turned out to be. It’s user-friendly and there are regular upgrades. And you can get 10% off by signing up to their newsletter.

Write! also has an automatic affiliate scheme. The scheme pays a 20% commission, with a minimum payment of $20. (Yes, this post uses affiliate links. Here’s the direct link: www.writeapp.co).

Over the last year, I’ve used Write! to write the first drafts of almost all my book reviews and other blog posts. I can draft the post wherever I am, then paste my draft directly into WordPress. Write! brings across the basic formatting (e.g Bold, H2), which makes it quick and easy to format and publish a blog post.

No, Write! won’t replace Word for editing long documents. But it’s a great alternative for drafting, and it’s simple to learn and use. So if you’re looking for a simple word processor with basic features that can be used online and offline, Write! might be what you’re looking for.

Me? I use it all the time, and I love it.

Thanks to WriteApp for providing a free licence for Write!

Do you have any questions about Write?

How long will it take to edit my novel? And how much will it cost?

Dear Editor | How Long Will it Take to Edit my Novel (And How Much Will It Cost)?

(And How Much Will it Cost?)

This is another question from a Facebook group. An author asked how long it would take her to edit her 80,000-word novel before sending it to a professional editor.

My answer? It depends.

It depends on two things:

  • What level of editing you are doing.
  • The state of the manuscript

The Level of Editing

I discussed the different levels of editing in my recent blog post, Did My Editor Do Their Job Properly?. As a general guide:

  • Developmental editing takes longer than copyediting
  • Line editing takes longer than copyediting
  • Copyediting takes longer than proofreading

It takes me around four hours to read an 80,000-word novel when I’m reading for pleasure. It can take me up to twice as long if I’m reading as part of a Manuscript Assessment, as I’ll be taking detailed notes as I read. It can then take me another four hours to draft the editorial letter, run spellcheck, and proofread the letter before sending.

Actual on-the-page editing will take much longer. It can take me anywhere from 20 to 80 hours to edit an 80,000-word manuscript (depending on whether the manuscript requires line editing or copyediting).

How long it takes me will depend on how good the writing was to begin with, and how much time, effort, and knowledge the author has spent revising and self-editing. That could be anything from 20 to 200 hours. Hint: the more time you spend, the less time it will take a professional editor.

If my sample edit indicates the edit is going to take more longer than 40 hours, I will suggest the author start with a manuscript assessment and undertake more self-editing before engaging me or any other professional editor.

State of the Manuscript

Some authors have an excellent grasp of the basics of punctuation and grammar. Some do not. I’ve had manuscripts submitted for editing that range from almost publication standard to almost unreadable. It doesn’t matter how great your story is, how original your plot, how compelling your characters if you can’t use words and sentences and paragraphs and scenes to get that plot and those characters across to the reader.

I’ve heard writers say they don’t need to know basic grammar, how to punctuate dialogue, or how to correctly use a comma. Their editor will fix that.

Well, yes. But that will make the editing a lot more expensive than it could be.

It also means you’re not giving your editor the chance to do the best job possible—if your editor is focussing on correcting misplaced commas, and trying to work out who is talking so your dialogue is punctuated correctly, then your editor might miss more important errors.

The other problem with submitting a messy manuscript is that the editor might do the work you’ve asked for (e.g copyediting), without realising the manuscript actually isn’t ready for copyediting because one of the main characters has a personality transplant at the halfway point, the pacing is inconsistent, the climax falls fifty pages too early, and the final resolution relies on an eye-rolling “coincidence”.

Don’t be that author. Make sure your manuscript is ready for copyediting before submitting it for copyediting. The best way to do that is to use beta readers, or pay a freelance editor for a manuscript assessment.

How Much Will it Cost to Edit My Novel?

If copyediting an 80,000-word novel will take between 20 and 40 hours, then how much will it cost to edit my novel?

The Editorial Freelancers Association has a schedule of average fees charged by member editors. Editing fees range from $30/hour to $60/hour, depending on the level of editing required. I pitch my fees in the middle of this range, and don’t differentiate between the types of editing. My time isn’t worth any less just because I’m doing a less complex level of editing.

Editors may quote for a project based on a per page rate (a standard editorial page is 250 words), a per 1,000 words rate, or by the hour. But at the end of the day, they all charge by the hour—even those who quote a single rate for a full manuscript.

Remember, while this standard hourly rate might sound high, freelance editors are self-employed. Freelance editors don’t get paid for eight hours a day, or 40 hours a week—they only get paid for chargeable hours, which means they aren’t paid for administration or marketing time. Editors don’t get paid vacation, paid sick leave, or benefits such as retirement savings contributions, or medical insurance. Editors have to pay for dictionaries, style guides, software, computers, and an internet connection.

Those expenses all come out of the hourly rate.

Actual actual hourly earnings may be half their hourly rate or less. Editing is mentally straining, which means many editors are only able to spend five hours a day editing without starting to miss errors.

So if an editor estimates your 80,000-word novel will take them 20 hours to copyedit, the quote will be somewhere between $600 and $1,200, depending on their standard hourly rate. A longer manuscript will cost more.

A manuscript that needs more work will cost more.

The best way to keep your editing costs down is to present your editor with a clean manuscript with no basic writing errors. This means:

  • Writing in scenes.
  • Showing, not telling.
  • Using point of view correctly.
  • Use interior monologue correctly.

If you’re not sure what these terms mean, you’re probably not ready for copyediting. Instead, begin with a manuscript assessment that will reinforce what you’re doing well, and show you how to correct what you’re not doing well.

Or leave a comment, and I’ll cover your question in a future blog post.

Time, place culture: Getting the setting right in your novel

Time, Place, Culture: Getting the Setting Right in Your Novel

This is another blog post based on a comment in a Facebook group (I seem to be getting into a habit, don’t I?). This was a conversation about editing.

One author commented that there are several changes she’d like to make to her debut novel, a historical romance published in 2017. Apparently, her research for her next novel has highlighted some inaccuracies in that first novel.

It should come as no surprise for you to know I’ve read the novel in question. It probably also won’t come as any great surprise to know that I found several inaccuracies in the setting.

The overall editing and proofreading in this novel was as good as I expect from a major Christian publisher.

The problem was with an element of editing that falls somewhere between developmental and line editing (both of which I addressed in a recent post).

Editing for Fact

Authors often make unintentional factual errors. I’ve found these fall into three main categories:

Time:

Using anachronisms, words which are too modern for the time setting of the novel.

Place:

Getting physical or geographical details wrong.

Culture:

Getting cultural details wrong e.g. a British character using an American English term in a time setting where s/he would have been unlikely to have known the American term (or vice versa).

Here are a few examples:

Danish (as a breakfast food):

Danish pastries were developed in Denmark in the 1850s. They spread to the United States during World War One, but it’s not clear when they were first introduced to England. My experience is that while the modern commuter might eat a Danish pastry for breakfast (or a pain au chocolate), breakfast at home in the 1880’s was more likely to be some form of cooked protein (bacon, eggs, kippers).

Entree (as part of a meal):

The entree is the main meal in modern USA, but the entree is the a small dish served before the main meal in England (and other Commonwealth countries). It took me a while to work out why the characters kept eating entrees, but never got to the main meal.

Marketing:

In Victorian England, marketing was the daily activity of going to the market to buy fresh produce to eat, not an activity undertaken by companies to sell products.

Schelp:

Schelp is an American English word derived from Middle High German via Yiddish. It dates from the early twentieth century, so an English woman in the 1880’s is unlikely to use the word.

Yard:

A unit of measure in British English, not a term used to refer to part of a property (the English have gardens, not yards).

These aren’t major mistakes.

None of them affected the believability of the plot (although I have read books where the factual errors did ruin the plot for me).

Also, using the correct English term (e.g. entree) may confuse American readers where the term has a different meaning in the USA. It is a balancing act.

But mistakes such as marketing and schlep brought me out of Victorian England and took me to twenty-first century America. And anything that draws the reader out of the story is a bad thing. We read to be drawn into the fictive dream, not thrown out of it.

This was brought home again by the story I was reading this evening, set in England in 1940. It’s a setting many of us know through such classics CS Lewis’s Narnia stories. So why did the English characters hide in a closet? We’ve all heard of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. So why did the American author feel the need to change “wardrobe” to “closet”?

How can authors stop this happening?

The best way to stop these kinds of errors is to be an expert in the time and place you are writing about. But that’s not always possible—we can’t all dedicate years to studying a specific period in history. And readers don’t want endless contemporary women’s fiction offerings about the challenge of balancing home, work, and family, and still trying to find room for hobbies and faith in the modern world.

Readers want variety.

Which means writers have to write more than what they know.

Which means research.

The research is rarely the problem. Authors research, and find out so many fabulous details that the challenge becomes what to leave out, not what to put in.

The real problem comes when the author adds information they haven’t researched. It’s an old problem: we don’t know what we don’t know. So we use a word that’s wrong for the time setting or location without realising it.

How do we avoid errors in our setting?

We need to find people who have knowledge of the areas we’re not personally familiar with:

  • Time
  • Place
  • Culture

With the novel that prompted this post, the answer would have been to find a beta reader or freelance editor who knows British English (perhaps someone who is English or has lived in England), and who knows something of the geography and history. I’ve read novels where the main character saw Oxford while traveling from London Heathrow to Bath. Nope. Not unless your driver is taking you for a ride, literally and figuratively.

Different novels will require beta readers or editors with different backgrounds and different knowledge. For example, an author writing about Native Americans or people of colour would benefit from finding an early reader with the appropriate racial or cultural background.

An author writing for a traditional publisher might think they don’t need to hire an editor or find beta readers with specialist knowledge. Won’t their publisher do that for them? First, obvious errors will affect your chances of gaining a publishing contract.

Even if you do get a contract, an increasing number of traditional publishers are outsourcing their editing. This means authors may or may not be assigned an editor with knowledge of the time, place, or culture of their novel. And many editors don’t undertake fact checking—research is the author’s job.

It’s your job as the author to get your facts right.

Authors, what steps do you take to prevent factual errors in your novels?

Can I Use Miracles in My Novel?

Dear Editor: Can I Use Miracles in My Novel?

I’m a Christian. I believe in miracles (although I understand not all Christians do, as I discussed in this post).

But that doesn’t mean that we can fill our fiction with miracles:

If you find yourself whipping up a coincidence or a miracle after the bleakest moment, chances are you’ve employed deus ex machina … some unexpected and improbable incident to bring victory or success. [This is] frowned upon in modern literature.

– Angela Hunt, The Plot Skeleton

In How Not to Write a Novel, Sandra Newman and Howard Mittlemark say a novelist’s job is harder than God’s: God can use miracles. We can’t. Even if they really happened.

Orson Scott Card puts it like this:

Believability in fiction doesn’t come from the facts—what actually happened. It comes from the readers’ sense of what is plausible—what is likely to happen … “But it really happened like that” is no defence in fiction.

– Orson Scott Card, Characters & Viewpoint, Chapter Three

But that isn’t to say we can’t use miracles. We can. But we need to establish up a world where miracles happen (which is related to genre). We need to set up our miracles with appropriate foreshadowing (but not telegraphing). And have to place our miracles at the right point in the story.

Miracles and Genre

I mentioned this draft blog post in my recent newsletter (if you don’t subscribe already, you can sign up on the right). One subscriber responded with a question: Does the presence of a miracle affect the genre labelling?

I believe it does. We’re more likely to expect miracles or supernatural events in genres such as fantasy or paranormal romance. But even in fantasy, the miracles or supernatural events must occur within the rules of the story. The author has to foreshadow or “plant” the possibility of a miracle or supernatural event.

We’re less likely to get miracles in romance, women’s fiction, mysteries, thrillers—or science fiction. As Arthur C Clarke says:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

That’s not to say you can’t have a miracle in a women’s fiction novel—especially if that novel is aimed at the Christian market. But the miracle still needs to be planted, and to fall at the right place in the story.

However, I suspect this is coming at the question from the wrong angle. We shouldn’t be writing a book, then trying to work out the genre labelling. That means we’re not going to have a clear picture of our target reader or reader expectations as we (as happened with the novel I discussed a couple of weeks ago).

Instead, we should know our genre before we begin writing, so we can meet reader expectations, and foreshadow any miracles or coincidences.

Foreshadowing Miracles

Sol Stein talks about “planting” as a key to creating a credible series of actions:

Planting means preparing the ground for something that comes later, usually to make the later action credible. Planting is necessary when a later action might seem unconvincing to the reader.

– Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, Chapter 15

This is related to the principle of Chekov’s Gun (click here to read more). Essentially, it means that any miracles need to be appropriately foreshadowed. They can’t appear out of nowhere—especially not if they are climax-solving miracles.

Miracles and Structure

We can’t just put miracles anywhere in our story. The worst place is at the climax:

deus ex machina, the god in the machine, comes down for the rescue. These devices fool no one. They exist for the author’s convenience because he can’t figure out a credible way of rescuing the protagonist.

– Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, Chapter 15

Instead, use a miracle early in the story to get the plot in motion. Pixar (the film studio) put it like this:

Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

Michael Kurland agrees, and also recommends limiting the number of coincidences in a story:

We’re all entitled to one whizz-bang coincidence that either starts our story or turns it into a new and unexpected direction … More than one “yeah, right” in the same story, and the reader will probably put the book down and use his or her precious time for something else.

– WriterMag

An added bonus of using a miracle to get your character into trouble is that you could use a variation of that same miracle to get them out of trouble.

One Final Thought

Even as Christians, sometimes we ignore the minor miracles. We either don’t notice them, or we write them off as luck or coincidence.

I’ll give you an example. One book I’m editing on has a woman driving alone on a mountain road when her tyre bursts. Her car spins, and stops inches from the edge of the cliff, and she survives. She is then helped by a man who turns into a major character.

This didn’t strike me as a miracle, because something similar happened to me when I was at university. I was driving myself, my sister, and three friends to go skiing for the weekend. We left home at about four in the morning, and it was still dark as we approached the mountains. The others had fallen asleep when I hit black ice. The car skidded, turned, and we ended up on the verge at the side of the road. Another few feet, and we would have gone over. The others woke up, I counted us all lucky, and drove on.

Now I suspect (realise?) that was a miracle. I was a Christian at the time (although my parents weren’t), and I know one of the people in the car with me was from a Christian family. In hindsight, I’m sure his parents would have been praying for safe travels for us.

This kind of miracle doesn’t need a lot of setup, because I suspect anyone who has been driving for any period of time (especially in a country with mountains) will have a similar story. The accident that didn’t happen. The accident that should have killed them, but didn’t. Accidents happen (or don’t happen) all the time, to Christians and non-Christians, but even as Christians we rarely acknowledge that our narrow escapes are miracles.

To summarise:

Yes, you can have miracles (and coincidences, and plain old good luck) in your novel. But follow the rules:

  • Plant your miracles
  • Use your miracles in the middle
  • Use your miracles sparingly
  • Don’t use your miracle to solve the main plot problem

Do you use miracles in your fiction? How do you make them realistic?

Can My Characters Have Secrets?

Can My Characters Have Secrets? (An #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop post)

This post is part of the monthly Author ToolBox Blog Hop, organised by Raimey Gallant. We now have over 40 blogs participating. To find more Blog Hop posts:

Today I’m talking about secrets.

I was recently browsing through Facebook when an interesting question caught my eye. An author was asking if characters can keep secrets from the reader.

There are two parts to this question. The first is this: Can a character have a secret?

Yes. A character with a secret is a good character:

Any character with a credible, interesting secret has a good chance of coming alive.

– Sol Stein, Solutions for Novelists: Secrets of a Master Editor, Chapter Five

That is especially true if the character is one of the main characters, a point of view character. We want the character to have secrets. And we want to know those secrets, because that’s how we get to know the character:

Bonding with characters is achieved through intimacy … the greatest intimacy is achieved when we are privy to the thoughts and feelings of the characters. When we get to go inside their heads.

– James Scott Bell, Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, Chapter Two

But that leads us to the second part of the question: Can the point of view character hold secrets back from the reader?

Yes, but then you’re placing an artificial barrier between the reader and your character. If we were truly inside their heads, we’d know their secrets. Withholding secrets prevents intimacy. And point of view is all about intimacy.

Are you prepared to trade secrets for intimacy?

Let’s use some examples.

I’ve recently read the Criss Cross trilogy by CC Warrens. The three novels are all in first person, from the point of view of Holly, a tramatised twenty-eight-year-old photographer living as close to off the grid as anyone can live in modern New York. Holly has intimacy issues. So it works that Holly keeps secrets from those around her … and from the reader.

We find out more about Holly as the stories progress, as she begins to face her fears, make friends, and trust others with her secrets. That’s why she’s keeping secrets from the reader (and from her newfound friends). It’s a protection mechanism. She can’t cope with remembering how she’s been “hurt”.

Holly’s secrets drive the tension which drive the novels forward. And that’s what makes this a brilliant series.

But this is the exception.

What’s more common is that an untold secret robs the story of tension. For example, I once read a novel where a young woman moves from Ireland to the United States. She’s hiding from something or someone, but we don’t know who or what. All we know is that she has a secret which has sent her into hiding.

Hint: if you don’t want the evildoers to find you, don’t leave a paper trail wider than the Amazon. Between the passport, the airline tickets, the marriage licence, the gym membership, the library membership (all in her own name), there was never any doubt the evildoer would find her.

Anyway, the story goes on and on with references to this secret and how horrible it will be if the unknown evildoer finds her. Every mention of the unknown secret made it bigger and bigger, until I’m thinking this woman must have some ginormous secret. Maybe she’s the secret love child of two ultra-famous people. Maybe she’s got the US nuclear launch codes tattoed on her back. Maybe she’s the only person who knows who committed the crime of the century.

I didn’t know what her secret was, but it was obviously big and unique. Something that had never happened to anyone else in all of human history, or in any novel previously published.

But no. It turned out she’d fallen pregnant after being raped, and was forced to give up the baby. That actually made a lot of sense given her actions in the novel (e.g. joining the gym to get rid of the baby fat, and her fear of her marriage-of-convenience husband). But it was a complete letdown as a plot point, because it felt anticlimactic. Unfortunately, women being raped, falling pregnant, and not keeping their babies is all too common, both in real life and in fiction.

I’m convinced it would have been a stronger story if we’d known her secret from page one. Then we could have empathised with her situation, cheered as she achieved small victories on the road to normal. And there still would have been plenty of tension: would she allow herself to recover? Could she learn to trust men again? Could she fall in love with her marriage-of-convenience husband? Would she tell him her secret?

Keeping the secret turned the climax into an anticlimax.

Readers allow the narrator to withhold the ending, as long as he tells us at each stage in the story all that the character knew at that point in time … [not] hold back information until the end of the story … The author who does this usually thinks she’s increasing the suspense. In fact, she’s weakening the suspense by decreasing the readers’ involvement with and trust in the narrator.

– Orson Scott Card, Characters & Viewpoint, Chapter 16

Sharing the secret with the reader is a great way to enhance the conflict and add to the tension.

The other characters don’t need to know the point of view character’s secrets. But the reader does.

A good recent example of this is Shadows of Hope by Georgiana Daniels. The main character, Marissa, is infertile but works in a pregnancy crisis centre. One of her clients is pregnant to Marissa’s husband—except only the reader knows this (well, Kaitlyn obviously knows she’s pregnant to Colin, but Kaitlyn doesn’t even know Colin is married, let alone who he is married to).

Marissa, Kaitlyn, and Colin are all point of view characters. We know what they know, and we also know the secrets they don’t know. This tension keeps the story moving forward as we wait for the inevitable dust-up when everyone discovers what we already know. The story would have no power or tension if it was told entirely from Marissa’s point of view (or Kaitlyn’s, or Colin’s).

The secrets drove the story.

And the result was I could feel and empathise with both Marissa and Kaitlyn. (Colin? Not so much.) Marissa knew her marriage was in trouble, but infertility isn’t an easy problem with a quick fix like, say, a root canal. Kaitlyn believed Colin loved her, and that he’d man up and marry her as soon as he found out she was pregnant. As a reader, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, because I knew about Marissa. But Kaitlyn didn’t know, and that enhanced the suspense.

So can a character keep secrets from the reader?

Yes.

But keeping secrets comes at a price—intimacy, empathy, tension, and conflict.

Is having your character keep their secret worth the price?

Why You Need to Hire the Right Editor

Case Study: Why You Need to Hire the Right Editor

I recently saw a comment in one of the Facebook groups I’m a member of. A fiction author was asking about editing standards in relation to her recently released first novel.

As it happened, I was in the middle of reading her book when I saw the Facebook comment. I’d bought it after she mentioned it in her regular email (yes, email newsletters do sell books). I hadn’t read much before I realised it was a typical self-published novel, in that the author had rushed to market, and skipped several levels of editing (I discussed the levels of editing in last week’s post).

She’s not a bad writer. In fact, she’s a very good writer. She’s been writing non-fiction for a long time. She has non-fiction books published, as well as hundreds of blog posts and newsletters. As a result, her writing is succinct and understandable, with no major grammar or punctuation glitches. That’s more than I can say for many first-time self-published authors.

I understand the author has a MFA in (I think) creative writing. That shows. Her plot and structure are solid. There are goals. There is conflict. There are strong characters, with plenty of faults. This definitely isn’t the work of someone who decides to write and publish a novel on a whim, to tick an item off their bucket list.

But my experience of MFA and similar programmes (my limited experience, mostly based on the blog posts and books I’ve read by people who say they are MFA graduates) is that they focus on literary fiction. But this author is writing genre fiction. It’s different. Just as fiction is different from non-fiction.

Based on what the novel, it’s obvious that neither the author nor her editor are regular readers of fiction in general, or the specific genre she’s writing.

In other words, the author didn’t hire the right editor for this project. Why do I say that?

Most fiction is edited to the standards set in the Chicago Manual of Style (the style manual I’m most familiar with). The other major style guide is AP (Associated Press), which is the accepted manual for journalism and a lot of non-fiction. I suspect this author (and/or her editor) has used AP.

The grammar and style in this novel is correct for non-fiction, but not consistent with what I usually see in fiction.

For example, fiction rarely uses parentheses. I’d say “never”, but I can remember one of the last thousand books I read used parentheses (no, I can’t remember which one). As you can see, I use parentheses all the time in blog posts and non-fiction. But novels do not use parentheses.

There were also a lot of colons and semi-colons in the novel. They were all used correctly. But I can’t remember ever seeing a colon in a traditionally published novel, and I only rarely see semi-colons. That’s a small example, but it shows neither this author nor her editor truly understand fiction.

Those were the two potential issues I noticed first.

I wasn’t looking for errors—even though I’m a freelance editor, I try to ignore editing issues when I’m reading for pleasure (or reading a review copy).

But then I read the Facebook post about the novel having errors, and I started noticing more errors (no, I didn’t keep count). I found sentences with missing words (which a copyeditor or proofreader should have picked up).

I found sentences which weren’t bad, but which could be stronger.

A line editor or copyeditor would have commented on those sentences. A developmental editor would have let the weak writing pass, on the assumption those sentences would be worked over later by the line editor. A proofreader would have let the weak writing pass because proofreading is about checking the final copy for correctness, not for making changes to the text.

There are also developmental issues that need to be addressed.

The biggest was genre. As I said, I bought the book based on a promotion in her non-fiction newsletter. The newsletter advertised the novel as clean romance. “Clean romance” means a general market romance novel with no overt sexual content—similar to the Harlequin Mills & Boon Sweet Romance category romance novels. There is no sex, but there are also no overt Christian or other faith-based elements.

Yet this novel has clear Christian elements to it , in that the hero has recently become a Christian and is determined to turn his life around. That’s great … in a Christian romance. It’s going to annoy readers looking for clean romance (many of whom are looking in the clean romance category specifically because they don’t want a faith-based plot).

So it was Christian romance rather than clean romance.

But it didn’t entirely read like a romance. The beginning read like women’s fiction with romantic elements, in that the first few chapters were just the heroine. A romance would typically introduce the hero early in the book. Then we got introduced to the boy next door, the heroine’s childhood sweetheart. I figured he was the hero … but he wasn’t. The hero was the other guy (the new Christian).

This isn’t good. Romance readers want to know which characters to like and to follow. Introducing the Other Man before the Hero confused the issue, and meant I wasn’t sure which guy to like and which guy to loathe.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad book. But it could have been better.

This book illustrates why it’s important to hire editors who don’t just understand the mechanics of grammar and punctuation, but also understand the genre you’re writing, and the reader expectations of that genre.

I suspect this author used the same editor she uses for her non-fiction books. But her novel illustrates the importance of not just hiring a solid editor, but hiring the right editor for this book.

The right editor isn’t just an editor. The right editor is a teacher and a coach, someone who will gently point out the mistakes and improve the novel on a macro level, not just make it right at the micro level. The right editor for this project needs to understand more than the rules of punctuation and grammar. The right editor needs to understand fiction in general, and the specific genre.

The right editor understands the genre of this book.

Which might mean hiring different editors for different books.

What do you think? Do you write in more than one genre? Do you hire different editors for different books?