This article by Joanne Grant is from the September 2020 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

Excellent characterization is the backbone to every good story. So much goes into creating believable, three-dimensional strong characters—solid back stories, clear motivations, compelling conflicts and vivid physical descriptions—but small details can be the undoing of all that good work. A misplaced ‘out of character’ moment or action can take the reader out the story, undermine the consistency of the character, and shake the foundations of believability.

To ensure that your characters are as real and unique to the reader as they are to you, in this article I’ll highlight three key areas of mindfulness when writing and self-editing your work.

Out of character behavior

This seems like an obvious one, but I’m not talking about the fun out of character behaviors that demonstrate there’s been a key shift in character development. As long as the behavior is well-motivated, the reader will love these moments as they are often the key turning points for the story—you’ve been building to them, the reader understands them and revels in the character’s unusual behavior.

Instead, it’s the small, inconsistent details that can stand out to the reader and slowly chip away at their confidence in the character, and in turn the story. Here are some examples:

• She is an edgy, top of her game businesswoman—but she leaves a meeting because she is about to cry
• He only drinks black coffee for breakfast—but complains later he is hungry because he skipped breakfast
• She’s never even been kissed—but is suddenly a sex kitten in the bedroom displaying a surprisingly encyclopedic knowledge of the Karma Sutra!

In each of these examples, the intention of this behavior may be to further the plot. If this is the case—as always—motivation is key! But if you can’t realistically motivate them to behave in this way, or there was no specific intent behind the behavior—the inconsistency should be eliminated.

Let’s take each example in turn:

• You want to demonstrate that your steely businesswoman is so emotionally affected by this meeting she cries, so show why she has been moved to this extreme! But if her tears are not integral to the plot—the intention is just to show that the meeting has got to her—think about how she would react that is more in keeping with her character.
• For our coffee drinking hero—this could just be a slip of continuity—if he never has breakfast, he can never miss it, so clear up this inconsistency. Believe me, readers do notice these things!
• As for our sex kitten—on reflection you may realize you’ve written a sexually confident heroine because this is what comes naturally to you. Either give a realistic reason how she can be so knowledgeable (has she literally studied the Karma Sutra?!) or, re-write the scene with your inexperienced heroine in mind. But if her being a virgin isn’t integral to the plot, you may want to question whether the virgin heroine trope is right for you at all.

Out of character language

It takes time to develop and find your own author voice; however, once you do, it becomes your anchor for your readers who will want return to you time and time again. But when it comes to creating character voice—how can you make sure that their voice and the language they use is distinct from your voice and that of other characters? After all, this character came from you and whether you intend it or not and they may just accidentally share some of your verbal quirks.

Here are some examples where character language can trip you up:

• Colloquial phrases: they hold meaning to you—based on your background and experiences—but probably have no place in your characters’ vocabulary based on their background.
• Age appropriate phrases: using dated/old-fashioned phrases or too contemporary phrases for your character’s age can really jar and make readers’ question the authenticity of the character.
• Culturally dissonant words/phrases: some phrases just do not translate across cultures even across shared languages, such as English. For example, Americanisms slipping into a British character’s vernacular and vice verso.

Just like a child learns from parents, and how close friends can pick-up certain phrases from each other and adopt them as their own—so can your characters—either from yourself or from other characters! This can happen in both thought and dialogue.

Being aware of this should help you spot any of these moments, and a helpful tip is to read your work out loud—or get someone else to read it to you—and carefully visualize your character as you do so. Can you picture your cultured, buttoned-up politician swearing like a trooper and complaining about the latest football scores, or a billionaire businessman exclaiming "oh, my goodness?"

Out of character physical movements

Human communication is heavily reliant on non-verbal cues.  Even though studies cannot agree on what percentage is verbal vs non-verbal, the consensus is that most of communication is non-verbal. If you know your characters inside out, you should be able to imagine how they move their body not just to get around, but to also communicate.

How do they walk, how much do they use their hands to express themselves and what about their facial expressions? Now check in on how you have described your characters physically moving about – does it match with their traits, such as age, physical ability, but also their personality? How does it match-up with their communication style?

Let’s look at some examples:

• Your hero is in his thirties, a successful man who is fit and strong—do you think he would ever "wander" or "amble" into a room—or is he more likely to stride purposefully?
• Your heroine is described as warm, friendly and open—but we rarely see her smile, or make physical contact with others, such as a hand on an arm, or a sympathetic look.
• Your character is very prim and proper—would they use their hands to enthusiastically "hand talk" when they speak?

When it comes to physical movements, inconsistent or even lack of description, can undermine a character. Whereas, a little bit of detail here, can go a long way to adding a deeper dimension to your character and really bringing them off the page for your reader.

In conclusion, even when you think you’ve got the big stuff nailed down for your characters the details and trip you up. Here some final thoughts on why is this and what can you do about it:

• You don’t know your character as well as you thought—you need to spend some more time getting to know them!
• You are writing against type and/or experience—you may need to consider whether this character is someone you can do justice to. More research into your character type is required to make sure they sound, act and behave authentically. Watch videos, documentaries, or better still—meet real-life people!
• You’re subconsciously writing too much of yourself or the people you know in real-life into your characters because that’s what you know! Once you become aware you could be doing this, you open yourself up to see spot it happening.

"You must know your character as you know yourself" is a phrase I must’ve repeated hundreds of times over the years and it is worth repeating again here. And if you really know your characters, and pay attention to the details, your reader will thank you!

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Joanne Grant is an editorial coach with over 16 years of editorial expertise working for the global bestselling publisher Harlequin. Joanne has edited hundreds of romance novels over the years and understands how to coach authors of all genres to deliver their best work. If you’re interested in finding out how she can help you achieve your writing goals, get in touch – Joanne loves to chat! You can find Joanne on Twitter @JoanneMGrant and Facebook at JoanneGrantEditorialCoach.

This article by Joanne Grant is from the July 2020 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

An impactful opening will hook your reader and quite rightly, there is a lot of emphasis placed on writers to get those first chapters right. And then there’s your ending. If you’ve done a great job, your ending will leave your reader feeling great about the time they’ve spent with your characters and are more likely to come back for more of your stories.

But what about everything in-between?

Whatever genre you’re writing, whatever the word count, there’s a lot of “in-between” that has to be just as engaging and memorable. After all, what’s the point of that fantastic finale if few readers make it there! But I know that writers can struggle to maintain momentum through the mid-section and are in danger of developing a saggy middle.

In this article I will focus on the often-overlooked middle by highlighting common symptoms and causes, and then suggest some toning exercises.

What does a saggy middle look like?

As a reader, you know when you’re in saggy territory because you find yourself losing interest, skimming the pages, in short – you’re bored! This could be because:

• There’s nothing really happening – it’s all a bit dull
• Or there’s lots happening! It’s all action and excitement, yet … it leaves you feeling flat
• The narrative is confused, repetitious or waffley

What is going on? The chances are — not a lot. And there sits the problem. You’re wading through a sludge of filler because nothing significant is happening to move the story forward in an engaging, meaningful way. This is key:

• Every scene, within every chapter, should be moving the story forward. Whether through plot, character motivation, emotions, conflicts, character development — something should be shifting, moving, propelling the reader through.

Without this forward-moving momentum, the pace will stall, your middle will sag, and readers will start to lose interest.

You know what sagging middles feel like as a reader, but how can you recognize it as a writer? Or when you feel like it might be sagging but aren’t sure? First, let’s identify whether your mid-section is in trouble.

Signs you’re developing a saggy middle

• You’ve lost interest in writing your current story. In fact, your head may be half-way into a different story. If you’re bored, your reader will be too!
• Your writing feels mechanical, you’re losing your natural voice and spark, and everything you write seems to lack the energy you created in the opening.
• You find yourself checking your word count every half an hour (or more!), willing it to have magically shot up a few thousand so you can move on to the next exciting part of the story.
• Your characters are repeating themselves — in actions, thoughts or conversations. In fact, they have run out of new things to say to each other!
• You find yourself describing the mundane. It may be real life, but it probably isn’t that interesting to read.
• You throw in some action — another sex scene, another fight — because, it’s exciting … isn’t it?

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, your writing is displaying some of the symptoms of a saggy middle, but the good news is that there are ways you can tone it up!

Two exercises to tone up the middle

Scene by scene analysis

We’ve established that every scene should be moving something along, so a good place to start is by looking scene by scene and asking: what purpose does this scene serve? Here are some elements to focus on:

• Characters: What have you learned about them? Have you revealed anything new to the reader, to another character or even to themselves? What has changed within them, or is the aim to show that they haven’t/can’t change?
• Emotion: Have the emotional stakes shifted? Have emotions changed in the scene — from hopeful to anxious; from insecure to content; from in love to feeling betrayed?
• Conflicts: Check your conflicts. If you haven’t noted a change in the above two points, it is likely your characters have stalled in their development and character arc: perhaps conflicts have been resolved too soon. This could also signal that the conflicts are simply not strong enough to sustain the story.
• Plot: What is happening in the external action of the story — has the plot progressed?
• Repetition: Is there any repetition of information, action, behavior from what has come before? Question whether the repetition is necessary — to emphasize a point, flag it as important to the reader — or is it just repetition with no purpose?

If you consider each of these elements and nothing has shifted from the beginning of the scene to the end of the scene in a meaningful way – then your scene is contributing to the sag, it is just filler dragging down the pace. However, just a note on some of those calmer scenes.

You may have a scene where everything is seemingly static and you can’t decide if it should stay. A moment of calm in the story can be a welcome moment of relief – it provides a sense that everything is going to be fine after all. Such scenes have much more impact if the scene that follows has high drama, this becomes the purpose of the calm scene. The trick is not to linger too long in the calm otherwise the pace will drop. And it never hurts to plant a seed of doubt that all is not well to propel the reader on.

Identifying where the sag began

It is often not the middle’s fault that it lacks tone – it really does get a bad reputation! Instead, the problem likely originated elsewhere so it’s important to detect exactly where:

• Look at the chapters that came before. It may be that your opening doesn’t have such strong foundations after all. What threads did you start that need continuing, what has been resolved too soon, or even forgotten about? Revisit your early chapters and check that your scenes have purpose here too.
• Think about your ending. You might find that you are meandering through the middle of the story because you’re not quite sure where you’re going, or how you are going to get to the end. This may be the time to focus on your story outline and synopsis to make sure you are heading forward with purpose.

Now on to the painful point…

Sharpen those editing tools!

You’ve identified which scenes have purpose and which don’t and where the problem originates from, so it’s time to get editing, and you may need to get brutal! No one said this was going to be easy…

• Work on your saggy scenes to ensure there is purpose: that it links to the what has gone before and pushes forward to what is about to happen.
• Once you’ve made sure that your scene has purpose, check it for any unnecessary description, exposition, repetition — basically cut the waffle! We’re trying to tone that middle, not hide all that great work under layers of padding.
• Adding purpose is not the same as an information dump! If you have a lot of information that needs to be shared by the mid-point, make sure those crumbs are dropping in sparingly before you get there.
• Sometimes a saggy scene can’t be toned up. You need to be objective and honest. Even if you like the scene, if it isn’t doing your story justice, it’s time to let it go. This could be mean losing a whole scene — it’s time for the chop!

And now breathe… How are you feeling after your workout? I hope you are feeling much more confident about how to tone up the middle of your story and have recognized that it deserves to be lavished with the same love and attention as the opening and ending.

Now, someone pass the cookies – I think I’ve earned one!

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Joanne Grant is an editorial coach with over 16 years of editorial expertise working for the global bestselling publisher Harlequin. Joanne has edited hundreds of romance novels over the years and understands how to coach authors of all genres to deliver their best work. If you’re interested in finding out how she can help you achieve your writing goals, get in touch – Joanne loves to chat! You can find Joanne on Twitter @JoanneMGrant and Facebook at JoanneGrantEditorialCoach.

This article, written by Lindsay Randall is from the April 2020 edition of Nink, the monthly newsletter of Novelists, Inc.  (NINC). Nink, which is packed each month with informative articles for career novelists, is a benefit of NINC membership. 

For author and professor Denny Wilkins, editing is this: defending your reader—from error, inaccuracies, a confusing story.

Any discussion of it being a mix of rules and artistry doesn’t hold much interest for him.

“Editing is just work. It’s thoughtful, meticulous, persistent work,” Wilkins said. “Debate about the art and science of it all you want. You have to want to defend your reader, right down to its and it’s.”

Wilkins, who has spent the past 20 years teaching journalism and mass communication, said the “search for the right word is a moral imperative for a good writer.”

But the evolution of language, especially recently, has narrowed the ability to create fine distinctions in meaning. Added to this is the fact that while the English language has by far the largest number of words, the working vocabulary of the average person is decreasing. Too, words can cause distance and division, perhaps more so now than ever before.

All the more reason for novelists to have fresh eyes on their work—both conceptually and line by line, Wilkins noted—to ensure serving today’s reader.

Benjamin Dreyer, author of the bestselling Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, has devoted nearly three decades to “making skilled writing better.”

He began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor and today serves as vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House.

Dreyer defines copyediting as “the act of doing one’s best to make an author’s text into the best possible version of itself that it can be.”

He does this by ensuring that sentences are grammatical, words are spelled correctly, and punctuation is error-free.

He also asks questions “carefully and respectfully” and makes suggestions on “more subjective, nuantial issues of style,” which is, in other words, “a great big blanket term covering everything an author sets on a page,” he said.

In the past 20 years, Dreyer has noted a decrease in the use of punctuation from all kinds of writers, but the biggest change in written English, he said, “derives from the awareness on the part of writers that the default reader—and the default human being—are not male, are not white, are not heterosexual.

“This appreciation of a larger world is reflected, I’d say, in the near disappearance of the supposedly genderless use of the pronoun ‘he,’ and the rise of the singular and nonbinary ‘they,’ to any number of changes in perspective and assumption that writers bring to their work in all sorts of ways,” he said.

Dreyer's English, named one of the best books of 2019 by O: The Oprah Magazine, the Strand Book Store, and Shelf Awareness, details the many tips and tricks Dreyer has gathered through the years, plus features his fun sense of humor and true delight in all things word related.

Special to this edition of the newsletter are the following excerpts from the book.

From Chapter 7, The Realities Of Fiction

Putting aside the extensive mechanical work of attending to the rudiments of spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc., the styling of prose is very much about listening. An attentive copy editor should become attuned to and immersed in a writer’s voice to the point where the copy editor has so thoroughly absorbed the writer’s intentions that the process turns into a sort of conversation-on-the-page.

Nowhere is this conversation more crucial than in the copyediting of fiction, where artistry, however you want to define that slippery concept, can outrank and outweigh notions of what might conventionally be deemed “correct”; where voice—eccentric, particular, peculiar as it may be—is paramount; and where a copy editor, however well-intentioned, who can’t hear what a writer is doing, or at least attempting to do, is apt to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, havoc is occasionally wreaked: I cringingly recall an instance in which one of the finest copy editors I know—so attentive, so sensitive, so adept that editors clamor for her service—crashed and burned on a job in which for some mysterious, unhappy reason she didn’t understand what the writer was doing generally and, specifically and perhaps worst of all, didn’t get his jokes, which she proceeded to flatten as if with a steamroller. Happily, this sort of calamity is exceptionally rare, and it was easy enough, in this case, to put the writer’s nose back in joint by having his manuscript recopyedited, tip to toe, by another copy editor.

Though I can’t here demonstrate in any practical fashion the elusive art of empathic listening, I can certainly let you in on some of the methodology—scrutinizing everything, taking nothing for granted, asking lots of questions, taking lots of notes, and performing scores of little tricks—a copy editor employs in the act of copyediting a work of fiction. I can, as well, point out to you some of the glitches that, since I’ve repeatedly come face-to-face with them over the years, you may well find in your own work.

The Real Reality Of Fiction

Fiction may be fictional, but a work of fiction won’t work if it isn’t logical and consistent.

• Characters must age in accordance with the calendar—that is, someone asserted to have been born in May 1960 must then be twenty-five in May 1985, forty in May 2000, etc.—and at the same pace as other characters:  Two characters who meet at the ages of thirty-five and eighteen cannot, in a later scene, be fifty and merely twenty-six. Grandparents and great-grandparents, I’ve occasionally noted, are often said to have lived decades out of whack, in either direction, with what is reproductively possible.
• Keep track of passage of time, particularly in narratives whose plots play themselves out, crucially, in a matter of days or weeks. I’ve encountered many a Friday arriving two days after a Tuesday, and third graders in math class on what, once one adds up the various “the next day”s, turns out to be a Sunday.
• Height; weight; eye and hair color; nose, ear, and chin size; right- or left-handedness; etc., mandate consistency.
• Stage management and choreography: Watch out for people going up to the attic only to shortly and directly step out onto the driveway; removing their shoes and socks twice over the course of five minutes; drinking from glasses they quite definitively set down, a few paragraphs earlier, in another room; and reading newspapers that suddenly transform into magazines.
• While we’re here: I recall one manuscript in which fully half the characters had names beginning with the letter M. You may not be surprised to learn that the author’s given name also began with an M. This is not a good thing.
• I don’t know why or how writers end up laboriously and lengthily describing restaurant meals as if they—the writers, that is—have never experienced one, but: Pay better attention.
• I don’t know why or how writers end up laboriously and lengthily counterfeiting newspaper articles as if they—the writers, that is—had never read one. At the least, remember to establish the whowhatwherewhywhen you were taught in high school, and terse it up a bit too.

Fun tip for counterfeiting newspaper articles with verisimilitude and panache:  Yank out all the series commas.

From pages 123-124: A Few Pointers On Unfinished Speech

• If one of your characters is speaking and is cut off in midsentence by the speech or action of another character, haul out a dash:

“I’m about to play Chopin’s Prelude—” Grace slammed the piano lid onto Horace’s fingers.

• When a line of dialogue is interrupted by an action, note that the dashes are placed not within the dialogue but one either side of the interrupting action.

“I can’t possibly”—she set the jam pot down furiously—“eat such overtoasted toast.”

Writers will often do this:

“I can’t possibly—” she set the jam pot down furiously “—eat such overtoasted toast.”

and that floating, unmoored narration is, I’m sure you’ll agree, spooky-looking.

• If one of your characters is speaking and drifts off dreamily in midsentence, indicate that not with a dash, but with an ellipsis.

“It’s been such a spring for daffodils,” she crooned kittenishly. “I can’t recall the last time…” she drifted off dreamily in midsentence.

• When characters self-interrupt and immediately resume speaking with a pronounced change in thought, I suggest the em dash-space-capital letter combo pack, thus:

“Our lesson for today is— No, we can’t have class outside today, it’s raining.”

• “Furthermore,” he noted, “if your characters are in the habit of nattering on for numerous uninterrupted paragraphs of dialogue, do remember that each paragraph of dialogue concludes without a closing quotation mark, until you get to the last one.

“Only then do you properly conclude the dialogue with a closing quotation mark.

“Like so.”

Excerpted from Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer. Copyright © 2019 by Benjamin Dreyer. Excerpted by permission of Random House, A Penguin Random House Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Lindsay Randall writes historical romance and most recently served as assistant editor of Nink.