Categories
Writing

How to improve your writing by avoiding things that I don’t like

Maybe it’s just a coincidence. You don’t see a particular mistake for years and then several examples turn up at once and you find yourself asking, ‘Is this a thing now? Why are people doing this?’ So here we go. How to improve your writing by avoiding things that I don’t like. Will it actually improve your writing? Maybe. No guarantees. Depends on context, etc. etc. etc. Try it and see!

There seems to be a trend for writers to use ‘inside’ or ‘within’ where the little word ‘in’ – or ‘into’ – would work just as well. Hence we have ‘The hero strode inside the room’ or ‘She reached within the cupboard’ or ‘He put it inside his pocket’. Try substituting ‘into’ (first two examples) or ‘in’ (last example). Doesn’t it sound cleaner and crisper? See also: ‘placed’ instead of ‘put’: for example, ‘Maria placed it inside the box’ vs ‘Maria put it into the box’. People are always placing things inside things instead of simply putting them in. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for these usages, just that it would probably improve your writing if you stopped and thought about it first to make sure that’s really the best way of saying what you want to say.

There’s another construction that’s been bugging me lately. Again, it’s not ‘an error’ per se, but it’s something you might like to think about to make sure you’re using it consciously and to maximum effect. Technically I’d call it ‘gerund vs infinitive’ – here’s an example:

‘She started walking along the path.’ Compare and contrast with: ‘She started to walk along the path.’ (walking – gerund; to walk – infinitive)

I’ve been seeing a lot of gerunds lately – the ‘ing’ form of the verb – especially in action sequences. ‘Dave started shooting …’ ‘Emma started running …’ and so on. I can totally see why people do it – it has a certain flow, and it tends to be how people talk, as well. But it can actually serve to slow down the ‘feel’ of the action where the infinitive would keep it moving along. This is the case especially where the action is interrupted or moves rapidly on. Neither construction is right or wrong, but if you keep it in mind while you’re reading through your own work, you can make an informed decision about which one you want.

Those are the most obvious things I’ve seen recently that give me an impression of laziness rather than bad grammar or mistakes. When one construction is used a lot at the expense of another which works just as well or better, it just makes me think that the author has got into a comfortable groove and hasn’t really ‘seen’ their own writing. It doesn’t make it bad writing, but if you take a look through fresh eyes and try mixing things up a little, it might give your work that extra pop and sparkle that elevates it from ‘competent’ to ‘good’ or from ‘good’ to ‘great’.

Final note: a character telling another character something is still ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’. I find ‘show, don’t tell’ rather a simplistic instruction – there’s a place for both – but don’t think you can stick something into dialogue and it suddenly becomes better. It’s particularly annoying when a character has spent a couple of paragraphs thinking about, for example, how Mr X can’t possibly be a plausible suspect because of Y and Z, and then feels compelled to repeat their thought process word-for-word to their colleague in the next chapter.

snowdrops growing in a garden
Snowdrops, just because they’re seasonal and they were conveniently there.
Categories
Personal

The post I really wanted to make

It’s about time I came clean. I hate writing blog posts.

There. I said it. I thought long and hard and I … oh, who am I kidding. I didn’t have to think hard at all to figure out that honesty is the best policy. And it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if I feel like that, there must be a whole load more people out there who feel the same. Can I come and join your tribe?

Writing blog posts is something ‘they’ say you must do in order to help your site’s SEO, boost your visibility, and attract lots of new potential customers to your site. By ‘they’, I mean marketing how-to guides and other successful editors. And they have a point. If no one knows my site is here, how are they going to find my awesome skills?

So I want writers to come to my site. Writers who need an editor and proofreader. Obviously. And what do writers want to read about? Well, how to be a better/quicker/more productive/published/successful writer, of course. So I try and write posts with that in mind. Posts that will help writers.

There’s one important flaw in this approach. Writing isn’t my best skill. I’m an editor. Now, that’s not to say that my writing is bad or that I’ve got no useful advice to offer – but it does mean that I often feel as though I’m winging it or cribbing information from elsewhere. And, while I know the world is big enough to take more than one ‘how to beat writer’s block’ article and more than one piece on ‘how to write dialogue’ … I don’t just want to rehash the same old things.

So I’ve decided to take a new approach. An honest approach. I’ve touched on this before with posts about my searches and my SfEP professional membership status, but now I want to grasp it with both hands and own it. I don’t mean posting about my personal life, soap opera style … but I’m going to be myself, and that might mean writing about things that aren’t writing, and maybe even things that aren’t editing. In this way I hope to post more often, and give you stuff to read that comes from the heart, rather than from a marketing expert’s idea of what will help my site rankings.

So here we have an irrelevant but sexy picture of a Triumph motorbike. Not connected with writing, but hey, your main character has got to have some mode of transport, right? How about it?

Triumph Tiger motorbike
An irrelevant Triumph.
Categories
Events

International Women’s Day 2018

It’s International Women’s Day and I feel oddly pressured to jump onto the bandwagon and write something topical. After all, I’m a woman, so it feels as though I’d be letting the side down if I didn’t at least mention it!

I don’t want to go down the boring route of ‘X female authors you should read’, though. I did that a couple of years ago for Help For Writers, if you’re interested. Other female authors I enjoy are Jan Mark, Diana Wynne Jones, Agatha Christie, J. K. Rowling, Jane Austen, Annie Proulx, Virginia Woolf and S. E. Hinton. I’m sure there are many more but you know how it is when you come to write something — my mind’s a blank!

So … being a woman. I’ve had an easy time of it so far. I’m white, I’m healthy, I’m cis, I’m (arguably) middle-class (I didn’t start out that way, but I have a desk job and a mortgage now so …). I live in the UK, where, while there is plenty to complain about, the standard of living for people in my position is actually pretty damn good. I’m middle-aged, so for the moment I escape most of the stereotypes about the old and the young. In many respects I lead a charmed life. I recognise why we still need an International Women’s Day, but really, who am I to talk about prejudice or sexism?

During my time in the non-profit sector, women outnumbered men in my workplaces and were just as respected by their peers. Then I moved into the publishing industry where, again, women are known to outnumber men, although not necessarily in the most senior roles. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been on the receiving end of sexist behaviour. (Disclaimer: it is quite possible that there were incidents that I simply didn’t notice, because I’m unobservant and socially inept and these things tend to go over my head.)

However, not being totally stupid I can see that not all women have it as easy as this privileged white woman, and in some countries women have few rights and are treated appallingly. There are more ‘issues’ than you can shake a stick at, but ‘honour’-based violence is particularly concerning — and does happen in the UK, too — so a few years ago I made a piece of artwork on that theme.

woman writing names, painted backwards so it is as though the surface of the painting is the glass she's writing on artwork

It’s acrylic paint on top of a photograph, and the writing is the names of all the women killed in ‘honour’-based crimes in the UK that I could find at the time. 

My motivation for doing the painting was to help raise awareness (although my little exhibition probably didn’t get more than a handful of visitors!), but that’s not much concrete help. If you want to help in some way, Karma Nirvana is a great charity that is always looking for donations and volunteers (trustees and community champions). To help women in the UK more generally, please consider supporting Women’s Aid.

If you’re a writer and a woman and you’re facing prejudice or disadvantage, I can only say: don’t give up! If you want any help with your manuscript please feel free to get in touch. I’m afraid I don’t have any magical contacts in the publishing world, but if you’re interested in self-publishing to get your work out there, I can certainly point you in the right direction and I’d be happy to have a (no-obligation!) chat about your options.

Categories
Proofreading

Get your ebook ready for self-publishing

Are you thinking about self-publishing or distributing your work yourself as an ebook?

If so, you need to make sure you engage an editor who understands the ebook conversion process. They can help make sure your work is correctly formatted to avoid errors in the final digital file. But there is a lot that you can do yourself beforehand to make the process easy and pain-free. Here are a few tips to help you create professional-looking ebooks!

person reading an ebook

Something to bear in mind …

An ebook is a different beast from a traditionally printed book. If you use an e-reader yourself, you’ll know that you can change the text size, the margins, and even the font on the display. When you’re getting a book ready for print, all these things are crucial. You may be working with a typesetter or spending hours getting everything ‘just so’ in Word or InDesign. But if the reader can change the appearance themselves, how does that affect the way you need to format your work? Is it a waste of time to focus on the appearance of the text on the page?

If you’re having your book printed as well as producing an ebook, it’s definitely not a waste of time. You’ll still need a print-ready file that looks just as you want it to. However, you’ll need a separate copy of the file ready to format for ebook, because the requirements are different.

Keep it simple

When formatting an ebook, less is more. Almost all the formatting is stripped out during conversion, so there’s no point doing anything fancy. By keeping everything as simple as possible, you reduce the risk of introducing anything that will be too distracting to the reader. After all, you want them to focus on what you’ve written, not on what it looks like.

To make things easier for yourself, switch on the ‘Show nonprinting characters’ option – click the button that looks like this:

non-printing characters key

 

 

This displays the formatting marks, showing all the formatting you’ve used – spaces, line breaks, paragraph breaks, tabs, page breaks, the works. This makes it easier to see what you’ve done and will help you to strip out extraneous formatting.

Spaces

Remove rogue spaces from the beginnings and ends of paragraphs. This can be a tedious job, but it’s worth it, because extra spaces often stand out on an e-reader.

Full stops

Don’t use double spaces after full stops. You can use the ‘Find and replace’ tool to remove them. You might have been taught to use them at school, but in an ebook they make the text look gappy and unprofessional, and professional typesetters don’t use them. In some cases, a double space even converts to no space at all, resulting in words that are run together.

If you’re a heavy-handed typist you might also want to check for the odd accidental triple space – they have been known to occur!

Hyphens & line breaks

Turn hyphenation off and don’t force line breaks. Even if you don’t like where a line breaks, remember that if the reader changes the font size, the line breaks will shift anyway. If you add a hyphen manually, there’s a danger that it will end up stuck in the middle of a line at random, looking like a mistake. Similarly, don’t try to correct widows and orphans.

Page numbers

Don’t include page numbers – ebook files don’t have universal page numbers, but some devices will allocate page numbers depending on the reader’s settings. E-reader devices usually tell the reader how far along in the book they are – e. g. ‘Page x out of y’ or ‘43% completed’. This also means that page numbers in your table of contents will be irrelevant.

Paragraphs

Decide whether you’re going to use block or run-on paragraphs and stick with the same format throughout. Block paragraphs have a line space between them, while run-on paragraphs don’t have any line space between them but have the first line indented instead. If you use run-on paragraphs, remember not to indent the first paragraph of each chapter or section.

And don’t use the tab key to indent your paragraphs – use the ‘First line indent’ tool on Word’s ribbon.

Chapters

When you want to start a new chapter, insert a page break. Don’t just keep hitting Enter until a new page appears! Use the ‘Show nonprinting characters’ option to help you get rid of extra paragraph returns at the beginning and end of each chapter.

Rather than formatting each chapter heading manually, use Word’s styles function to set a heading style and apply it to each one. Which brings me neatly on to …

Styles

Use Word’s Styles palette to organise your chapter headings, subheadings, body text etc. If you don’t know how to use this, or any other tools within Word, there’s a wealth of information online, and it’ll be well worth your while to learn how it works because it will save you a lot of formatting headaches. Before you submit your manuscript, check that you’ve applied the relevant style to each part of your text.

Out of the ordinary

If you want to use ‘fancy’ formatting – such as headers, footers, borders, special fonts, coloured text, multi-column layouts, lots of illustrations or tables etc. – you might want to consider opting for a fixed layout ebook rather than a reflowable epub.

Certain elements, like decorative drop caps or special chapter/section dividers, can be inserted as images, but if there are a lot of them, you’re better off getting some professional help with the conversion to make sure you get the result you’re after. You can certainly include images in ePub and MOBI files, but some ereaders display them in grayscale, so make sure that your images work in grayscale as well as in colour.

Use the style guide

This final tip might sound blindingly obvious, but it can make the difference between getting your ebook accepted or rejected by stores: if you’re submitting your document to a site that has a style guide, use it! Sometimes it can look complicated, but take the time to work through it and you will reap the rewards later.

It’s time to get your book proofread!

Hopefully you will have started the marketing for your book while you were still tidying up the early drafts. If not, you’ll need to build in some lead-in time while you generate a bit of hype. But that’s a post for another day! I’ll assume you’ve got that side of things covered and all you’ve got left to do is get your book proofread to make sure there are no stray apostrophes or references to the ‘pubic domain’. 

If you’ve followed the steps above, your proofreader will have less work to do – saving them time and saving you money!

Good luck!

Categories
Proofreading

How to proofread your own work

‘Proofread your own work?’ I hear you say. ‘But that’s ridiculous! You proofreaders are always telling us it’s impossible!’ And it is impossible to proofread your own work to the same standard as a trained and impartial professional. But if you use common sense and a keen eye, you can get your manuscript to a good standard before it hits the copy-editor’s or proofreader’s desk – and hopefully save yourself a few spondoolies! Here are my tips on how to go about it.

  • Read your work out loud. This is the single most important thing you can do when trying to polish your own writing. Don’t worry about sounding ridiculous. Shut the door. Wait until everyone has gone out if you have to. And, most importantly, take your time about it. Reading a piece out loud will show up a multitude of sins. If you slow down and really look at what you’re reading, it should help you to spot any missing little words. You may spot other errors as well.
  • Read each line backwards. That’s the next step. Invest in some ink and paper and print out your manuscript so that you can hold a piece of card under each line, just like when you were learning to read at school. Most of my proofreading is done on screen, but I still find it easier to see mistakes in a printed passage. If you can afford it, do it. Read each line backwards, a word at a time.

person proofreading sitting at desk with papers
A Lesser-Spotted English Proofreader in its native habitat.

Those are my two top tips – a couple of basic principles, if you like. Here are some pitfalls to watch out for.

  • Run a search for ‘pubic’. You won’t regret it. (Unless you’re actually writing about genitals, of course, in which case you’ll probably find yourself typing ‘public’ by accident.) If you mention martial arts at all, you might also want to search for ‘marital’.
  • Consistency is key. You may have noticed that apostrophes and quotation marks can be curly or straight depending on which font is used. Make sure all yours are consistent. Even if you’re sure you’ve applied the same font throughout, you might be surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a manuscript where the odd ‘odd’ apostrophe hasn’t crept in.
  • Pay special attention to the letters f, i, l and t, especially when they crop up close together. Check that ls aren’t is and is aren’t ts, or vice versa. Check that double letters aren’t triple.

There are also a few simple things you can do to make it much easier to format your book for print or digital distribution.

  • Please don’t use double spaces. Not after full stops; not anywhere. It takes seconds to run a ‘find and replace’. Watch out for triple spaces if you’re a heavy-handed typist!
  • Get rid of spaces at the ends of paragraphs. I know the feeling only too well – you’re typing away and your thumb automatically adds a space at the end of the sentence. But you don’t need one at the end of a paragraph.
  • Use Word’s ‘Styles’ function. If you don’t know what it is or how to use it, there are plenty of tutorials out there. Take some time to figure it out and your copy-editor will thank you for it.

I could add a lot more, but that’s enough to be going on with! Remember the three golden rules: 

  • read it out loud,
  • read it backwards, and
  • take your time!
Categories
Events

Coming up: writing & literature events

I’ve had my nose buried in a tricky copy-editing job and only just surfaced for air. In the name of professionalism I can’t post about work I’m actually doing, and I’ve been living and breathing this particular subject for several weeks. I’ve even dreamed about the references!

As a result I’ve fallen behind on finding out what is going on in the world of writing and literature, so in the process of catching up I thought I would compile a few of the writing/literature events taking place in the UK in August to October.

Steve Bowkett workshop story grids

One event I’m particularly looking forward to is Leicestershire author Steve Bowkett’s workshop on ‘Story Grids: Techniques to Improve Your Writing’, which will take place on 3 October, 14:00-16:30 at The Dock, 75 Exploration Drive, Leicester, LE4 5NU. Steve aims to help you form a narrative organically and ‘take your mind by surprise’. The workshop will look at building the key elements of a story and sustaining reader involvement. It’s not specific to any particular genre, so there should be something for everyone! Book onto this workshop.

Steve’s workshop is taking place as part of the Everybody’s Reading Festival.

Categories
Help For Writers Networking Writing

Networking for introverts & special snowflakes

people talking in conference setting
Me (L) attempting to network at the London Book Fair.

I just wanted to share a couple of really useful articles I’ve read recently which touch on both networking and writing your novel.

‘A Survival Guide for Introverts Networking’, a blog post by Abi Saffrey, is aimed at people going to the Society for Editors & Proofreaders conference in September, but it applies equally to any conference or event you might be going to. I’m not actually an introvert, but this post is full of helpful tips like ‘Pre-break the ice’, ‘Don’t wear new shoes’ and ‘Prepare some opening lines or questions’.

I found Randy Ingermanson’s explanation of the ‘Snowflake Method’ of writing a novel clear and inspiring. It made me want to start planning my own novel! I don’t have a plot or theme or any characters in mind, but reading Randy’s article made me feel as though I could write about anything. Remember, folks: ‘Good fiction doesn’t just happen’!

If you have any especially useful blog posts or articles that you keep going back to again and again, let me know in the comments. Helpful resources for writers are always welcome in these quarters!

 

Categories
Writing

Erotica: Banned words

silhouette of heterosexual couple facing each other eroticaEditing erotica presents its own special challenges. By the time something gets to copy-editing stage I don’t want to suggest a major rewrite, but there are some words that get so much use in erotica that I would like to put them on my ‘banned words list’! There’s nothing wrong with these words per se, but if you’re a writer and you’re thinking about using any of these in a sex scene, please, I implore you, think again:

  • manhood
  • nub
  • mounds
  • glided
  • throbbing
  • moist
  • wantonly
  • channel
  • globes
  • bulge
  • appendage
  • heaving
  • rampant
  • slippery
  • pert

I’d also like to put in a special plea for authors not to describe pubic hair as either coarse and wiry (ouch) or soft and downy (sceptical hmm).

If you’re an editor or proofreader, are there any words you’d like to add to the ‘banned words’ list? I’d love to hear about anything I’ve missed!

This isn’t supposed to be a dig at authors who have used these words in their books, and I’m certain that there are some excellent erotic passages (ahem) that contain them. However, they all seem to get used a lot, so if you want to be rigorous about avoiding clichés, you might want to think of something else or see if you can get away with removing that word altogether.

Bonus points available: outside my office someone has marked up the pavement ready for some forthcoming works. They’ve written ‘SERVICE TRENCH’ in large letters. Every time I see it, I wonder whether this phrase could be worked into an erotic scene. Bonus points for any author who can manage it.

Categories
Events

The 4th Self-Publishing Conference

On Saturday 7 May I attended the 4th Self-Publishing Conference, organised by Matador.

self-publishing conference brochure

As a Leicester City supporter I was feeling particularly proud of my home city, so it was nice to see people converging on Leicester from all parts of the world – even from Spain!

University of Leicester flowers
Leicester boasts many beautiful scenes around the city as well as on the football pitch.

The keynote speech was by Caroline Sanderson, Associate Editor of The Bookseller. She talked about what self-published authors can do to maximise their chances of getting noticed and promoted. There was a strong emphasis on the importance of good cover design, and she highlighted various examples, talking about what made them stand out.

I attended a workshop by Louise Jordan of the Writers’ Advice Centre. She talked about structuring a children’s book. I dived into the exercises, despite not having a children’s book on the go, thinking, ‘I’ll just have to make something up.’ It then occurred to me that that’s exactly what writer’s do! Her advice was so useful that you might be seeing my book on a shelf near you soon! (Well, that last bit might be a slight exaggeration.)

Next, I listened to Rachel Gregory from Troubador and Barbara Scott from Surrey Libraries talking about how to maximise your ebook’s potential. Most people know that you can borrow ebooks from libraries, but they don’t take ebooks directly from authors. Barbara was a great advocate for libraries. It might be free for people to borrow books, but the libraries have to buy the ebooks in order to stock them, so it’s still worth getting your book into libraries if you can! It was heartening to hear that library loans of self-published material are growing.

Professor Alison Baverstock from Kingston University gave an excellent plenary session about her research into self-publishing. I felt like jumping up and shouting, ‘Yay!’ (I didn’t. I just went up to her afterwards to say it in slightly more articulate words.) When I was planning the marketing for Help For Writers I noticed that there’s a lot research into readers – demographics, habits, what they like – but precious little about writers. Alison’s work helps to fill that gap. I can also confirm one of her findings from a personal perspective – editors enjoy working with self-publishing authors!

Prof. Alison Baverstock
Professor Alison Baverstock talks about her research.

Mike Bodnar, author of humorous travel book Against The Current, talked to us about self-promotion for self-publishers. He gave us loads of useful information with a few jokes thrown in. I covered several pages with notes – thanks Mike!

Cressida Downing of The Book Analyst probably thinks I’m stalking her, because this is the second time I’ve been to one of her workshops in a short space of time. She’d asked people to submit synopses in advance, and she read out excerpts and gave some insightful criticism of each one. Don’t get your synopsis confused with your blurb – it’s perfectly OK to give away spoilers in the synopsis; in fact the whole point of a synopsis is to tell the reader what happens in your book!

After the conference came the drinks reception, where we mingled and talked.

Group of people talking
Networking in progress.

One of the authors I spoke to was Julian Jackson, who has written his own account of the day. Apart from Mike Bodnar’s talk, he attended different sessions from me, so it’s well worth a read if you want to find out what was going on elsewhere!

Thanks to Matador for putting on an informative and well-organised day.

 

Categories
Events London Book Fair

The London Book Fair 2016: Beautiful pigs & lots of colour

My first London Book Fair was an amazing* experience. It made me realise how lucky I am to work in the field of books and writing. Being surrounded by so many books – and, more importantly, people who love them – was energising.

The world of books is a colourful one. Lush displays of children’s books, coffee table books (some of which were large enough to actually be coffee tables) and art books reminded me why the industry hasn’t mirrored the music business in its rapid move from physical to digital formats. There’s something especially attractive about an origami book, a book you can scribble in, or a book that includes balsa wood. It’s also useful to own a book that you could use to knock an intruder unconscious.

 

Origami animals at London Book Fair 2016
You can’t make these out of an ebook.

 

I was there to promote Help For Writers – I’ll be writing a more detailed blog for them soon – but I couldn’t stop my enthusiasm for copy-editing from surfacing from time to time. I hope I managed to convince a few writers of the importance of a good copy-edit!

I found the the wonderful unexpected around every corner – including beautiful pigs.

 

beautiful pigs London Book Fair 2016
You never knew you wanted this book, but now you do.

 

I was honoured to take part in an Author HQ panel on ‘How to prepare for self-publishing’. I hope people found it useful. Thanks to Fiona Marsh (Midas PR) for chairing the session and to my colleague Nikki Halliwell (Marketing Executive at Help For Writers) and self-published author Will Green (Default Setting) for being on the panel with me. You can’t beat advice from someone who has ‘been there and done that’. Luckily there was only one mic between us so I couldn’t interrupt them too much.

Now it’s time to get some caffeine into my system and start the follow-up…

 

London Book Fair 2016 How to prepare for self-publishing Help For Writers panel Fiona Marsh Will Green Nikki Halliwell Catherine Dunn
Will imparts some words of wisdom on the ‘How to prepare for self-publishing’ panel. L to R: Fiona Marsh, Catherine Dunn, Will Green, Nikki Halliwell

 

(*Dipping into the thesaurus in search of a less clichéd word to replace ‘amazing’, I was confronted with the suggestions ‘shocking’ and ‘prodigious’. That, my dear reader, is why you can’t write well by following a set of rules.)