Writer, Editor, Helper

Jack Hart Talks about Wordcraft

Jack Hart has spent five decades helping writers succeed, working shoulder-to-shoulder with journalists in newsrooms both big and small and with students at five universities. Writers who’ve worked with him have written national best sellers and won prizes that include five Pulitzers and a slew of other national awards.

Hart is the author of Storycraft, now in its second edition, and the newly published Wordcraft, both available from the University of Chicago Press.

CS: Wordcraft is primarily geared toward journalists and nonfiction writers, but almost everything in it applies to fiction writing as well. Could you say something about that overlap? You’ve written novels yourself.

Very Long Sentences in Fiction

Recently, I was listening to the audiobook of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong, and at some point it struck me that we’d been in the middle of a sentence for quite a while. But it wasn’t just long—it was lyrical and purposeful. Pretty early on in the sentence, I began to realize it wasn’t primarily about an annual infestation of ants.

Gender-Neutral Pronouns in Creative Writing

People sometimes worry about honoring the personal pronouns of those who don’t identify with the gender binary. They’re concerned that using (for instance) “they/them” in place of “he/him” or “she/her” will be complicated or confusing. Some aren’t sure about the grammar (“They are” or “They is”?).

Overcoming entrenched speech habits to use the right pronoun consistently takes practice. But in writing, it’s easier. Plenty of creative writers use “they/them” pronouns (among others) for nonbinary characters.

The Chicago Way

How Grammar “Goofs” Work in Creative Writing

I’ve written before to caution copyeditors against scrubbing voice and character out of fiction manuscripts by adhering too closely to a style manual.

Each novel or story is unique, of course. Some feature dialect and colloquialisms, and others pretty much stick to formal English as laid out in The Chicago Manual of Style. Many, many novels and stories mix it up, using formal English for the narrative while their characters speak in a more casual idiom. Keeping all those voices straight is one of the primary tasks of a writer; monitoring and protecting those distinctions is a primary task of an editor.

To make good writing and editing choices, it’s helpful to know what’s considered standard or formal in the first place, not in order to apply that knowledge indiscriminately, but to use it to create or edit narration and dialogue that’s consistently natural, real, and believable. That’s where a good dictionary and style guide come in. They help us determine what’s “grammatical” so we can choose when to reject it for the best effect.

To see how these intentional grammar “goofs” work in creative writing, let’s look at a few issues commonly faced by writers.

Commas between Adjectives in Creative Writing

Do you sometimes dither over whether to put a comma between two or more adjectives?

a polished, spherical stone or a polished spherical stone?

a nice, big check or a nice big check?

Although the guidelines for deciding at CMOS 5.91 and CMOS 6.36–37 work well for any kind of writing, there are times when creative writers prefer to ignore them.

How to Format a Novel for Submission

When you write a book to send to an agent or editor, you are preparing a manuscript. And even if your ideas, characters, and plot twists are colorful and creative, your manuscript format should not be. Agents and editors almost always require submitted pages to be in a standard format free of images and color and anything flashy. Many agents and editors post the format they prefer (or demand) on a “Submissions” page at their website.

It’s normal, however, to prepare material before you know exactly where you’ll submit it. That’s why it’s smart to produce a generic document based on Chicago style (the style used by most US trade book publishers) that can be tweaked later if you receive more specific instructions. Using this conventional style and saving it in a flexible file format will position you to adjust your formatting for each submission without a lot of extra work.

8 Tips for Creative Writers on Facebook

I often encourage creative writers to join one or more private Facebook groups where they can post questions and share resources with other writers. There are specialized groups for children’s book writers, romance writers, fantasy—you name it. In groups like “Ask a Book Editor,” writers can get help from amateur and professional editors. At “The Business of Being a Writer,” people share information about self-publishing, getting an agent, drafting and revising manuscripts, and financial matters. In groups like “Scrivener Users” or “PerfectIt Users,” writers share technical advice.

Although some groups are by invitation only, typically becoming a member of a private (or closed) group is as simple as clicking on Join and agreeing to the rules. Some discussions are closely moderated, others not. The writing groups I like best prohibit ads and self-promotion and insist that conversations stick to writing and publishing topics. They provide a pet-free zone where you don’t have to see what anyone else is cooking for dinner.

How to Start a Novel

Starting a novel is an exceptionally personal affair, so I’m always amazed when someone decides to tell us all the best way to do it. Nonetheless, there are some basic guiding principles a struggling writer might find helpful. If you’ve been burning to begin but can’t seem to type the first word, read on.

Style and Grammar in Promotional Copy

Anyone familiar with the grammar and style rules and guidelines in CMOS knows they come with a lot of qualifiers: normally, in most cases, in running text, in regular prose, depending on the context—I could go on and on. In life, very few rules are meant to cover every situation. The same is true in CMOS.

This is especially so when it comes to writing and editing marketing copy, something more and more authors are doing for themselves. Indie authors often design their own book covers and ads and write their own press releases. A few weeks ago we looked at the liberties we take when writing or editing blurbs. This week we’ll consider more visual types of promotion.

Who Gets Capitalized in a Novel?

I gave Detective MacSwain $200 and a diamond ring worth $1,000 to keep quiet and make it look like suicide. (Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest, 81)

“That’s nice,” the gray-mustached sleuth on my left said. He didn’t sound sincere. . . . The gray-mustached detective who had sat beside me in the car carried a red ax. (Red Harvest, 106)

Few readers will be puzzled by the capital D in the first example and the small d (and s) in the second. “Detective MacSwain” is treated like a name, a proper noun; “detective” (like “sleuth”) is a common noun. But what form would you choose in the following examples?

Paragraphing in Manuscripts for Submission

In manuscripts of yore (centuries ago), the text would appear in one huge unbroken block. At some point breaks in thought or theme came to be indicated in the line of text with marks of various kinds, which in late medieval times included a pilcrow (¶), essentially the same symbol your word processor hides at the end of a paragraph in your documents today. With the invention of movable type, printers introduced the practice of starting each new paragraph on a new line and indenting that line from the left margin, no doubt with the idea of making the text easier to read. Eventually, the pilcrow disappeared altogether from the printed page.

These days, it’s unusual to see content online that has been formatted into traditional paragraphs. Web designers seem to agree that on a computer screen, text is friendlier when there’s some space between paragraphs and all the lines begin flush left, as in this post.

Abbreviations in Fiction

 

A great many common abbreviations* behave perfectly well in any fiction or nonfiction context, including dialogue, when the general guidelines in CMOS are observed: Mr., Ms., CEO, p.m., PhD, UFO. Editors should have no quarrel with them, as long as they’re styled consistently. If it’s 11:00 a.m. in chapter 1, it shouldn’t be 2 PM in chapter 3. That’s what style sheets are for.

Nonfiction versus Fiction

On the other hand, some of Chicago’s advice for wrangling abbreviations (see CMOS 10.3) can be safely ignored by fiction writers and editors. In a novel or short story,

How to “Take Back” an Online Error

Everyone makes mistakes, but if you goof online at your author website or in social media, the potential for ruin these days is downright scary. That doesn’t mean you should hide in fear or shame. Handling a correction or retraction with grace and honesty will assure readers that you are professional and trustworthy.*

Crediting Images at an Author Website

Your author website probably has a nice banner image, and if you blog, you probably look online for eye-catching artwork to illustrate or decorate your posts or pages. Maybe your About page features a professional headshot or images from book signings or other events. When you borrow images from another creator, whether you found them in printed form, online, or crumpled in your mother’s coat pocket, there will be times when you’re obliged to acknowledge that the work isn’t yours.

In printed books, such credits can appear in captions, footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies. Sometimes credits are gathered on the copyright page or in a list of illustrations. But those options weren’t exactly invented with your website vibe in mind. Here, I’ll explain how you can easily adapt several of these traditional crediting methods for website use.

Formatting Text Messages in Fiction

 

 

In our Fiction+ series, we set out to help CMOS users adapt Chicago style to creative writing contexts. Sometimes, Chicago’s general guidelines already work just fine; other times, they need a little noodge to sit comfortably on a page of fiction. And often, as is the case in this post, they are just one option among many that may suit the material.

So my aim today isn’t to decide the best way to format text messages in fiction, but to show how different stylings suit different kinds of work and to point out problems that might arise.

How to Edit Blurbs

 

Blurbs are quotations of praise that appear on book covers and jackets, in press releases, on author websites, posters, and ads, in social media, and in the unnumbered pages at the beginning of a novel or creative nonfiction book. They may be solicited or excerpted from published reviews. Any writer or publisher who finds it hard to get attention in the traditional review press may be especially motivated to solicit blurbs from influential writers or celebrities.

“Had had”? Flashbacks and the Past Perfect

Novelists are sometimes urged to eliminate the past-perfect tense from their sentences, and copyeditors are sometimes trained to search out those auxiliary “hads” and lop them off from their verbs. What exactly is the past perfect? And what’s wrong with using it?

When Page Numbers Don’t Help

 

Editors are never happy. First they throw a fit if you send in a manuscript without page numbers, but once you send them a paginated work, they complain when you try to discuss a sentence on page 67. What’s the deal?

Creative writers will benefit from understanding what editors and copyeditors face when it’s time to discuss changes to your manuscript.

Numbers in Creative Writing

 

 

When we think about writing numbers, we tend to think of research papers, financial reports, sports columns, and other quantity-laden nonfiction settings. But novelists and playwrights and poets also puzzle over how to style numbers. Some happily leave such matters to their copyeditors, while others spend valuable writing time out of a compulsion to get it “right.” If you’re the latter type (or their copyeditor), read on for comfort and advice.

Do You Overstep When Editing Fiction? Three Easy Cures

The other day, I ran across this line in a recent novel by a best-selling American writer (key words are disguised):

His disposition warmed faster than did the gradually dawning day.

I couldn’t help wondering: Did the writer write it that way? And the copyeditor thought it was fine? Or did the editor bully the writer into “correcting” the sentence by adding “did”?

Why would an editor insist on such awkwardness? No doubt from a doubly wrongheaded conviction that fiction isn’t exempt from formal English and that certain familiar wordings are somehow incorrect. But there’s nothing ungrammatical about “His disposition warmed faster than the gradually dawning day.”

I can think of three obvious ways overeager copyeditors get writers into trouble. Let’s take a look.