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The Problems I See Most
When Looking At Samples
from the harrowed hand of GF Willmetts
Ten years of hitting the slush pile, both for
novel length and short stories, some of the problems
I've hit had to rely on stock answers simply so
I could focus on the material's other short comings.
No one's perfect but we all have common ground
that needs work on.
As an editor, my job when looking over samples
tends to be two fold. Apart from seeing if there's
anything good or worthwhile (subjective terms
at best) in the material, a great deal of time
is looking at what is wrong. SF fans are hardly
a quiet bunch when it comes to mistakes and an
editor's job is, if not to eliminate all mistakes,
then to keep them down to the minimum.
This particular piece is here to cover a lot of
basic problems that I see in every sample mostly
to do with presentation and grammar. These are
the tools of your trade, folks. If you want to
look like a good writer or be taken really seriously,
you do need to get these things right. You'd be
a very wise neo-writer to take heed on this guidelines
article.
As a means to improve everyone's track record,
here's a selection for you to consider and see
what is applicable to you. Although I'm not saying
these are all the problems, let alone the solutions,
if they make you stop and think and do something
about them then this feature will have served
its purpose.
These tips are as applicable to standard submissions
so you don't get any bad habits should you submit
to paper publishers.
1. Headers And Layout. Here's a good habit
to get into with all submissions. For the Header,
use Align Left for title, name and sometimes address.
Try not fill more than 2 lines doing this. Most
word processors do this in a smaller fainter font
so there's no need to make it bold or a distraction
from the text. Number the pages at the top right
and outside of the Header. Do NOT staple the pages
together although a paper clip is perfectly acceptable
to differentiate the chapters if necessary. The
main text of the page should be double-lined if
hard-copied. I would suggest you do this after
you've completed your draft. The one exception
for e-formats is not to double-line but that's
only in data-file not hardcopy. Do double check
your pages are in the right order and you haven't
sent duplicates in the same envelope.
2. Opening Paragraphs.Tabbing each paragraph or dialogue adds up a lot
of waste space, try 2 spaces instead. Don't think you're conserving space by
having nothing at the beginning of paras, it makes for a tougher hardcopy read.
If you have your word processor's settings to give double spaces at the end
of a full stop for business work, adjust it to one space instead.
3. Speech Marks. This is more for our website but check publisher's
requirements. Use the singular speech marks ' ' as opposed to " " - leave the
latter for quotes. It's also the British way and we'd like to be recognised
as such on the Net. On a computer screen or hardcopy especially they look more
authoritative and probably why UK book publishers like them. Over here, double
speech marks are seen only in juvenile books. We might have no choice in accepting
and sorting out American spelling differences, but the ditto marks will indicate
where we're sourced. Search&Replace is one of the handiest functions of the
Word Processor. [As this industry is so crazy, if you've got a draft with American
quote marks then do this change last and keep a copy in both formats.] Characters'
thoughts because they are non-verbal do not have speech marks!
4. Pace. If you want to create high tension and things that are moving
in a hurry, shorten the length of your sentences. Have a run and then trying
saying a long sentence. Doesn't work, so you break it up even more. Writers
who understand how to pace also know how to adjust the mood of the story. Boo!
Did you see that coming? Frame the sentence to the events you're depicting.
5. Sentences come in all lengths and sizes but if you can't complete
them in a single easy breath, you might consider that they might just be a little
on the long size. Always beware of over-loading them with too much information.
6. Reporting events. It's the cardinal sin of reporting what is going
on rather than living the events along with the characters. If people want to
read about events, then they get a newspaper. A writer can bring them up tight
and personal. The reader needs to be involved in the situation if they are to
care about your characters.
7. Punctuation. Listen to the structure of a sentence for its rhythm
and pace that can easily be recognised if you say your story aloud. Think of
the comma as a mini-pause within a sentence. It isn't there for you to take
a breath - that's only allowed at the full stop - but to add gravity to the
next part of the sentence. Commas also stop the words running into each other.
This doesn't mean that I read all my sample aloud. I'm more experienced than
that but once you get into the practice of doing this, you'll be correcting
as you read where it plainly doesn't sound right.
8. Commas With Or And But. I tend to err on the side of no comma next
to words like 'or', 'and' and 'but' because when there's only one alternative
commas are out of place. When you have a list of choices, yes, but the last
one following an 'and' wouldn't, so why should it have one if it's the only
choice? This doesn't mean they never happen but remember point 7.
9. Semi-colons. The most misused punctuation mark. In articles, they
are used for slight extensions to sentences where there's a little more pertinent
info to add. This shouldn't happen in stories and especially not making sentences
longer or even have more words than before the semi-colon. With each semi-colon,
run through the list: Can the sentence work with a comma? Can the sentence be
shorter or re-written? Remembering pace, would it be appropriate as two sentences,
assuming the first sentence is too long? Can the sentence be written differently?
10. Scene Changes. It would pay to keep to the standardise
scene change. Centre a line and tab 3 '*' with a blank line each side. When
it comes to e-material, HTML does funny things to text for streaming down the
telephone anyway and a proper gap rather than missing a couple lines tends to
work better. Don't try to imitate what HTML does with other e-books. It's entirely
out of our power and would take immense re-editing if your book ever went to
a paper publisher. As much as possible, I tend to insist writers stick to standard
formats.
11. Spelling. Where do I start? Word processors are very good at a lot
of things and will highlight words it regards as suspect. What they can't do
is recognise the difference between a word spelt correctly and whether it is
used in the right context. Don't rely on it to be correct and keep a decent
paper dictionary to check your spellings. I tend to reply on a Chambers 20th
Century Dictionary myself. It's a big book but has most words, their variants
and definitions.
12. Hyphenation. Hyphenated words are mostly compound words.
The great problem with word processor spell-checkers is that they can't distinguish
between words spelt correctly and words that should have been hyphenated. There
has to be a lot of common-sense applied to know the difference.
13. Trail-Offs.Whether it's a pause within a sentence or a trail off
at the end of a sentence, there is only a nominal 3 dots. As the three dots
represent a physical 3 spaces, there wouldn't be any spaces either side within
a sentence either. Think of jumping off a cliff, you don't get much chance to
say goo...
14. Dialogue. There are no easy lessons with dialogue and it takes a
practised ear to bring it alive on the page and to differentiate it between
the characters so they don't sound alike. Only practice and experience will
sort out stilted dialogue. People do not speak in over-long sentences - they
like to breath. Always think of education, social graces and background when
developing a character. Education maketh the voice. Listen to how people talk,
look at how other writers deal with dialogue on TV shows or movies and especially
in books and see what you can learn from it.
15. Poor characterisation. This problem tends to stem from the above
problem combined with not developing your writer's voice sufficiently to know
when it's important to create a character voice which isn't your own and different
from the main text. When I do my own stories, my self-edit is to go through
the story as each character and ensure that their voices are separate from each
other. The main test for this is if you can carry on a conversation between
two characters and can tell which is which purely from the dialogue. The quickest
way to develop or improve your 'writer's voice' is to do a series of short stories
being very self-critical and trying out different angled aspects, like plot
and characterisation, to test them for strength and weaknesses.
16. Emotional Content Or Response. One of the easiest ways to sense
a writer hasn't gotten something working is to look at the emotional content
of a story. If characters aren't angered or saddened by events that's happening
to them then the reader will pick this up. No matter the genre, this is the
key to the heart and interest of the reader. You need to instil passion/interest
in your own characters so that the reader will feel likewise about them. There's
no easy answer to this because you need to dig deeper into yourself to draw
out these emotions and feel the situation you've created along with your characters.
As stories invariably have life-threatening situations, you'd expect the characters
to have some sort of reaction than just walk through it as if it's a Sunday
picnic. Think of the emotional responses accordingly.
17. Method Acting. In many respects, there's a form of method acting
in writing stories. As a writer, you are the eyes, ears and feelings of the
reader. As such, you have to become the characters on the page. When I'm polishing
my own stories, I tend to read through from each character's perspective, making
sure that they stay in character and are distinct from each other. After a while,
a lot more of the groundwork is done at the first draft stage but its a good
way to dimensionalise your characters.
18. Do NOT Say. The strongest thing that a reader will remember about
a character comes from demonstrating something that they're good at than just
to say that's what they do. If a character is greedy then it's easy to demonstrate
cos it comes out in their attitude as they tend to be self-serving in practically
everything. Do NOT Say should be engraved in your memory. The real skill of
the writer is looping it into the context of the story as part of the plot.
19. Avoid Repeating Scenes. If you go into so much detail on every unimportant
or irrevalent event, the story is never going to move on. Part of the trick
of story-telling is that it doesn't and can't totally mimic life (something
even I had to come to terms with). Let's take a typical terrestrial scene that
has appeared countless times in books, TV and movies. Two cops are called to
a crime scene, maybe in a series of murders. In our reality, you'd expect them
to discuss the case in the car, maybe to any high-ranking officer on arrival
and amongst themselves examining the victim. By the third time, the reader is
going to be fed up and if not lose interest in the story isn't going to pay
attention. As a writer, you have to examine the situation and decide which of
the three is the most important and downgrade the others. I often find it a
lot easier to comment on the boring bits in passing and expand where it really
counts. It keeps the story sharper.
20. Descriptive Detail. This is one thing where experience does actually
count when judging to say something about what is going on. Think of this scene
as an example. You have a character walking along a street and suddenly a safe
slips out of a window and likely to squash him or her. Someone across the street
calls out. You can't describe the scenery in such a situation because apart
from the fact the event is happening in a matter of seconds, it would lose,
er, the impact. Problems like this are a matter of staging and working out the
best place to disclose background information.
21. Contemporary Terminology. Stories tend to be period piece of sorts,
one has to adjust what they say to the time period. With the past, it's the
lack of technology that one has to be aware of. With the future, not only do
you have to consider upgrades but will people do things as they are today.
It does no harm to occasionally wade through a couple books on grammar occasionally
to remind yourself of the basic rules. It isn't as though these books are overtly
long. Once the right habits are developed, you can focus on other areas that
need attention.
Finally, novel-writing is very much a marathon of anything up to 18 months to
complete. For a writer to do this, it requires developing the stamina to complete
it. To build up such a confidence, it makes sense to start off with short stories
then move up to novelette size before the big one. This way allows you to experiment
and develop your writer's voice so the quality of your writing matches your
ideas. Those who just jump in with little practice are also the ones who don't
always succeed.
I hope you come away from this article a little more enlightened than when you
started it. If your writing quality improves then you know you're doing the
right thing.
Good luck
GF Willmetts
Submissions Editor: SFCrowsnest.co.uk
July 2005
(c) GF Willmetts 2005
More details
Guidelines for would-be
daily newsfeed journalists
Guidelines for
flash fiction submissions
Guidelines
for short and long fiction submissions
Guidelines for
book and movie review submissions
The problems
Geoff sees most when looking at samples
Summary: contributor
guidelines
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