I’ve been thinking about epistolary novels ever since I wrote last week’s post on the use of letters in fiction. I’d already mentioned that, in the early days of the novel, the epistolary format let the writer replace an all-knowing narrator. And letters offer a character a chance to express themselves – both who they think they are and who they really are – in an extended monologue.

Epistolary novels have other uses, as well. One of the fun things about Arthur Connon Doyle’s Lost World (you know he wrote more than the Holmes/Watson books, right?) is that it’s presented as dispatches by the journalist who joins Professor Challenger on his expedition to the Lost World of the title. This series of mock news stories gives the novel an extra dose of immediacy and authenticity that only adds to the fun.

There is also the use Dorothy Sayers made of the epistolary format which, as far as I know, is unique. The Documents in the Case was written during the puzzle mystery craze of the twenties and early thirties. The novel consists of a dossier of documents – personal letters, police reports, forensic records – centered around the murder. It still lacks some of the in-depth character development that later novels (including some written by her) would show, but it is still worth attention.

The documents present clues and eventually reveal the murderer, much like a standard mystery. Margaret Harrison is the much younger second wife of the murder victim, George Harrison, and was having an affair with their upstairs neighbor, Harwood Latham. Margaret and Latham are suspected of conspiring together to murder George, and evidence eventually shows that Latham was the killer.

But depending on which documents you read, Margaret is either a grasping and amoral gold digger who manipulated Latham into committing the murder or she was an innocent bystander unfairly suspected from the beginning. Because the mystery is presented as a series of documents, all of the different opinions of who she is carry roughly equal weight. So even though the murder is solved by the end, Margaret remains a mystery.

That’s pretty audacious characterization and says something about Ms. Sayers’ willingness to experiment – though she later said she was disappointed in the novel. And that willingness to take outrageous and original chances is why I think this nearly century-old, obscure mystery is still of interest to writers. Always remember that the assumptions of your genre are not written in stone. Breaking them can often be worth doing.

One personal note. If you’ve read me for a while, you may have noticed that many of the examples I use are decades if not centuries old. I have found that editing has largely ruined pleasure reading for me. I still read out loud to Ruth – sharing books this way has been part of our relationship since the beginning. But even then, I find myself editing them as I go, even revising awkward passages as I read. I can’t sit down with a novel without writing a diagnostic reading report in my head as I go. It kind of undermines the willful suspension of disbelief.

That’s one of the reasons for my (admittedly bizarre) interest in antiquarian books. When I sink into, say, a seventeenth-century sermon, I’m experiencing what people of that time were most concerned with. I’m also enjoying the erudition, the wisdom, and often the wit of someone from centuries ago. It’s essentially time travel.

And a practical note. If there’s any topic you’d like to hear me write about, please feel free to suggest it in the comments. Or, if you’re not a paid subscriber, feel free to email me.

Until next time.

Good Writing

Gentle readers,

When I was growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania in the sixties, there was a small mailbox – just large enough to hold standard letters -- mounted on a utility pole across the street from my house. This in addition to the full-sized mailbox a block or so down the road and others scattered around town like grass seed.

This memory demonstrates how much the role of mail has changed in just my lifetime – for while I’m old, I am not that old. Bills were sent and paid through the mail. Postcards kept vacationers in touch with the folks back home. Magazines of all stripes adorned coffee tables. And given the expense of long-distance telephony, people still wrote personal letters.

This reliance on paper communication was even more important in Jane Austen’s day. (Note, it probably peaked in Queen Victoria’s day, when paper stamps were first introduced. By the end of the nineteenth century, mail in London was delivered 12 times a day.) If you wished to contact family members or shops that weren’t within walking distance, a letter was your only option.

Which brings us, gentle readers, to the uses literature has made of correspondence.

One is to ease reliance on an omniscient narrator to move the story forward. What many consider one of the first novels, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, is constructed entirely of correspondence. And the technique continues to this day, with novels such as The Color Purple still told through letters. Ms. Austen was not breaking ground when she included lengthy letters in Pride and Prejudice.

She did advance the technique in an important way, though. Because letters were a semi-permanent form of communication – if you were still reading Cicero and Seneca’s letters in the nineteenth century, it was easy to imagine people in the far-flung future reading yours – people put thought into what they wrote and how. As much as possible, letters were a true expression of who they believed themselves to be.

But because of the all too human tendency to think better of ourselves than we deserve, letters often reveal more about us than we may be aware of ourselves. And Austen makes use of lengthy quotes from letters — essentially uninterrupted, self-aware monologues — to allow her characters free reign to reveal themselves.

Take Lydia’s letter home after her marriage to Wickham:

You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. . . . You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I write to them and sign my name ‘Lydia Wickham.’ What a good joke it will be!

All of Lydia’s frivolous and self-centered naivete are right there in front of readers, and she is blithely aware of none of it.

Then there’s Mr. Collins’ letter on the same subject, which reads in part:

The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose . . . that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. . . . Lady Catherine and her daughter . . . agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family? . . . Let me then advise you, dear sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offense.

And there is Mr. Collins’ self-righteousness, rigidity, and obsequious toadying in, again, a single paragraph that he wrote in perfect sincerity. These two very different, equally layered letters show how clearly Ms. Austen grasps who her characters are and how they express themselves. It would take decades for that kind of clarity to become routine in literature.

But, alas, we live in an era in which letters are far less common. So how can writer today make use of Ms. Austen’s example?

Tweets, emails, and posts are far more ephemeral than letters. No one imagines anyone reading their tweets a millennium from now. But they have become even more ubiquitous than letters once were. When the mail was delivered 12 times a day in Victorian London, it was almost possible to carry on a conversation as lengthy and detailed as a modern text exchange or chat.

And ephemeral or not, texts and posts can reveal both who people believe they are and who they actually are. Writers can make use of them in the same way and for the same reasons as Ms. Austen use personal correspondence.

One final, favorite example before I sign off. Telegrams, the instant communications of their day, were paid for by the word. So people developed a stylized syntax of abbreviations as elaborate as the world of emojis. “I got the message you sent on the 15^th. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” might boil down to “Yours 15^th received. Arriving soonest.”

P. G. Wodehouse once made good character-revealing (and comic) use of this language. When Bertie Wooster heard that Gussie Fink-Nottle had broken off his engagement with Angela Bassett, he wired Gussie, “You say ‘come here immediately,’ but how dickens can I? Relations between Pop Bassett and self not such as to make him welcome Bertram. Would hurl out on ear and set dogs on. Why serious rift? Why dickens?”

If Wodehouse could make such use of a telegram, it must be possible to do the same with emojis.

One final note, gentle readers. This post has been a long time coming, and for that I must apologize, especially to those of you kind enough to subscribe. Things have been hectic here of late. I shall try to amend my ways in the future.

So until next time, I bid you good writing and remain,

Your affectionate servant,

Dave King

When Austen gave her characters – particularly Elizabeth – an internal life, she was well ahead of her time. What she then did with it was even more remarkable.

As readers follow the story of the Bennett sisters, they come to assume Elizabeth’s view of the world. Her father, with his habit of retreating to his library, is charmingly eccentric. Her mother is volatile and shallow, but she has her daughters’ best interests at heart. Lydia and Kitty are frivolous but harmless. Mary is annoying in a younger-sister sort of way. Wickam is charming and likable.

And Darcy? Clearly the most arrogant, self-centered git ever to grace a noble house. He breaks up Bingley and Jane despite their love for one another. He treats her family with contempt. He treats poor Wickham with meaningless cruelty. And his proposal to Elizabeth? Despite his better judgement, despite all reason, he will deign to marry her, even though she and her family are far beneath him. And he is actually surprised when she turns down the offer.

Then, once Austen gets readers comfortably enmeshed in Elizabeth’s view of the world, she blows it up.

When Lydia elopes with Wickham, it’s not just a potential tragedy for the family – the scandal would mean that none of the girls would ever make an advantageous match. It takes everything that readers thought they knew and turns it inside out.

Mr. Bennett’s habit of retreating into his library isn’t charmingly eccentric, it’s an abdication of parental responsibility. Lydia isn’t harmlessly frivolous, she’s dangerously naïve. Mrs. Bennett isn’t sincerely, if artlessly, interested in her daughters’ welfare, she’s grasping and foolish. And Wickham is really a cad and a bounder.

Darcy was right about everything.

Plot twists come in different flavors, but I’ve always felt that the most effective, most memorable twist isn’t one that simply reveals something unexpected. The ones that stick with you take things you already thought you knew and changes their meaning. Essentially, the plot twist rewrites much of the story that came before it. This is exactly what Austen does.

Then she goes even further. While she has, in effect, been inside Elizabeth’s head, she has also created a sense of how Darcy sees the world. And she now rewrites his take on things. He steps in to force Wickham to marry Lydia out of guilt because he was too proud to tell the truth about Wickham. When he learns that Jane and Bingley really love one another, he recognizes his arrogance and drops his opposition to the match. And he can see just how much of an idiot he was in his proposal to Elizabeth.

It’s this double inversion of everything readers thought they knew that ultimately bring Elizabeth and Darcy together. It is, in essence, the fulcrum of the story.

It’s immensely powerful now, but imagine what it would have felt like to readers in her time. Readers who were used to an omniscient narrator unspooling the story would not have realized they were adopting Elizabeth’s worldview rather than the narrator’s. So when the worldview shifted, they may not have realized what was happening to them. It’s no wonder Austen was so intensely popular in her own day and remains so today.

At this point, I’ve covered what I see as the central strengths of Pride and Prejudice. But Austen also gets a lot of little details right. So in the next couple of posts, I’ll cover some of these.

And after that? After nearly forty years of editing, I still have plenty to write about. But let me know if there’s some particular topic that interests you. I’d be happy to oblige.

Good writing.

When I did a quick review of what novel writing was like when Jane Austen first published, I mentioned that omniscient narrators – often with pedantic, ponderous voices – did a lot of the storytelling. This meant that readers had very little sense of what was happening inside the characters – what they were feeling, how those feelings evolved, and why.

Austen also makes use of an omniscient narrator, of course -- the opening line isn’t spoken by any single character, and readers are often simply informed of what the characters are feeling. (Opening of Book 1, Chapter 21: “The discussion of Mr. Collins’s offer was now nearly at an end, and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusion of her mother.”) Also, the techniques that modern writers use to convey interior monologue hadn’t been developed yet. You could even argue that the whole concept of an inner life didn’t really exist until Freud invented it nearly a century later.

And yet, when I look back on Pride and Prejudice, I have a clear sense of what the characters, particularly Elizabeth, felt and how their feelings changed over the course of the story. In fact, the evolution and interplay of those feelings is a large part of what the story is about. So how did Austen manage this without the tools modern novelists rely on?

Incidentally, teasing out the answer to this question is one of the reasons this post has been delayed so long. My apologies for that.

First, while Austen’s omniscient narrator is presented stylistically as distinct from Elizabeth . . . it’s Elizabeth. Occasionally the omniscient narrator slips in some information Elizabeth might not be aware of, but for the most part, everything we see and hear is what Elizabeth saw and heard. Also, the attitude the narrator takes toward the other characters and the world is pure Elizabeth. This means it’s not hard to see the narrative starting to leak over into interior monologue in a way that wouldn’t become common for another century or more.

Consider Book 2, chapter 16, which opens with a sentence or two describing what Kitty and Lydia had been up to before Elizabeth met them for lunch – classic omniscient narrator stuff. By the time lunch is done, we’re solidly rooted in Elizabeth’s experience, though the voice is still omniscient. So when Lydia describes Mary King as a “nasty, freckled little thing,” we this passage: “Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such coarseness of expression herself, the coarseness of the sentiment was little other than her own breast had formerly harbored and fancied liberal!”

If I were to run into this passage in a client’s work today, I’d want to refine the technique – there’s no need to tell us Elizabeth was shocked. And the two-hundred-year-old language is a little stiff. But even so, this is clearly a glimpse into Elizabeth’s thoughts.

Elizabeth isn’t the only character in P&P with an internal life. Austen gives us a sense of what other characters are feeling through a breathtaking use of character voice. Her voices are so distinct, so individual, that usually just a line or two is all you need to be able to tell who is speaking. And a distinctive voice tells us what matters most to that character – Lydia’s obsession with how she appears to others, Mr. Collins’ judgement of everyone around him, Mr. Bennet’s dry sendup of his wife’s (and his own) foibles. An entire character can often appear in a single well-crafted line of dialogue.

So what can modern writers learn from this? For one thing, the power of character voice. Always remember that the words your character chooses, the rhythms and cadence of their speech, grow out of their history, their education, their interests, their mood of the moment. Voice brings your characters to life.

There’s an exercise that allows you to focus on voice. Take all the dialogue spoken by your main character and put it together in a file. Then put together similar files for your other major characters. Read all their dialogue at once. If the files start sounding the same, then you need to pay more attention to how your dialogue reflects your characters’ personalities.

Even more important, remember that all good stories are essentially two stories woven together. There’s the outer action – what your characters do, what happens to them, how they react. Then there’s the inner story of how the action changes them. The best stories balance the two and bring them to a conclusion at the same time.

A reminder once again that subscriber are welcome to get involved in the discussion. You can also suggest future topics – whatever might interest you – or send me a page or two of your WIP for editing and analysis.

Next week, we’ll look at how Austen uses these internal stories to pull off the plot twist that shapes her entire plot. And I should be able to get that out more quickly. Until then . . . .

Good writing.

Once again, the need to do some research and . . . you know, life . . . has held up the next installment on the genius of Jane Austen. So I thought I’d talk about something that’s been in the news lately – the rise of AI. There’s been a lot of speculation about the future AI is leading us into, everything from “Humanity will have robotic servants to do all of our menial tasks” to “Humanity will be reduced to slavery by our hyperintelligent computer overlords.” Between those two extremes, there is the more reasonable fear that AI will replace creative content producers. Like writers.

I’m actually pretty sanguine about the prospect. I’ve been interested in artificial intelligence ever since the seventies, when I read Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Hofstadter described an early AI project where a program called Shrdlu was able to carry on a simple conversation about an artificial world of colored shapes. (“Shrdlu, where is the yellow triangle?” “The yellow triangle is inside the blue box.”)

Then, in the eighties, I was working toward a computer science degree at Columbia (I’ve had a long, strange education and employment history) and took a course on data structures from an AI researcher. He was trying to create a program that could write plausible soap opera plots. This was back when Dallas ended a season by revealing that the entire previous season had been a dream. (Kids, Google it.) My professor was grateful because his program now had the “It was all a dream” node to call on when it backed itself into a corner. But even with that Get Out of Trouble Free card, his program couldn’t meet the low bar of soap opera creation.

Modern large-language models of AI can do better than this. But they work by scouring large databases of real, human speech – digitized books, social media posts, periodical archives – to predict what the next word in a sentence will be. Essentially, they’re autofill on steroids. If you interact a lot with one – if you have an online AI buddy, say – the programming can use your feedback to adjust its guesses as to the next word. So it can produce something that can easily pass for human speech in the dusk with the light behind it.

This works fairly well for casual conversation. But creative writing? Everything modern AI writes is based entirely on what’s already been written. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for creative thought and innovation. In other words, AI-written fiction may be able to entertain, but it will rarely surprise. And the more you read of it, the more that flat sameness will show.

It’s also been predicted that, as more online content is written by AI, AI will soon be imitating itself imitating itself imitating itself ad infinitum. Its shortcomings are going to multiply until the whole thing implodes into nonsense.

So, you know, I don’t think writers have anything to worry about.

When modern steam engines were developing in the late 1700’s, one of the breakthroughs was the centrifugal governor. This was a pair (usually) of heavy iron balls attached to a system of hinged rods that spun with the engine. As the engine sped up, centrifugal force would cause the balls to fly further out, pulling on the hinged rods. This would close the valve that let steam into the engine, slowing the engine down. As the engine slowed, the balls would fall back in, opening the valve again. This kept the engine speed constant.

It was also hailed as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. After all, the machine was controlling itself.

Large language AI models are probably the most advanced technological breakthrough so far. But at their heart, they construct their “intelligence” literally one word at a time, unaware of what they’re saying. They’re useful, but they’re no more intelligent than a centrifugal governor.

Once again, paid subscribers are welcome to not only join in the discussion, but to ask questions about any topic that might be puzzling you. You’re also invited to send me a page or two of your WIP for editing.

See you soon with more about the genius of Jane Austen. And until then,

Good Writing

In the earliest days of cinema, a lot of movies were simply what were called “actualities.” Moviemakers set up a camera on a street somewhere and let it roll, capturing a few minutes of film of everyday people walking by.

I find these movies fascinating to watch now because they bring the past to life – street merchants pushing handcarts full of fruit, ice wagons making deliveries, dapper young men tipping derbies to the camera. But to people at the time, these were high entertainment. Just seeing ordinary moments recorded in film was astonishing and new.

I suspect something similar was true of early novels. Just watching a fictional character’s life unfold was fascinating enough to sell books. So people were happy with a novels that was mostly just a series of incidents, almost vignettes, that demonstrated the hero or heroine’s character or showed a tense moment but didn’t drive a specific dramatic conflict forward.

Then came Jane Austen.

Pride and Prejudice has a lot of threads and subthreads all in play at once – Elizabeth’s animosity with Darcy, Jane’s disappointment over Bingley, tension between Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, the need to get the girls well married, Lydia’s elopement. But Austen realized something 200 years ago that I’m still teaching my clients. A novel is not a machine, with discrete moving parts that all accomplish specific tasks. It’s an ecosystem, where, when you change one element, you affect everything around it through complicated feedback loops. Austen weaves those various threads together to form a tight, coherent whole.

Wickham’s sad story of his mistreatment at the hands of Darcy increases Elizabeth’s contempt for Darcy but also helps Wickham ingratiate himself with Lydia and, by triggering Darcy’s pride, keeps him from telling the truth about Wickham – both of which feed into the moment when everything transforms (more about that later). Caroline Bingley’s desire to win Darcy for herself leads her to help push Bingley and Jane apart, which also feeds Elizabeth’s animosity toward Darcy and his guilt when he discovers that Jane genuinely loved Bingley.

Even scenes that seem like comic interludes ultimately feed the main story. The narcissism that Lady Catherine displays when Elizabeth visits her home with Charlotte look like pure mockery, until the narcissism leads Lady Catherine to confront Elizabeth over her “plot” to marry Darcy. Watching Elizabeth slap down Lady Catherine is a joy in itself, but the scene also alerts Elizabeth to how Darcy really feels about her, which pushes her toward the ending.

In short, instead of a thinly connected set of short stories, Austen gives us a plot made up of a large number of character arcs that all feed (even though readers are unaware of it at the time) into a single, constantly advancing story. It is perfect, whole, and entire, wanting nothing.

And that’s today’s lesson for writers. You can create a good book by only focusing on one or two elements but doing them well. Most thrillers aren’t great on a character’s internal struggles. Romances aren’t big on action and surprise plot twists. But in the best novels, all the elements that make up the story feed into one another in ways that even the author might not be fully aware of until the end.

A novel is not a machine. It’s an ecosystem. And you have to pay attention to how each element affects the rest to keep the whole thing healthy.

A couple of bookkeeping points. I’m aware that Sense and Sensibility was published before Pride and Prejudice. And many of the virtues I’m writing about now can also be found there. But I know P & P better than S & S, which I’ve only read once. So it’s easier to explore.

Also, remember that a subscription gives you not only the right to join in the conversation, you also have a chance to ask me questions about writing. If something stymies you, you’re probably not alone, and I’d be happy to center a post on your question. You can also submit a page or two of your manuscript for editing.

And until next week,

Good writing.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

The opening line of Pride and Prejudice is celebrated as one of the most effective first lines in literature. Why? What makes it such a brilliant launching point?

For one thing, this single sentence throws readers right into the middle of the story, introducing the question that drives the characters for the rest of the novel. Because Mr. and Mrs. Bennett have had only daughters, his estate is eventually going to pass to Mr. Collins, his nearest living male relative. The only practical way for the girls to have a secure future is for them to marry well. That opening line is part of the introduction of Mr. Bingley, the rich young bachelor who has just rented the estate next to the Bennett’s and the first possible candidate for a suitable husband for Jane, the eldest Bennett girl.

The opening line also introduces a subtler source of tension. The line assumes that the thing that most makes a husband suitable is money. Given the limited opportunities open to women at the time, this isn’t a stupid position. Back then, about the only alternatives to a good marriage in the Bennett’s social class were either dependence on charity from family members – living with a married relative -- or a menial, limiting position – a paid companion or such. This is why we might excuse Mrs. Benett for her obsession with finding her daughters rich husbands.

Yet the three daughters who marry by the end of the story (even Lydia, in her own way) buck this economic reality and marry for love. In fact, Elizabeth rejects proposals from both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy because she can’t bring herself to love them. Her decision does get some support from her father, at least about Mr. Collins’ proposal, but most of the rest of her society would have considered this an insane thing to do.

The other beauty of that opening line is that, in just a single sentence, it establishes the character and attitude of the narrator. Capturing any character in a single sentence requires serious skill, and to do it in the opening line, with absolutely no context, is something that only the best authors can manage. In fact, I could think of no examples that manage to do so much so quickly.

“Call me Ishmail” establishes in just three words that the narrator considers himself an outcast, set apart from society, and also shows that the identity of the narrator is not as important as the story he’s about to tell. But it’s much easier to establish a character’s identity when you’re writing in the first person, since you invite readers into the character’s head. Austen’s narrator has no head – there is no actual character attached to the narrative voice. Also, Melville’s opening line might establish Ishmail’s character but it does nothing to put readers into the story.

The opening line that comes closest to doing what Austen has done comes from a much more modern story, long after omniscient narrators had faded from the scene: J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” That “thank you very much,” conveys the same sense of bemused detachment you find in Austen’s narrator. And it certainly drops readers into Rowling’s world, where the pathological normality of Privet Drive contrasts with the magical world that becomes apparent as we watch owls soaring around and meet a cat who can apparently read road signs. (And this before Hagrid shows up on the flying motorcycle.) But the opening line doesn’t introduce readers to Harry’s battles, both internal and external, against he who must not be named. It doesn’t tell us what drives the story.

Finally, Austen’s opening line is even more brilliant given her historical context. As I said last week, many novels written before her era don’t have anything near the crisp beauty of her opening line. Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, a Foundling begins (after a lengthy introduction on the nature of novels by the intrusive and boringly didactic narrator) before Jones was born. Among Austen’s contemporaries, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein opens with a letter (it is an epistolary novel) that only makes vague reference to an “enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings,” which doesn’t exactly kick the story off. Walter Scott’s Waverly (after an introduction by another intrusive and boringly didactic narrator) begins with Waverly leaving his family to join the Dragoons, which is the first event of the story but doesn’t exactly lay out what the novel is about.

So Austen’s opening line may be the first, ever, to embody what we now consider the virtues of a good hook – establishing the character of the story and drawing readers directly into the meat of it. It is hard to read that first line and not want to read the second.

C. S. Lewis once complained that he had to go listen to a student’s essay on Scott that began, “Scott was born . . . “ That was a pretty standard opening in the earliest novels by even the best writers. Until Pride and Prejudice came on the scene and instantly made it obsolete.

A few quick bookkeeping notes. I realized in rereading it lately that I have a lot to say about Pride and Prejudice, and I plan to unfold it in the next few months. If any of you who are subscribing would like to take advantage of the offer to have me look over a couple pages of your WIP, I’d be happy to take a break.
And feel free to tell me your favorite opening lines. Or correct me if I’ve missed something. I’m a pretty good editor, but I’m not a literary expert by any means, and my reading has always been a little haphazard.

Next week, plot arc. Until then,

Good Writing.

C. S. Lewis once said that, if you want to understand humanity, read great books. If you want to understand how people thought in a particular era, read the second-rate guys. They’re the ones who published, not because they were offering insights into life that could stand the test of time but because they were giving the culture at the time the kind of thinking it wanted.

So before launching into what readers can learn from Pride and Prejudice, I think the place to start is one of my rare bookstore finds -- a little-known Gothic novel published in 1798 called The History of Jack Smith, or The Castle of Saint Donats.

I haven’t read a lot of eighteenth or early nineteenth century novels, but from what I have read, Jack Smith is pretty typical of where the genre was at the time. For one thing, instead of having a single plot arc that traces specific conflicts through to their conclusion, the plot consists more of a string of nearly unrelated incidents – almost a series of short stories rather than a novel. You can find similar “plots” in, for instance, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) or another of my bookstore finds, The Life and Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew (also 1749).

Saint Donats starts the story of Jack Smith’s life when he was just a poor, orphaned lad falsely accused of being a pickpocket. Captain Henry Grey saves him from being “dunked” in a nearby pond by an angry mob (not making that up), then recognizes his bravery when, shortly after that, Smith attacks a trio of highwaymen. And so it goes. Smith becomes Captain Grey’s ward, falls in love with the fair Miss Modeley, goes to University, takes up with a bad crowd and nearly loses himself, finds himself again, winds up in an apparently haunted castle (this is a gothic, after all), joins the army, and so on. The novel ends with Smith discovering that he is actually the son of a French Duke (there’s a disinterment involved), inheriting the haunted castle and finally winning over the fair Miss Modeley.

Smith’s life feels even more like a string of short stories because he has almost no inner life. There is nearly no interior monologue, and not a lot of dialogue, to show what he is thinking or what motivates him through his various adventures. In fact, none of the characters has much of an inner life.

Instead, the narrator is in charge of telling us what’s going on with the characters. A new character is usually introduced with a page or two summarizing their personality, and the narrator fills us in on their motivations – often with a moralizing twist. (“Smith was induced to leave the kingdom for a little while, from displeasure against the magistrates of the University, by whom he concluded himself ill-treated.”)

Granted, intrusive narrators were a part of fiction throughout the nineteenth century and beyond – I still edit them out of client’s books from time to time. But St. Donats’ narrator has a tighter lock on the story than most. Consider the way a typical chapter begins: “How can I better begin this chapter than by a small tribute of applause to that philanthropy, so conspicuous in the female breast?”

Having the narrator be such a presence is an even bigger problem because the narrator is . . . well, boring. It’s not just a tendency to slip into a style that, even then, was well past its sell-by date. (“Reader, if from the verge of misery thou hast ever found a benefactor who saved thee from destruction, thou mayest conceive of the grateful ardor that animated the poor lad to the succor of his friend.”) It’s that all the narration – and, when the narrator actually allows the characters to speak, all the dialogue – has the same ponderous, plodding voice.

So this is the literary world into which Jane Austen burst. As we get into all that she does so well, bear in mind that a lot of her most effective techniques had rarely if ever been used before. And that she brings so many different original techniques together in a single story makes it even more remarkable.

Ironically, St. Donats also has an introduction – a conversation between various characters with symbolic names that would have made Dickens blush – about what a novel should be. The opinions range from Lady Bell Vivant’s view that a novel is a story “well stored with gordian knots, which the hero may at once cut through, but the heroine must nicely unravel” to Mr. Cynic’s view that it’s “Love run mad, Honor stripped naked, the Passions dancing the hays together, and Virtue, common Sense, and Propriety turned out of doors. A novel is the last refuge of every blockhead of a scribbler.”

Presumably, we’re getting better at it by now.

Once again, I’m sorry for taking so long to get this story up. I wanted to give you this context, but I had to reread a fair amount of St. Donats again because the story is, as you might imagine, forgettable. As always, remember that you paid subscribers are welcome to join the conversation in the comments. And if you would like to submit a page or two of your own work for editing, I’d welcome it.

Oh, one more little postscript? You notice that the title page mentions that the author, Charles Lucas, is also author of Infernal Quixote. That book does not exist. Lucas’ publisher made it up to make Lucas seem more experienced.

First, my apologies for taking so long to post something. I am hoping to start a new series on what writers can learn from Pride and Prejudice, but I’ve found the introduction to the series required some research. It will be fun when it comes, I promise.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about a challenge that writers of historical novels face – how to put yourself in the mindset of someone who lived in the past, when people thought very differently about things. And what got this line of thought started was the recent juxtaposition of the stories of two men – Eric Swalwell and Samuel Pepys.

If you have a newsfeed and a pulse, you’ve probably heard that Representative Eric Swalwell has dropped out of the California Governor’s race and resigned from Congress. He was credibly accused by several women of sexual harassment and even rape.

Pepys is less familiar. He was a diarist who lived in the late seventeenth century (1633-1703). Historians love him, not only because his diaries give them an insider’s look at the restoration of the monarchy – he was an MP and Secretary of the Admiralty under Charles II and James II. He was also on scene and wrote in detail about some of the largest historical events of the late seventeenth century, like the outbreak of the bubonic plague in London in 1666 and the great fire of London in 1667.

He was also a sexual predator.

According to a new book, Pepys was guilty of sexual crimes that would make Swalwell blush. He routinely fondled his maid while she dressed him and had sex with his wife’s paid companion (who was 18 years old to his 35). He expected sexual favors from the wives of men who came to him looking for jobs in the Admiralty. He committed rape frequently, mostly of lower-class women. He once wrote of watching three men gang rape a serving girl and only wished he could be part of it.

What strikes me about these new revelations is not that Pepys was a predator. Men in power have always felt they had a right to dominate women, as Swalwell has proven again. What leads me to think writers might learn something from this is the attitude of the culture Pepys lived in.

Sexual predation, especially of lower class women, was apparently commonplace in Pepys’ day. And translators of Pepys’ journals have been whitewashing it since the journals were first published in 1825. Pepys spoke several languages and tended to switch out of English when he was writing about his sexual encounters. This language shift gave his publishers the leeway to treat his predation as “liaisons,” the term still used on his Wikipedia page.

This longtime comfort with powerful men sexually assaulting vulnerable women made new sense of a couple of my favorite passages from the eighteenth century. One was from Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, a 1750 collection of sample letters meant to teach the proper form for a personal letter. One of the sample letters was, “A young Woman in Town to her Sister in the Country, recounting her narrow Escape from a Snare laid for her on her first Arrival by a wicked Procuress.” So, they had human trafficking in London in 1750, and it’s so accepted that it forms the gist for a sample letter.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Letters written to and for Particular Friends was written by Samuel Richardson, who also wrote Pamela, a novel about a nobleman trying to pressure a fifteen-year-old servant girl into having sex with him. (He does end up marrying her, but that looks like morality imposed by the author.)

The other passage the news of Pepys rewrote for me comes from The Spectator, the daily journal written primarily by Joseph Addison and Richard Steel from 1711 to 1714. In 1712, a man wrote to say that, on entering a room full of young women, he offered each of them a kiss. One of them turned her cheek to him. He thought that was rude and wanted the Spectator’s opinion. The Spectator’s use of wit to defend the young woman (“The Correspondent is desir’d to say which Cheek the Offender turned to him.”) distracts from the fact that a man felt free to kiss strange young women and considered it rude for them to refuse.

Of course I’ve realized for years that women were often considered sexual property in the past -- that rich and powerful men took mistresses, upper-class, unmarried women always had to be chaperoned, lower-class women were always at some risk, and woman’s rights weren’t even a dream. But I had not realized things were quite this bad, that sexual assault, rape, and human trafficking were just part of life.

Which gets us to writing. If you write historical fiction, one of the hardest tasks you face is trying to understand how different everyday life was in the past. Not just how women were at much greater risk and must have lived lives of constant fear, while men took their dominant position in society for granted. But how, say, never moving more than a few miles from the place your family had lived for generations might affect your sense of the world. How people’s minds worked differently in a world where almost no one could read and write and anyone who could do simple multiplication was a math prodigy.

Actually, putting yourself in the head of someone in the past is worth doing no matter what kind of fiction you write. To see how people thought in the past exercises the same literary muscle you need to see how people in different cultures think today. Or simply how other people think. Putting yourself in the head of someone who thinks very differently widens your view of what it can mean to be human.

Remember, anyone is free to read these posts. If you’d like to join in the discussions, feel free to subscribe. Subscribers are also invited to submit a couple pages of their current WIP for editing and commentary. And I will be getting back to Pride and Prejudice next week.

Until then, good writing.

For the last five months or so – with occasional digressions – we’ve been talking about how hard writing is. (Incidentally, if you joined in late, you might want to browse through the older posts. They have been developing a theme.) Shrinking readerships, publishing houses that aren’t interested in new voices, the difficulty of self-promotion, scam artists, all make it tough to be a writer.

All of which raises the obvious question, why do it?

God knows, not for the money. Yes, it is possible to make a living at it, but there are probably easier ways to do it. And you do hear of writers who break through to bestsellerdom and make millions, but you also hear of people winning the lottery. A few years ago, a potential client told me he didn’t want me to work on his manuscript unless I could guarantee that it would make at least $100,000. I told him to find a new hobby.

But writing is still worth doing, even if it doesn’t pay. As I said way back when we started, you probably poured out your first novel in a burst of creativity that is a joy to inhabit. Well, as you learn and practice your craft, that act of creation becomes even easier. You gain the tools to create stories that work at even deeper levels and are even more satisfying to finish.

But writing isn’t just a joy in itself. It broadens your entire life.

In my long, strange path to get where I am today, I once took a course in Newtonian mechanics at Columbia University. While I can no longer calculate the angular momentum of a hollow cylinder rolling down an incline, that course changed the way I look at things around me. I can see how force and stress and leverage and gravity work together to shape everyday objects. I’m also told that painters see landscapes more deeply than the rest of us, and that drummers experience time differently.

Writing does that, too.

Writing makes you more sensitive to language. As you create dialogue that sounds authentic, you’ll soon find yourself spotting good dialogue – character filled, original ways of talking – in things you overhear at the grocery store or on the street. You also start expressing yourself more concisely and precisely.

Creating settings makes you more aware of the places around you. When you come to someplace you’ve never been before, you tend to pick out the key details that make a new location what it is.

You can’t create plausible and sympathetic characters – finding the humanity in your villains, showing the flaws in your heroes -- without learning to love people. You start seeing the nuance, the humanity in everyone you meet. You don’t have to lose your sense of morality -- you can still believe in a clear right and wrong. But don’t lose the humanity of the people you think are in the wrong.

Most important, writing puts you in touch with . . . living. You can’t write stories about how life works without learning how life works. You can see how the decisions people make shape who they become. Thinking about how your characters overcome problems – and personal flaws – teaches you how to overcome your own problems and flaws. Thinking about the arc of a story makes you aware of the arc of your own life.

Ironically, when you give up the goal of publishing and begin to write for the sake of writing itself, you become more likely to publish. I’ve noticed that the musicians I like best always seem to be having a good time. When you focus on the ways writing rewards you, you will probably also strengthen the ways it rewards your readers. And that aways makes for a better, more salable book.

In short, writing makes you a better person. Which makes you a better writer. It’s a virtuous cycle.

So get started. And good writing.

I’ve added more interior monologue to reinforce her view of what’s going on, and tried to make her view seem a bit more reasonable. Readers are more likely to buy into her view of things — until they hit the lettuce in the sponge cake and begin to doubt. Introducing your readers to a narrator who is at odds with reality is an excellent way to draw them in. And, there is the usual tightening and tweaks that are part of any editing.

Once again, paid subscribers are invited to submit a few pages from their WIP for this kind of editing. It has limits, as I discussed in the previous post. But even a short passage can illuminate serious storytelling techniques.

Enjoy, and good writing.

Dave



“Good morning, Clementina,.” Dr. Fernandez said. “I apologise for making you wait. The road was long and busy.” He sat down behind the desk and opened his bag to take out pulled his laptop from his bag. “My apologies for making you wait. Traffic.” He ignored her, as h His long fingers skipped over the light-grey keyboard, making a clicking sound similar to that of almost like a typewriter but not as satisfying.

Clementina was sitting quietly in front of the desk. He still hadn’t looked at her.

Her ’s nephew, Hernan, stood behind her remained standing, a ghost of an observer, playing with a slice of dehydrated lemon. Clementina shuddered at the sight and turned away. The bastard knew how much lemons affected her. , and he’d He must have brought it to shake her confidence, waiting for Clementina to make her first mistake. If she’d been a betting woman, Clementina would have put all her money on it.

Neither said a word to each other. , having They’d both said it all on the day when Hernan had duped Clementina into moving here. to Acun. She’d changed this man’s diapers during his visits, but in spite of that, he had no heart. Just like her husband.

She waited for the doctor to speak, knowing the routine by now. , this being her third appointment. Every four months, Head Nurse Paula, per at Hernan’s request instructions, would ask Dr Fernandez to make her take a test to see how crazy she was, even though t. The last two tests had shown she was perfectly sane. times the test had been a walk in the park, and Clementina was determined to keep the score in her favour. Clearly, they were just going to keep testing her until they got the reults they wanted.

Dr Fernandez pushed his laptop to the side and leaned back against his chair, hands clasped with fingers intertwined over his flat stomach. He finally looked at her. “Mrs Gutierrez, how are you feeling?”

The innocuous opening question. “I’m great, doctor. Never better.”

The man nodded. Clementina felt Hernan’s gaze like two torches lighting igniting a fire on her skin, but she didn’t glance at him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her sweat.

“Good.” Dr Fernandez read something in his computer before turning back to her. “I have some notes here that say you’ve had a situation this month. How do you feel about it?”

A situation? That was how they were giving a sinister cast to an ordinary event? “I’ve got no particular feelings about it. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“Ah. And how is What makes your perspective different from that of the nurses?”

“Those dishes didn’t need any soap.”

“The file says here that you were convinced you’d never used soap in your life.”

Clementina felt her armpits begin to itch. So this was how they were going to try to corner her. “That’s just It’s a misunderstanding. They didn’t get the joke.”

“Joke?”

“Yes, sometimes those kids they hire have no sense of humour.”

“Well, Mrs Gutierrez, considering the nurses’ worries over finding you in the kitchen, somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, I can imagine they were not them not being in a joking mood.” His gaze returned to e paused and glanced at the computer screen. “What were you doing in the kitchen in the first place?”

“TOkay, that’s where the second misunderstanding comes into play.”

“Two misunderstandings in one day?”

“Exactly, doctor. I often feel misunderstood.” Especially when the orderlies deliberately misinterpreted what she said.Sometimes I don’t feel like people understand me.”

The doctor glanced at her and back to the screen. “Tell me more.”

“I have made make a special cakes like that. I’ve done it all my life, and I was dying for something sweet. So, yes, I went into the kitchen…—”

“While everyone was sleeping.At three AM.”

“Well, of course. I went in there at night,” Clementina sent said, sending Hernan a murderous glance “Paula,” as you so rightly said, doesn’t allow us in there. I just wanted to make a cake. Is that so terrible?”

“Not at all. What kind of did the cake was have in it?”

“It was a simple sponge cake with cream, pineapple, strawberries…” Clementina suddenly saw where this line of questioning was headed. realised where the doctor wanted to go and paused. She wasn’t falling for his trick. “And strawberries. Perfectly normal cake.”

“So you didn’t mix there was no lettuce mixed in with the whipped cream?”

Clementina resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “See, tThat’s where the misunderstanding comes up. It’s No one gets the lettuce that make the cake special, but I’ve done it all my life. That’s what was special about the cake and why people loved it. Tthe sweet and sourness of it.”

Dr Fernandez didn’t respond; he just sent a quick glance to Hernan. Clementina shifted in the chair as if ants had found their way under her skirt. What was she doing? She opened her mouth, but closed her lips, shaking her head. What was she doing? Giving the man ammunition to agree with the claims of Hernan and Paula to restrict her further? She felt like she was living through another of those police interviews, except that it was all bad cop with no good cop in sight. and couldn’t tell if she had got stuck with the bad cop.

Her thoughts turned in jumbles, and a tide of feelings rose up, Suddenly, a waves of emotion rockeding her like a wooden plank floating in the water while a turbulent violent storm raged around her. Damn it! She had to keep control of her thoughts.’d fallen too easily for his trap.

“Doctor, I didn’t ask for this appointment, so either you do whatever inspection you want to do, or you can let me go. They’re waiting for me to start a game of carioca.”

The doctor nodded.

“Only a few more harmless questions, Mrs Gutierrez, I only need to ask you a few questions. They’re pretty harmless.”

“Harmless tTo you. If I get them wrong, what then? My nephew’s right, and I a’m going insane, and you have the right to do whatever you want to me. Thank you, but no. I may have my moments, but I’m perfectly sane.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Gutierrez, it’s only a series of simple Let’s get started, then. I’m going to ask you a series of questions and then I’ll give you an activity to perform. I’m just trying to find out It’s a simple test that helps me determine how you a’re doing.”

“We’ve done it all this already, doctor. No need to repeat yourself. Maybe you’re the one with the memory problems.”

The man didn’t laugh. She took a deep breath, heart racing, as if preparing for a competition she hadn’t trained for. Proving she was still sane was getting harder.

“Please listen carefully. I a’m going to say three words that I want you to repeat back to me now and then try to remember. The words are captain, garden, picture. Please say them for me now.”

“Captain, garden, picture. Yes. I remember.”

“Good. Now, what date is today?”

Clementina relaxed, letting the tension in her shoulders go. She knew what was coming and knew she could answer the questions.

“January 6th, 20206. My husband, Arturo, passed away on November 7th in 2018. It was a Wednesday.”

“Who’s president?”

“Alberto FernandezJavier Milei.”

“How old are you?”

“Ninety-eight.” She paused for breath. The rapid-fire way he was asking questions were confusing her. made her pause and take a breath. She fluffed her hair with one hand. She sighed. “Well, that’s not true. That’s what I tell people. I enjoy hearing them tell me how good I look for my age.” She laughed once, but t

The doctor didn’t even crack a smile.

She lowered her gaze to her lap and fiddled with the zipper of her light cardigan. “I’m 86.”

One good metric is price. Editors are professionals, and the good ones charge accordingly. I can be bought for $90 an hour, more than a mechanic and less than a therapist, which seems about right. When I’m line-editing, I rarely cover more than 10 pages an hour, and often less, depending on how much thought a client needs.

So if you’re looking for skilled, conceptual editing – the kind that delves into the heart of your story and helps you find the full potential in your characters and plot -- then you might want to stay away from someone charging you a dollar or two a page. They may be honest and sincere, but chances are you’re going to get superficial proofreading rather than the editing you’re looking for.

How long someone’s been in the business is another good test. There is a lot to editing, and it takes time to learn to do it well. Besides, if someone’s been in the business for, say, a decade and is still in business, that’s a good sign.

Testimonials from satisfied clients can help as well, along with list of clients who have published and published well. (Full disclosure: I do have a list of published clients on my website, which I maintain myself. I haven’t updated it in more than a decade. Shere laziness, I’m afraid.)

Samples of the editor’s work are even better. That way, you can see how deep the editor is willing to go -- whether they’re correcting your spelling, shaping your character voice, or something in between.

But perhaps the best way to pick the right editor is to see what they can do with your work. Even the best ones might not be a good fit for you. This is why most legitimate editors start with a preliminary report of some kind, where they read your manuscript and give you feedback on your strengths and weaknesses. This lets you know how they see your story before you commit to more extensive (expensive) editing. If they clearly want to take you in a direction you don’t want to go, then you have a chance to find someone else before you’ve invested much.

Good editors know they need preliminary reports, too. I can’t edit effectively until I know where the story’s going and who the characters will be when it gets there. That means reading the entire manuscript first, and once I’ve done that, it only makes sense to give the client my feedback.

Some editors offer a very cheap or even free review of, say, the first five pages. This lets them give you feedback on your style, and maybe your hook, and if that’s what you’re mostly concerned with, that may be all you need to decide to commit. But there is the risk that the editing you get may not go as deep as you’d like – you have no idea if your editor can address problems with your story arc or plot twists, for instance.

There’s really no way for me to write about this topic without sounding like an extended infomercial. So let me say up front, I’ve sometimes seen the work of other editors, and there are some skilled ones at work out there. And, full disclosure, I have sometimes had clients show me the work of editors or beta readers who have caught things I’ve missed.

Thanks for your patience in waiting for this post. For the next one, I’m going to put up an example of the new perk I’m offering paid followers. Send me a page or two of your WIP, and I’ll edit it and post it here. Yes, this won’t let me comment on your story and characters, but it can help. And it’s yours for $7/month.

A final, personal note. The face is healing. My nose is beginning to look like a nose again, even though it’s still attached to my forehead in strange ways. The operation that will put everything back together is scheduled for a little less than two weeks from now. I may have to skip a post then, as well.

And, as always, if you have any questions about either what I’ve written here or on snags you may be encountering in your WIP, feel free to ask.

Good Writing,

Dave

The reports were at least 70% boilerplate – paragraphs of the sort of generic advice any writer might need or feel they needed. Apparently Appel hired unqualified people to skim through a new manuscript and cull enough details to plug into the boilerplate to make it seem as if someone had actually read the thing.

The real situation was worse. Appel also ran a number of bogus agencies and small presses. When someone submitted a manuscript to one of them, they were told that their novel was absolutely wonderful and the press would be delighted to publish it. It just needed a little editorial attention first, and could they recommend the excellent work done by Edit Ink. In addition to his own bogus presses feeding Edit Ink manuscripts, I believe Appel also got kickbacks from agents who funneled otherwise hopeless clients his way.

Edit Ink has long since been shut down as a fraud by the New York attorney general. But my profession still has its fair share of scam artists. I’ll go into detail next week on how you can avoid them but first . . . I think I’ve already mentioned that I love a good story? Well, I cannot resist the story of Quoth the Cabbage.

Back in the nineties, three authors decided to expose some of the crooks inhabiting my profession. (This was long enough ago that I could find some details on the Internet but could not locate their names.) So they decided to start by writing the worst novel they possibly could.

They did. Quoth the Cabbage told the story of a poor, starving cabbage farmer in the last years of Czarist Russia. Eventually driven mad by his poverty, he abandons the farm along with his wife and ten children. Then, after they’re gone, a group of escaped orphans hides in the cabbage patch. In the middle of the night, small dolls begin to emerge from the cabbages (kids, if you don’t recognize the cultural reference, Google it). Between them, the dolls and the orphans engineer the Russian Revolution. Later, they’re banished to Siberia, where they discover the original cabbage farmer, who has started a new life with his family. The book ends with the farmer’s family and the orphans sitting around the table, enjoying warm bowls of sauerkraut.

This Great Siberian Novel was written in three days, using voice recognition software that misunderstood every third word. The authors also quoted extensive passages from Encarta (this was pre-Wikipedia), and simply repeated large blocks of text. They then invented an author, Richard Hulligan, an equally ridiculous cover letter (“Several of the guys over at the VFW think it is great.”), and sent it out to five legitimate agents and five suspected crooks.

All five legitimate agents told Mr. Hulligan to find a new hobby. But the crooks? They loved it! Three of them referred Mr. Hulligan to – wait for it – Edit Ink. The other two asked to see the entire manuscript and, after “reading” it, reported that it had wit and charm, contained fascinating information, and was a joy to read. And if Mr. Hulligan would just send them a fairly stiff copying fee, they’d start sending it out to eager publishers. They even hinted at movie rights.

Of course, Quoth the Cabbage went into the nearest trash can, the copying check went into the bank, and a few months later, Mr. Hulligan received a form letter saying that, sadly the book did not sell.

Writers are naturally eager to get published, and beginners are not yet confident of their talents. So praise from a supposed professional can hit your system like a drug. And this is a classic opportunity for scam artists.

As I say, next month I’ll give you some advice on how you can avoid the sharks. But Quoth the Cabbage deserved to live on.

One quick practical note. Until now, I have been offering paid subscribers a chance to take part in the discussion. Starting with this post, I’d like to offer you another perk. If you’ll send me one page (about 250 words) of your current Work in Progress, I’ll edit it and post it here.

Back in the antediluvian days of my career, Renni and I gave regular workshops on editing topics -- Self Editing for Fiction Writers started out as one such workshop. The most effective part of the workshops was when we took participants’ writing and edited it in front of the class. Later, as a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, I inaugurated their online editing clinic, doing something similar.

Watching editing principles applied in real time has always been one of the best ways to learn them. So I think it’s time to give it a try here.

And, finally, a personal note. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been a little late and erratic in posting. That’s because, last Thursday, I paid for the sin of never using sunscreen. I had a large basil cell carcinoma removed from my nose and, the next day, major cosmetic surgery to rebuild a nose that had essentially been stripped to the studs. I currently have a large patch on my nose that, last week, was in the middle of my forehead, along with a flap of not-quite-attached flesh running from the forehead to the nose.

It does not hurt. It is healing nicely. And it is not nearly as bad as it looks. The yellow stuff is Xeroform, a petroleum-jelly-impregnated gauze that keeps the underside of my skin moist. Still, when I touch my nose, I feel it in the middle of my forehead. And it’s a little odd to think that the technical term for what happened to me is flaying.

So, I’ll see you next week for information on how to avoid the sharks. Until then, stay healthy, wear sunscreen, and . . .

Good Writing

In fact, I’ve often seen strengths in new manuscripts that the authors didn’t realize were there. They’ve felt something was wrong but didn’t know what. I’ve been able to say, for instance, “Cut your first chapter, lead with chapter five instead, and you’ve got solid tension building from the beginning.”

There are limits, though. For one thing, we’re human, us editors. I have often missed stuff, sometimes critical stuff, that later beta readers or agents have picked up. And even though I develop a pretty good sense of what you’re trying to do, my vision of the book is never going to exactly match yours. In fact, I’ve found that with the most creative editor/writer collaborations, my clients take about 70% of my suggestions.

I try to work around these limitations by starting out editing with a preliminary report, where I spell out what I see as your strengths and weaknesses, so we can get on the same page before we start. And I edit back-and-forth in batches, usually about 50pp. I edit1-50, the client inputs those changes, then edits 51-100 and sends me a clean copy. I’d edit that batch, send it back, they’d edit 101-150, and so forth. This gives the client a chance to practice new techniques and get feedback. But it also lets me tailor my editing to what the client wants, as I see what I’ve changed and they haven’t.

There’s also the problem that manuscripts by beginning writers often have serious structural problems. This isn’t surprising, since a novel is a much larger, more complex beast than most writers realize when they start out (more about that in a future post). Clients usually solve their superficial problems – mechanics, the balance between description and dialogue, the dozen things that make point of view work – on the first manuscript we do together. But I’ve often had clients only break into print with the second novel – the one where they applied what they’d learned from scratch.

In a sense, you might say they’d wasted the investment in that first, abandoned novel. But [all right, this is a bit of an advertisement], even if a client doesn’t publish after we’ve worked together, I like to think they’ve gotten their money’s worth. Essentially, they’ve had a MFA-level writing course where they’re the only student and their own novel is the only example.

The takeaway? Editors aren’t perfect, even good ones. Don’t treat our suggestions like pronouncements from on high. If you feel uncomfortable with a suggestion, talk back. A good editor will thank you for it.

Good writing,

Dave

Last week, we talked about how hard it is to tell whether your manuscript is ready for publication. You are simply too close to the manuscript to judge it for yourself, and the rejections you receive could easily reflect and agent’s or acquisitions editor’s personal taste rather than your skill as a writer.

One of the most obvious ways to get feedback is to ask for it, either by letting friends you trust read the manuscript, joining a critique group where you evaluate one another’s works, or <ahem> hiring a professional editor. Any one of these can be an effective way to open your eyes to problems that you either suspected without being able to pinpoint or were simply unaware of.

But there are dangers here, as well. Your friends may be well-meaning, but they often lack the knowledge to critique beyond “I really liked it.” Also, they may simply be impressed that a friend of theirs has created an entire book – which is quite an achievement.

Critique groups, especially those made up of other writers, are both more helpful and more problematic. Your fellow critters know what’s involved in crafting a story and are more likely to have insight into your problems. The risk is that most writers write the kinds of books they like to read. If you’re writing something outside their comfort zone, they might (with the best intentions in the world) tell you how to write the book they want to write. You want to learn better how to write the book you want to write.

Professional editors can get around this problem. Part of the skill we bring to a manuscript is a wide knowledge of different writing techniques. We can spot what you’re trying to do and know from experience the best way to get you there. (Just so this doesn’t seem too self-serving, next week I’ll get into the limits of professional editors.)

But no matter what approach you use, two principles can help you weed the genuine critiques from matters of opinion. The first is sense of the meeting. If many or most of your critics begin to agree, then they’re probably flagging a genuine problem. Even if you disagree, open your mind and look closer.

The other principle is inspiration. If you have a hard time seeing a problem for yourself, then you may have reason to suspect your critters are simply missing your point. But the best critiques hit like revelation. If you’ve long suspected that there’s a problem you can’t see, and a critique suddenly opens your eyes to it, so that your suddenly itching to get into a rewrite, then thank your critter and get to work.

So, yes, find your beta readers and listen to their feedback. With any luck, you’ll find the inspiration you need to push on.

Good writing,

Dave

I’ve had several cases over the years where a client has sent me a self-published work. I always appreciate the gesture, since I love staying in touch with former clients to see how they’re progressing. But at least twice — with novels I haven’t worked on, by the way — I’ve glanced through the book at random and found egregious problems that editing could have solved. I even had one prospective client who wanted a diagnostic reading report, and instead of the manuscript I expected (this was back in the days of paper manuscripts), I received a hardback copy of her self-published novel. She’d simply put it out there before it was ready.

The real heartbreak of this problem is that it’s often impossible to tell for sure when you’re ready. Rejections from agents or publishers don’t necessarily tell you anything, since I’ve seen novels I knew were strong and deserving being rejected repeatedly. (Some of them have self-published successfully, by the way.) Even if you self-publish and only sell a few dozen copies, the problem may lie with your marketing rather than your writing.

So how do you know whether or not you’re ready? One way to at least guess at the answer is from the kind of feedback you’ve gotten from traditional sources. If you’ve gotten several personalized notes along the lines of, “This is a strong book, but it’s not right for us at this time,” then it may be time to contact the self-publishing outlets. If all the rejections you’ve received are form letters, then at the very least, set the novel aside for a month or two and look at it again. See then if you think you’re ready or if you should put that novel in a (metaphorical) drawer and start the next one.

One of the themes running through this Substack so far is that writing is hard. As I said at the beginning, I tell you that not to discourage you but to prepare you for the realities of writing as a career.

As always, I’d encourage you to subscribe and, if you can, become a paid subscriber. This not only supports my efforts, it lets you jump into the conversation and make your own voice heard. And don’t forget, I’ll also be happy to answer specific questions about your WIP and, if the answers are complex enough, devote a post to them.

Over the next few posts, we can look at places you can go to for help. Until then . . .

Good Writing

Dave

Something a little different this morning — my first video post on Substack, and the first video post drawing parallels between baroque music and writing that I’ve done in a while.

I’d like to thank St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ashfield, MA, for letting me use their 1860 William Johnson single manual pipe organ. It’s a sweet little instrument I played and maintained for a few years when I was organist there.

Unfortunately, when I pulled the camera back to show the rest of the instrument, it dropped the video before I could play the Sinfonia through from beginning to end. So here is a video of someone with better skills than I tackling the piece far faster than I ever could. Enjoy.

For this post only, I’m opening the comments to everyone. If, after this, you’d like to join in the discussions, please consider subscribing.

Good writing (and listening),

Dave

After all, traditional presses didn’t simply crank out the books and rake in the money. They brought skills and experience to the creation of your book that you couldn’t provide for yourself. Such as design.

I often have clients send me copies of their self-published novels. Many look professional, but others have had serious design flaws. Cover illustrations that look like they could have been doodled in the margins of a notebook by a relatively skilled 11^th grader. Paper quality that fell somewhere below newsprint. Tiny type and narrow margins that made the book nearly unreadable. Things that a professional designer would axe from the beginning but that an amateur might not recognize until it’s too late.

I understand now that a lot of self-publishing – especially e-publishing – outfits offer design help. But even if you don’t have to educate yourself in the basics, you still have to make aesthetic decisions about typeface and margins and cover art that require skills that have nothing to do with writing.

You also have to teach yourself about marketing – how to arrange promotions at local bookstores, how to get advance copies into the hands of the right reviewers, how and where (and whether) to place ads, either online or in real life. Again, this requires an understanding of market forces and return on advertising investment that have nothing to do with writing.

It often requires chutzpah. One of the ways to overcome readers’ reluctance to buy a book by an unknown name is a good back-cover blurb from someone they recognize. This means approaching well-known writers and asking them to read and publicly admire your book. I realize some people are good at this. I am not one of them. And before you self-publish, you should ask yourself whether or not you are.

Again, I’ve known writers who can bring real creativity and grit to their self-publishing experience. One wrote a series of mysteries around quilting, and arranged for her books to be carried and displayed in quilting shops. I’ve known others who have built relationships with independent bookstores who carried their works. It is work, but it can be done.

So if you plan to self-publish, be prepared for the work. You will need to develop skills and invest time into what can easily become a second job.

As always, keep an eye on the discussion. And feel free to join in. For $7/month, you can share your experiences with other writers, ask me questions about your current WIP, or even suggest topics you’d like to hear. I’d love to hear from you.

Good Writing.

I have been doing this long enough to remember when self-publishing involved a vanity press that, for a substantial fee, delivered cartons of books, most of which ended up in your garage. Between electronic publishing and print on demand, self-publishing is much more welcoming to writers.

We’ve all heard stories of self-published writers who break through to the bestseller lists, just as we’ve heard stories about people who win millions at the lottery. But I have had several clients self-publish successfully enough to make a living at it, even without achieving star status. One self-published her memoir and, once it began selling, was noticed and picked up by Andrews McMeel. Another has a successful detective series that has been running (and selling) for years.

Be warned, though, that the people who are trying to sell you on “the self-publishing experience” are probably making it sound easier than it actually is.

First and foremost, self-published authors face the same hurdle of any other first author – your readership starts at zero. Readers tend to only buy books they have some idea beforehand that they’re going to enjoy, which generally means writers whom they’ve already read and enjoyed. Remember, sales of The Cuckoo’s Calling jumped when people discovered J. K. Rowling was the author.

This problem is actually worse for self-published writers, for two reasons. One is that there are no gatekeepers. When you have the imprimatur of a large press, you’re not only more likely to be reviewed, readers know an acquisitions editor was impressed enough with your work to take a chance on you. Even with small presses, readers of other books by the same press can come to trust the taste of the editors. But when you self-publish, no one has vetted your work, and getting readers to take the risk is even harder.

The other problem with self-publishing is that there is an awful lot of it going on. And a lot of writers self-publish before they’re ready. So the chances of a self-published work being a dud are even greater than with a small press. You have to work that much harder to get readers to trust you.

There are some other dangers with self-publishing, but let’s save them for next week.

Once again, I’d invite you to sign up for a paid subscription. The comments section on my articles in Writer Unboxed is nothing like the stereotypical internet comments section – it is informed discussion, with intelligent questions and valuable shared experiences. I’m hoping to support the same sort of conversation in the comments here. So join in, express your opinion, ask your questions (including about your own work), make suggestions for topics you’d like to hear.

Join in. It’s fun.

Good writing,

Dave

Part of my Christmas tradition is to read various Christmas stories from the past, and this morning I thought I’d share one. This does come from the Christian tradition, but even if you’re not part of that tradition, it does have some lessons to teach anyone interested in story.

J. S. Bach once said that transcribing a collection of Vivaldi violin concerti taught him how to think musically. Since he was in his thirties at the time and was already showing his brilliance, what he probably meant was that he learned to think of music independent of the instrument it was played on.

Well, sometime around 830 AD, a missionary – probably an Irish monk – translated the gospel story into Saxon alliterative verse – the poetry of Beowulf. The result was The Heliand, which is the old Saxon word for Savior. It’s a delightful story in many ways, but what attracts me is the way it adapts a familiar story to a different culture. One in which the closest thing to a city is a fortified hilltop or berg. One in which shepherds are so despised that any story involving them would be ignored.

Looking at all of this teaches me to think of story independent of the culture in which it’s rooted.

So here is the familiar story of the shepherds, with a Saxon twist. And there were in that same country . . . horse guards.

What had happened [the nativity] became known to many over this wide world. The guards heard it. As horse-servants they were outside, they were men on sentry duty, watching over the horses, the beasts of the field; they saw the darkness split in two in the sky, and the light of God came shining through the clouds and surrounded the guards out in the fields. Those men began to feel fear in their hearts.

They saw the mighty angel of God coming toward them. He spoke to the guards face to face and told them that they should not fear any harm from the light. “I am going to tell you,” he said, “something very wonderful, something very deeply desired. I want to let you know something very powerful: Christ is now born, on this very night, God’s holy Child, the good Chieftain, at David’s hill fort. What happiness for the human race, a boon for all men! You can find him, the most powerful Child, at Bethlehemberg. Take what I now tell you in truthful words as a sign: He is there, wrapped up, lying in a fodder-crib -- even though He is king over all the earth and the heavens and over the sons of all the peoples, the Ruler of the world.”

Just as he said that word, an enormous number of the holy army, the shining people of God, came down to the one angel from the meadows of heaven, saying many words of praise for the Lord of Peoples. They then began to sing a holy song as they wended their way through the clouds toward the meadows of heaven.

The guards heard how the angels in their power praised the all-mighty God most worshipfully in words: “Glory now be,” they said, “to the Lord-Chieftain Himself, in the highest reaches of heaven, and peace on earth to the sons of men, men of good will, those who because of their clear minds recognize God!”

The herdsmen understood that something great had been told to them -- a merry message! They decided to go to Bethlehemberg that night, they wanted very much to be able to see the Christ Himself.

Happy Holidays, and good writing.