In the previous blog I discussed some of the important lessons I learnt from editors in the field of business publications many years ago. In this blog I want to look at how I needed to adapt to the world of fiction. As we shall see, it’s not just about spellchecking and grammar checking. Fiction has it’s own needs, conventions, and style.

With fiction, the writer is seeking to create an emotional response in the reader, by making the reader identify with the main character and submerge themselves in an imaginary story world. It’s all about the story and how it makes the reader feel. This is very different from business books that are intended to convey information or advocate a point of view.

There are three different levels of editing to consider in fiction writing:

• Development edit — does the story work and evoke an emotional response in the reader? And how can the characters, story world and story be improved?
• Copy/line edit — is the text free of errors, superfluous wording and inconsistencies?
• Proof reading — is the final proof error free and formatted according to publishers style.

It is also important to understand that all fiction is written from a point of view. A writer will need to choose a point of view and a tense to write in and apply them consistently. The choice of point of view is usually between:

• First person POV — ‘I wondered why I was here. Did Harry betrayed me?’
• Third person limited POV — ‘He wondered why he was here. Had Harry betrayed him? But equally the following works too: ‘He wondered why he was there. Did Harry betray me?’
• Third person omniscient POV— ‘John wondered why he was there. Harry had betrayed him.”

There is also a second person point of view (‘you’), but it is rarely used in fiction writing.

First person point of view and present tense is often used in YA novels. The difficulty with first person is that the reader only sees what the main character sees. So you can’t write a scene in which the main character is not present.  The advantage of first person POV is the intimacy it creates between the reader and the main character.

Third person omniscient is very much the author’s point of view telling the story to the reader knowing everything that is happening in the story. In the example above, the author knows that Harry betrayed him and is telling the reader this information. Third person omniscient POV creates a distance between the reader and the main character and is therefore less intimate than first person. That isn’t to say that some very successful writer have used this omniscient POV, such a JK Rowling.

Third person limited is my preferred approach for the type of books I write. Like first person, the point of view character in a scene can only see what he/she sees in that scene. But the advantage is that you can have a different point of view character for different scenes. Third person limited is often used in complex plots where the reader needs to know what other characters are doing when the main character is not present in the scene. Third person limited is usually written in the past tense.

Another difference between fiction writing and business writing is that in fiction you can break some of those so-called rules you learned at school. For example, you can:

• Use sentence fragments. Even one word sentences.
• Use contractions (Can’t, Won’t etc..)
• Ignore dialogue tags where it is obvious who is speaking.  For example, after an action beat by a character. And by using paragraph breaks to show a change of speaker.
• Ignore some grammar rules where it is gives a more natural vocal style. For example starting sentences with a conjunction, splitting infinitives (‘to boldly go..), or ending sentences with a preposition.

Fiction editors also dislike the overuse of adverbs and adjectives, and many dislike the use of semi-colons and exclamation marks. Here are some important quotes from famous writers about adverbs:

The road to Hell is paved with adverbs.
— Stephen King

Overuse at best is needless chatter, at worst it creates the impression that characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add important intonations to dialogue, or subtly convey information.
–Howard Mittlemark

Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. … It is comprehensible when I write: “The man sat on the grass,” because it is clear and does not detain one’s attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: “The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully.” The brain can’t grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.
–Anton checkhov

And on the the subject of exclamation marks and semi-colons:

Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

So as we can see from the above there is a lot to the subject of editing fiction other than just correcting typos and inconsistencies. In the next blog I’ll look at some of the tools and techniques I’ve used to help me through the editing process.