Write Your Novel!: editing

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Writing syle ... exactly what is it?

Your writing style is your unique writer's voice -- and flaws here are the hardest things of all to find and correct, because these are most often "spoken language" traits, "habits of speech." They pass over into the written word, where they don't belong, and where they glare off the page sounding clumsy, awkward, or just plain weird.

There is no five-minute fix for this point of copy editing, but many years ago a slim little book was written, Elements of Style. In 1918, William Strunk Jr., an English professor, attempted to touch down on every essential element and explain it with examples. In the following 90 years, the work has been revised several times; it was released into the public domain in 1995, and at the time of this writing you can buy it on paper (Macmillan, New York), or download it as an ebook.

Stay on this page, and a little further down, we'll lift the cover and take a peek into Strunk's slim volume.

Some errors of style are colloquialisms, or regionalisms — slang terms from a geographical area which don't mean much, a hundred miles away. For instance:

A "buttie" and a "sarnie" are the same thing. A sandwich. But only in the UK. "Miffed" means annoyed, so long as you're in the US. "Chuntering" is a cross between grumbling and chattering ... in the UK. "Chooks and snags and keks" are chickens and sausages and eggs ... so long as you're in Australia. "Pollies" could be parrots or politicians, depending on where you are. "Singlets and beanies" are undershirts and woollen hats ... in Australia. "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos" are terms making perfect sense, in Alaska! "Pootling" is a verb meaning "to drive slowly" or wander about at leisure ... in London.

So, watch out for colloquialisms and regionalisms in your narrative. You can use them in dialog, where they're important in the development of your character's unique voice. So long as the meaning is either contextually clear, or you make it clear, this is the place to use colloquialisms. It's when they escape into the narrative that the problem begins!

However, most errors of style that come out at the copy editing stage are speech patterns which don't work on paper. A good example of this is the passive voice. In speech, you can get away with using the passive voice; it sounds absolutely normal: "Insufficient time is being spent on the problem," is perfectly normal in speech.

However, agents, editors and publishers want the active voice, virtually to the exclusion of all else. In the active voice you would say, "The problem is being neglected."

Look at these examples of active and passive; sort them out and see the way to navigate through these rapids:

Passive:
The river was being progressively polluted by farming along both banks.
Active:
Farmer along both banks of the river were progressively polluting it.

Passive:
The little boy was brought to school by his father.
Active:
The man brought his little boy to school.

Passive:
The book had been read by a thousand students.
Active:
A thousand students had read the book.

Passive:
The intruder was mauled by three guard dogs.
Active:
Three guard dogs mauled the intruder.

Passive:
Maureen was made a fool of by Uncle Arthur.
Active:
Uncle Arthur made a fool of Maureen.

Here's the trick: look for the verb. (Above, the verbs are bring read, maul, make, and "progressively pollute.") Look for who performs the verb. Reword the sentence to make sure that the subject is actually performing the verb:

Passive: The cat was rescued by two young girls.
Verb: rescue.
The girls performed the rescue, not the cat!
The verb was performed ON the cat -- he was rescued!
Therefore,
Active: Two young girls rescued the cat.

Editors are quite strict about this point. It's usually active voice or the rejection pile.

Watch out particularly for catch phrases. For instance, "A fine performance was given by all concerned," sounds fine in your ear, but on paper, editors want to see the active voice: "All concerned delivered fine performances."

Copy editing is the time to be thorough, and meticulous ... and to know the rules.

Another excellent example of an error of style is to overindulge in "wordiness." When we're speaking, our speech patterns govern how we talk, describe things, relate other conversations, and, again, we can get away with almost anything. However, in text, wordiness soon becomes apparent. Your copy editing will be an interesting experience for some time, as you discover how to weed passages like this:

Try this:

The simplest rule is: never use five words to say what you can say in three! (Editors and agents can spot this at a glance, and they will know (or think) your work is padded out to make a short story much longer. Some magazines pay by the word, and even though its only 3c or 5c per word, if you can sprawl the story out over an extra thousand words, you just picked up another fifty dollars! Expect strict editing from magazines that pay by the word, for obvious reasons.)

Literally hundreds of bad speech habits shadow every word we speak aloud, and none of them matters because the spoken word vanishes into the ether. The trouble starts when they're written down. They come back to haunt us. For this reason, political speeches are written long ahead of time, by professional speech writers!

Having said all this, it is also very important to find your own unique "voice" as a writer, and hang onto it. If 250 different writers were to obey every rule of the little book Elements of Style, they would sound almost identical.

This might be fine for academic writing -- but not for fiction, where it's a writer's unique treatment of words, sentences, dialog, narrative, discription, that go together to make successful fiction happen. We don't want or need romances, westerns, historicals and science fiction to all sound alike!

Copy editing is a process in which you must use your judgement. Don't get so wordy that editors and agents constantly reject you ... at the same time, don't let adherence to the Elements of Style strangle out either your voice or your creativity.

At times in this area of copy editing, it will be as if you're walking on a tightrope. When you begin to feel overwhelmed, STOP. Instead of editing yourself to death, or rewriting for the tenth time, go for a walk. Put on some music. Make coffee (apple tea will also get your brain going). Put your feet up. Pick up a couple of dozen books by other writers, in your genre, if you're writing in a niche. READ. See how other writers express themselves by flipping through the books and touching down on a paragraph here and there. You're not looking at the story or the character development, or the descriptive narrative. You're looking at the flow of words.

And some of the time, you're going to see thoroughly sloppy writing. Best-selling writers are allowed to break the rules. When you're breaking into the industry at the bottom, you have to know what the rules are, and play by them. However, if you pick up a dozen books and read a few pages here and there, you'll see some extremely good writing, as well as dross.

Be analytical. Try to key, or focus, on what these writers are doing that works, and works well. See if you can get into the habit of writing concisely. If not, fall back on copy editing to prune, or weed, sentences which are too wordy. The more you do this, the easier it will become. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

Errors in style ... the Elements of Style ... is an absolutely vast subject. An in-depth study would take a whole book, and indeed, entire books have been devoted to this topic. Copy editing, as a job, involves knowing most of the rules and making personal judgements: where do you conform to the rulebook? Where do you diverge, to protect your unique writing style?

William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style is the skinny volume we recommend. In the space of around 110pp, he looks are every imaginable awkward use of the language and, through the means of examples, smooths out the wrinkles.

Here's an example:

Keep related words together.

...and so on! The book is very "dense," meaning Strunk doesn't waffle on. He jumps directly from one sin to another, deals with each in a minimum of words and proceeds to the next. The book is invaluable if you're still in the stage where you're learning to analyze the language ... perhaps trying to figure our which combination of words is actually correct. If you're "playing by ear," this is the book for you.

You can actually download it: Click here to do just that! However, a book is so nice to have on the shelf, and you can also order it from Amazon.com, using the button to your left.

If Elements of Style sounds too dense -- too hard -- then by all means stay on this blog and check out a number of other posts. We're covering the same ground, but we're doing it with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other...!

Here are some more posts which will help you work out what Style is all about, and get it under control:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Is there an echo in here?!

Writing with consistency

Writing with absolute clarity

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Is there an echo in here?!

Repeated words, and terms or phrases used too often: Broken Record Syndrome!

"Repeated words" are instances where the same word, or its root, or a version of it, appearing two or more times in the same sentence for no good purpose; or in consecutive sentences; or consecutive paragraphs, if each individual paragraph is very short.

Notice that the words "sentence," "paragraph," and "consecutive" appeared twice each in the previous sentence — and then "sentence" appears FOUR times in this sentence! There are times when it's absolutely correct to use the same word repeatedly ... but many more times when it's an oversight. You're on the lookout for the oversights, and at all times when you're copy editing, you'll be seeing things like this:

splooshing

The other kind of repeated words are known popularly among writers as (!) "purple light words" ... because a certain author will use a word or phrase so often, it gets to be funny, or aggravating, to the reader.

As a general reader you might not have noticed this; on the other hand, you could easily have stumbled over this sloppy writing in pulp fiction, and even in genre fiction which sells well.

Tip: established writers can get away with blue murder! Best-selling authors are allowed to go to press with some pretty crummy writing! However, publishers, editors and agents won't let a new writer get in through the door with bad writing. You'll think to yourself, it's not fair for the best-sellers to get away with bad writing while newcomers are penalized and rejected ... and you'd be right. But these are the unfortunate facts of the writing life, and you have to deal with them in the only way you can: Don't be good. Be GREAT.

The kind of sloppy writing errors you've probably noticed in published books are briefly outlined below. Be vigilant — don't get into these habits. Editors and agents will notice, and before you're established in the industry, they won't forgive you. Watch out for these:

The word "started" will be making readers shudder by page 50. This is slap-dash writing, bereft of good, creative style.

Also, watch out for the dreaded "there was" and "there were" echoes:

I saw there were six scones left...

There were only a few...

Frank sat down, but there were no chairs left afterward...

She told me there were eleven kids...

In the paddock there were nine beautiful horses...

There were several dozen sheep in the meadow...

Across the park, there were at least two hundred trees...

Years ago, there were no high-rise parking lots...

When I was young, there were trackless wastes here...

In the state of NSW there were once bushrangers galore...

There were two big dogs in the garden...

"There were" and "there was" are so easy to use, and therefore overused. It's fine once or twice, but don't indulge in it four times on every page. A professional editor will pick up this in a few pages, and will know you haven't done your homework. Decades ago (the industry was much more affluent in those days), it was financially possible to assign you a copy editor who would go through the manuscript and tidy it up for you. These days, your editor is on the lookout for the rare manuscrip that arrives on his/her desk not needing this work! If you can get it right before submission, your chances of publication are enormously higher.

Use copy editing to find the over-usages, and use good, creative sentence construction to switch words around and achieve variety in your writing.

The next "purple light word" to watch out for is "that" ... and let's play a game. Could the usages of "that" in the following paragraph:

The tiny word "that" can soon come to be like bamboo under the fingernails. Editors will see it used up to 25 times on a single page ... say, 8,000 times during a book-length manuscript ... and this is another sign of careless writing. Be aware of what you're doing; use copy editing to pick out ALL the usages of "that" and weed them down to only what you need. Three or four to a page is fine, and correct. More can swiftly become so aggravating, the repetition of these four letters will be cause of your rejection slips!

So, if you're not going to repeat words, what's the plan? Let's work backwards from the wrong answer! Here is an exercise in not repeating the word "said," which results in literary itching powder:

This little conversation is the exact opposite of using the same word over and over. In an attempt at variety, this writer is using a different verb on every speech line ... and it turns into a "stamp collecting" exercise which shreds the reader's nerves. This can't be called sloppy writing, because the writer probably worked very hard to find a dozen alternatives to "said." The sad fact is, all his/her work was wasted, because the end result is no good.

The trick is to find a happy medium, and find other ways of expressing communication. Be watchful, while copy editing, for passages like this, and try something like this:

Grammar: the absolute basics --

Get this much "down" if you do nothing else!

We've put the essential ground rules in a nutshell. Be aware, there's more ... there's a lot more ... but you should find more than enough right here to get you on the right track, and if you do need more, we'll recommend some excellent reference books. (If this were soccer, you'd know the size and shape of the field, length of game, number of players, how to score and maybe two offside rules. Of course there's more — but you might not need it!)

What's in this post?
Is it singular, or are they plural? Help
If it was ... if it were ...? What goes on here?
Do I say I, or me?
Either, or, neither, nor ...say, what?
Can, may or might? And what's the diff?
Possession: adventures with the Dreaded Apostrophe
Pluralizing: more misadventures with the Apostrophe
It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?
Whose or who's or whose's? A little help here!
Controlling pronouns before they run berserk
Splicing together phrases and clauses to make sentences
Subjects, objects ... and what's this predicate business?
That or which ... which is it?
On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Understand the difference between them, and it's simple:

It's is a contraction. It's short for it+is. You use It's to say, "It's a beautiful day;" "it's a crying shame;" "Mike said it's in the cupboard;" "Jim's bike? It's broken;" "it's being mended;" "it's got two flat tires." "It's not a good idea." "It's time for tea." "It's too late for talking." "Then, it's all over?" "But it's only just started!"

Its shows possession: my, your, his, her, our, their ... its. Notice, NONE of the words showing possession have an apostrophe. Not one of them. So, it's easy to tell when to use Its, because it has no apostrophe. Like this:

"Its paint was cracked." "She had a bike, but its wheel was buckled." "Jim said its door was yellow." "Yes, but its knob was green." "Its wires were burned out." "Its tail feathers are white." "Its aroma was delicious." "The song was lovely, its melody soared." (In these examples, Its is standing in for the noun. A house, a door, a bike, a radio, a bird, a pot of soup; a song.)

Its' is a typographical error. Never use it, because it doesn't mean anything at all. It's the ultimate booboo: gibberish. A mix-up between your fingers and the keys. 'Nuff said.

Pluralizing: billboard's ... billboards ... hotdog's ... hotdogs ... house's ... houses ... help!

More fun with the apostrophe. Relax: it's easy. You already know, after reading #1, that the apostrophe shows possession. What is does NOT show #151 not ever! -- is the plural, of anything! (Singular is one of something; plural is two or more.) All you have to do, to avoid this incredibly common gaff is, never, never use the apostrophe when you mean "two or more." Like this:

Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?

All three are correct, in context. When you're copy editing, all you need to do is make sure the right word is used for the right context. Fortunately, it's so easy!

Their is a possessive pronoun. (A pronoun is a word which stands in, like an understudy, for a noun. 'It' can be the standin for a lamp, an elephant, and the planet Mars. 'She' can be the standin for two year old Gemma, your great-grandmom, and the starship Enterprise. 'They' can be used to stand for a bunch of flowers, ten battleships, and the Hell's Angels. Pronouns are the most flexible words in the language, and some of them show how a noun "owns" or "possesses" something. "The girl's bike = her bike." "Jim's book = his book." "The car's wheels = its wheels." "The boys' exams = their exams." The personal pronouns in this particular word list are "my, your, his, her, its, our, and their." Simply add a noun to any of them, and you can't go wrong.) So, their is only ever (ever!) used to show how a bunch of people or things "possess" something else. Stick to this, and you can't go wrong. "Their religion." "Their tourism industry." "Their Size 14 dresses." "Their industrial-strength titanium frames." "Their tiny, delicate petals." "Their warped camshafts." "Their photon torpedo banks." "Their painted fingernails." Easy.

There is a word with two jobs.

The first job is where "there" is used as a preposition. (Prepositions are words which show the position of objects in space. Under, over, in(side) out(side), before, behind, between, above, below, here ... there.) So, "The football stopped over there." "Our house is there, on the corner." "There are the girls." "The frog was there, on the rock." "I saw him standing there." "She said, 'There it is, under the table." He answered, 'I don't see it there.'" "'But the book is there,' she insisted. 'I put it there!'" "Jim saw the Klingons, hiding in wait there." So, in this context, use There to show the position of objects in space. Never use "their" or "they're," and you can't go wrong.

Second job performed by "there" ... it shows the existence of things. Like this:

There is; there are; there were; there will be; there aren't any; there are six; there were 43; there haven't been any since May; there won't be any until August; there isn't a chance; there can't be a sound; there wasn't any trace; there is a whole load of them; there is at least a million; there was one when I got here. So, in this context use there only (only!) to show the existence of things.

They're is a contraction. It's short for they+are. "They're" is never (never!) used for any other purpose. Stick to this, and you'll be right ever time. Like this:

"They're on their way home, I see them there on the road." "They said they're coming back, as soon as their car is fixed." "I talked to Jack and Sam, they're finished the job." "We called them last night, they're on the morning train." "The two dogs are fighting, they're going to get hurt this time." "Six cars are racing on the road, they're driven by maniacs." "Four flights have been cancelled today, they're waiting for fog to clear." "Daniel and Jack won't be back tonight, they're busy." "Their plane is late, so they're going to take a cab home, we don't have to wait there."

Attack of the killer pronouns!

Take a look at these sentences. Each contains one pronoun and two or three nous. The problem is, you're left guessing which of the nouns the pronoun stands in for, and the sentences become ambiguous. One of the most important copy editing jobs is to watch out for ambiguity, turn the muddy into the clear. Pronouns can get you into a lot of trouble! Like this:

Try this:

The trick is to see the ambiguity, and then look for ways to either invert the sentence to make the potential for ambiguity go away; you can also replace the pronoun with a similar word which will do the job just as well, and prevent over-use of the original noun. Copy editing give you the opportunity to revise to your heart's content. (In the examples above, the car = the vehicle; home = the building; lunch = his meal; the crate = the heavy box; the white cat = the Persian. In the other examples, the sentences have been turned inside out to weed out the potential for killer pronouns.

Subjects and Objects: it's war!

Every sentence has a subject. If it doesn't have a subject, it's not a sentence! (Put your copy editing hat on here.) The 'subject' of a sentence is the entity that performs the verb. Think of the subject as the owner of the verb. Like this:

First step: pick out the verbs. (A verb is an 'action' word. It can be the only word in the entire sentence that indicates what is actually HAPPENING! In the examples above, the verbs are...

Sings ... running ... wants ... jumped ... arrived ... worked ... terrorized ... arrested.

(NOTE: the verbs are in different tenses, but don't worry about this. They're all verbs, and at this moment, that's what counts.)

Now, figure out who's performing each verb. Who owns it?

The boy ... The elderly man ... A beat-up red car ... A small brown puppy with big, bright eyes ... Mother's cat, a young Persian called Nostradamus ... Two girls from Nebraska ... A regiment of door-to-door salesmen ... Six badly behaved children with execrable manners ... Eight people.

Notice how subjects can be simple ("The boy" and "eight people"), and either singular or plural. The subject can be a whole bunch of people ("A regiment") ... and the subject can get complicated, as in the case of Nostradamus!

The subject of the sentence is all the words used to describe the subject, gathered together:

These, above, are not sentences, even though they're long. They're fragments. To make a sentence, you need add a verb:

(Do you still have your copy editing hat on? Good!) Now, what about the object of a sentence. Not all sentences have objects. Very short ones can be complete without them:

But the instant these short, choppy little sentences start to grow and express more ... you get an object. The object is the entity or object that is affected by the verb. It has the verb performed on it, or done to it. Like this:

In the above examples, the verbs are:

arrived ... smashed ... escaped ... struggled-to-catch ... win ... parked ... stood ... crying-out.

And if you're looking for the subject, it's easy now: the subjects of these simple sentences are the parts that are NOT the verbs or the objects! (Jack and Daniel ... the little girl ... five puppies ... Two policemen ... Charles ... The driver of a yellow Gogomobile ... the Gogomobile ... Stockton.

So far, so good. Look for the verb; whatever, or whoever performs ("owns") the verb is the subject, and whatever gets the verb wreaked upon it is the object. The copy editing process is coming along fine.

Now things get interesting. There's a good deal more material involved in long, complicated sentences, and you have to make absolutely sure all this material is properly tagged and organized. If you get lazy and inattentive, you can end up with hilarious, fall-down-laughing copy editing results, like this:

The trick is simply to arrange the sentence to keep all the appropriate material gathered together. While you're learning, go through a sentence and "tag" the various parts. Underline the verb, highlight the subject, and then when you've identified the object, round up all the material belong to it:

A comb with celluloid teeth ... a table with antique legs ... a house with a nasty case of termites ... a drill with a three-meter cord ... a guitar with bright steel pegs.

The other subject/object battle you can easily get into while copy editing is this: in long sentences, a fight can develop over who owns the verb. When sentences become very long and complex, you can find yourself hunting around trying to sort out who owns what. The easiest "fix" for this malady is to break the sentence down into two, three or even more smaller ones. Shorter sentences are easier to control ... often, they're also easier to read, and they can pack a "punch" in the narrative, which longer, flowing sentences don't have. This is where copy editing can actually cross back over and line into creative writing. The border between the two blurs out.

For example, here's a long, rambling sentence, and the copy editing cure for it:

A good distance offshore, where the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss, two small trawlers (which had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal) set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas, when the sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, so suddenly and so violently — with massive winds and a barrage of hail — that both the boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

Structurally, the sentence is sound, but it rambles from one topic to another, and another: the coastline, the trawlers, the fishing grounds, the storm, the disaster. In the middle of such a sentence, you can struggle to see who or what owns which verb, and it's all too easy to get into a muddle. Good copy editing should always be performed with the reader in mind, not the writer! Make the story easy to understand, and people will stay with you, keep reading and buy your next book!

Try this:

A good distance offshore, the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss. Two small trawlers had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal. They set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas. The sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, suddenly and violently, with massive winds and a barrage of hail. Both boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

In the second "take" on the same material, it's split up into five sentences. The copy editing was very effective. The material is not easier to read, and much easier to control. Subjects and objects are easier to pick out. Be vigilant: by all means write in fluid sentences which sound good in the ear, but ... know when enough is enough! Take pity on your readers.

There is one more rambling-sentence problem which we'll touch on here, and cover properly elsewhere. It's called the "run-on" sentence, and this is something you need to be keenly aware of, so that you can steer well clear if it. The "run-on" is a long, long sentence which has no business being a sentence at all. It's actually several shorter sentences which the writer has spliced together with commas and semi-colons, in order to simulate the "sound" of fluid sentence construction. In fact, the sentences have nothing to do with each other and should be separate.

In the following example, each sentence is complete, even though some of them are short and choppy. They're also unconnected! You can glue the whole lot together with comms, semi-colons and conjunctions (the "ands" and "buts"), however ... you shouldn't, because these sentences address different topics:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town. The sun was hot. Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well. James was sweating in the heavy tunic. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left. With an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune. The horses were tired, and in need of rest.

Here it is as a run-on sentence. This is what you DON'T want to to:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town, the sun was hot, Charlotteville was on the horizon, a tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and James was sweating in the heavy tunic — worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune, and the horses were tired, and in need of rest.

You can glue anything together with the glue of punctuation and conjunctions, but in many instaces, you should't. The trick is to split up the material and keep topics together. Identify your subjects, objects and verbs, and keep them under control. This is better:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town where the sun was hot, making James sweat in the heavy tunic. The horses were tired, and in need of rest. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, but Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune.

We'll be looking at run-ons in greater detail in another post, but for now ths example will give you a good grasp of what you want to do ... and what you don't!

That ... or which ...? So, which is it?

At least in this contexthis one is an easy fix. (NOTE: there are many and complex rules governing "that" and "which," but in this case ... trying to work out which one to use, when they seem at first glance to be interchangeable! ... it's not so complex. At this moment, with this particular problem, you're hunting for a "five minute fix" to solve the "that/which battle" -- you only need to know one rule. Elsewhere on the site, we'll examine clauses, and subordinate clauses and a lot of material which can get fairly confusing. The fact is, however, when you just need a "that/which quick-fix," you don't want all the rest. For now, scoop the icing off the top; come back for the rest of the cake later.)

"That" and "Which" have many uses in English. One of their jobs is to glue sentences together in a specific ways. Both of them take short, choppy, awkward, ugly sentences and make them longer, smoother sentences. However, THAT and WHICH are used in different ways, in different contexts. They're not interchangeable at all! So ... which would you use, and when, and why?

Take a look at these examples.

All the above examples use WHICH. The examples below use THAT. Take a look at them, then we'll work out the rule:

Notice, in the first set of examples, two awkward little sentences have been glued together to form one better-sounding sentence, using WHICH. They may sound better when conjointed with WHICH ... but they are actually complete and coherent on their own. Read them through again... "Bats are amazing creatures." This makes perfect sense, and the sentence is complete, like "He had an ace up his sleeve." And "Don't overlook the force of the wind." The sentence comes to a full stop -- done. It's followed by another short sentence with amplifies it, but it'll stand on its own. WHICH is used to turn two choppy, awkward little sentences into one smooth sentence.

Notice, in the second set of examples, two concepts are joined using THAT ... but neither concept is a complete sentence on its own. Like this:

"He used the kind of language" is not a complete sentence. "It would get anyone slapped" is a sentence, but it has an "it" in there, and the "it" makes the sentence utterly ambiguous, if it's separated from the previous sentence fragment and taken out of context. "It" could be face-pulling, a rude gesture, a teeshirt with a crude cartoon, bad behavior -- or bad language. You would use THAT to join a sentence fragment (it's a fagment because it won't stand on its own as a sentence without more added) and a qualifying concept.

"The huge black dog" is not a sentence, but a fragment, like "The only science," and "It could only be the car" and especially, "Mrs. Bailey made more tea, but it was a single lingering lamington" ...! Each of these incomplete fragments needs to be welded to another, qualifying concept, in order to make proper sense. The glue you use to stick them together is WHICH."

(CAVEAT: this is the quick fix! There's a lot more to "that" and "which" than can be covered here, but by far the most common mistake is in mixing them up when you're looking for the right glue to stick short, choppy sentences together. With a firm grasp of this one rule about the that/which battles, you'll about the vast majority of errors. Bookmark this page and return when you need full, in-depth information. Or, subscribe to our newsletter. It's free, and every week or two we'll tell you which pages just went on line at Write Your Novel, detailing which pesky subjects. Visit us again when what you need is "up" ...!)

On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

This at least is simple. Once you see the rule, all errors vanish, never to return. In the course of your copy editing, watch out for two kinds of sentences which contain parentheses (brackets):

1) The sentence is entirely inside the brackets;
2) The sentence is partly inside, partly outside the brackets.

The rule is this: If ALL the sentence is inside the brackets ... so is the punctuation. If part of the sentence is OUTSIDE the brackets, so is the punctuation. Like this:

Johnny had been in Mexico (working for his Uncle Joe), for six months.

(For some reason, Barbara had never thought of this.)

The mountains (up as far as the Swiss Alps) were white with snow.

(Seven dollars seemed like too much to pay.)

If wishes were horses (as my grandpa used to say), we'd all be cowboys.

(Jim would have preferred to see the Clint Eastwood movie, but decided not to say so.)

And now, with sounds of evil chuckling:
Turn page to Grammar: when to break ALL the rules!

Grammar? Who in the heck needs it, anyway?

Grammar...without it, the language unravels!

Grammar. What in the world is it? You certainly can't see it, touch, smell or taste it. But you hear it, and the worse it is, the more of it you seem to hear! Bad grammar is at the root of a lot of jokes. When spoken language goes ridiculously wrong, humor of the unintentional kind won't be far behind.

On the other hand, good grammar is one of a small handful of factors which have, for centuries, set the aristocracy apart from the rest of mankind. Not long ago, only the sons of rich men could go to school. Many were taught by monks ... girls were rarely taught at all. Literacy was the privilege of the wealthy and scholarly. Grammar — being the framework on which every word we speak is hung — was one of the qualities peculiar to ladies and gentlemen, because only they were given the opportunity to learn it.

Like anything else that is rare, proper language, good grammar, soon became a status symbol. You could be shabby, not own a horse, much less a piece of land, but so long as you spoke well, the classes of the nobility would accept you into their ranks. You were 'people like us,' or PLU. It was an elite club, where the entry card was your ability to use the language properly. And it all begins with grammar.

In movies, we get a big laugh out of the "local yokel." In the street, face to face with friends and acquaintances, we tend to overlook lapses in grammar. The spoken word is gone in a heartbeat; who remembers? But what a writer commits to paper achieves a kind of immortality...

In other words, your booboos will come back to haunt you! As an aspiring writer, you have one big goal: to impress the heck out of editors, agents and publishers. If you can impress them enough, they'll publish your work, and you'll earn. Eventually, you'll earn enough to give up the day job and write for a living.

One of the criteria on which you'll be judged — on page one of your submission! — is your grammar. You can't afford to make any, or many mistakes. If your creativity is "off the scale," you'll be forgiven for the odd lapse here and there; an editor will straighten out a few mistakes in grammar. However, if you make too many of these lapses, the editor, agent or publisher won't keep on reading your manuscript for long enough to discover how brilliant your fiction really is.

There is only one solution to this problem. Good grammar. Either learn it yourself, or recruit your friends (if you do conscript friends, make very sure they know what they're doing ... if they don't, the manuscript will simply be full of their errors, instead of yours). The third option is to pay for professional editing, and although you can certainly do this, please do read our caution, on the freelance editing page. Of you haven't yet read it, go there and scan it now ... this page will be here when you come back!

For the purpose of this page, then, we'll assume you've made the commitment to being the consummate professional. It's not a five-minute journey from "wannabe" to "best-seller," but the trip can be a lot of fun. No one ever said any of it had to be boring.

So: you're on this page to get a stranglehold on the gentle art of grammar. Right? Right.

In that case, let's grab the fundamentals and throttle them!

Turn page to
Correct Grammar: a framework to which everything else is pegged

Style editing ... it's editing for style

This is where you make sure your readers are definitely understanding you, and you're using the right words, and they're in the right order ... you're not overusing words, not repeating them, not inadvertently using regionalisms, which can sound unintentionally comical — or mean nothing at all to your readers. At this level of editing, you ensure that pivotal points are revealed once, while nothing is skipped over and forgotten. Material is not repeated, or repeated too often.

For example, a phrase used too frequently soon becomes annoying. Or funny. 'I'll be back.' Speaking of which, you'll be on the lookout for clichés! (Editing to the rescue.)

As you edit, you'll be making sure enough detail makes it onto the page to 'paint the scene,' but not enough to become boring. Modern readers will skip over too much description, and if there happens to be something crucial buried in the middle of this passage, they'll miss it utterly. This is how they 'lose the plot' and put the book down, saying it's incomprehensible and it's all your fault, as the writer.'

And you'll be on the lookout for several more 'writer beware' points. Hazard flags go up when something isn't right, like the black warning flags signaling 'oil on the racetrack.' Words have a way of flowing together naturally, every writer has a unique 'voice,' and so will you; but you must be in control of how the words flow, why they flow, and where they're flowing to. Here, freelance editing crosses a line of fuzzy logic into a form of art.

For instance, Jilly Cooper and Clive Cussler 'sound' very, very different indeed. Both are fine writers, but not only is their material a world apart, they also approach the 'job of writing' from different angles. They're from different parts of the world, different social backgrounds. Their words have a way of flowing together naturally, but the similarity ends right there!

Both writers, being consummate professionals, choose their words to suit their readership. Comparing a social comedy and an industrial thriller is exactly like comparing apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit, but every other quality is different.

The trick is, as your own freelance editing guru working on the fly as you write, to choose your words to suit your readership. Moreover, you'll soon 'get a nose' for what works, and you'll automatically, instinctually, choose your words to suit your changing material, from scene to scene within the same novel. In your intimate scenes, the words flow together in one way ... in action scenes, they flow another way.

If you're one of those 'natural, born writers' who make this happen without even thinking about it, bravo! Mother Nature gave you an advantage. The rest of us need to develop the instinct for words. The good news is, it doesn't take long.

Here's a grossly-exaggerated example, which will make the point. A short poem by John Macefield, entitled Cargoes, where the choice of words speaks for itself:

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

'Style' has little to do with how you spell or punctuate your writing, and whether the grammar is perfect. 'Style' is about how the words flow together ... which words you choose for what purpose ... and within all of that, keeping a tight grip on your own unique voice.

Daunted? Don't be. If you know how to score tennis, understand the offside rule, can put together flatpack furniture, bake a carrot cake, follow a knitting pattern, and program the DVD recorder, you can crack editing. It's an instinct, a 'nose' for writing and editing. And developing it is actually a whole lot of fun.

Editing your own work ... where to do begin?

When you're just starting out as any kind of writer, editing is a large part of your job, and copy editing is where we get down to the real nitty gritty stuff. This is editing on the fine-tooth scale, where you make sure the grammar, punctuation, spelling, clarity and continuity are absolutely accurate. You'll be looking at every sentence as a stand-alone, and checking to ensure you're not getting run-on sentences, which become hard to follow. You'll be looking at the sentence in the context of its own paragraph, then looking at that paragraph in the context of the one previous and the one after.

This level of editing might sound daunting, but don't sweat it. Copy editing is a skill, like tapdancing and baking bread to die for. Once you learn it, you'll do it so well, you're going to be asked to do it for other people. (You might be on your way to a career in freelance editing; and it does pay well. Now, this has to grab your attention. Hang out your shingle...! Hmmm.)

There is so much to consider under the heading of 'freelance editing,' we're breaking it up into a whole flock of posts. Here's the plan: Deal with one thing at a time. Nail it down, call it 'done' and go on to the next thing.

As we go, we'll index all subjects, in rational order; and here's where we are to date:

For example, the issue of clarity in your writing is often overlooked. It's vitally important for readers to be able to understand what you mean, but the misuse of pronouns, the wars that can happen between the subject and object of a verb, and so on, can undermine your clarity. You know what you meant in a certain sentence, but no one else does! If you write ambiguously, there can be three ways to understand something, and — people being people — two thirds of readers will take what you wrote the wrong way. As a freelance editing guru for your own work, you'll soon see how to remedy errors 'on the fly.'

Relax — it's quite easy to make peace on this battlefield. Need to get a quick start right here? Copy Editing 101! Here's where your freelance editing skills start to repay you a hundred-fold!

Global editing ... what in the world is it?

Freelance editing begins here: work local, think Global

This is editing (freelance or otherwise) on its most 'gross' scale, where the grammar and punctuation don't matter, and the storyline itself is under the magnifying glass. Global editing also verifies the integrity of the plot: events have to follow in a logical order. If a character who was killed in Chapter Five shows up again in Chapter Twelve, there had better be a good reason! At this level, continuity is also addressed: a character who was Californian when introduced can't be from New York eight chapters later. A blond(e) should stay blond(e), unless a 'new do' is part of the plot. At this level of freelance editing, you can also check to make sure there's a good balance between dialog and narrative, with enough of each and not too much of either. And so on.
Global editing is the first stage in the process. Most writers do it 'on the fly,' and there's a way to make it dead easy, even if you're not a 'natural' at this.

If you've never done this before ... if the book is 1,000 pages long and you lose track of the details ... if you're writing a series of books ... if you have a memory like a sieve ... if months go by between opportunities to write, and you just forget stuff, global editing can be a hassle. It still has to be done, but there's a cast-iron way to get around it. It's simply this:

Get a pack of cardex file cards and a pen. Read through your story. Write down every proper noun -- character and place names; make a note of the relationships between characters; the physical appearance of the characters, plus any special characteristics. Does someone lisp or limp, or have a scar? Is someone crazy for a specific reason? Give each character his/her own card ... and organize them alphabetically. Six months from now, pull Rhett Sinclaire's card, and jog your memory:

Rhett Sinclaire: has a Chinese grandmother, bleaches his hair, talks with a Chicago accent, is phobic about spiders and allergic to cats, but loves dogs and rides horses like a pro, he was married to Janet, two kids, Marina, 10 and Shaun, 8; divorced 5 years ago when Janet couldn't stand his job any longer; has custody of the kids every second weekend; his dogs are Biff the Beagle and Bozo the schnauzer; lives in a 30-y-o ranch house in the San Fernando Valley; worked for Eagle River Security, 6 years; has been an insurance investigator for IUA for 8 years. Loves the job; loves German beer and Chinese food; hates punk rock music...

A lot of writers can carry that lot in their heads, and do it for 40 characters in a giant novel, but there's no law that says you have to carry it all in memory. Cardex file cards are cheap, and they work!

Finding a fresh spin for old material, and being able to see when the spin either has not been done yet, or was not done well, is one part of the editing process. In fact, it's the first part. Global editing, also known as story editing.

Turn page to The Global Edit... writing and editing working in tandem

Can I proofread and edit my own work?!

I've heard proofing and editing my own work is impossible!

Well ... not impossible. Just more difficult! When you're editing for someone else, it's easy to be ruthless. You 'prune' wherever you see something that needs to be snipped. You're not in love with every word in this chapter, and what needs to be done seems obvious, often painfully so. However, writing as a freelance, editing your own work will require some discipline.

There is a good chance you are in love with every word in the chapter you're editing, and you know the saying ... love is blind. It can be hard to see faults in our own work, though they fairly 'jump off the page' to someone else. (Which is the up-side to using a professional freelance editing service.) See the sidebar to your right for career-changing, guru-like guidance!

At this point, you come to a personal decision, and it can be another epiphany.

If you're aspiring to be a professional writer, you'll need to slither past the natural love affair you have with your material. Step back to get a new perspective. See it through someone else's eyes.

It can be a right, royal pain to put a line through what you've written, find other words to express what you mean, delete a whole scene, ditch a lot of dialog. However, if this kind of freelance editing is what it takes to bring your manuscript up to full professional standard and earn you some good money, it's unavoidable, and highly desirable.

Here's the kicker. Industry professionals (publishers, editors, veteran writers) can see every fault the instant they look at a text. It's an 'eye' for words, which some people have naturally and others have to work at. This quality, the ability to perform freelance editing unconsciously, on-the-fly, is like hearing a melody and being able to whistle along with it.

Believe it or not, a fair percentage of human beings can't hear melody! They're said to be 'tone deaf,' it's a medically diagnosable condition. (Which might explain why a good deal of modern music actually has no melodic line; it appeals to the surprisingly large section of the population who can't hear a tune.)

Professional writers have what's been called a 'built-in, automatic crap detector,' which turns on the moment they begin to write, and acts like a filter for all kinds of materials. Bad grammar, poor sentence construction, ambiguous wording, incorrectly used words, repeated words, 'purple light words,' over-writing, under-writing, melodramatics, unintentional humor, run-on sentences, and 'sudden death' material ... all gets filtered out either as soon as it's typed, or before the fingers hit the keys! This is freelance editing on autopilot.

IMPORTANT: Don't be perturbed by unfamiliar concepts in the paragraph above. They might sound odd, scary and confusing now, but in an hour you'll be familiar with them all. Some, you'll recognize. Some might make you stop and think, and perhaps take another look at your own work. And maybe you'll feel the tingle of an epiphany coming on! The freelance editing wizard inside you is beginning to turn on.

Even if you can't 'pick the tune' at once when it comes to being able to tell good writing from poor, don't be anxious. There are two ways to approach this. If Plan A is out of reach, fall back on Plan B.

Plan A is about natural, born writers who can pick the tune so easily, for most of their writing careers, they 'play by ear.' They're like a singer or musician who can't read music, has no idea what s/he's playing or singing, yet fronts for a band and gets massive applause.

If you're among these writers, you've probably been getting rave reviews from friends and family for years. They're exhorting you to 'go pro.' You might even have tried ... you might also have failed. The reason is, a writer 'playing by ear' is prone to let fiddling little errors slip through. Professional editors easily pick them up. The editor will weigh the sparkle of your work (and if you're a born writer, it'll always sparkle) against the amount of editing needed to bring you up to publication standard. They look at outsourced freelance editing as time, then convert time to money — and you get a rejection slip instead of the contract you were praying for.

It's still very possible for a natural, born writer to get published. But it's by no means easy or certain, and it would be fair to say that the road to publication will be liberally papered with rejection letters, even for natural-borns.

So ... Plan B: Not being a natural, you need to (figuratively) learn to read music. Even if you only play the piano with one finger, you can tap out the tune and learn it, note by note. It just takes a little longer than being able to hear the melody a couple of times, and then promptly play it.

Writing (and the freelance editing which goes hand in hand with writing) is exactly like this, for a great many people. Having to learn the process doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means you'll play 'catch up' while the naturals romp it. (However, the 'by ear' writers are often working with a handicap they're not even aware of. Those little errors slip through and accumulate, and the end result is still a rejection slip. Take heart: you can to better than catch up. You can actually overtake them.)

There's a gray area in which writers who are on the top rungs of the amateur league tend to languish for some time. It's a twilight zone where these writers are the best of the bunch in their writers' workshop, APA, or class ... yet they don't make the transition to professional. You've seen it happen; you wonder if it'll happen to you.

These writers don't make the transition for any one of several reasons. Some writers are quite happy to be amateurs. They don't need to write for money. It's a fantastic hobby, and they don't feel 'driven' to get to grips with the world of pro publishers, freelance editors, reviewers. Other writers would love to turn pro, but they suspect they don't quite have the skills ... and they're simply too lazy to invest the effort, and learn.

A third group refuse to believe they have anything to learn. They know they're the best, and they have fits if anyone 'puts one sticky finger' on a word they write (unquote!) Such writers might be very good indeed, but it's a thousand-to-one against them getting professionally published without being edited, and since they don't want to confront editors -- they don't submit professionally. Their love affair with their material, which causes them to guard every syllable, is maintaining their amateur status. (Freelance editors would be creatures from their worst nightmares. Again — see the sidebar to your right!)

A large group of writers are extremely good, and willing to learn, do submit ... and still fail to make the transition. Some can't deal with rejection slips, and in the early days, rejection notices are a fact of life. Someone one said, 'You have to develop a thick skin.' Line the budgie cage with your rejection slips, and press on.

Other writers genuinely have nothing fresh to contribute, and they probably know it! To get published, you need determination, skill, and something fresh to say.

It's perfectly true that there are no new stories. They have all been told, and most of them have been told a thousand times over. The trick is to find a new spin to put on old material. Have a look at Eregon ... in fact, it's Star Wars dressed up as Lord of the Rings. It's also incredibly popular. (In turn, Star Wars has so much in common with both The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings that, if you need it, here's the proof. There's no such thing as a new story! However you can put such a fresh spin on an old one, readers and viewers are delighted.)

Proofreading: weeding out
typographical errors

Typographical errors (known as typos) are probably the most common gaffs you'll find. Everyone from the copy editor to the proofreader is looking for these little monsters, and no matter how many pairs of eyeballs are on the job, a few will still get through into the published version.

A computer spell checker will find most of them, but anyone still using a typewriter is particularly susceptible. Who's still using a typewriter? Older writers who scorn computers, younger people who can't afford one, anyone who has a computer that's broken down with the deadline right around the corner ... and writers with eye problems like macular degeneration, who must not, at all costs, look into a bright light. You'd be amazed how many typewriters are still out there, and still in use. Did you know Tom Hanks collects them? True!

However, computer users need not be too confident: computers are blind to an amazing number of booboos, and the human eye of the copy editor must find them. For example, you wanted the FIRST word in these pairs; your fingers typed the second. It's an error, but the computer won't see it:

Though ... through. Kneel ... kreel. Fine ... find. Fool ... foot. Root ... toot. Lean ... leak. Now ... not. Can ... car. Skim ... skip. Slim ... slip. Wound ... would. Deer ... deep. Then ... them. Bank ... band. Bought ... brought. Dropped ... dropper. Slipped ... slipper. Fond ... font. Like ... live. Mister ... master. Miss ... mist. Coasting ... boasting. Brawl ... yawl. Push ... lush. Boy ... box. Bright ... fright. Bathers ... fathers. Shout ... stout.

Typographical errors can produce some absolutely hilarious results. You can often have a good laugh, when you see what your fingers did all by themselves. (There are also some amusing Freudian slips).

Humor aside, get after those typos, weed them out. Get as many as you can, then have someone else apply a fresh pair of eyeballs to the manuscript. The more proofreaders "do" the book, the better it's going to be.

TIP: read slowly. Read the words, not the sentences, and definitely not the story. Read the last page in the manuscript first, and work your way through to the front. This makes sure you don't get caught up in the story and start reading, instead of proofreading.

Turn page to Spelling errors...

Return to What the heck is copy editing, anyway?

Copy editing: what the heck is it, anyway?

Copy editing: The nuts-and-bolts end of the business...
or, "Copy Editing 101"

'Copy editing' is a term which raises goose bumps on the arms of many writers, yet these days there is absolutely no need for the reaction. In the old days, heavily correcting a piece of work meant retyping the whole thing ... perhaps 300 - 500 pages of typing, Hence the goose bumps! Since the advent of computers, correcting is done on-screen, and you just hit "print" to get a fresh copy. The old "shiver" reaction to the specter of the copy editor persists, but there's no need for it to. Writing is a cross between art and craft, and if you ask any painter, sculptor, knitter or carpenter, they'll tell you the same golden truth.

There are skills to be learned and rules to be followed. Once you have the pattern (be it a knitting pattern for a sweater or a woodworking pattern for a bookcase), it's very like painting by numbers. You stay with the pattern. If something is wrong, you take it apart and put it back together again, to get a correct fit.

This is copy editing. Trust me. You won't drop dead, or spontaneously burst into flames at a lick of sunlight.

The major difference between copy editing and other crafts is that you're working 'on the fly.' The "pattern" is a list of "ingredients," while the plot is the recipe. As the copy editor, you're the 'taste tester.' You stick your finger in the mixing bowl, try the goop, and correct it when it's not quite right.

You need two things, to excel at this. First, you have to be ready to learn, and accept, copy editing. Very new writers cam get very offended when someone suggests that they need some editing. More experienced writers might have a history of rejections, or they've spent some considerable time polishing their own work, with the help of friends.

During this polishing process, a time comes when errors start to literally jump out of the manuscript and bite you ... and, inevitably, you wonder, "Why didn't I see that a year ago?" You realize, the publishers who looked at the novel last year would have seen the errors (they must have seen them, if you yourself can see them now!), and you think to yourself, "A good editor would have weeded the gaffs out of the manuscript back then."

Someone skilled at copy editing could certainly have weeded the manuscript ... but were you ready, at that point, to admit that you needed the editing/weeding? All writers reach a threshold. On one side, they're amateurs, not-yet-ready to go forward. On the other side, they've experienced The Epiphany. In a flash of insight, they start to see written material (fiction of journalism) as a fluid, constantly changing, endlessly flexible, lending itself to molding and shaping.

Copy editing is like dipping your hand into this fluid, changing the pattern of eddies and currents, to get around rough patches, make things clear, and keep the fluid moving smoothly.

So, the first useful thing I can do is take a look at the 'rules' by which this game is played.

You have to learn the rules before you can score tennis, knit a sweater or fiddle with the car engine. Copy editing is no different ... and nothing to be intimidated about.

I'm going to call this "Copy Editing 101," and it's quite a large subject, so what I'm going to do is break it up into chunks and tackle each chunk in a separate post.

In fact, he entire subject of copy editing is larger than you might think at first glance. It can be overwhelming, if you don't break it up into bite-sized chunks. We'll divide up the pie into nibblets which fit the size of blog posts, and you can choose exactly what you need at this moment, to solve some specific problem which you just diagnosed. (However, be sure to get the "big picture" too, because it's way too easy to be making mistakes you're not even aware of. A professional editor will pick them up at once, and there's another rejection slip for your collection!)

You'll probably want to hit the whole list -- and access it easily! -- so we'll itemize it right here (stay on this post and scroll down). Some of the topics are short series of posts...

First Rules: Put out an APB for bad guys

You have the manuscript on the desk before you, and pens and pencils. You're ready to scribble on the manuscript ... all over it, if necessary! But what are you looking for? Here's a short-list -- topics will turn into links as posts are added to this blog:

Typographical errors, especially in manuscripts which were typed up rather than being "done on a computer," which spellchecked the document prior to printing out.
Spelling errors which got past the computer's spellchecker; all spelling errors, if the manuscript was 'only' typed, using a old-fashioned typewriter.
Grammatical errors
Punctuation errors
Textual formatting errors
Inaccuracy: wrong word used
Repetition and Over-use: repeated word within a sentence or paragraph; term or phrase used too often overall.
Ambiguity: the reader can't tell what the writer means!
Writing with consistency in word usages throughout.
Nonsequiteur: the narrative either contradicts itself or heads off in unconnected directions.
Errors of "style" (harder to pick out; don't worry, we're going there).

Take it from the top! I'll start with a five-minute Q&A covering the physical aspect of the job. What does it look like, how does it work at the fundamental level of the paper and pencils ... then we'll dive into the details....

Click here for A Copy Editing Q&A...

Getting paid to write

When and how does a freelancer get paid to write?

Freelance writers "do it backwards" — you'll be paid to write after you've finished. When you make the sale, you'll be offered a contract for the piece. How much you'll be paid depends on what the work is, and who you're selling it to, plus how well known you are, and just how good your current project is.

Markets for fiction are very broad and tremendously varied. You can sell to conventional (print media) magazines and book publishers ... as a freelance writer you can also sell to electronic publishers, whose magazines appear online; you can get a contract from an ezine publisher; and in the early days of your career, you can submit to semi-professional publishers. More on this below.

Getting paid to write is one thing; getting paid well is a goal to aim for. Like any other art, the more famous you are (which, for a writer, comes down to how many people have read your material, liked it, and will pay good money to read more), and the better you perform, the more compensation you'll be offered.

In the early days, when you're completely unknown, your name can't be used by a publisher as a 'hook' to sell more copies. As you go on and make several sales, your name will become known. Readers who liked your previous work will be 'hooked' to buy a volume (anthology, magazine, or even a whole novel) in which you appear. You can get paid to write while you develop the name that will earn you the big checks later.

At the outset, however, you're the classic unknown quantity, and a publisher must take a risk on you. He or she is going to pay you money on a guess that readers will like your work. This guess is based on how well the staff at the publisher's office liked it. Did you hold their attention? Make them laugh, or cry? Did your story haunt them for days after they finished reading?

Other factors also come into play when a publisher is deciding whether to accept or reject the work of a freelance writer. How commercial is the piece you're submitting? How relevant is it to the publication? How original is it? And how well is it written?

If a piece is 100% relevant, addresses current, popular subjects, has a good streak of originality and is quite well written, you're in with a chance of achieving your first goal: actually get paid to write! And the first time you get a check (or cheque, depending on which part of the world you come from) is a thrill.

'Quite well written' means the editor will have to do some work on your writing to bring it up to full professional standard. If your material is original enough, relevant and commercial, he or she will happily spend several hours going over your story, with a line-by-line edit. (Several hours?! You echo, dismayed. Why is editing necessary? Who should do it — and when? Click here to learn more about what a professional edit entails, and why it can take some time.)

Naturally, the less editing you need, the less time an editor needs to spend on you prior to publishing ... the more time you save him, the more he'll approve of your material, and the more likely you are to get the sale ... in other words, get paid to write. So it behooves you to write very well! Which is the whole topic of our WRITE! segment.

How much you finally do get paid to write depends on how much of the editor's time you consumed, to get your work up to standard ... how relevant and commercial it is, and if you've made sales before (meaning, do readers know you? Will you attract them, and enhance sales for this publisher. Everyone's bottom line is financial, the publisher's as well as yours).

When you make your first sale, don't expect a vast check. If you're selling to high-end popular magazine, they'll adhere to their industry pay scales, which can be quite generous. But regional magazines, small papers, small(er) publishers, don't make the kind of sales the big boys (and girls) do, and can't pay as much.

Inquire about pay scales at the time you contact the editor, asking if he or she wants to read your work. Some very small magazine publishers might even pay in copies, not cash. Others might pay half a penny per word, or a penny per word, which is a bare fraction of the industry freelance rate. They should be up front about what they intend to pay; if you get the impression something is being hidden — it probably is.

It is practically impossible to put a dollar amount on how much you can expect to be paid to write, because the market is so wide and every publisher is different. For example, if you're submitting to an anthology, you might receive $20 - $500, depending on how long your story runs, how many copies the publisher intends to print, how well known you are, and how well patronized the genre is at this moment.

(For instance, science fiction is a quite popular genre. For a brand-new writer, a major SF publishing house might run 7,000 - 20,000. However, a small SF publishing house would have to 'play it safe' and might run 3,000 - 7,000. Actual dollar amounts for a freelancer's payment are impossible to predict; but you can see the margins you're working inside of.)

Publishers can be reluctant to disclose the size of the printrun, and this is their prerogative. Also, the printrun can be changed, for reasons of economic pressure. Something planned as 6,000 can ultimately be cut to 4,000, not because of the quality of your work, but for multiple other reasons of business. You may never know how exactly many copies were printed.

A small 'literary' publisher might run 3,000 copies of a book. A genre publisher might run five or six thousand for the first printrun, and if it goes well, organize a reprint, in which case, you get paid again ... without having to write a word. (Getting paid to write just got sweeter!) A publisher working in a larger niche might print 10,000 - 25,000. However, if you've been thinking all books are printed and sold in the tens of thousands, and the millions — this is only true of national bestsellers.

Suffice to say, as a freelance, you finish the work and then contact editors and offer it to them. Talk to the big guys first (they pay the best), but be happily surprised if you get a solicitation from them. Remember, everyone goes to them first (because they pay more!) so they're usually buried in queries and submissions. After the submission, and the acceptance, you'll receive a contract and a financial offer. Ah! The 'get paid to write' scenario is happening!

How much money is in the offing is another question. As a freelance, you're not compelled to accept a publisher's offer, but before you turn it down, consider several points. You're a newcomer, an unknown quantity. Your work might genuinely need some editing to get it up to full-professional standard for publication, and editing takes time. (You'll learn about this at firsthand as you read through our EDIT! segment.)

As Benjamin Franklin said, "Time is money," and an editor's time is especially precious. If your editor is willing to accept your work even though it needs to be polished, don't be insulted (much less angered) by the editing. It's actually a compliment. Your originality is being praised. You're being accepted for publication, even though your writing needs a lick of polish.

How much work will an editor do for you, and still publish you? It all depends on how much he or she wants the story! If you're good enough, and original enough, some editors will invest an astonishing amount of effort. (But you'll woo more editors, and get paid to write more often, if your work is already is wearing a shining coat of polish before you submit.)

Still, past a certain point, you could be asked for a rewrite, especially if the editing that's deemed necessary is more to do with 'story editing' than 'copy editing.' What's the difference? We get to the nitty-gritty part in the EDIT! segment.

So judge the offer a publisher makes you on its own merits, your merits, and the publisher's merits, before you turn it down. Are you selling to a small(er) publisher, who will do a small(ish) printrun? Are you still largely unknown? Does the work need some polishing? (The hardest question is, 'Am I good enough to be paid to write?' It's a tough one to answer for oneself.)

If the answers to some or all of these questions is 'yes', then work with your editors, not against them. The sale will get you a modest check and, much more importantly, it'll get you a professional credit. Your 'track record' has begun.

In the early days, it's not about earning a lot of money. Being paid to write is always nice, but the fat checks probably won't materialize until you're well known, and your work is so highly-polished at the time of submission, your editor had better put the cap back on his 'blue pen' before it dries up! (The traditional editor's tool is the blue pen, or pencil.)

Make your name in your genre with some good, solid early sales. These books or stories will be reviewed in the media (online or print; the Internet is equally valuable these days), and if your reviews are good ... they will be if you and your material are up to snuff! ... you can work your way up the freelance ladder surprisingly quickly, getting paid to write more often, and in larger amounts.

Then a day arrives when you find a publisher's letter in your mailbox. They're soliciting for material — actually asking you to send them something! Anything you submit following this letter has crossed the line from a freelance submission to a contractual relationship.

If you've been asked for a book, you can expect to get an advance on royalties. You'll be paid before you write! You might not be getting rich yet, but the pleasure you'll feel will be worth a million bucks. Getting paid to write is the bottom line for all writers. Being asked for a book is a ticket to our seventh heaven. And it happens, if you're good enough — and you will be.

On a closing note, your very earliest submissions might be made to semi-professional publications. Some pay; others don't. If you're drawing a blank elsewhere, can't get a solicitation to make a submission, don't close the door on these publishers. In the opening phases of your career, being paid to write is only half if the equation. You also need to learn, and build your credentials.

Semi-professional editors are often highly-skilled, and they publish for the sheer love of what they do. You can learn a lot, and some of the magazines, ezines and books coming out of these APA (Amateur Press Association) offices can be quite prestigious. You can start building your 'track record' long before you start to earn, and build up both your skills and experience along the way. You may not get paid to write in cold, hard cash, but experience and education are invaluable.

The very best APA publications are often seen by professional editors. An editor spots you in those pages, likes your material. When he or she receives your query letter, you're already a known quantity. You can sneak in through the door right there.

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