Now it’s time to dig down into the depths of your fic to examine how well the language you use tells your story.
This phase of editing is called line editing (also called content or stylistic editing), and like all editing, it’s more art than science. It’s about how readers will experience your story and your characters and whether the language you use serves to draw them in or to push them out.
As I wrote in an earlier post, line editing looks at the author’s stylistic language choices, with the goal of making the story “pop off” the page and the characters feel lifelike and true.
Style is, of course, subjective. There’s rarely a right and wrong way to “do” style, but the following are some things to consider as you read through your work.
A story’s voice is a combination of point of view (POV), narrative tense, character voice, and the narrative and authorial voices.
I touched on POV and tense in my last post; here I’ll skim over the basics of the others.
Character Voice
Character voice is not just how your characters speak but also how they think and, if the character is also the narrator (as in first-person POV), how they relay information to the reader.
Narrative Voice
The narrative voice is how the person telling the story (which can be a character or a non-character third person) speaks, thinks, and conveys information to the reader.
Authorial Voice
This is the voice that reflects you, the author, and how you communicate. There is naturally overlap between the narrator’s voice and the author’s voice, but an author with a strong style may use different narrative voices in different stories but will have a recognizable authorial voice in all of them.
Even without a cover or title page, you can often tell within a few paragraphs if a story was authored by, say, Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë. And no experienced reader would mistake a Hemingway story for one by William Faulkner.
I can’t give you a concrete list of dos and don’ts, because voice is intrinsic to the story you’re trying to tell and your own inimitable style, but there are a few general things you can look for to ensure your voice serves your story.
Do things sound “wrong”?
While you’re editing, be alert to things that don’t sound quite right. Often, this will be because they don’t fit a character’s or narrator’s voice, or because they don’t sound “like you.” This can happen when an author, consciously or unconsciously, emulates an author they admire. (Reading back over my earlier work, I find these kinds of unintentional but recognizable imitations of other writers all over the place.)
If you write in first-person, give the character a strong voice.
Novelist Jonathan Franzen said it best:
Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly."
This is excellent advice.
First-person can be hard. Lots of sentences starting with “I” can get boring and make your character sound like a narcissist (which could be what you want, of course). A unique, compelling first-person voice, on the other hand, can draw the reader in and delight them.
I’ll give you two of my favorite examples of interesting first-person voices from fic.
The first is author therealsnape’s Mafalda Hopkirk in “Flipping the Elephant”:
It was a tractor that changed my life.
A perfectly ordinary Muggle tractor, its owner calmly on his way to whatever it is Muggle farmers do with their tractors.
Of course, we did not pass it. ‘We’ being the participants on the Marvellous Magical Gardens tour. We could have, obviously, since we were seated in a perfectly good magical touring car that was “our home away from home for the next five days, my dear friends.”
The reasons for not passing the tractor had been explained exceedingly clearly by our new dearest of friends – the very, very enthusiastic tour leader of Magical Garden Tours. “We are not in any kind of hurry, are we?” Clara had informed us when we boarded, two days ago. …
I had come on this bus trip to see magical gardens. Marvellous would be a bonus. New friends, lovely or not, had never been part of the deal. Or so I thought.
(From “Flipping the Elephant” by therealsnape. Used with permission.)
In this story, therealsnape takes a character who is only mentioned in canon and makes her a vibrant and observant narrator with a dry, subversive wit. From the first paragraphs, it’s clear that Mafalda is a sensible, practical woman with opinions and a sense of humor about herself and her world. She’s nice, but with an edge, and the reader wants to know more about why she’s on that cockamamie tour.
And for something completely different, try kelly_chambliss’s funny, precocious preteen Adela in “My Journal About My Life and Stephen and Miranda” by Adela:
That’s the beginning of the novel I wrote last August. I can’t believe how bad it was and how much I didn’t know what I was doing. But I was only eleven then, and I really didn’t know any better.
I hadn’t started working with Dr. Reese then, for one thing. She’s a writing professor who lives down the street, and she pointed out the problems with my novel. She’s really good at that – she doesn’t just show you the easy errors, like spelling “elegant” wrong; she says not to worry about that sort of thing because you have Spell Check. She tells you about the stuff that’s hard to fix. That’s what makes you a better writer.
My novel was about Stephen and Miranda. They live in the house next door to me. They are from England, well actually, Miranda is from Scotland, that is not the same thing as England. Their names are Miranda Robinson and Stephen Smith and they moved here last summer when I was still eleven.
They are very interesting and mysterious. I used to think there was some great tragedy about them, because my pop said they were like what Cathy and Heathcliff would have been if they had lived longer. (Cathy and Heathcliff are in an old movie called Wuthering Heights, it is about tragic love. Have you ever seen it? It is a book, too.)
(From “My Journal About My Life and Stephen and Miranda” by Adela by kelly_chambliss. Used with permission.)
Isn’t that a glorious character-narrator voice? You know right away that Adela (the narrator) is very young, but also smart and inquisitive, the kind of child adults—the reader, and maybe even curmudgeonly former Potions masters—might enjoy spending time with. The author skillfully blends Adela’s youthful voice with her insightful observations of the world around her. She even engages the reader directly with her question about Wuthering Heights. Brilliant.
In both of the above examples, notice how the authors bring in other voices that add variety and life to the first-person narrative.
Are the characters’ traits consistent with their eras and backgrounds?
Draco is unlikely to use the word “bougie.” Professor McGonagall probably wouldn’t use slang regularly or swear in front of a student. Nor is Hermione likely to call her grandmother “Memaw.” Teenaged Sirius probably won’t be an aficionado of Garth Brooks (but he might very well like Elton John or The Kinks).
Be on the alert for anachronisms, inauthentic slang, and other things that don’t fit your characters or the setting, especially if you’re writing about a time or place that differs significantly from your own.
Google is your friend here.
What is telling vs. showing?
Related to the “info dump” mentioned in my last post is the “telling” scene. Lots has been written on “show vs. tell” in fiction, and it’s beyond the scope of this post to wade too far into those weeds, but by way of example, instead of telling readers how nervous your American witch original character is when she comes to Hogwarts, find opportunities to show it—with body language, hesitant speech, dropping her box of Chocolate Frogs … you get the picture.
Are you overusing distancing words?
Look out for distancing words—felt, thought, seemed, etc.—that tell the reader what’s happening with a character when showing would be more interesting.
Draco stood there, shaking hands with the Minister for Magic. Looking at him made Harry feel nervous, and he was embarrassed when he dropped his wine goblet.
Vs.
Harry glanced at the doorway. Draco stood there, shaking hands with the Minister for Magic. A droplet of sweat made its way down the back of Harry’s robes, and he flinched when the goblet of wine he’d been holding slipped from his fingers and shattered on the marble floor.
Balance showing and telling.
The trick here is balance. If you go overboard with the showing, turning every small moment into a paragraph or more of action beats and dialogue, you risk interrupting the narrative flow and pacing, and tiring the reader.
The second example above is longer than the first, and not every moment needs to be shown rather than told. Find the moments where showing is worth the extra words—moments that reveal character or provide foreshadowing or convey thematic elements—and feel free to “tell” the other moments.
Dialogue should move the story forward, but its main purpose isn’t to tell the reader what’s happening or has happened (although it can sometimes do these things). It moves the story by showing characters’ reactions to events and revealing their inner lives—even if they are lying through their teeth. It also sets the scene’s mood and can anchor a character in time and place.
Avoid maid-and-butler dialogue.
Maid-and-butler dialogue is when characters talk about information they already know but that the author needs to convey to the reader:
“As you know,” Harry told George, “I won a thousand Galleons in the Triwizard Tournament and gave it to you and Fred to start your joke shop.”
George replied, “But when Fred was killed during the Battle of Hogwarts, all the fun went out of it. I stopped enjoying life and closed down the shop.”
Is this the best way to convey this information to the reader? Maybe. But it doesn’t exactly leap off the page, does it? Or tell us much about the characters. Let’s try again:
“George,” Harry said, “everyone’s wondering when you’re going to reopen the joke shop.”
George scuffed the tip of his unpolished boot in the dirt. “I don’t know.” His voice fell to a whisper. “Maybe never.”
“I know you miss Fred—we all do—but do you think that’s what he would have wanted? For you to give up your dream?”
“Look, Harry, if it’s about the thousand Galleons—”
“I don’t care about the Galleons. I gave them to you because I thought we all needed a few laughs. And we still do. You more than anyone, maybe.”
Okay, War and Peace it ain’t, but I think it’s better than the first example.
You’ll also want to eliminate the day-to-day dialogue that might feel realistic but will bore readers. By all means, have a morning-after scene with Draco and Harry, but maybe Harry doesn’t need to narrate every step of his preparing his famous Eggs Gryffindor for a skeptical Draco.
Avoid unnecessary monologues.
Remember that boring, Binns-like teacher who used to drone on and on? Remember how hard it was not to fall asleep? Yeah, that can happen in fiction too when a reader encounters a wall of text.
You’re more likely to hold the reader’s attention if you break up long bits of dialogue with action beats or narrative, and vice versa.
Are you overusing vocatives?
Vocative expressions are when the speaker uses the name of the person being addressed.
They’re useful when you want to establish who is speaking to whom without using a dialogue tag, or to emphasize an emotion. But using too many serves little purpose and clutters up dialogue.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Potter!”
“But, Severus, I love you.”
“You are ridiculous, Potter.”
“Just hear me out, Severus.”
“Potter, you are overstirring that potion.”
How are you conveying character accents?
“Why should ’e complain?” burst out Fleur Delacour, stamping her foot. “ ’E ’as ze chance to compete, ’asn’t ’e? We ’ave all been ’oping to be chosen for weeks and weeks! Ze honor for our schools! A thousand Galleons in prize money — zis is a chance many would die for!”
(from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling)
Ugh. Just … ugh.
If you’re doing anything similar, please reconsider.
Spelling out characters’ accents phonetically can be annoying and tiresome for readers, and it risks perpetuating offensive stereotypes, especially if the author isn’t familiar with that character’s culture. Done very sparingly, it can work, but it’s easy to tip over into caricature.
You can convey characters’ backgrounds in other ways, like using (small) sprinklings of a speaker’s native language or a syntax common to their native language or dialect, or an idiom unique to their culture.
(Confession time: When I first started writing about Minerva McGonagall, I gave her father a generic “Scottish” accent, changing every you to ye. Upon rereading the stories later, I realized how distracting and unnecessary it was and promptly edited them to remove most of the phonetic spellings. Made for a better read, I think.)
Are the dialogue tags distracting?
In general, dialogue tags should be invisible, serving only to clarify who’s talking. Where a tag is needed, said or asked (or whispered or shouted, if necessary) is usually best because it doesn’t pull the reader out of the dialogue and it doesn’t reiterate what the dialogue itself is telling the reader. (“You are insufferable, Minerva,” isn’t improved by adding Severus opined.)
Save the colorful alternatives (muttered, screamed, gurgled, and so forth) for when they’ll pack the most punch. And please use only vocal expressions as dialogue tags. (No one smiles a sentence.)
Action beats can take the place of dialogue tags when you need variation or want to convey emotion.
“Do you want to go with me?” Draco asked.
“I don’t know,” said Harry. “Do you want me to go?”
Draco turned the page of his book with a casual finger. “I don’t care.”
“Don’t you?”
The twitch of Draco’s lips gave him away. “I said I don’t care, Potter.”
Harry flipped the cover of Draco’s book shut. “Get up. We’re going.”
Are there repeated words, phrases, or sentence starts?
Look out for words and phrases that appear too often or too close together. If Draco “cries like a baby Kneazle” in one paragraph, you probably don’t want to use the same words to describe Harry’s meltdown a few paragraphs later.
Similarly, look out for your crutch words. These are words you might rely on a little too frequently. For example, I often find my characters doing things “wryly.” That’s an unusual-ish word, and it loses its flavor when I use it too often.
You can make a list of your crutch words as you read through your story. A simple search for each of these in your draft will show you how often you’ve used them, and you can decide where to retain them and where to make a change. A list is helpful for future stories too.
You’ll also want to make sure you don’t have too many paragraphs in a row that start the same way, for example, with the same name or pronoun or with a participial phrase (Running down the stairs … Smiling at Harry … Casting a quick Summoning Charm …). Too many similar sentence starts make the writing feel flat and monotonous.
Are you using filler words?
(Confession: Overuse of filler words is one of my worst writerly habits.)
Filler words are words (or sounds) used to “fill in” sentences (often when a character is thinking about what to say) but that don’t add meaning or interest.
Common fillers include:
Really, very, um, ah, well, oh, right, just, quite, you know, start to, seriously, so and so forth.
Using filler words can be a character trait, but be careful about overusing them, as they muddy up your dialogue without adding much.
Look out for distancing words.
Like filler words, distancing words are usually unnecessary and can keep your writing from being as immersive as you want it to be.
They can create unwanted distance between the reader and what a character is feeling. (There are places you might want this distance, so it’s wise to keep these words for when you really need them.)
Common distancing words include felt, thought, seemed, wondered, knew, saw, heard.
Example:
Draco thought Harry looked handsome.
Vs.
Harry looked handsome.
The first sentence puts an extra “step” between the reader and Draco’s feelings, while the second puts the reader squarely in Draco’s head.
Are paragraph and sentence lengths varied?
Too many long sentences or paragraphs in a row can tire the reader. Too many short ones can be annoying. (Using several short paragraphs in a row can be an effective way to build tension, but it’s a technique best used sparingly.)
Are you using offensive language or stereotypes?
When you read through your story, be alert for potentially offensive terms or language that reinforces negative stereotypes.
One common example is when an author describes the skin of a person of color (PoC) using clichés such as mocha, coffee-colored, chocolate, or other food-related terms.
The useful guide created by WritingWithColor notes several problems with the food comparison, including dehumanization, fetishization, and the historical connection with the slave trade.
Importantly, WritingWithColor authors advise describing both white characters and PoC characters rather than singling out the PoC:
You should describe the race and/or skin tone of your white characters just as you do your Characters of Color. If you don’t, you risk implying that White is the default human being and PoC are the “Other”.
Are you using adverbs purposefully?
Lots of writing advice will tell you to avoid adverbs (words that modify verbs, telling you how something is being done). And yes, writing that is littered with adverbs can be cluttered and overwrought. But in the right place, adverbs are helpful.
When you come across an adverb in your writing, ask yourself if it adds anything useful or interesting to the sentence.
For an (obvious) example of an adverb that adds nothing:
“I hate you, Snape!” Harry yelled loudly.
“Loudly” is already there on the tin, with the exclamation point and the verb “yelled.”
Frequently, an adverb can, and often should, be replaced by a stronger verb:
Hermione ran quickly to Harry’s side when the spell blew him forcefully off his feet.
Vs.
Hermione raced to Harry’s side when the spell blasted him off his feet.
Next up, I’ll talk about copyediting and how you can polish your fic till it gleams like Lucius Malfoy’s shiny blond hair.
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