Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Literary Term Defined

A Classic Story with a Classic Writing Flaw

Dialogue forms a fundamental part of fiction writing. It's how the characters talk to one another—or how they don't talk—that provides insight into what is going on within a scene and what the characters might think about it. It's through dialogue that we can get the actual thoughts of other characters, not just the POV character. So much story often revolves around the dialogue.

However, when writing dialogue, many writers still new to the craft will fall back into an excessive use of dialogue tags. I have written about this some years ago, in the post Billy said... Diana said... In that post, I spoke about how it's not just the use of the word said that causes the issue. It's the over-excessive use of dialogue tags in general that can disrupt the flow of a story.

There are many writers and editors out there who will argue that using the word said isn't a problem. Even Stephen King says this. They rightly argue that our brains are trained to overlook the word said and move on. If you shift to the other dialogue tags (e.g., cried, shouted, bellowed, hissed, growled), our eyes are drawn to them, and we notice them.

This is all true, but the publishing industry as a whole is shifting away from the printed form (and I'm including eBooks as a printed form for this discussion). Audio books are taking a hold, giving people the ability to check out the latest book from their favorite author while they're out walking the dog. Whatever is on that printed page is directly translated to audio form, and the two ARE NOT the same.

Punctuation has a direct impact on this, bringing into question within editors' circles about how rigid we need to be with the punctuation rules. Whereas issues like the he-said-she-said fest become so obvious when read aloud.

Is my story too short?

Normally, when I have a conversation with someone about story length, it's because the writer has written an opus that needs to be trimmed down. This is often the result of too much backstory or unnecessary word building and character description that only distracts from the story as a whole. Trimming a story down is where I'm the queen. (Okay, I'll admit it... I overwrite my own stories in early drafts. I've developed the skills and techniques needed to trim word counts quickly, bringing a story back in line with where it should be.)

However, occasionally, I find myself having a conversation about how a story is actually too short based on the elements presented. There might be too many named characters. Or the setting plays too big of a role for the word real estate available. Or perhaps, there were too many twists and turns and not all the threads were adequately explored.

This is more often seen in shorter story forms, like short stories and novellas, and trying to explain the minimum word count needed to do a story justice is not an easy concept to fathom.

In episode 12.27 of the podcast Writing Excuses, Mary Robinette Kowal introduced an equation that she uses to work out how long a story should be based on the number of characters, number of locations and the number of MICE elements (and NO, I'm not talking about those little things that go squeak, squeak, or those devices that we click repeatedly when the computer refuses to respond). So, let's get to it and break the mathematics down.

Do you need to hire a developmental editor?

Once again, I have found myself privy to a debate about the merits of hiring editors. This time the focus was on developmental editors, and some of the comments... You have no idea how hard it was to bite my tongue and not go mental on social media.

Before I get too far down the track with this argument, I should remind my readers that a developmental editor looks at the story aspect of your manuscript. They will examine the structure, the character and plot development, the narrative voice, concepts of show vs tell, and all the nitty-gritty that goes with it. If you are looking at nonfiction (and not just creative nonfiction), a developmental editor still looks at structure, but they will examine the flow of information and the level of detail provided. Developmental editing is a huge job and the most important editing phase.

I have written about the stages of editing before, on numerous occasions, and still, I read far too many books that are lacking on the developmental editing front — both fiction and nonfiction. But I digress...

So... The comment that really got me riled up...

I quote:

"I was in a workshop with a literary agent ... she said she believed “all freelance editors were charlatins.” No joke. She wasn’t including copy editors in that group."

Okay, we'll ignore the fact that charlatans is spelled incorrectly. It was a comment made on social media, and even my phone spellchecker has failed me on numerous occasions. (Stupid autocorrect!) But the commenter in question also recommended that the writer who posed the original question about hiring developmental editors should seek an editor from Fiverr for all the good it would do them.

OMG, my eyes saw red. I so wanted to rip a new hole into the commenter for such remarks, but I would never do that on public social media. Nope, I turn such debates into a blog post instead. (Hmm... This could be a problem, but I'm doing it anyway.)

It's time to dispel some myths about what it is like working with developmental editors (myself included), and why I have made the decision to always hire a developmental editor for my personal writing projects.

Who cares what the chair is called?

A few months ago, I found myself in a conversation with other editors about a description that was given to a particular type of chair, asking whether people would actually know what a writer was referring to if they just used the name of the chair. There was a photo posted with the original post of some rusted chair that glided back and forth. You should have seen the comments that went back and forth about locality and age of editors. It was mad. Then I piped in, looking at the sample writing that was provided in the original post and the clunky description that was given to the chair.

In my comments, I provided a potential rework to the passage to smooth out the sentence flow and highlight the significance of the chair itself, but in my rework I had changed the name of the chair from glider to rocker. OMG, I was lynched, because apparently there is a big difference between a glider and a rocker.

My response to the lynch mob: Who cares what the chair is actually called? What matters is why the character is noticing it in the first place. (I think I actually wrote that on the forums too.) What is the significance of this chair, whatever it was called, to the plot?

MacGuffin: A Literary Term Defined

How many times have you been in a conversation with fellow writers and they have spouted off some term that you had never heard of before? And how many times have those around you nodded their heads, like they've heard it all before, making you feel even worse for not knowing the term?

Well, this particular feeling happens to me all the time. And you know what: it doesn't make me any less of a writer for not knowing the terms. In fact, like today's literary term, most of those random words are insignificant, but today's term is doubly so.

A MacGuffin (also written McGuffin) is an object or goal sought by the characters of a story, keeping the plot moving forward, though the object itself lacks intrinsic importance.

There’s an Art to Providing Feedback

Over the last two weeks, we've been talking about feedback: how to handle feedback and how one might go about finding critique partners. But there is another aspect to this equation that also needs to be covered. I'm talking about the act of actually providing feedback to other writers.

It's all great to be given feedback, but when the tables are turned, you'll be asked to give feedback too. However, providing feedback is more than saying what it is you do and don't like about a piece. It's about more than just pointing out the grammatical errors. And there is a trick to providing that feedback, so you can stay true to yourself while providing honest, useful feedback, but avoid crushing the souls of other writers.

So, let's get started.

Critique Partner Dating

Working with critique partners and beta readers is an important part of the editing process. These are people who are looking at your manuscripts when you have become too close to them and help you identify the weak areas. There are differences between critique partners and beta readers, each having a different focus and coming in a different stages of editing.

Your critique partners tend to be involved during the early stages of editing, looking at a story's development. As such, their purpose it to help you identify weak areas of your manuscript, where the writing itself needs to develop or you need to look more into the nitty-gritty of your subject matter.

A beta reader, on the other hand, looks at the full manuscript and is there to provide you with those reader reactions. You can even employ a special breed of beta reader known as a sensitivity reader, who is one who focuses on the way in which you handled the subject matter.

Understanding what these two different types of readers do is one thing. Finding them is something entirely different.

Handling Feedback

The Real Costs of Editing. Here we go again!

Within my various editing groups, there seems to be a common complaint among editors, and it revolves around the issue of appropriate rates to charge. We editors seem to be in this "damned if we do, damned if we don't" position.

Most of us encounter those who look at our quoted rates and balk at the price — but as one said to me the other day, it's not necessarily the people we think either. (She sent out two quotes the week before, with the same rate quoted: one to a lawyer and the other to a retired gentleman. It was the lawyer who complained about the cost. The retired gentleman smiled as he paid the bill.) The flip side of this coin is that some look at our rates and compare it to the rates offered by others, and go, "Oh, you mustn't be very good. You're not charging anywhere near enough for what you say you do."

What are we editors to do?

Most of us encounter the former type of writer more than anything. Let's face it, there's this inherent nature that people have to be stingy with their finances, complaining that they can't get something for free. There's not a lot I can do about the second category, but with the first, I can educate writers about what it is they really face when working with freelance editors.