Novels and screenplays are two very different art forms. When a story is presented to a reader as if it were something being watched in a cinema or on TV, the book begins to wobble.
Great screenwriters can be great novelists, but being the former doesn’t guarantee the latter.
Description and dialogue When a novelist approaches their story as if it’s going to be watched, the narrative and dialogue can become overwritten. In TV shows and movies, characters do lots of quite mundane things – walking into and out of rooms, opening and shutting doors, scratching their heads, putting the kettle on, wringing their hands, frowning, standing up, sitting down, walking over to windows and gazing out of them, picking up tea cups or beer bottles and taking a sip or a slug. They say hello and goodbye, and hmm, mmm, er, um and aah as they talk to each other and themselves. All this stuff happens quickly and provides a backdrop to the main action and dialogue. Sometimes there’ll be a backing track to assist with mood creation. Some of that mundane stuff can go into a novel, but when it’s replicated in full it can be tedious to read and does nothing to drive the novel forward. Example: taut description and dialogue in a novel Here’s a scene from Harlan Coben’s Don’t Let Go (Penguin Random House, 2017, p. 201). There are 122 words.
We pull into a garage the approximate dimensions of a college gymnasium—is that judging?—and park. He leads me through a side door and down into what some homes call a basement, but this one has a theater room and wine cellar, so we need to find a new term. Lower level, maybe? He heads into a small room and flicks on a switch. In the back right corner, there is a four-foot-high old-fashioned safe with a big dial.
“You’re not the cop on the case, right?” This is the third time David has asked me that. “No. Why is that a big deal?” He bends down and starts fiddling with the dial. “Hank asked me to hold something for him.” Example: description and dialogue in a screenplay If we were watching that on TV, we’d be shown a great deal more.
In his book, Coben omits almost all of that. Instead, he lets the reader do the work. Good choice because all that stage direction would be boring to read. It could take a page to get through it all, maybe two, and none of it would drive the novel forward. He gives us just enough to imagine the setting in our mind’s eye, then gets down to business with the interesting elements of the story. He and we know that no one’s walking through doors spectre-like; they need to be opened and shut. No one’s leaving the car running; the engine will be switched off. And natural speech invariably includes noise and pause. Example: overwriting in a novel Here’s my mangled example of how that might have looked if the detail of the screen version had been written into the novel. There are 421 words.
We drive along the road, turn left into a treelined side street, pull up in front of a garage the approximate dimensions of a college gymnasium—is that judging?—and park. The garage door has a red aluminum facia with a silver handle.
David pushes a hand through his hair and looks at the garage. He remains still for a moment. I sense his anxiety, and my brow furrows in frustration as I follow his gaze. He takes his foot off the accelerator, shifts into neutral, and pulls on the handbrake. He pulls the key from the ignition and unhooks his seatbelt. I follow suit and open the passenger-seat door, close it, then walk around to meet him on the driver’s side. David gets out of the car and joins me on the sidewalk. He slams his door shut and turns. We walk toward the garage, me slightly behind, letting him show me the way. He leads me to a brown hardwood side door and stoops, fumbling the key in the lock. The door opens with a groan and we walk through to a dimly lit stairway. The door closes behind us. David goes first, leading me down into what some homes call a basement, but this one has a theater room and wine cellar, so we need to find a new term. Lower level, maybe? We reach the door at the bottom of the steps. David opens it and heads into a small room. He flicks on a switch. The light comes on and he turns, gesturing for me to enter. I do, and look around. In the back right corner, there is a four-foot-high old-fashioned safe with a big dial. “Um, you’re, er, not the cop on the case, right?” he says nervously. This is the third time David has asked me that. “Like I told you before, no.” I hesitate before asking, “Why is that a big deal?” He turns and walks toward the safe, bends down, and reaches for the dial with his hand. I watch as he fiddles with it, concentrating hard as he moves it first left, then right, then left again. I see sweat beading on his forehead. He stands, stretches, and wipes it off with the sleeve of his blue button-down shirt. As he lowers himself again and continues working the dial, his pants ride down over his ass. He sighs as if he’s bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Hank asked me to hold something for him,” he says. Word dump Writers who choose to write novels for viewers rather than readers risk adding ten, maybe twenty thousand words to their books that don’t need to be in there. I’m not advocating removing description; I’m advocating writing for the page. That means making sure that the description is relevant rather than suffocating, enriching rather than boring. If you have pages of characters making small talk about how they take their coffee over the noise the kettle’s making, that small talk needs to be central to the plot. So does the whistle of the kettle. And if it takes 500 words to get your character out of their car, there needs to be a reason for that. If that information is just filler, give your reader the nudges they need and dump the rest into a box for when you write the screenplay version. Your director will the delighted! Viewpoint characters Viewpoint can unravel when a novelist approaches their story like a screenwriter. When a novelist selects a viewpoint character for a section or chapter of their book, the reader will experience the story through that character’s perspective – what they see, smell, hear, touch and think. Viewpoint characters allow the reader to immerse themselves in the moment, and for that reason they’re tremendously enriching. Example: viewpoint on the screen Imagine watching this short scene on TV:
Example: confused viewpoint in a novel What some beginner writers do is render the scene in a way that partially mimics the screen version. That’s because they’re familiar with how stories are presented on the TV or in film.
Matt ducked under the hedge beside the footpath. He counted silently, mouthing the words, focusing attention away from the hawthorn piercing the back of his neck and scalp. Heels clicked on the footpath close by. Adriana. Bitch.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out,’ she said. Her throat felt swollen. 'Dammit, and to make things worse, I feel like I've got a cold coming on. Plus, I had a skinful last night.' And she’d needed it after that interfering prick Matt had started sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted. ‘I hear you, Adriana. Don’t worry, we’ll find him,’ said John. He was standing by the north wall, clad head-to-toe in black. Hands grasping brick and flint, he hauled himself up and peeked over to see Adriana pocketing her phone. He pulled down his balaclava and stole south to cover the back, masked by the shadow of night. Adriana was on the phone, Matt realized. That was good. It meant she was on her own. Adriana continued down the path, getting closer to where Matt was hiding with every step. Patrolling the grounds in stilettos had been a bad idea. They were killing her feet. Matt hoped so, after what she’d put him through. The problem is that there are multiple viewpoints that force the reader to bounce from one character’s experience to another. We never invest in Matt, Adriana or John because as soon as we try to immerse ourselves in the experience of one of those people, we’re dragged into the head of another. The result is a wonky hybrid of novel and screenplay. We know what everyone’s doing, thinking and seeing. It rips out the tension and destroys the structure of the scene. Example: singular immersive viewpoint in a novel If, however, the writer commits to the viewpoint of one character, the prose is very different. In this version, we lose John completely. Adriana is visible but only from Matt’s perspective. We don’t have access to her thoughts, only what Matt thinks might be going on in her head based on what he knows, sees and hears. It’s shorter, certainly, but the tension is back and the writing is tighter.
Matt ducked under the hedge beside the footpath. He counted silently, focusing attention away from the hawthorn piercing the back of his neck and scalp. Heels clicked on the footpath close by. Adriana. Bitch.
‘He can’t have gone far. Find him and take him out.’ Her voice was thick, like she was full of virus or hungover. Or maybe it was fury. Matt heard a reply – a man speaking – but the sound was muffled and tinny. She must be on the phone. That was good. She was on her own. For now. Patent-black stilettos passed no more than a metre in front of him. The skin below both Achilles looked swollen and red. Those shoes must be killing her, he thought. He hoped so, after what she’d put him through. Summing up If you’re at the start of your writing journey, take care to craft words for the page, not for the screen. Keep the boring stuff out, even if it’s realistic. You’ll reduce your wordcount but enhance reader engagement. Look to books written by your favourite novelists for inspiration on how to build a beautiful page, rather than the Netflix adaptations. Your writing will be all the better for it, I promise.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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Will your reader immerse themselves in your crime novel’s setting? Will the world you’ve built make sense, even if it’s a work of fantasy? And is it coherent? If you’re not sure, create a wiki.
A world-building wiki will help you keep track of your novel’s environment and the rules that govern it. And that will go some way to protecting your plot and maintaining a logical narrative.
‘But I write crime, not fantasy ...’ Even if your novel’s setting is the world as we know it right now, a world-building wiki is still useful. I live in a hamlet in Norfolk (the UK one). Some of the things I have to deal with in my day-to-day life are different to those of friends who live only ten miles away in the city of Norwich.
How does all of this relate to fiction writing?
One of my author clients bases his books in the Colorado Rockies. I know the lie of the land – how the weather affects the local population on a seasonal basis, how the pine smells in the spring, how the mountain passes are treacherous in the winter. Then there’s the town where the sheriff’s office is located. And it is a sheriff rather than a chief constable who’s in charge of this fictional county’s law enforcement. I know about the guns people carry, the idiomatic turns of phrase they use, and where they tuck their chewing tobacco when they speak. I live five thousand miles away and have never visited this region of the US, and yet I swear if I drove into that town with a flat tyre, I could locate the garage and a find place to grab a latte while the mechanic was fixing my car – without having to ask a soul. And that’s because my author is a great world-builder. He writes crime thrillers, but he never forgets that most of his readers aren’t cops; that many don’t even live in the US, never mind near the Colorado Rockies; and that no one lives in Rocky Points … because he made it up. Environments of the not-now and the not-here Crime fiction is as versatile a genre as any other. For not-here, think about Chris Brookmyre’s Places in the Darkness. The Ciudad de Cielo space station makes the Colorado Rockies seem like a mere hop. It’s crime fiction, but spacey! For not-now, how about C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series. It’s crime fiction but the Tudor world in which our lawyer-detective operates bears little resemblance to that of a modern detective. And then there’s China Miéville’s not-here and not-now The City & The City. It’s a richly gritty world of hardboiled crime fiction where things don’t work in quite the same way. However, the narrative feels utterly reliable. All three authors are fine crime-writing world-builders, and their plots never unravel because the worlds they’ve shown us work. Your wiki and your plot Not everything in your wiki has to end up in your book, but all of the information will help you keep track of who’s who, what’s where, and how. That means you can keep the environment(s) in which your story is set coherent. Furthermore, if you decide to write a series, your wiki will help you maintain consistency across books. Even if you switch to a new location, even a new planet, and different rules come into play, it’s a space in which you can record the additional information and keep yourself on track. Let’s look at some of the elements you might include in your crime wiki. Physical environment Where does your story take place and how will the geography, geology and climate play with your plot? Does the landscape or the weather restrict or empower your characters, and if so, how? Real or fantastical, every world must obey its own scientific laws. Continuity is key, and your wiki will help you stay on track. Imagine your protagonist’s partner dies because the paramedic’s oxygen tank is empty, but they live on a world where the population breathes mainly nitrogen. Even your characters’ inhalations can blow a hole in your plot if you don’t keep track of the rules of your physical environment. If you’re setting a story in a real place that you’ve not visited, the wiki is where you record the details you’ll need to stop pedantic locals getting the hump when your hero sprints from the Tube station at Amersham to the next stop on the line. Chalfont & Latimer looks close by on the London Underground map, but trust me, it’s not for sprinting. Embankment to Charing Cross, yes! Culture, language and faith Use your wiki to record the ideas, customs, belief systems and social behaviours that distinguish your world, and how those will impact on your characters. Record also how your characters speak, and whether they are out of place in the setting, or fully integrated.
How will you reflect the way people speak in your world? Do people from the region in which the novel’s set have a particular idiom or dialect, and will you express this just through dialogue or in the narrative too?
Will you offer nudges here and there or include it consistently and heavily throughout the book? It goes without saying that if you include phrasing in a language you’re not fluent in, get it checked by someone who is. Google Translate is not the tool of choice here. Rules of governance Record who’s in control and how the rule of law works in your novel’s setting. If you’re mimicking reality, there might be variations not just between countries but also between states, counties, provinces or municipalities. Who makes the law? Who upholds it? What powers do they have? What are their titles? Who are they accountable to? What are the checks and balances that restrict them? And what does sentencing and punishment look like in the world you’ve created? How about the rules of engagement and the customary notifications given to characters apprehended by law enforcement? If a right-to-silence warning is given to a suspect arrested in the UK, and it’s referred to as a Miranda warning, your narrator’s reliability will be compromised. The term ‘caution’ is used in this neck of the woods. Make notes about the way the jurisprudence system works, and the rights of your world’s citizens in the locations you situate them. For example, time and place will determine how long a person can be held without access to legal representation, and how they might be punished if they’re found guilty of a crime. If your story is taking place in a fantastical setting, you can decide how all of this works. Still, your wiki will ensure there’s continuity in the way you apply your fictional rule of law to your characters. Science, technology, engineering and medicine ... and guns Your wiki is the perfect place to record essential information about science, tech and weaponry – what it is, how it works, who has access to it and what it’s used for. If you’re going for authenticity, make notes about how it works in the real world. How heavy is a Glock 19, and can a suppressor be attached to the barrel? What noise does a suppressed gun really make – is it just a pop or something louder? Years ago, I read a novel by a very well-known fantasy and horror writer. One of the subplots hinged on the DNA of a set of identical twins – one egg, one sperm, one zygote, which had split into two embryos. They had almost identical DNA. Only they didn’t because our twins were different sexes. That meant they were fraternal, not identical. The only thing they’d shared was a womb. A technical error pulled the plot to pieces. Food, drink and dress What do people eat and drink in this world, and how do they dress? Are there foodstuffs or materials that are restricted, impractical, unaffordable or impossible to access for some or all of the characters in your world? Does what people eat and how they dress indicate something about their status, their identity, their belief system, and what are the norms and rules surrounding their choices? Even if this information isn’t integral to the plot, it can still help your reader immerse themselves in your narrative as they experience the colours, textures, tastes and smells of the world in which your characters are moving. Heterogeneity in homogeneity As with real life, just because a group of people share a location, a job, a faith, doesn’t mean they’re all the same. Unless homogeneity is central to the plot, it can suck the soul from a novel because it’s unusual.
Any other quirks
Record information about any other quirks that are story-specific in a miscellaneous section. I nearly came undone with my own writing when embarking on a piece of flash fiction centred around where I live in Norfolk. During my research into pheasant shooting, I found out that my wee tale had come undone before I’d put a word on the page. Initially, I’d centred my plot around a crime being ignored during the summer because of the gunshots from legal pheasant-shooting parties.
Summing up
You can include whatever you need to in your wiki. Fundamentally, it’s about consistency and continuity, such that your plot isn’t plundered because you forgot something crucial about your world and how it works. More than that though, a reliable world is a believable world, even if it’s completely fabricated. When your readers feel like they can visit without having to ask where to grab a cuppa, you know you’ve built something beautiful.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Readers want to know what characters look like. Writers want to show them. Here are some tools that will help do it with subtlety rather than a sledgehammer.
We like to know what characters look like because it allows us to picture them in our mind’s eye. That helps us invest.
The author wants us to invest in them, immerse ourselves in their journey, because then we’re more likely to keep on reading. Still, no reader wants all that information hurled at them as if they’re reading a shopping list, and certainly not in a way that’s cliched or mundane. That’s nothing more than an information dump. Here are some ideas for how you might unveil your characters’ physical descriptions in ways that are relevant and interesting. I’ve used examples that I’ve enjoyed from published works of crime and speculative fiction. First things: Pick and choose what to tell I said above that readers like to know what characters look like. Actually, we don’t necessarily need this detail to immerse ourselves in a character’s experience. I’ve just finished reading I Am Missing by Tim Weaver. I love the David Raker series, and have read most of the books in it. I can’t recall whether and where Weaver has given me a physical description of his missing-persons investigator, but he certainly didn’t in I Am Missing. And you know what? I didn’t care a jot. Weaver uses first-person past-tense narratives, which means we uncover the mystery with Raker. We see what he saw, wonder what he wondered, run when he ran. His fear, pain, shock and relief are ours. That’s where the immersion comes, rather than in knowing that he’s X feet tall or has hair the colour of whatever. Which is to say, you might not need to tell us about the physical appearance of a character to draw us deep into the story. And even if you do want to give your readers a sense of what a character looks like, we don’t need to know everything. Tell us what’s interesting, what gives us an insight into the way they think or feel, or things they notice that will be relevant later in the story. Green eyes might be more interesting if they’re surrounded by bags that show tiredness, or creped lids that give a clue to the character’s age. Long elegant fingers might be more deserving of a mention if the owner picked away at their cuticles and made them bleed, perhaps because of anxiety. Choose the right space If you decide you want to put a character’s physical traits in front of the reader in one fell swoop, you could follow Roger Hobbs’s approach. Ghostman is a gritty, punchy thriller. Hobbs’s writing is fast and taut. Five pages into the novel (p. 8) we’re given a description of Jerome Ribbons. Hobbs fires a lot of information at us – skin, height, weight, strength. This is no shopping list, though. Ribbons is about to carry out a casino heist, and Hobbs uses a description of the character’s physical traits to show us that he’s physically and mentally capable of the crime. It’s a case of the right words in the right space.
Show us through another character’s eyes There’s no better time to show what someone looks like than when a viewpoint character sets eyes on them. We’re already in the viewpoint character’s head, thinking and seeing with them. Their observations are reliable, and it feels natural for the reader to be confronted with descriptions of what’s visible, and why it’s noticeable. Here’s another excerpt from Ghostman (pp. 31–2). Jack is the protagonist, and the viewpoint character in this chapter. We see what he saw, and know what he knew. More telling, we learn something about how this character’s appearance belies his nature.
Make your character self-reflect A viewpoint character’s self-reflection is another useful tool for character description, especially when it includes contrast … that was then, this is now. We don’t feel like we’re reading a shopping list. Instead, the details tell us a story of change – whether that is positive or negative. In The Wife Between Us (p. 11), Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen weave Vanessa’s current hair colour, height and weight into a narrative about the challenges she endured when her marriage to a wealthy hedge-fund manager broke down.
Think about what you do when you look in a mirror.
If your character is seeing themselves reflected in a window or mirror, have them notice things about themselves naturally. Create an out-of-place setting Might you set a character’s description in a scene where they look out of place? Philip K. Dick doesn’t use any clever descriptors for Bill Black in Time Out of Joint (p. 19). Instead, the interest comes from how his manner of dress, hairstyle and gait appear old-fashioned to the viewpoint character, Ragle. It’s less a case of what he looks like than why he looks strange. No matter – the reader knows what they’re looking at.
Show us the viewpoint character’s emotional reactions Describing how another character’s appearance makes the viewpoint character feel is another trick. In Bad Luck and Trouble (p. 32), Lee Child uses rather mundane adjectives to describe Neagley, but the emotional impact on the plucky and usually granite-like Reacher, and Child’s typically no-nonsense sentence structure make this description anything but dull.
In the above example, Reacher feels awkward. You might use other emotional reactions as a way to open the door to natural-sounding physical description: envy, disgust, desire, for example. Unveil through dialogue Character descriptions needn’t come solely through the narrative. Dialogue is perfect for unveiling too because it pushes the details front and centre. In I Am Missing (p. 13), Tim Weaver constructs a discussion between Raker, the protagonist investigator, and his client, Richard Kite. Weaver uses the conversation to show the scarring on Kite’s face.
Of note here is that the author chooses to give us little else about what Kite looks like – hair or eye colour, for example. It’s clever because this character is suffering from dissociative amnesia – unable to recall large chunks of information about himself. He is lost. The author keeps such tight control over the physical description that we are drawn deeper into Kite’s loss of self, and Raker’s struggle to find any clue to who he is. As I read, he remained almost faceless in my mind’s eye. All I could picture was the harm he’d suffered. Writers can and should be picky about what they choose to include, and omit, in order to draw a picture and evoke a mood. Summing up Do your best to avoid descriptions of characters that read like shopping lists or police reports. Instead, wrap the details around emotions, contrasts, and journeys of change. See you next time (said the blue-eyed fiction editor with a bob, who wore size-nine shoes and was five foot eight). Cited works and further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Apostrophes confound some authors. Not knowing how to use them doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, but getting them wrong can distract a reader and alter the meaning of what you want to say. This guide shows you how to get it right.
What does an apostrophe look like?
The apostrophe is the same mark as a closing single quotation mark: ’ (unicode 2019). This is worth remembering when you use them in your fiction to indicate the omission of letters at the beginning of a word. More on that further down. What do apostrophes do? Apostrophes have two main jobs: 1. To indicate possession 2. To indicate omission And sometimes a third (though this is rarer and only applies to some expressions): 3. To indicate a plural 1. Indicating possession The English language doesn’t have one set of rules that apply universally. However, when it comes to possessive apostrophes, the following will usually apply: Add an apostrophe after the thing that is doing the possessing.
Possessive apostrophes and names
Names can be tricky. The most common problem I see is authors struggling to place the apostrophe correctly when family names are being used in the possessive case, even more so when the name ends with an s. Here are some examples of standard usage to show you how it’s done:
Note that in the Melanie Fields singular-possession example, there are two options. Both are correct but some readers will find the second more difficult to pronounce because there are three s's a row.
Hart’s Rules (4.2.1 Possession) has this advice: 'An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x, or z sound […] but an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in pronunciation, typically after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable.’ If you're unsure whether to apply the final s in a case like this, use common sense. Read it aloud to see if you can wrap your tongue around it, and decide whether the meaning is clear. Then choose the version that works best and go for consistency across your file. Pedantry shouldn't trump prescriptivism in effective writing. 2. Indicating omission Indicating omission when one word is created from two In fiction, we often use contracted forms of two words to create a more natural rhythm in the prose, particularly in dialogue. The apostrophes indicate that letters (and spaces) have been removed. Common examples include:
Indicating omission at the beginning, middle and end of single words
We can use an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing at the end of a word (dancing – dancin’), the middle of a word (cannot – can’t) and the beginning of a word (horrible – ’orrible). Start-of-word letter omissions are commonly used in fiction writing to indicate informal speech or a speaker’s accent. Make sure you use the correct mark. Microsoft Word automatically inserts an opening single quotation mark (‘) when you type it at the beginning of a word because it assumes you’re using it as a speech indicator. Apostrophes are ALWAYS the closing single quotation mark (’) so do double check if you’re indicating omission at the start of a word.
Indicating omission in numbers and dates
Plural numbers don’t usually require an apostrophe because there’s no ambiguity. In fiction writing, it’s common to spell out numbers for one hundred and below, but even when numerals are used, no apostrophe is needed for plurals.
Omission-indicating apostrophes at the beginning of dates are acceptable according to some style manuals. In the example below, the 1970s is abbreviated. It’s conventional in UK writing to follow the NHR example below.
In fiction, however, you can avoid the issue by spelling out the dates. This is universally acceptable, and my preference when writing and editing fiction.
3. Indicating a plural with an apostrophe
When indicating the plural of lower-case letters – for example, if you want to refer to two instances of the letter a – it’s essential to use an apostrophe because the addition of only an s will lead to confusion. In the non-standard examples below, you can see how the plurals (in bold) form complete words, resulting in ambiguity.
For that reason, it’s considered standard to use an apostrophe (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online 7.15 and New Hart’s Rules 4.2.2).
When indicating the plural of upper-case letters, the apostrophe would be considered non-standard because there’s no ambiguity.
Avoiding erroneous apostrophes and possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are the bane of the apostrophe novice’s writing life, especially its! The following possessive pronouns NEVER need an apostrophe: hers, theirs, yours and its.
If you’re unsure whether to insert an apostrophe in its, say it out loud as it is. If it makes sense, you need an apostrophe; if it doesn’t, you don’t!
Avoiding erroneous apostrophes in plural forms
The apostrophe novice can fall into the trap of creating plural forms of nouns by adding an apostrophe before the final s.
Summary
I hope you’ve found this overview useful. It isn’t exhaustive – there are entire books about apostrophes. Fucking Apostrophes is one of my favourites. However, when it comes to fiction writing, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about more than the basics covered here. If you’re stuck on where to stick your apostrophe, feel free to ask me for guidance in the comments.
Further reading
Want to revisit this information quickly? Visit the Books and Videos page in my resource library to download this free booklet.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
What is flash fiction and can its creation make us better writers and better editors?
In July 2018, I wrote my first piece of flash fiction and submitted it to the Noirwich Crime Writing Festival’s flash fiction competition. Here’s what I learned.
What is flash fiction?
Think of a tiny story that packs a large wallop … that’s flash fiction. It’s not always called that. Some call it micro fiction, others nano fiction. I’ve also heard it called the shortie, short-short and postcard fiction. How long is it? There’s no consensus other than it’s short ... very short. Some types of flash fiction have established word counts – the dribble with 50 words, the drabble with 100 words, and Twitterature – no more than 280 characters. If Twitterature seems like a challenge, imagine writing it when the character-count limitation was 140! So what are the key components and what can they teach writers of longer-form fiction? 1. Brevity – making every word count Keeping things tight is one of the biggest challenges faced by many of the beginner novelists I work with. Overwriting usually occurs because the author hasn’t yet learned to trust their reader. Will that single adjective be enough? Maybe another sentence that says a similar thing would be in order, just for clarification … Often, it’s not a reflection of a writer’s ability to write, but about confidence. Getting the balance right comes with experience and not a little courage. A line editor can help with overwriting – they bring fresh eyes to the book, and can advise on what can safely be removed without damaging flow, sense, rhythm and tension, and in a way that respects style and voice. Flash fiction helps writers practise the art of precision in the extreme. And when it comes to self-editing your novel, you can ask yourself this: ‘If this were a short story and my word count was restricted, is this the way I’d construct this sentence?’ The answer might be ‘No, but I’d be missing an opportunity to enrich the narrative and the dialogue in a way that’s best for my book.’ That’s a great answer. Still, the flash fiction writer is forced to be disciplined, and when it comes to writing longer works, that discipline will get you used to thinking in terms of making sure every word counts, and comfortable with removing those that don’t. A limited word count also encourages writers to experiment with literary devices such as free indirect speech, sentence fragments, action beats, and asyndeton, all of which can facilitate brevity but enrich tension, immediacy, mood and rhythm.
2. Structure – shaping the story
Stories need structure. No writer wants to get to the end of their novel only to realize that the denouement occurred ten chapters earlier. Sophie Hannah calls it ‘story architecture’, which I think is both a practical and a beautiful way of thinking about how a writer helps their readers experience a novel. There are different ways to shape stories but the most common is the three-act structure. First, the beginning or hook that draws us in. Second, the middle where the confrontation takes place. This is where we come to understand the characters’ motivations and the conflict or obstacles in their way. Third, is the end where the denouement or resolution occurs. Says Julia Crouch, ‘If you have any storytelling bones in you at all, you will more than likely, even subconsciously, end up with a structure like this.’ How does flash fiction help? Do you even need to worry about structure when you’re writing such a short piece of work? Absolutely! No one will enjoy an 80,000-word novel that’s poorly structured. The same applies to 800 words. The only difference is that with flash fiction they’ll lose interest quicker. Flash fiction is a story form in its own right. It’s not about pulling an excerpt from a longer-form piece of writing. Flash must have structure – a beginning, a middle and an end. Something must happen to someone or something, and readers must leave the story feeling satisfied, that the story is complete, that they’ve been on a journey, albeit a short one. Without structure, it will descend into nothing more than an extract. Perhaps flash is akin to poetry – squeezing big ideas into small spaces. That too, though, is good practice for the novelist, because it encourages writers to think about the discipline of shaping, and the journey that the reader will be taken on.
3. Strong endings – surprises and twists
There’s nothing more disappointing than a book that hooks you into turning page after page only to sag into a giant anti-climax. ‘Endings are so important to the reader and you will never please everyone,’ says Nicola Morgan. ‘Readers do want the end to feel “right”, though. They have spent time with these characters and they care what happens to them.’ How and when novelists decide to tie up all or most of the loose ends will depend on style, genre, and whether the book is part of a series, but there must be some sort of closure so that your readers aren’t left hanging. Flash fiction is a challenge to write, but it’s a challenge to read too, particularly for those who love to get stuck into a world and the characters who move around within it. It’s therefore an excellent format in which to practice packing a final punch, even if that amounts to just one or two sentences. This form of writing also allows writers to play with readers’ expectations of resolution in quirky ways. You might decide to evoke a laugh, or a shudder, or shock, or a sense of poignancy, but the reader should feel something such that even though you’ve only written a few hundred words the story is memorable. Here are some additional tips that you might consider if writing flash fiction appeals.
Flash fiction tips #1: Seek immediacy
Which tense will you use? At the time of writing, I’ve written eight flash fiction stories, none of more than 900 words. In all but two I instinctively opted for the present tense. I didn’t notice my predilection until I reread them one after the other. It made me reconsider the two I’d framed in the past tense. I decided to see what would happen if I changed them. I learned something. My narrative tension loses its piquancy when I write in the past. That’s not to say I wouldn’t use the past if I were writing a novel. However, for flash fiction, there’s no time to lose! I’m trying to close the distance between the reader and the viewpoint character so that the former is quickly immersed in the tiny world I’ve built. The opposite might be true for you; there are no rules. But if your flash is flagging, don’t be afraid to experiment with tense and evaluate the impact. Flash fiction tips #2: Characters and viewpoint Given the space available, keep the story tight by sticking to one viewpoint character. It’s easier to create immersion if you allow readers to get under the skin of a single person’s experience. That doesn’t mean there can’t be other characters in the frame, just that we see these others through the viewpoint character’s eyes. You’ll likely need to omit anything about the character that isn’t necessary to drive the story forward. Novels include descriptions of the characters’ appearance and personality so that we can better visualize them and understand their motivations. With flash, consider focusing only on those unique physical and emotional traits that nudge the reader towards the big reveal. Flash fiction tips #3: Use the mundane Play the what-if game. Take an object, or place, or personality attribute of someone you know, and ask what the story might be in another universe. What if that old door in your friend’s hallway didn’t really go to the downstairs loo? What if that scribble you found on the inside of a library book had a more sinister connotation? What if your neighbour wasn’t quite who you believed them to be? What if your best mate’s boring job was just a cover story? Sometimes the most wonderful clues to the theme of a shortie are hidden in plain sight. 4. The editor turned fiction writer – lessons learned Writing and editing are two very different arts. I don’t believe that a good fiction editor must be a fiction writer. I do, however, think we need to understand the core components of fiction writing and what makes a book work, and be able to place ourselves in the shoes of the author and the reader. Still, I’m (now) one of many fiction editors who also write fiction. Some of my colleagues have publishing contracts. Some are self-publishers. Some have agents, while others are seeking representation. Some of us write our fiction purely for pleasure. There are many roads, but we all agree on one thing: it has been good for us to sit on the other side of the desk – to be the writer, to be the one being edited.
Louise reading 'Zeppelin'. Crime writer Elizabeth Haynes looks on.
The short story I wrote for Noirwich 2018 was a challenge for two reasons:
The amazing thing is that I made the final shortlist of three. That, however, presented a new challenge. I was invited to Noirwich Live where the winner would be announced by New York Times bestseller Elizabeth Haynes. Would I read my story ‘Zeppelin’ to a roomful of people, mostly complete strangers? The audience comprised fellow amateur writers, teachers of creative writing, published writers including Haynes, Merle Nygate and Andrew Hook, and most important of all, my daughter Flo and dear friend Rachel. My knees might have been trembling as I took to the floor, but I got the job done and thought about what I’d learned from the experience. Sharing takes courage Writing fiction is one thing; sharing it with others is quite another. Even tiny fiction like mine. For some of us, it takes courage, especially when massive doses of newbie impostor syndrome are flowing through one’s veins. And this is exactly how many of my author clients feel. Sometimes I’m the first person on the planet to see their work when they’re done with it. My experience enhanced my already deep respect for them, because now I know how it feels to share my fiction with others. Editing is an honour My own small venture has taught me what a privilege it is to be chosen by an author to edit for them. When they choose me or one of my colleagues, they take a leap of faith. They place trust in us to treat their words with respect and help them move forward towards their publishing goals. Fiction is intimate The nine stories I’ve written to date are really short. I’m at the beginning of my fiction writing journey. I have a lot to learn. But those stories are precious to me. Every one of them contains a bit of me, or of someone I care about, or someone or something that has made a mark on me in some way. They are not fact, but they are not completely made up either, and that infuses them with a level of intimacy. In other words, fiction writing is personal. It’s important that the fiction editor takes all of that into their editing studio and remembers it at every touchpoint of the project – an amendment, a query, a summary – and never forgets to say thank you.
Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Dialogue tags – or speech tags – are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. This article is about how to use them effectively.
A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech:
Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up longer chunks. Rather than give you a bunch of zombie rules that you’ll want to break about two seconds after you’ve read them, here are three guidelines to bear in mind when thinking about which tags to use, which to avoid, and when you might omit them altogether:
Why said often works best, and when it’s not enough The speech tag said ‘is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible,’ say Mittelmark and Newman in How Not to Write a Novel (p. 132). I agree, and I recommend you embrace it! If someone’s told you to avoid repeating said, head for your bookshelf and take a peek inside some of your favourite novels for reassurance. If you deliberately try to avoid said, you run the risk that your writing will reflect that intention. If your reader is focusing on your avoidance, their focus is not where it should be – on your story. Still, there will be times when you’ll want a tag that tells your reader about, say, the sound quality, the mood of the speech, or the tone of voice. Speech tags aren’t the only way to do this – for example, you could use action beats before the dialogue, or adverbial phrases after your tags – but few readers will complain if you use the likes of whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered or whined. Hissed is one that I rather like, though some writers and editors are less keen. Even though said 's invisibility makes it harder to overuse, avoid the temptation to place it after every expression. Here’s an example of how it looks when it's been overworked (see, too, the final section in this article, ‘Omitting dialogue tags’):
EXAMPLE: OVERUSE OF SAID
‘Tag it,’ he said. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said. 'I'm glad you agree,' he said. Showy speech tags and underdeveloped dialogue Showy tags can overwhelm dialogue. Since you’ve written your dialogue for a reason, that’s where the reader’s attention should be. When the tag is more visible than the speech, it’s a red flag that the dialogue, not the tag, needs enriching:
EXAMPLE: SPEECH TAG OVERWHELMS THE DIALOGUE
‘The way he was dressed, the attack was inevitable,’ preached McCready. Instead, we might amend the dialogue so that it conveys the preaching tone, and leaves the tag (said) with the mechanical function of indicating who’s speaking:
EXAMPLE: ENRICHED DIALOGUE; SIMPLER SPEECH TAG
‘Oh, come on,’ McCready said. ‘You dress like that, you’re going to attract the weirdos. Just the way it is. He had it coming, no question.’ Showy speech tags and double-telling Some speech tags are just repetitions of what the reader already knows – they double-tell. Asked and replied are two common examples, though these are used so often that they don’t fall into the showy category. For that reason, I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid these, though do take care not to overuse them. Showier examples – such as opined, commanded, threatened – become redundant if you’ve got the dialogue right:
EXAMPLES: SHOWY SPEECH TAGS THAT DOUBLE-TELL
‘But it’s none of our business how Jan makes her living,’ opined Jack. ‘Stand down, soldier! That’s an order,’ the general commanded. ‘If you tell a soul what you heard here today, I swear I will kill you and everyone you have ever loved,’ Jennifer threatened. ‘That’s amazing!’ he exclaimed. In the first three examples, it’s clear from the dialogue that an opinion, a command and a threat have been given. The speech tags repeat what we already know; we should consider whether said is a less invasive alternative. In the fourth example, amazing and the exclamation mark (!) tell us that the speaker exclaimed, so again the showy tag is redundant. It’s a question of style, of course. I’m not giving you rules but suggesting ways of thinking about the function of your tagging so that you keep your reader immersed in the spaces of your choosing. Non-speech-based dialogue tags and the reality flop Even if you decide you do want a more extravagant tag than said, take care when using verbs that are not related to the mechanics of speaking. Examples include: smiled, gesticulated, ejaculated, thrusted, fawned, scowled, winced, smirked, sneered, pouted, frowned, indicated and laughed. The physicality of these verbs will jar your reader and they immediately introduce an element of inauthenticity into the prose. They’re great words for describing what other parts of a person’s body can do, but are unsuitable for use as dialogue tags:
EXAMPLES: UNSUITABLE NON-SPEECH-BASED TAGS
‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ she laughed. 'You,' she smiled, 'are the best thing that's ever happened to me.' Try one of the following instead:
EXAMPLES: ACTION BEATS AND ADVERBS; SIMPLER OR OMITTED SPEECH TAGS
‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ she said, laughing. [Uses laughed adverbially.] She laughed. ‘Martin, you’re not seriously going to wear that, are you?’ [Uses laughed in an action beat.] 'You' – she smiled – 'are the best thing that's ever happened to me.' [Uses smiled in a mid-sentence action beat. Note the spaced en dashes. If you were styling according to US convention you could opt for double quotation marks and closed-up em dashes.] Alternatives to showy speech tags – more on action beats Rich action beats can complement or even replace speech tags, and are useful if you want to keep your dialogue lean and are tempted to use a showy speech tag. Keep them on the same line as the speaker they’re related to. Action beats let you set the scene so that the reader can fill in the gaps with their imagination while a character is speaking. Here’s an example of dialogue with a showy speech tag – moaned:
EXAMPLE: SHOWY SPEECH TAG
‘My back teeth are killing me,’ James moaned. In the alternative below, the reader can discern the moaning manner in which the speech is delivered because James’s discomfort is shown in the action beat preceding it:
EXAMPLE: ALTERNATIVE USING ACTION BEAT
James pressed two fingers to his cheek and winced. ‘My back teeth are killing me.’ Notice how the action beat is punctuated. There’s a full stop (period) after winced. Neither of these examples is wrong or right. You might decide that you prefer one over the other. Rather, I’m showing you alternatives so that you can make informed decisions about how to make your writing engaging. Using proper nouns in dialogue tags If your fiction is gender binary (and it might well not be) and the genders are known to the reader, you needn’t repeat the speaker’s name every time they appear in a dialogue tag. You can use third-person singular pronouns: he and she. Clarity is everything here. Notice how Alexander McCall Smith uses nouns and pronouns in his dialogue tags, and peppers the text with action beats so that the reader knows who’s speaking (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 125):
EXAMPLE: MIXING UP PRONOUNS AND PROPER NOUNS
Mma Ramotswe nodded her head gently. Masculine bad behaviour. ‘Men do terrible things,’ she said. ‘All wives are worried about their husbands. You are not alone.’ Mma Pekwane sighed. ‘But my husband has done a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘A very terrible thing.’ Mma Ramotswe stiffened. If Rra Pekwane had killed somebody she would have to make it quite clear that the police should be called in. She would never dream of helping anybody conceal a murderer. ‘What is this terrible thing?’ she asked. Mma Pekwane lowered her voice. ‘He has stolen a car.’ [...] Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Do men really think they can fool us that easily?’ she said. ‘Do they think we’re fools?’ ‘I think they do,’ said Mma Pekwane. Omitting dialogue tags If you’re confident your reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags altogether. Once more, it’s not about rules but about sense and clarity. This will work best if there are no more than two characters in the conversation, and even then, most writers don’t extend the omission for more than a few back-and-forths before they introduce a reminder tag or an action beat. Here’s an example from Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks novel Sleeping in the Ground (pp. 273–4). There are two characters in this scene: Banks and Linda. Robinson omits most of the dialogue tags in this conversation because it’s clear who’s speaking, but he keeps us on track with an action beat and a tag halfway through:
EXAMPLE: KEEPING THE READER ON TRACK
‘So do I,’ said Banks. After a short pause he went on. ‘Anyway, I seem to remember you told me you went to Silver Royd girls’ school in Wortley.’ ‘That’s right. Why?’ 'Does the name Wendy Vincent mean anything to you?’ ‘Yes, of course. She was the girl who was murdered when I was at school. [...] It was terrible.’ Banks looked away. He couldn’t help it, knowing the things that had happened to Linda, but she seemed unfazed. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And there was something about her in the papers a couple of year ago. The fiftieth anniversary. Right?’ ‘That’s the one.’ ‘It seems a strange sort of anniversary to celebrate. A murder.’ ‘Media. What can I say? It wasn’t a [...]’ Summing up When it comes to dialogue, remember the function of the tag: to indicate which character is speaking. Says Beth Hill, ‘These tags are background, part of the mechanics of story; they meet their purpose but don’t stand out. They let the dialogue take the spotlight’ (The Magic of Fiction, p. 166). So, during the self-editing process:
Cited sources and further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
If you’re including authentic technical or procedural information in your crime writing, you’ll be wearing your research hat. Your story should come first, of course. However, be sure to get your facts straight before you decide if and how far you’re going to bend reality.
Procedure varies between region and country, and when your novel is set will also determine the relevance of the resources I’ve included. Still, even those outside your jurisdiction might spark an insight that drives your storyline further or deepens your characterization
Conversations, consultations and ride-alongs
My brushes with the law have been limited to bad parking. Still, I know a few coppers socially, and it’s to them I’d head for procedural guidance in the first instance. If you know a police officer, a forensic anthropologist, a crime-scene investigator, a barrister, or whatever, ask them if you can pick their brains. They’ll have expert subject knowledge and insights, and your talking with them face to face could be the most powerful tool of all. If you don’t have existing contacts, ask your friends for theirs or put a call out on social media. A writer recently requested help from munitions experts via the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Facebook group. Several commenters provided advice and one offered to put her in touch with an expert. If your book's set in the UK, try Consulting Cops or Graham Bartlett, author and crime fiction advisor. Both have teams of law-enforcement experts who'll help you keep your facts straight. Here’s crime writer Julie Heaberlin discussing the importance of researching and feeling comfortable approaching experts, especially to bring deeper layering to her novels:
‘I’m very worried about not being accurate […] because there are a lot of writers who don’t research and that’s just more misinformation out there. And I learn things myself. Standing outside the Texas Death House during an execution … it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be.’
How to Write Crime – Harry Brett in conversation with Sophie Hannah and Julia Heaberlin. Waterstones, Norwich, 2018
In a bid to improve relations between the police service and the public, some larger forces now operate ride-along schemes that allow members of the public to patrol with an officer. In the UK, these include Avon & Somerset, Nottinghamshire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Humberside and Warwickshire Police.
Search online using the keywords ‘ride-along police [your country/state/city]’ and see what comes up.
Watch and read
How about TV and movies? Your favourite crime dramas and fiction might have been meticulously researched. Then again, they might not. In ‘Five Rules for Writing Thrillers’ David Morrell urges writers to do the research but to use caution:
‘You don’t need to be a physician or an attorney to write a medical thriller or a legal thriller, but it sure helps if you’ve been inside an emergency ward or a courtroom. Read non-fiction books about your topic. Interview experts. If characters shoot guns in your novel, it’s essential to fire one and realize how loud a shot can be. Plus, the smell of burned gunpowder lingers on your hands. Don’t rely on movies and television dramas for your research. Details in them are notoriously unreliable. For example, the fuel tanks of vehicles do not explode if they are shot. Nor do tires blow apart if shot with a pistol. But you frequently see this happen in films.'
Morrell talks more about how research makes him ‘a fuller person’ and how he learned to fly in order to create an authentic pilot for his book The Shimmer. The expense of a pilot’s licence will probably be out of reach for the average self-publisher. YouTube could be the solution.
There are thousands of hours’ worth of real-life video footage on YouTube. You can learn from experts about how a body decomposes, how an autopsy is carried out, how a forensic sketch artist works, and how to clean up a crime scene.
And there are lectures on the science of blood spatter, computer forensics, investigation techniques, and forensic imaging. You name it, it’s probably there.
Use Wikipedia
Wikipedia is great for any sleuthing writer wanting to track down information about criminal procedure. Do, however, use the primary sources cited in the references to verify the information. In the online masterclass ‘How to Write a Crime Novel’ Dr Barbara Henderson recommends using at least two sources for internet-verification purposes. Here are some searches to get you started:
Security agencies
MI5 – the UK’s homeland security service
Visit the official site of MI5. There’s information on how it handles covert surveillance, communications interception, and intelligence gathering, plus a brief overview of its history since its creation in 1909. Christopher Andrew’s The Defence of the Realm is the first authorized history of the service. Published by Penguin in 2010, it’s available on Amazon and in major bookstores. Visit The National Archives and type MI5 into the search box. That will give you access to all the files that have been released into the public domain to date. National Crime Agency (UK) The NCA is tasked with protecting UK citizens from organized crime. Its website has articles and reports about cybercrime, money laundering, drugs and firearms seizure, bribery and corruption, and trafficking. I recommend looking at the NCA’s free in-depth but readable reports such as the National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2018, which outlines threats, vulnerabilities, the impact of technology, and response strategies. MI6 (SIS) – the UK’s secret intelligence service Visit the official website of the SIS to find out how it handles overseas intelligence gathering and covert operations. There’s a brief overview of the service’s history and some vignettes that illustrate how intelligence officers operate. Keith Jeffery’s MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949 is ‘the first – and only – history of the Secret Intelligence Service, written with full and unrestricted access to the closed archives of the Service for the period 1909–1949’. If you want historical information, this is a good place to start. GCHQ – Government Communications Headquarters (UK) The GCHQ website is worth visiting just to see the building from which it operates in Cheltenham! There’s an overview of GCHQ history, operations, its various operational bases, and how it works with Britain’s other security services to manage global threats. For a more in-depth study of the service, start with Richard Aldrich’s GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency. FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation (USA) The FBI’s website is packed with the usual overview material of how and why, but I think the go-to resources are the likes of the free Handbook of Forensic Services, the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC) page, and the training guidance. The easiest way to navigate around the site is to head to the FBI home page and scroll down to the links in the footer. NSA – National Security Agency The NSA website is the place to go for twenty-first-century code-breaking information, and there’s a ton of information about cybersecurity and intelligence. Head for the Publications section to get free access to The Next Wave and various research papers. The material is dense but could be just the ticket for building backstories for cybergeek characters.
Police forces
Michael O'Byrne is a former police officer who worked in Hong Kong, and later with the Metropolitan Police (sometimes referred to as New Scotland Yard). Try the second edition of his Crime Writer's Guide to Police Practice and Procedure. INTERPOL This is the world’s largest police force with nearly 200 member countries. The Expertise section of its website is rammed with useful and readable information on procedure, technical tools, investigative skills, officer training, fugitive investigations, border management and more. UK police forces Police procedure will vary depending on where you live. You can access a list of all UK police force websites here: Police forces, including the British Transport Police, the Central Motorway Policing Group, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence Police and the Port of Dover Police An Garda Síochána – Ireland’s national police and security service The easiest way to navigate the Garda’s website is to head for the home page and scroll down to the sitemap at the bottom. There you’ll find links to information on policing principles, organizational structure, and the history of the service. The Crime section is particularly strong on terminology and procedure. Legal resources Lawtons Solicitors’ website has an excellent Knowledge Centre filled with articles on parliamentary acts, offences, criminal charges and police procedure. What are the drug classifications in the UK? and Police Station interviews are just two examples. Ann Rule’s advice on attending trials is aimed at true-crime writers, but you could use the guidance for fictional inspiration: Breaking Into True Crime: Ann Rule’s 9 Tips for Studying Courtroom Trials. Crown Prosecution Service (UK): The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) website provides detailed prosecution guidance for criminal justice professionals. It is extremely dense, and so it should be; it wasn’t designed for novelists! See, for example, the section on Core Foundation Principles for Forensic Science Providers: DNA-17 Profiling. Still, there’s a wealth of information there for those prepared to wade through it. Department of Justice (USA): The DOJ site offers guidance on the role of the Attorney General, the organizational structure of the department, lots of statistical information, and maps of federal facilities.
Forensics resources
Historical crime writing resources
Weapons research
I hope you find these resources useful. I’ve barely been able to scratch the surface, not least because I’m busy trying to book a ride-along with my local bobby! While I sort that out, here’s some wise advice from David Morrell:
‘The point isn’t to overload your book with tedious facts. Rather, your objective is to avoid mistakes that distract readers from your story. If you’ve done your research, readers will sense the truth of your story’s background. In addition, the topic should interest you so much that the research is a joy, not a burden.'
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
This post shows you how you can use commas and conjunctions to alter the rhythm of a sentence. Changing the rhythm can help your readers immerse themselves deeper in the mood of your narrative and the emotions of your characters.
Standard grammar advice – the stuff we learned when we were kids – calls for lists with three or more items (or phrases or clauses) in a sentence to be separated by a comma, and for a conjunction to be inserted before the final item:
Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols and machetes. Or, if your preference is to use the serial (or Oxford comma): Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols, and machetes. The use of this one conjunction is called syndeton, and it moderates the pace. When it comes to fiction, standard grammar works very well for the most part. However, there are other accepted literary devices you can use to help your readers feel the scene you’ve written in a different way: asyndeton and polysyndeton. I’ve used examples from crime fiction in this article but the principles apply across genres. More on syndetic constructions Syndeton is everywhere. It’s the most oft-used way of constructing a sentence with multiple clauses, and it works well because it aids clarity: this thing, that thing and that other thing. Here’s an excerpt from At Risk by Stella Rimington (p. 369): And here’s an example from Jo Nesbo’s first Harry Hole thriller, The Bat (p. 250): This second excerpt is taken from a chapter in which the head of the crime squad, Neil McCormack, delivers a long speech to the protagonist, Harry Hole. Harry has just spent nearly an hour delivering his own monologue, updating McCormack on everything that’s happened so far. The mood of the entire scene is one of contemplation and resignation. The characters give each other the space to talk without rushing. Their behaviour feels controlled, and the way they talk is measured. The grammatical structure of the sentence (syndetic) is a good choice because it moderates the speed at which we read, and reflects the mood. Omitting conjunctions – asyndeton Authors might choose on occasion to change the mood of a sentence by deliberately removing the conjunction. Separating all the items with only commas accelerates the rhythm. That speeding-up can have a variety of effects:
Let’s go back to the Nesbo example and see what happens when we change it: ‘They helped the Allies against the Germans and the Italians, the South Koreans against the North Koreans, the Americans against the Japanese and the North Vietnamese.’ By omitting the conjunction and inserting a comma, a sense of frustration and urgency is introduced. It’s subtle, certainly, but that’s the beauty of it. If Nesbo had wanted to convey more immediacy, he could have elected to make these small changes. They would have altered the rhythm and showed (without spelling it out) that McCormack’s tone had changed or the pace of his speech had increased. Here are two examples from Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (p. 274 and p. 355): In the example above, Ludlum could have introduced ‘and’ after/instead of the final comma of the first sentence with no detrimental effects, but I think its omission brings a sense of urgency and determination to the writing that reflects the tension of the scene. In the excerpt below, he uses asyndeton to evoke a sense of futility, frustration and anger. The reader is forced to become bogged down in the senseless loss of life from a bullet to the head:
‘Another dumb, inanimate slug would shatter another skull, and another life would be stricken, erased, turned into the putrid animal matter from which it had been constituted.’
Asyndetic constructions can be particularly effective in noir and hardboiled crime fiction. These genres don’t shy away from the dark underbelly of their settings. The characters are often as damaged as the gritty environments they work within, and a sense of hollowness and futility underpins the novels. Here’s an excerpt from The Little Sister (p. 177) by the king of hardboiled, Raymond Chandler: Imagine that second sentence with ‘and’ after (or instead of) the final comma. It would ruin the flow and remove the utter sense of despair and hopelessness. Chandler doesn’t overdo it though. He saves his use of the asyndetic for the right moments rather than littering his pages with it. Using multiple conjunctions – polysyndeton Another technique for altering rhythm is that of using multiple conjunctions. Polysyndetic constructions are interesting in that they can work both ways:
In the following example, Chandler (p. 103) shows us two different groups of people waiting in a reception area that the main character, Philip Marlowe, has entered. By using a conjunction between each adjective describing the hopefuls, he enhances the brightness of their mood. This in turn tells us more than Chandler gives us in terms of words about the other group. We can imagine their boredom and frustration:
‘There was a flowered carpet, and a lot of people waiting to see Mr Sheridan Ballou. Some of them were bright and cheerful and full of hope. Some looked as if they had been there for days.’
There’s a powerful example of the polysyndetic in Kate Hamer’s The Girl in the Red Coat (p. 151). Hamer uses it to enrich a child-character’s voice. Carmel has been abducted and is experiencing a kind of dislocation as she plays with two other children. The multiple conjunctions serve to emphasize the overwhelming giddiness. There’s almost no time to take a breath: Beware the comma splice Asyndeton should not be confused with the comma splice. A comma splice describes two independent clauses joined by a comma rather than a conjunction or an alternative punctuation mark. I recommend you avoid it because some readers will think it's an error and might leave negative reviews. The standard-punctuation column in the table below shows how the authors have got it just right. The right-hand column shows you how the non-standard comma-spliced versions would appear.
I hope this overview of syndeton, asyndeton, polysyndeton and the comma splice will help you to discover new ways of playing with the rhythm of your own writing while keeping the punctuation pedants at bay!
Resources and works cited
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with independent authors of commercial fiction, particularly crime, thriller and mystery writers. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, and a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).
Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Proofreader & Copyeditor, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, or connect via Facebook and LinkedIn.
If you're self-publishing within a strict budget, this booklet will help you decide how best to invest.
The guidance is broken down into sections that reflect the recommended order of play and the outcomes you want to achieve.
Click on the image to download your free copy.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Some crime writers are planners. Some are pantsers (so called because they fly by the seat of their pants). Neither is better than the other. What matters is that the method you choose to write your story works for you and results in a tale well told.
Being either a planner or a pantser won’t determine whether you sell lots of books. A story that makes sense – one that reads as if you had carefully planned it – is what’s key to creating an experience that readers will relish.
So what do some of the big-name crime writers have to say on the matter? What’s right for you? ‘The more I talk to other crime writers the more I start to become fairly sure that for each writer there is an ideal way, but there isn’t one ideal way,’ says Sophie Hannah. I think I’ve read everything Harlan Coben’s ever written. If I haven’t, it’s waiting in the pile or on the Kindle. If you’d asked me, I’d have marked him as a planner. His stories hang together so well; he ties up every loose end. And I always have that ‘Ah, that’s what happened’ moment. But in fact, Coben’s a pantser:
'I don’t outline. I usually know the ending before I start. I know very little about what happens in between. It’s like driving from New Jersey to California. I may go Route 80, I may go via the Straits of Magellan or stopover in Tokyo … but I’ll end up in California.'
Maybe you’re like him or Julia Heaberlin:
‘I start with just a fragment of a thought in my head. I don’t outline at all. I have no idea where the book is going.'
Or perhaps you’re like Susan Spann:
‘My novels start with an outline, and that outline starts with the murder – even when the killing happens before the start of the book.'
Or Hannah:
‘When I start writing chapter 1, I have a 90–100-page plan … kind of like a list of ingredients of what needs to happen in each chapter. And I don’t write it well. I don’t write it elegantly. It could be written by a robot […] but everything necessary for that chapter, whether it’s a murder or a snide glance, is included in that plan.'
To help you decide whether to plan or pants, consider the following:
Planning and creativity
Some writers fear that planning will mute their creativity and the process of discovery. The following excerpt is from an article from the NY Book Editors blog:
‘For writers striving to create something unique and surprising, the kind of work that will grab the attention of agents and editors, the thorough plotting and planning can be a matter of life and death. By that, I mean that planning your novel ahead of time increases its likelihood of being dead on arrival. […] When writers engage in extensive pre-writing in the form of outlines and character sketches, we change the job of the writing we’re preparing to do. All of a sudden our role becomes that of the translator.'
Heaberlin feels that surrendering control to her characters is essential to the creative unfolding of her stories:
‘I let the characters kind of take me wherever they want me to go. It sounds a little precious but that’s what happens. The plot evolves through the characters telling me what’s going to happen next.'
However, passionate planners feel differently. Their plans are as much a form of artistry as the actual writing. Here’s Hannah on how a plan needn’t thwart spontaneity:
‘Plot and character are not rivals – they’re co-conspirators […] The biggest lie uttered by writers about planning is that it somehow limits or stifles creativity. This is absolutely untrue. Planners simply divide their writing process into two equally important and creative stages: story architecture, and actual writing. Both are fun. And yes, of course you can make as many changes as you want when you come to write the book – I’ve changed characters, endings, plot strands, everything very spontaneously, even with my plan at my side, when it’s felt like the right thing to do.'
Time frame and process
Some authors write multiple drafts to ensure the book’s plot works. That slows down the process. Hannah’s detailed planning approach means her first draft works; she’s already identified where the problems are before she gets started on the actual writing process.
‘A lot of the thriller-writers I know who turn up their noses at planning end up writing four or five drafts of their novel before they’re happy with it. You might want to do that – in which case, you should do it! – but if you’d like to spend one year writing a book rather than five, planning is the way forward.'
Jeffery Deaver concurs:
‘I plan everything out ahead of time. I work very hard to do that. Part of that is planning each subplot – I call it choreographing the plots. I start with a post-it note. I put it in the upper left-hand corner [of my whiteboard] and that’s my opening scene. And then I start to fill in post-it notes throughout the whiteboard. Then I come up with a big idea for the twist, and that goes in the lower right-hand corner. And if that’s going to be a legitimate twist, that means planting clues.'
He then walks around talking to himself, deciding where on the whiteboard the clues need to go so that the main plot and various subplots will work. And if he finds that a clue won’t work in a particular place because, say, character X doesn’t know Y yet, he moves the post-it note. It’s an eight-month process but once it’s done, ‘writing comes quickly’. Still, don’t get too comfy! Andy Martin spent the best part of 12 months in the company of Lee Child as he wrote Make Me:
‘Even before he had written the first sentence, he turned to me and said: “This is not the first draft, you know.” “Oh – what is it then?” I asked naively. “It’s the ONLY DRAFT!” he replied.'
Which just goes to show that being a pantser doesn’t necessarily mean being a slow writer.
Does the plot work?
If you’re a pantser, the idea of finding yourself stuck in a hole after months of writing might not terrify you. Lee Child doesn’t let it stop him.
Says Henry Sutton, ‘When, for instance, [Child] hits a cul-de-sac, say his character – Reacher – might be at the point of an impossible situation to get out of, rather than go back and think, “Right, I’ve written too far. I need to delete that chapter or even the chapter before that”, he will think of a way of him actually surmounting that obstacle and then push him on.'
In an interview with Harry Brett, Heaberlin acknowledges the need for third-party assistance to fill in the gaps and polish her stories:
‘In Black-Eyed Susans I did know I wanted to write about mitochondrial DNA but it wasn’t actually until two thirds of the way through that book that I knew I wanted to write about the death penalty! […] At the end, my book is not perfect, not well-crafted. Mine have all these loose ends and so I work with an editor to kind of tidy up. But I also don’t like everything to be answered always, kind of like in real life.'
Contrast that approach with those of these two planners:
Deaver: ‘I know what I’m going to write. In the case of The Cutting Edge, … I knew where all of the subplots went, I knew where the clues were introduced, I knew where the characters entered the book and when they left. […] When I do the outline, I can see whether the book is going to work or not. And if it isn’t going to work then I can just line up the post-it notes and start over [whereas] it can be a very difficult process to start writing and come to page 200 and not know where that book’s going to go.’
Hannah: ‘Without a start-to-finish plan of what’s going to happen in my novel, I don’t know for certain that the idea is viable. It’s by writing a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene synopsis that I put this to the test. I’d hate to invest years or even months in an idea I suspected was great, and then get to where the denouement should be and find myself thinking, “Yikes! I can’t think of a decent ending!”’ What kind of writer are you? In an interview with Henry Sutton in May 2018, Deaver discussed how planning can help the non-linear writer:
‘Writing for me can be very difficult at times. And I have found that doing the outline allows me, since I know the entire schematic of the book, to write the beginning at the end, or the end at the beginning […] So I go to the outline and think: Today I’m supposed to be writing a vicious murder scene but the sun’s out, the birds are singing, and I don’t feel like it. I save it for those days when the cable guy who’s supposed to be coming at 8 in the morning doesn’t show up until 4 and I’m in a bad mood! I can jump around a bit.'
So Deaver’s method allows him to concentrate on telling the part of the story he wants to tell when he wants to tell it. For every writer who frets at the thought of not knowing where they’re going, there’s another for whom that’s a thrill. Child is a linear writer, and Zachary Petit thinks that ‘very well may be the key to his sharp, bestselling prose’.
'When he’s crafting his books, Child doesn’t know the answer to his question, and he writes scene by scene – he’s just trying to answer the question as he goes through, and he keeps throwing different complications in that he’ll figure out later.’
If you too enjoy sharing the rollercoaster ride with your protagonist, pantsing could be the best way for you to tell your story. If not, detailed planning might suit you better. Clue planting Spann has a two-handed strategy for planning. And it’s all to do with the clues. The first outline – the one that will determine what she writes – needn’t be particularly detailed. It’s a map of each scene, and each clue, that enables her to keep her sleuth on track. Just as important, however, is the other outline:
‘A secret outline, for your eyes alone. This one tracks the offstage action – what those lying suspects were really doing, and when, and why. The “secret outline” lets you know which clues to plant, and where, and keeps the lies from jamming up the story’s moving parts.'
I like her on- and offstage approach, and I think it’s particularly worth bearing in mind if you’re a self-publisher who’s not going to be commissioning developmental or structural editing. What you don’t want is to go straight to working with a line or copyeditor and have them tell you your clues don’t make sense, because you’d be paying them to paint your walls even though there are still large cracks in the plasterwork. That offstage outline could help you to complete the build before you start tidying up.
The importance of structure
One thing’s for sure: whether you choose to plan or pants your way through the process, put structure front and centre. Recall my comment above about how Coben always leaves me feeling like he must have had everything worked out from the outset. That’s because however he gets from A to B, he understands structure. Pantsing isn’t about ignoring structure, but about shifting the order of play. Says Deaver:
‘[Lee Child and I] both structure our books. I just do it first. I run into those same roadblocks. And maybe for me it’s a little post-it note […] But the work has to be done somewhere. Any book should be about structure as much as fine stylistic prose.'
And here’s domestic noir author Julia Crouch to wrap things up for us:
‘There is a reason that screenwriting gurus bang on about the three-act structure – setup, confrontation and resolution – and that’s because it works. If you have any storytelling bones in you at all, you will more than likely, even subconsciously, end up with a structure like this. But it’s helpful to bear it in mind and, whether you structure beforehand (as a plotter), or after (as a pantser), run your plot through that mill.'
Good luck with your planning or pantsing! Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Are you using free indirect speech in your writing? This article provides an overview of what it is and how it can spice up crime fiction.
What is free indirect speech?
In a nutshell, free indirect speech offers the essence of first-person dialogue or thought but through a third-person viewpoint. The character’s voice takes the lead, but without the clutter of speech marks, speech tags, italic, or other devices to indicate who’s thinking or saying what. It’s a useful tool to have in your sentence-level toolbox because:
The table below shows three contrasting third-person narrative styles in action so you can see how free indirect speech works:
It’s also referred to as free indirect style and free indirect discourse.
1. Flexibility and interest Free indirect speech (FIS) is flexible because it can be blended seamlessly with other third-person narrative styles. Let’s say you want to convey information about a character’s physical description, their experiences, and their thoughts – what they think and delivered in the way they’d say it. You could use third-person objective for the description, third-person limited for the experience, and free indirect speech for some of the thought processes. In other words, you have a single narrative viewpoint but styled in different ways. You’re not changing the viewpoint, but rather shifting the distance between the reader and the character. And that can make your prose more interesting. Here’s an example from Val McDermid’s Insidious Intent (p. 14). She begins with a more distant third-person narrator who reports what had been on Elinor Blessing’s mind, and when. Then she shifts to free indirect speech (the bold text). This gives us temporary access to Blessing’s innermost thoughts – her irritation – and her lightly sweary tone, but still in the third-person:
Philip Prowse employs a similar shift in Hellyer’s Trip (p. 194): 2. A leaner narrative FIS is a useful tool when you want to declutter. Direct speech and thoughts are often tagged so that the reader knows who’s speaking/thinking:
With regard to thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with a reader being told that a character thought this or wondered that, but tagging can be interruptive and render your prose overworked and laboured if that’s the only device you use. Imagine your viewpoint character’s in a tight spot – a fight scene with an arch enemy. The pace of the action is lightning quick and you want that to be reflected in how your viewpoint character experiences the scene. FIS enables you to ditch the tags, focus on what’s going on in the character’s head, and maintain a cracking pace. The opening chapter of Stephen Lloyd Jones’s The Silenced contains numerous examples of free indirect speech dotted about. Mallory is being hunted by the bad guys. She’s already disarmed one in a violent confrontation and fears more are on the way. Jones keeps the tension high by splintering descriptions of step-by-step action with free-indirect-styled insights into his protagonist’s deepest thought processes as, ridden with terror, she tries to find a way out of her predicament:
Here’s an excerpt from Lee Child’s The Hard Way (p. 64). Child doesn’t use FIS to close the narrative distance. Instead, he opts to shift into first-person thoughts. Reacher is wondering if he’s been made, and whether it matters:
Some might argue that this is a little clunkier than going down the FIS route, but perhaps he wanted to retain a sense of Reacher’s clinical, military-style dissection of the problem in hand. If Child had elected to use FIS, it might have looked like this: Had they seen him? Of course they had. Close to certainty. The mugger saw him – that’s for damn sure. And those other guys were smarter than any mugger. [...] But had they been worried? No, they’d seen a professional opportunity. That’s all. It’s a good reminder that choice of narrative style isn’t about right or wrong but about intention – what works for your writing and your character in a particular situation. 3. Deeper insight into characters A third-person narrator is the bridge between the character and the reader. As such, it has its own voice. If there’s more than one viewpoint character in your novel, we can learn what we need to know via a narrator but the voice will not be the same as when the characters are speaking in the first person. FIS allows the reader to stay in third-person but access a character’s intimate world view and their voice. It closes the distance between the reader and the character because the bridging narrator is pushed to the side, but only temporarily. That temporary pushing-aside means the writer isn’t bound to the character’s voice, state of mind and internal processing. When the narrator takes up its role once more, the reader takes a step back. Furthermore, there might be times when we need to hear that character’s voice but the spoken word would seem unnatural:
FIS therefore allows a character to speak without speech – a silent voice, if you like. Think about transgressor narratives in particular. If you want to give your readers intimate insights into a perpetrator’s pathology and motivations, but are writing in the third-person, FIS could be just the ticket. Here’s an example from Harlan Coben’s Stay Close (chapter 25). Ken and his partner Barbie are a murderous couple bound together by sadism and psychopathy. Ken is preparing for the capture and torture of a police officer whom he believes is a threat:
This excerpt is from an audiobook. While listening, I could hear how the voice artist, Nick Landrum, used pitch to shift narrative distance. The book’s entire narrative is in the third-person, but Landrum used a higher pitch when presenting the narrator voice. Ken’s dialogue, however, is in a lower pitch, and so is the free indirect speech of this character – we get to hear the essence of Ken even when he’s not speaking out loud. If you’re considering turning your novel into an audiobook, FIS could enrich the emotionality of the telling, and the connection with your listener. A closer look at narrative distance To decide whether to play with free indirect speech, consider narrative distance and the impact it can have on a scene. Look at these short paragraphs, all of which convey the same information. All are grammatically correct but the reader’s experience is different because of the way in which the information is given, and by whom.
Your choice will depend on your intention. Think about your character, their personality, the situation they’re in, which emotions they’re experiencing, and the degree to which you want your reader to intimately connect with them.
Consider the following examples in relation to the table above:
Wrapping up FIS is used across genres, but I think it’s a particularly effective tool in crime writing because of its ability to simultaneously embrace brevity and communicate intimacy. Jon Gingerich sums up as follows: ‘Free Indirect Discourse takes advantage of the biggest asset a first-person P.O.V. has (access) and combines it with the single best benefit of a third-person narrative (reliability). It allows the narrator to dig deep into a character’s thoughts and emotions without being permanently tied to that person’s P.O.V. Done correctly, it can offer the best of both worlds.’ If you haven’t yet played with it, give it a go, especially if you’re looking for ways to trim the fat. Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
If you’re not sure what a first-person narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your fiction writing, this post is for you.
What is narrative point of view?
Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved. There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a single character. And to complicate things, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why. POV can be tricky and my aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations and build up and outwards. Why should you bother nailing POV? Pro editors and experienced writers agree on one thing: it’s worth the beginner author’s time to understand POV so that they can make decisions about which to use, where, and why. Consider the following:
Point of view: What are the options?
There are multiple ways in which to narrate a novel. Some are more popular than others, and some easier to master. What you choose will shape not only the story you tell but also your readers’ understanding of it. The options are as follows:
First-person POV First-person narrative POVs are the most intimate, the most immediate, but they’re less flexible. The pronouns used are ‘I’ and ‘we’. The reader is privy to an individual character’s thoughts, emotions and experiences, all told through a distinctive voice. We can only see, hear, smell and feel what the character sees, hears, smells and feels. We are compelled to move through the story knowing only what they know, and at their pace. However, used throughout an entire novel, from on character only, it can be problematic for the following reasons:
Example: Not relying on ‘I’ In To Kill a Mockingbird (p. 5), Harper Lee keeps ‘I’ to a minimum and yet the prose oozes with first person. Note in particular how the voice is rich and distinct, rather than the more neutral tone we’d expect from third-person objective narration.
Because Lee doesn’t append ‘I’ plus a verb to much of the prose, we are given a shown narrative that we can experience rather than being told how the narrator experienced the world being described. Compare it with the ‘I’-heavy made-up example below and consider how the narrator’s told experience keeps the reader at a distance.
I placed my hand on the rusty handle and tugged, but the old oak door refused to give way to me. I heard a rustling sound behind me and turned my head. I spotted movement in the inky shadows and felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle with terror as I realized I wasn’t alone.
Let’s rewrite this with a less invasive first-person narration in which the reader can experience the action as it unfolds. The handle was rusty against my palms as I tugged but the old oak door refused to give. A rustling came from behind and I turned. A shape flitted in the inky shadows and the skin on the back of my neck prickled. I wasn’t alone. Example: Sustaining interest with other interpretations In The Word is Murder (p. 208), author Anthony Horowitz is one of the characters! The viewpoint is first person (his). The author is like a floating camera; we see the protagonist – the detective (Hawthorne) who solves the crime – through Horowitz’s eyes as he accompanies him to interviews with suspects and on visits to crime scenes. The author-character offers his own theories, even pursues his own lines of investigation, and interjects with stories about his life and career. This adds interest but, ultimately, it’s the detective who grounds the crime story, brings reliability to the narrative, and drives the novel forward; it’s through him that we access the procedural elements and the answer to whodunnit. Here’s an excerpt:
Recommendation First-person narratives introduce depth and explain motivations but can be difficult to sustain if not sufficiently interesting and there’s too much told narrative. Watch out for filter words if you think you’re over-telling. Consider whether your whole novel needs to be in first person. Perhaps limiting this approach to specific characters in dedicated chapters would be more effective. If you decide to stick with first person throughout, think about voice and how your viewpoint character (and therefore the reader) will discover the how, when and why of the story at an engaging pace. And, finally, if you’re basing your whole novel in the first person, be cautious about using the present tense throughout. The past might give you more flexibility, particularly if you’re writing action-heavy scenes where, in reality, the character wouldn’t have time to give much thought to the consequences and motivations of their behaviour. Cited sources and related reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Sentence length can affect tension. This post looks at how overwriting can mar the pace of a novel and frustrate a reader, and how less can sometimes be more.
Around eighty per cent of the books that end up in my editing studio are in the crime fiction genre.
One of the most common problems I encounter is overwriting. That’s not because the authors are poor writers. It’s because they’re nervous writers. It takes a lot of hard graft to put enough words on a page to make a book. Yet it takes an equal amount of courage to remove them ... or some of them. ‘What if the reader just doesn’t get it?’ ‘What if they’ve forgotten what I told them above?’ ‘What if I haven’t provided enough detail?’ ‘What if I just love both ways I’ve said that?’ These are the kinds of questions that result in anxious authors bulking up their prose. In a bid to help you trim the fat, I’m going to explore the following:
Trusting your reader The issue is sometimes one of trust – in the author’s own writing and in the reader’s ability to fill in the gaps. Some genres of fiction lend themselves well to more flowery prose that goes off at a tangent for a moment, a little narrative indulgence for the purpose of artistry or even titillation. Crime fiction, however, is all about the page turn. That doesn’t mean that the description isn’t rich, but there is an expectation of forward momentum. Avid readers of the genre love it for the thrill of the ride. Great characterization is key, of course. We want the protagonist to draw us in, the antagonist to pique our curiosity, and the supporting cast to deepen the picture, but ultimately we want to know whodunnit. And that means we want words that help us understand what’s happening, why, where, who’s doing it, whom it’s being done to, why it’s being done, and how it feels. And we only need to be told once. We might need a little clarifying nudge here and there but we’re capable of extracting a lot with less than you might think. Feisty fragments and snappy shorties If you’re trying to evoke tension in your reader, short sentences and fragments can be very effective. Look at the following examples and notice how the authors keep their narratives lean. Here’s an excerpt from Gone Bad by JB Turner:
Turner gives us just enough to set the scene – when, where, who and what – but no more. He trusts us to fill in the gaps.
He might have given a more detailed description of the forest – its sounds and smells. He might have delved deeper into Cain’s emotions, or helped us to picture the backpack by detailing the colour, make, number of pockets and zips, and where the ammo was being held. He could have told us, word for word, how Cain loaded the gun, how careful he was, which bullets he used. But he doesn’t. Turner leaves it to us to imagine the woods, to see in our mind’s eye the loading of the rifle, and to sense the cold hard determination of the shooter. And the backpack gets no more than a passing mention, because to do more would slow the pace and act as a distraction. And the result is just right – Goldilocks would approve. Now consider the choppy fragments in Jens Lapidus’s Life Deluxe:
Lapidus loves the colon more than any other author I’ve come across! It’s a hard piece of punctuation but it works because the characters we’re being introduced to lead hard lives. They’re always looking over their shoulders, thinking in short snaps, weighing up what’s in front of them ... and what might be behind.
Lapidus dares to trust us, dares not bore us. And because of, rather than despite, the short sentences and fragmented prose, reading the scene is an immersive experience for the reader. I recall a sense of taut fatigue as I read this book, like I was right there, ever watchful, on my guard. This author’s deliberate punctuation choices and choppy style mean the word count is reduced but the tension is heightened. He doesn’t pad his narrative with purple prose and stage direction. Like Turner, he trusts us to do the work. Damage by dilution Consider your own writing. Leave your draft alone for a few days. Then return to it and see what happens if you take a more reductive approach to a scene. It's all about balance at the end of the day. Not too much but not too little. Howard Mittelmark & Sandra Newman write:
I’m not suggesting you remove information the reader needs to know, but asking you whether there is material your reader doesn’t need to know, material that might bore them or hold them back.
Neither am I suggesting you avoid creating emotive scenes that are high on tension. Rather, might you build this tension with shorter, tighter sentences that demand your reader do some of the work? And I’m not suggesting you should limit every sentence in your book to five words – not at all. I’m suggesting that you might use this technique when you think it would work, when it would push your reader forward, when fewer words – the right words – would work as well or better than more, especially if you know you tend to overwrite. Letting go of what you love For some authors it’s not about trust, but about not wanting to let go. Perhaps you found two delicious ways to say the same thing and now you can’t bear to cut either. Or you constructed a stunning paragraph but it’s interrupting the conflict or the action. In The Magic of Fiction, veteran editor Beth Hill says:
Hill asks authors to grab ‘the liberty to cut words as freely as you added them’ and then to enrich what’s left.
It’s tricky for some beginner writers, I know, but repetition and interruption mean there are redundant words in your writing. And to make your novel sparkle, you need to let go of them because they’re not adding something new, they’re not in the right place, or they’re in the way. Take courage. Try it with and without. You might be surprised.
Cited works and further reading
If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit the Self-publishers page on my website. Try these in particular:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Today, I discuss the negative impact that just one word can have on narrative tension: Suddenly.
I’m not suggesting writers eradicate it, but rather use it judiciously and with intention.
I edit a lot of crime fiction written by beginner and emerging authors. I’m an avid reader of the genre too. Reading a genre isn’t enough to make anyone an expert in it, but it does afford the editor plenty of opportunities to see it written well, and to experience it as a punter ... to ask: Why do I like that? What is it about that scene that works so well? What’s hooking me here?
There’s one word that great crime writers put on the page with care – suddenly. However, many new or developing writers struggle to leave it out. Two reasons for overuse stand out:
I’ve grabbed a handful of crime fiction from my own bookshelves, and taken examples from these books to show how suddenly-free writing can be more immediate and immersive. 1. Countering wordiness Some developing writers record every nod, every furrowed brow. All that mundane stuff happens in real life. And in the movies we get to see it played out onscreen. That doesn’t mean it all needs to go into a novel. Readers don’t behave like viewers. When I’m watching a film I expect to be spoon-fed to a degree – dialogue, facial expression, action, and a healthy dollop of incidental music to tell me who’s feeling what and why. The reason it works with film is because a chunk of that stuff happens simultaneously, and even I, impatient soul that I am, don’t get bored. When I’m reading a book, my brain works differently. I don’t want all that stage direction. Too much of it distracts me and that’s when I’m most likely to lose interest. When a new writer hasn’t learned the art of crafting the story so that there are just enough nudges to keep the narrative rich, but not so many that it becomes tedious, suddenly rears its head. Suddenly becomes an apology for overwriting – an exciting reward for sticking around. Only it doesn’t work. It’s just one more word on the page that the reader doesn’t need. Solution: Keep your crime writing lean Not every writer wants to strip their writing back to the bare bones but ask yourself whether you’ve introduced a sentence with Suddenly purely to reengage the reader. If so, tighten up the preceding narrative so that you don’t lose them in the first place. Less is sometimes more. Example Here’s a scene from Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz, featuring the protagonist, Daniel Brasher (p. 393):
A less experienced writer might have been tempted to overwork the preceding description and the line conveying Daniel’s anxiety ... and that could have led to a Suddenly barging its way onto the starting blocks of the final sentence to drag the reader out of the protagonist’s head and back into the external action. It could have gone like this:
He was ushered through the door into a small, dank, grey windowless room with a stall terminating in a shield of ballistic glass that looked onto the mirror image of a facing stall. Only a steel table and two chairs furnished the room. A coaster-size speaking hole in the glass rendered jailhouse phones unnecessary.
He waited, counting the seconds, working to stay calm. Sweat dripped from his forehead, ran down his back and soaked his shirt. He massaged his temples to stave off the growing panic and raked a clammy hand through his damp hair. Just relax, he thought. You’re in control. Suddenly, a metallic boom announced the opening of an out-of-sight metal door ... Instead, Hurwitz has given us just enough to know that our protagonist is fretful. We hear the metallic boom in the same moment Daniel does. We imagine how it might make him jump. There are 58 words instead of 114. And the writing in the shorter, published example is tighter, the tension higher. The boom comes suddenly, but Hurwitz doesn’t tell us so. He doesn’t need to. 2. Redundancy – the verb’s already done the work Even those novice writers who’ve conquered their noisy narrative can still be tempted to nudge unnecessarily with suddenly. I see this most often in the following scene types:
Certainly, writers who use suddenly are doing so with good intention – to give the reader a now-nudge. However, in most cases it’s unnecessary to convey immediacy and adds nothing to the narrative. In the above examples, the immediacy is rendered perfectly with the verbs launched, dawned, lit up, exploded, trilled and slammed. By adding suddenly into the mix, the reader is pulled out of the story, as if the author has tapped them on the shoulder and whispered, ‘Hey, you, something big’s coming. Just so you know. Right then, as you were. Carry on reading.’ That’s an interruption – the opposite of what the writer intended. Now the reader’s no longer moving at the same pace as the character. They’re one step ahead rather than immersed in the moment. Solution: Test the sentence out loud Say it first with suddenly, then without. Ninety per cent of the time, the slimline version will work better. When that’s the case, hit the delete button.
Published suddenly-free examples Here are some published examples for comparison. None of the authors felt the need to nudge the reader into immediacy.
The Barclay example is particularly interesting. The narrative point of view in this chapter is that of the antagonist. From his perspective, the violence is almost mundane, which renders the scene all the more horrific for the reader. A now-nudge in this paragraph wouldn’t have been just superfluous; it would have countered the perversity of our tension being heightened through being forced to immerse ourselves in Cory’s psychosis. When suddenly works a treat Suddenly-free isn’t a rule. Don’t ban it from your novel! There are times when it works beautifully:
In this made-up example, the inclusion of suddenly subtly changes our perspective of Pip’s situation. There's a subtle immediacy to his discomfort has emerged only now, that in the seconds before he’d watched bu not felt threatened. And so it’s not that suddenly does or doesn’t work. Rather, it depends on the writer’s intention. Your turn ... how do you maintain tension with minimal interruption? Are there particular adverbs you use with caution? If you'd like to access more tips and resources for self-publishers, visit my resource centre. Try these in particular:
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
Crime fiction falls into a range of subgenres. Knowing where your novel fits helps you understand what readers expect, which published writers you can learn from, and how you might stand out.
This post featured in Joel Friedlander's Carnival of the Indies #91
If you'd prefer to watch a video, scroll down to the bottom of the article.
This article provides an overview of some of the established subgenres, though the list isn’t exhaustive.
There’s crossover certainly and, depending on the commentator, crime fiction gets chopped up into subgenres variously. I’ve elected not to focus on inverted-detective fiction, heists and capers, LGBTQ mysteries, feminist crime fiction, or romantic suspense, but these subgenres and more all have their place in the market. One thing’s for sure: ‘Crime fiction is never static and never appears to be running out of ideas,’ says Barbara Henderson. Two more reasons to know your subgenre If you’re going it alone, one of your publishing jobs will be to help your readers find your book. When you upload to Amazon, Smashwords or any other distribution platform, you’ll need to decide which BISAC headings to place your book under. And if you’re going down the traditional publishing route, identifying your subgenre(s) will help a literary agent understand which publishers have a best-fit list and where in a bookstore your novel will be shelved. If the fit isn’t obvious to you, it could be harder to convince your agent that your book’s marketable. Ultimately, though, it's the writing that needs to be top-notch, not strict conformity to one or another subgenre. These days, it's probably harder to find crime fiction that isn't fusion of subgenres!
Cosy crime fiction
If much of today’s crime fiction seems gritty, even gratuitously violent, and that’s not the way you want to write, fret not. Cosy crime is alive and kicking (though gently).
Publishers are rushing to bring “lost” golden-age authors such as Annie Haynes back into print, and to repackage the likes of Margery Allingham and Francis Durbridge. (Alison Flood)
What distinguishes the cosy? Murder yes, but leave out the gore, the pain, and depressing social commentary. Your protagonist might well be flawed but no more so than anyone else in the novel, and your readers will embrace your hero’s quirkiness with a skip in their step. That doesn’t mean the cosy isn’t tight on plot and well-paced action that drive the novel forward. Contemporary readers want fantastic mysteries with twists and turns that will keep them guessing. Cosies can be liberating for the playful crime writer who wants to explore the genre with non-traditional characters placed in non-traditional settings:
Classic detective – the Golden Age and beyond
RD Collins locates the start of the genre with Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It found its feet with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and entered into a Golden Age in the 1920s with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, among others.
The Golden Age introduced ‘rules’ for the genre. Reba White Williams summarizes these as follows:
See also the quote further down from Otto Penzler about locked-room mysteries – no cheating with doubles and magic! Today’s authors must abide by the same rules, no matter whether their tales are set in Oxford with Morse, LA with Bosch, or Reykjavik with Erlendur.
Hardboiled crime fiction
Los Angeles had never been written about. California had been written about, a book called Ramona ... a lot of sentimental slop. But nobody in my time had tried to write about a Los Angeles background in any sort of realistic way.
That’s a quote from Raymond Chandler in conversation with Ian Fleming in 1958. Chandler’s response was to write crime fiction that was gritty, depressing, violent, cynical and seedy. Hardboiled crime writing, as it came to be known, pulls no punches. The protagonists aren’t invulnerable superheroes. And the environments within which they operate are those of contrast – urban decay and tourist hotspots, hope and corruption. If your crime writing falls into this category, don’t set an amateur protagonist sleuth alongside foolish law-enforcement officers who have neither brains nor access to detection resources. Hardboiled isn’t pretty but it’s rich in believability. Plots are fattened with complex characters, social commentary and, of course, murder. Says Matthew Lewin on the contemporary hardboiled crime fiction of James Lee Burke and James Ellroy:
There is a fury and desperation in this new writing that touches on the violence and depravity of our time as well as the grace and beauty of the best in human nature and the physical world.
Think Harry Bosch. Tim Walker refers to his creator Michael Connelly as ‘the modern Raymond Chandler’. ‘Connelly says he still sees it as a duty to acknowledge the social climate in his novels’. Think also Rebus; Ian Rankin, like Connelly, fuses hardboiled with police procedural masterfully. With hardboiled, even when the crime is solved, your readers won’t expect to close the book feeling that everyone will live happily ever after.
Historical crime fiction
Popular series feature CJ Sansom’s Shardlake, SJ Parris’s Giordano Bruno, Susanna Gregory’s Thomas Chaloner, and Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael.
The genre is as interesting for its criminal investigations as for the lessons in social history afforded to the reader. And because the reader needs to understand the historical setting, these novels are often long. Sansom’s Dark Fire comes in at a whopping 600-plus pages. I have the hardback version and I’m sure I bulked up my biceps just carrying the book from Waterstones to the car park. If historical fiction floats your writing boat, be prepared to put in the research. Many of your readers will know their history so you’ll need to dig deep. It’s no accident that the protagonists in these novels are curious renegade monks, lawyers, scholars and the like. The criminal justice system as it exists in our era bears little resemblance to that in these bygone days. Consider the following:
Some historical fiction is cosier and shorter. Consider David Dickinson’s Lord Powerscourt and Emily Brightwell’s Mrs Jeffries. These Victorian mysteries offer plenty of intrigue and good old-fashioned murder, but we’re spared the grisly details. Don’t be surprised to see this lighter crime fiction splashed with a dose of humour as the authors cast their gaze over the social-economic and gender disparities typical of the era. Still, if the Regency or Victorian cosy is your bag, you’ll still need to gen up on period details.
Legal and medical crime fiction
Courtrooms, labs and hospitals make for great crime fiction, and ‘lawyers and doctors make effective protagonists since they seem to exist on a plane far above the rest of us. Although popular, these tales are usually penned by actual lawyers and doctors due to the demands of the information presented,’ writes Stephen D. Rogers.
Here are some examples:
That old trope of writing what you know comes into play here and it’s a good reminder that using your own specialist knowledge to bring authenticity to your crime writing makes good sense. And if you’re not a former cop, doc or lawyer but you have friends who are, be sure to pick their brains. In particular, research the role of your legal or medical protagonist and ensure that the powers of investigation you assign to them are appropriate for their location. Even if you’re pushing the boundaries of existing science, to give your reader the best experience the foundations will need to be solid.
Locked-room crime fiction
The crime scene is that of a moving train, a secluded and heavily guarded house, an aeroplane, a single-track road with only one way in and one way out ... less whodunnit, more howdunnit.
A locked-room novelist is the illusionist of crime writing, the creator of ‘impossible’ fiction. And yet not so impossible as it turns out, as our brilliant protagonist gradually reveals all. Take care though. No cheating is allowed with locked-room crime. Says Otto Penzler:
The solutions to none of these locked room murders and thefts have supernatural elements and there is no cheating about hidden panels, long-lost twins, waking from dreams or hallucinations. No, they are deduced by detectives, who explain all to the incredulous characters and the baffled reader.
Well-known examples include:
The artistry of the locked-room mystery lies in the author’s ability to deliver a reveal that doesn’t rely on a device that doesn’t exist in real life, that doesn’t require information to be deliberately withheld from the reader, and isn’t so obvious as to be deducible at the beginning of the story. I recommend The Locked-room Mysteries, Penzler’s superb anthology for aspiring locked-room crime writers who want to see masters at work. It's huge – over 930 pages – and heavy, but literally worth its weight.
Police procedural
If you’re writing a police procedural, your in-depth research will need to be top-notch. The angle you take will be determined by your protagonist’s skills. Examples include:
Procedurals are notable for their thoroughly researched and authentic rendering of detection, evidence-gathering, forensics, autopsies, and interrogation procedures in order to solve the novel’s crime(s). Wowser tools and tech don’t come at the cost of strong characterization though. Rhyme is paralyzed following an on-scene accident. Cooper is recovering from the breakdown of her marriage. Rebus has a history of trauma dating from his former military career. Wallander has diabetes, and his daughter attempted suicide in her teenage years. These in-depth backstories provide complexity and conflict – a kind of layering that fattens the plot without complicating it. I find Cooper a little whiny, Rebus grumpy, Scarpetta arrogant, Wallander depressing. That doesn’t stop me falling in love with them though. In fact, flawed characters can balance the sterility of the procedural details. And you, the writer, might find a protagonist with foibles more enjoyable to write. Mankell did:
It’s quite true that I don’t particularly like [Wallander]. But then I think most writers would say it’s more interesting to write about a person you don’t like. I’m quite sure Shakespeare enjoyed writing Iago much more than he did writing Othello. [...] It’s much better to have something between you and your main character that grates.
Spy thriller
When it comes to spy stories, your protagonist is a spook, the nation’s safety the hook. It’s a race against time – against a larger-than-life antagonist – in order to save, well, everyone. The plots are usually complex and the action high-octane.
‘When you’re writing spy fiction you have one overriding goal: to keep the reader turning the pages,’ says Graeme Shimmin. Here’s some great advice from Kathrine Roid: Don’t wing it when it comes to plot:
A spy novel needs to be thought out beforehand, even more so than novels of most genres. Unlike, say, a quest fantasy, where plot points can be shuffled or cut out or added without too much trouble, everything needs to be compactly connected to the main plot. (Unplotted) whims simply do not have a place.
If you’re wandering into spy-fi territory, you’ll have a little more freedom to play with gadgetry. If you’re keeping it real, do the research. Know your guns and your gear so that your protagonist doesn’t end up more tactifool than tactical. But old on a mo. Your spy crime fiction doesn’t have to be a sprint like Robert Ludlum’s or Clive Cussler’s. Mick Herron is one of my favourite writers. The pace might be a little gentler but the brooding narrative is utterly believable. His Jackson Lamb series features the ‘slow horses’ – MI5 agents who’ve messed up and been put out to graze in the backwoods of inactive service. Herron’s crime isn’t spy-fi – there are no wacky gadgets to get Lamb’s crew out of a fix. The characters are vulnerable, disgruntled, and bored ... until there’s a crime and Lamb suspects the spooks. It’s a fine example of character-driven writing with attention to detail on Service procedural and detection legwork.
Private eye and amateur sleuth
The private-eye tradition crosses subgenres: from cosy to hardboiled to classic thriller.
Telling your story through a point-of-view character who works outside law enforcement has its advantages: your protagonist can behave and move in ways that a detective can’t, at least not without risking their job. On the other hand, your sleuth won’t have access to the wealth of contemporary resources available to the police. And take care not to make your amateur’s successes depend on witless professionals. Certainly, every organization/service has its fools and bad apples, and crime fiction is the perfect tool with which to explore police and state corruption, but contemporary readers are unlikely to engage with a novel whose chief investigator is an oaf.
Transgressor/noir
If this is your bag, you’ll go where others fear to tread. Whodunnit is still in the mix, but whydunnit is close behind.
It shares the grit of hardboiled but is distinctive for its focus on the narratives of the transgressor (Eoin McNamee: Resurrection Man), the victim (Larsson: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), or both (Lippman: I’d Know You Anywhere). The authors who do this subgenre best seem almost to be able to channel their characters’ psychosocial conflict, and dig deep into the predator–prey relationship. And even when the detective is the protagonist, they’re less superhero than anti-hero, troubled by demons, working despite – rather than within – an establishment as troubled as them (James Ellroy: LA Confidential; Antonin Varenne: Bed of Nails). Says Penzler in ‘Noir fiction is about losers, not private eyes’:
There are no heroic figures in noir fiction. [...] The noir story with a happy ending has never been written, nor can it be. The lost and corrupt souls who populate these tales were doomed before we met them because of their hollow hearts and depraved sensibilities.
Regional variants – e.g. Tartan, Scandinavian, Emerald – that represent the landscape, culture, idiom, and social and political identity of their settings have emerged to international acclaim.
A quick note on subgenre fusion
Your book might well fall into what Agnieszka Sienkiewicz-Charlish calls genre syncretism: ‘the hard-boiled detective story, the police procedural, Gothic fiction and the psycho-social novel’. She offers Rankin’s Rebus novels as an example.
Consider also China Miéville's The City & The City. In this novel, two locations occupy the same physical space. At heart, it's a police procedural, but there's a speculative/fantasy take on the hardboiled tradition: the shiny surfaces of one city butt up against a grubbier alternate, yet residents of each are legally bound to 'unsee' each other. As such, Mieville incorporates a subtle commentary on state authoritarianism, surveillance and corruption into a murder investigation. Genre syncretism can help your work stand out, but take care to recognize the conventions of each so that the core subgenre elements are all done well. No reader will thank you for promising a fusion of hardboiled and police procedural if both are half-baked. Good writing trumps everything. I hope you find this useful and wish you sleuthing success on your crime-writing journey! And there's that video I promised for those of you who'd prefer to watch or listen.
Further reading
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses. |
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