And the Rest is History...

Historical fiction is a genre that has so much potential—you can take a true story and retell it differently, make up a story and frame it within a certain historical time period, or even change the facts of history to suit your narrative. There are so many possibilities, and yet many writers seem to get stuck in the “history” part and never quite make it over to the world of “fiction.” In other words, some of the manuscripts I read have me wondering if I’m reading an original work of fiction or a history book.

The main mistakes I see with this type of writing are stories with too many historical details inorganically inserted throughout the text, so concerned with sounding authentic that the overall tone is very distant and, frankly, rather boring to anyone who’s not a diehard history fan. My guess is that the problem stems from a desire for authenticity—which I get. When you’re writing about a family in 19^th century America, it would probably be best to leave cell phones out of the discussion, and certain aspects of 19^th century life would likely need to be explained to readers. However, sometimes authors get a bit carried away with the history and forget the story.

I sometimes read manuscripts of historical fiction that have passages similar to something like this: “Lady Anne took up her hat, which had been purchased from Madame Beauregard’s hat shop in town. This particular hat shop was famed for being the most fashionable hat shop in the whole country, and had been founded in 1858, introducing the French style to England. The first hat shops in England were actually founded many years prior to this, such as Henrietta’s Hat Shop, established in 1832.” (I’m completely making all of this up, but you get the point.) Does a history lesson on hat shops actually further the plot? No, and on top of that, it’s boring; it takes the reader out of the story if every time a character uses something period-appropriate, you take a moment to give a dry, awkward history of said object. Relevant things should be explained, but not at the expense of coherency—remember that you’re writing a story and not a collection of facts. Besides, even history textbooks have to be coherent—you can’t just leap from one fact to another like they do in those bing commercials. History can be a great tool for a writer, but it shouldn’t crowd out the story in a work of historical fiction.

Hope this helps!

—S.E.

When Spell-check Fails: Proofreading and Your Manuscript

Everyone’s experienced it: you finish a paper or a story that you’ve spent hours and hours working on, read it through one last time on the computer, and print it out. You then reread the hard copy, only to find a spelling or grammatical error that spell-check didn’t catch. What went wrong?

The problem is in the proofreading—namely, the fact that most of us have become pretty lax about it. We depend too much on spell-checkers that don’t always fix everything. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read manuscripts that have grammar or usage errors – from something as simple as mistaking the word “reed” for “read” to something bad, like repeatedly conjugating the same verb incorrectly.

Basically what I’m saying is that before sending your manuscript to us, make sure it’s been proofread. Now, a badly proofread manuscript probably will not make or break our decisions on whether to accept something—after all, it is easier to correct a few typos than it is to develop a character or to change the pacing of a story. What it does do is give us the impression that the writer does not care as much about getting her manuscript published, which is something I’m sure none of the writers sending in materials intend.

It’s even more important to make sure that query letters are well proofread, because they are our first impression of you and your ability to write. We are less inclined to request materials from someone with a poorly written and proofread query letter, again because it gives us the impression of apathy on the writer's part.

However, do not fret because there is a very easy way to proofread your writing: read it out loud. When we read silently it is far easier to skip over parts of a piece, but reading aloud forces us to spend time with every word. You are much more likely to catch little mistakes by reading aloud – I promise. If proofreading is not your forte to begin with, just ask a friend who knows their grammar to help.

It's worth the time and effort, because we are sure to notice both good and bad proofreading. Keep up the good work, and happy writing!

Becca

New Release & Free Read!

This month marks the release of Mail Order Cowboy, by Laurie Kingery. With beaux scarce in post-Civil War Texas, practical Milly Matthews and her “Spinster Society” friends have their hands full protecting their ranches. Their only hope: advertising for mail-order grooms. But aristocratic British cavalry officer Nicholas Brookfield isn’t exactly Milly’s idea of a cowboy—or a man she can trust. And the more Nick proves himself as a ranch hand, the more he must hide his past from the woman he longs to make his own. Learn more about the book by clicking here.

Also this month, Naughty or Nice by Tawny Weber is available exclusively as a free online read at eHarlequin.com. Mari Madison wants only two things for Christmas: to help her mother win the town's annual holiday decorating contest and to reinstate her good-girl reputation so that she can start her business on the right foot. Then across the street she spots the best-looking Christmas package she's ever seen…and realizes it's Declan Cole. The man who ruined her reputation in the first place. The man who's sure he's going to win the contest. To read the serialized story (with new chapters being released daily), click here.

Character Overload

When I’m reading manuscripts, or anything for that matter, I like things to be clear. It seems that the biggest enemy of clarity is attempting to do too much. Lately, my number one critique when reading manuscripts is that there’s too much going on. As Becca mentioned in her last blog post, too many details can really take away from a great manuscript. The same is true of too many characters. A manuscript with excessive amounts of character is an immediate red flag for me; if I can’t keep track of them all, I’m likely going to become confused and overwhelmed.

We all know how important character development is to a great novel. The main character needs to be fully fleshed out and at least somewhat likeable or relatable. After all, your reader will be hanging out with her for 200 pages! Secondary characters, on the other hand, are a bit different. Although these characters can be a significant part of a finished product, it’s important to remember that they aren’t meant to be protagonists. These characters have to take a bit of a backseat to the star of the show.

Too much background about less important characters can take away from the focus of a manuscript. Though it’s nice to get to know minor characters, the reader doesn’t need to know about every aspect of their lives. Plus, too much detail in secondary characters can lead to excessive storylines. If there are numerous characters and they all have their own things going on, it’s easy to overwhelm the reader with information. Be sure any secondary plotlines don’t take precedence over the main plot.

The important thing to remember when working on a manuscript is to make sure everything you write is important and necessary to the plot. As hard as it can be to eliminate a character you’ve grown attached to, sometimes you just have to do it! Cutting out some excess can really help to turn a good partial into a great one. Plus, you can always save those extra characters for your next novel!

--Beverly

Let's Talk Dialogue

Dialogue is a great tool for a writer. It lets you communicate what a character’s thinking—or at least, what the character wants others to know she’s thinking—in her own voice, and it contributes to character development by allowing you to show how characters interact with one another. Dialogue makes it possible to allow your character to speak directly, rather than having to filter the speech through a narrator. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to have your character explicitly state: “I like ice cream!” rather than having the narrator describe that “Sarah likes ice cream.”

Good dialogue is also fun for the reader, because the verbal interaction of characters helps the reader get engrossed in the story. People in real life talk (I’m fairly certain verbal communication in some form or other is one of the human race’s great pastimes), so it makes sense that dialogue can be a great way to pull your reader into the story. For this reason, a lot of authors use dialogue as a way to reveal exposition or setting.

For instance, rather than telling us that Johnny is wearing a red shirt that looks like it came from the 80s, one could simply have another character (let’s take Sarah from before) say: “Ugh, Johnny, where’d you get that ridiculous shirt? That red is so out of style and, um, in case you haven’t noticed, so are the 80s.” (Note: this does not necessarily reflect my opinion of the 80s.) Now, Johnny’s red shirt isn’t terribly important—actually it may be, depending on where this story’s going—but you see how the reader learns what it looks like through the dialogue? This is often a more interesting and, importantly, a more subtle way to convey factual information.

However, there is a fine line between using dialogue to subtly reveal facts about the plot or setting and simply piling tons of exposition into a piece of dialogue. Say Johnny and Sarah are mechanics; if I have to read line after line of them explaining some mechanical process that’s apparently crucial to the plot, it just won’t feel right. Dialogue like this is stiff and wooden, and frankly, unnecessary. If they’re both mechanics, why are they explaining this stuff to each other? Even if one of them were not a mechanic, it's still awkward. Obviously the writer is trying to explain the relevant elements of mechanics to the reader, but if the explanation is going to be a long one, dialogue is not really the best way to do this. Instead you can leave this kind of thing to the narrator, because at the end of the day, characters should sound like themselves, not as if they’re mouthpieces for the narrator. (Of course, this can get complicated when the narrator is a character as well.)

An information dump can work in narration, but in general, if the information is extremely technical and/or does not sound natural to the character or the situation, you want to keep that out of your dialogue. The reader wants to hear the characters talk, so give them something worth listening to. Best of luck!

—S.E.