Injecting Emotion

Most writers don't think of ourselves as actors, but we are a little bit. We have to imagine what our characters are feeling and then portray it. It's just that writers portray it slowly on the page (and revised over time) rather than in the moment with our voices and bodies. It's a different medium, but the goal is the same: to connect with the audience, to make them feel what we feel.

I've talked before about using description to convey emotion. Among other things, I said, "Think about what's happening in the scene—what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or even tasted. Then, think about what the characters are feeling and use that to color what is described and how."

Let's go a bit beyond that. What if you didn't just think about what your characters are feeling? What if you felt it too?

Of course, every writer's process is different, but it's likely you're already doing this—at least sometimes. You may have become sad when you had to kill a character or gotten angry at something your villain did. That's what this is. All you gotta do then is use it.

Take those emotions and describe them: what your body feels or how your feelings color the world around you. Your description doesn't have to be perfect (it's not gonna be—it's a first draft!), but there will be gems in there. More importantly, that initial description will help you feel those feelings again when you revise, so you can fine tune it to better describe what you were feeling at the time.

Right, but... How?

Some people struggle with feeling these emotions. I certainly did. For most of my life, I considered emotions untrustworthy, something to be avoided. That belief led me to shunt my emotions down until I didn't feel them anymore. (Or rather, I thought I wasn't feeling them. In truth, I didn't recognize them for what they were, but they created all kinds of stress and anxiety, among other things. But that's a whole other post...)

If this resonates with you too, here are some tips that might help you tap into your characters' emotions better, thus helping your readers do the same.

Act out the scene. Put yourself in your characters' shoes, not just in your head but physically. (If you have a willing friend, act it out with them—maybe even talk about what both of you are feeling afterward.)

Draw from your experiences. Maybe you've never had to flee from a deadly assassin or walked through a haunted wood, but you have been scared. Think about times you felt something like what your characters are feeling and put yourself back in that situation. What did it feel like? What was going on with your body? Can you feel those feelings again?

Learn from the acting world. Actors have to be in touch with their emotions, and we can learn a lot from them. I'm not saying take acting lessons or join a troupe (though those would certainly help improve your writing!), but maybe read some articles about acting or improv. Learn about what actors do that we don't normally think of.

Play D&D or other tabletop RPGs. Tabletop RPGs are a fantastic and relatively safe way to practice putting yourself in someone else's head. Granted, most TTRPG groups aren't going to deep-dive into emotional acting, but they are an entertaining way to imagine what someone who is not you might feel or do in situations you've never been in. (It can also be another method to practice a bit of improv!)

Do some inner work. I'm not suggesting you seek counseling to become a better writer, but if you're struggling with emotions—whether your own real-life emotions or feeling the imagined ones of your characters—maybe process why that is. Emotions are a normal and vital part of being human (and a critical part of writing). It's well worth exploring our own issues with them.

Again, every writer has their own process. It might be that none of this is for you, and that's fine. But if you're seeking to better connect readers with your characters, I hope you can find something useful here.

How to Write in Dark Times

It is objectively difficult to create when it feels like the world, including the networks and structures we take for granted, is crumbling around us—even more so when it actually is. But art in all forms is a critical kind of resistance and reconstruction, and it's one way we can actually help.

But what the heck do you write about when everything is terrible?

Thankfully, we're not the first to experience this. Writers have been writing in dark times for as long as there have been times. Stories didn't stop being told just because there were world wars, global depressions, or raging pandemics. In fact, many of our best stories were created from those times.

With that in mind, here are some of the reasons I and others continue to write.

To Give People Hope

A story can give people hope that the darkness can be beaten, that even the smallest person and the smallest act can matter. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien drew on (among other things) his experiences in World War I to write The Lord of the Rings, even as he lived through the build-up toward World War II.

Stories can give people hope for a better future, like Susan Kaye Quinn's Nothing Is Promised hopepunk series, written amidst the ever-present doom of our climate crisis yet presenting a vision of what humanity is capable of.

To Give People Inspiration

The darkness can be beaten, but how do we beat it? Your story might address this more directly, presenting a dystopian world and the hard-pressed, reluctant heroes who tear it down—for example, Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire, Lois Lowry's The Giver, or Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. It's fiction, yes, and not an instruction manual, but stories like these can be the seeds for real-world ideas (or in some cases, real-world warnings).

To Shine a Light on the Truth

Many stories, especially those by authors from underrepresented or oppressed groups, reveal truths that majority culture is often blind to. These are the kinds of stories that can change someone's entire worldview, and humanity needs as many as we can get.

R.F. Kuang's Babel takes a scathing look at the former British Empire and the cultures that were crushed to create it. It raises critical questions of whether an invincible power can be fought at all and, if so, how—all while telling a gripping historical fantasy tale.

Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts paints a vision of a terrifying America-that-could-be (one that feels increasingly real in today's political climate) and asks the reader to consider how such a thing could have happened and what they might do within it.

To Increase Empathy

Not all stories need to touch on dystopia to make a difference. Every story is an exercise in empathy, especially the most personal ones, and empathy is critical to pull us out of the darkness.

In Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng writes about a town that believes itself to be uplifted yet struggles when faced with its own underlying biases. There is no great villain nor power to be toppled in this story, but it nonetheless forces us to empathize and wrestle with multiple perspectives on difficult moral questions.

(Honestly, all of Celeste Ng's work is amazing. I can't recommend her enough.)

To Provide an Escape

Not all stories need to inspire or teach or represent. A story that is merely an escape is every bit as vital during dark times. When every headline feels worse than the one before, despair comes all too easily. But despair is how the darkness wins. In a fight like that, joy and escape become lifelines and weapons.

My examples, of course, are from my own interests—what I have read and remember (hence all the sci-fi and fantasy). But there are so many good examples I am omitting here. Please, recommend your own stories-from-dark-times in the comments. We want to read them!

I Have to Rewrite the Whole Thing?!

They say you have to murder your darlings, and you think, sure, I get that—a phrase here, a sentence there... But what if the feedback is that a whole scene isn't working? Or a whole chapter? What if you're asked to add or remove an entire character or, God forbid, rewrite the entire novel?

Why would you even consider that? There are lots of possible reasons. Here are a few off the top of my head:

• A chapter isn't working and needs to be cut entirely or replaced with something else.
• You removed an entire character and need to rewrite whole chapters or scenes.
• A hard drive crash caused you to lose a huge chunk of work.
• After finishing a first draft, you realize you love the world and characters, but the plot isn't working at all.
• You returned to an old draft after several years and want to update it with everything you've learned.

Rewriting something you've already written feels bad, hard, impossible. It took so much work to get those words there in the first place—why would you want to do it again?

Let me reassure you that, while it does feel scary, a rewrite is never as bad as you think it will be for one simple reason:

You already did it once.

What's hard about writing something the first time is that you don't know what will happen or who the characters are or how to say what you want to say. But after having written it once, a lot of this mental work is already done! And if you've lost work and are just trying to redo it, it's even easier. You don't have to think about changing anything—you can just try to remember what happened and write it as though you had outlined it already.

The fear of rewriting largely comes from this unexamined idea we have that what we wrote the first time was good, and we're afraid we won't be able to replicate it again. But you absolutely can.

You did it once. You can do it again.

What's even better, the act of a rewrite allows you to improve what you had written, because you're not starting from scratch. You have a foundation to work from—even if it's just in your head—and you can actively improve on that foundation as you rewrite.

Most of the time, doing a rewrite is optional. But if you're willing to try, you can find great freedom and flexibility in your story. You'll discover what I said in a previous post: that your novel is always soft and malleable. And when you've finished, you'll often find that you love the new version more than you ever loved the original...

...you know, the one you thought you could never recreate.

Perhaps most importantly, you'll begin to learn to trust yourself—your skill, craft, and experience. And that is where the really good writers are born.

Seeing What the Reader Sees

One of the hardest but most important aspects of editing your own work is reading it with fresh eyes. You can (and should!) do this with beta readers or by hiring an editor, but being able to do it yourself is so, so valuable.

But how the heck do you do that? After all, when you're reading your own work, you not only know what's going to happen but also what might happen, what never happened, and what happened once in an old version like seven revisions ago!

You have to get out of your head. You have to read your own work as though it were the first time you've ever seen it. You know nothing that isn't on the page! It's not easy, but here are some tips to make it possible.

TAKE A BREAK. This is probably the most common advice. Step away from what you wrote for a while—days, maybe weeks or even months if you can. When you come back to it, you might have forgotten parts, but more importantly, your brain will have the opportunity to approach it like a new thing. That feeling won't last through the whole novel, but hold on to it as long as you can. Also...

TAKE NOTES. As you read your novel with fresh eyes, write down facts and details—especially things that you know have changed from outline to draft or from revision to revision. But—and this is the most important thing—you cannot write down anything that is not on the page! Write down what you see, not what you think you see.

PRACTICE. Believe it or not, seeing a familiar document from a fresh reader's perspective is a skill you can improve at. How do I know? It's literally my job. The more you do it, the easier it will be to see a manuscript the way a new reader would see it, setting aside all the extra information floating around in your head.

This is a very important skill for writers to learn. Beta readers are amazing, and a good editor is well worth the money, but you are the only person in the world who fully understands your intent and your vision. If you can maintain both readers in your head at once—one who has never read this before and the other who knows what you want it to become—you can do anything.

What Kind of Editing Do You Need?

In spite of *gestures at everything*, I am still a professional editor, and I still want to help you with your writing. So let's talk about that for a bit.

It's not uncommon for writers to be unsure of what kind of editing they need. They want to make their novel the best it can be, but they also don't want to break the bank doing it. Once you've determined whether you need an editor, how do you know what kind of editing to get?

This isn't helped by the fact that different editors use different terms and definitions. I'm going to use my terms here, which should give you a foundation for talking to any editor even if they use these terms slightly differently.

I'm going to talk about three very broad categories of editing:

1. Developmental edit
2. Line edit (a.k.a. copy edit)
3. Proofread

Developmental Editing

This is what you want when you've finished an early draft and want to know whether the story works. A developmental edit (or dev edit) looks at the big picture—structure, pacing, plot holes, themes, characterization, world-building. Does each scene and chapter serve a purpose and move the story forward? Does every major character have an arc?

From a practical standpoint, a developmental edit will consist primarily of comments in your document and a thorough editorial letter.

This edit is for writers who are ready to dig deep and do major revisions—adding or removing characters, combining subplots, cutting or rewriting whole chapters. You might even decide the best way forward is to rewrite the whole thing! (That's not as bad as it sounds, mind you. I'll talk about that in a future post.)

A dev edit might be less helpful if you're satisfied with the story's plot and structure and you just want it to be written better or if you're on a tight deadline and don't have time for major revisions.

This kind of edit is generally better earlier in the writing process, when the novel still feels soft and malleable. (Technically, novels are always soft and malleable, but it's hard to feel that way after the 50th revision!)

Line Editing (or Copy Editing)

This is for when you know the story and structure are sound, but the writing just isn't where you want it to be. A line edit (sometimes called a copy edit, though some editors have different definitions for each of these terms, so always ask!) looks at the writing and the craft—description, dialogue, sentence length, character voice, emotional impact. Does each sentence and scene convey the feelings you want them to? Are the style and detail choices consistent throughout? Is the word "just" used too many times, and does the main character sigh too much?

From a practical standpoint, a line edit will consist primarily of (lots of!) tracked changes with additional comments throughout the document to explain those changes or query the author's intent.

Line edits are useful when you're getting ready to publish and want to make the novel sound as good as it possibly can.

Proofreading

This is the last step before publication. The editor will be looking for objective errors—typos, grammar issues, punctuation. The goal is to create a document that is completely error free (even though, as any writer knows, that's virtually impossible).

Deep Edit

There's another kind of edit, sometimes called a deep edit, which is like all three of these rolled into one. The editor provides developmental comments, line edit changes, and an error free document all in one.

As you might imagine, this is a lot of work—some of which could be wasted if, for example, a developmental comment motivates the author to rewrite an entire chapter! On the other hand, this can be a good way to get a lot of information all at once.

Because every kind of edit not only improves that manuscript but also helps the author level up their knowledge and writing skills. Even if you don't end up using all of the tracked changes in a chapter you rewrite, you will still benefit from understanding why those changes had been suggested at all.

These Categories Overlap!

The way I've laid it out here can make it feel like editing is black and white—either you get developmental comments or line editing changes but not both. The truth is that there is a lot of overlap between each type of editing.

For example, I will often make line editing comments on a dev edit to help the author learn and save time in their revisions, and I will frequently leave developmental comments in a line edit as I go. And a line edit always looks for objective errors. These categories are really more about what the editor focuses on rather than rules about what they Will and Will Not Do.

How Do I Know What I Need?

In an ideal world, a novel would have a developmental edit (or two!) on an early draft followed by a round (or two!) of line editing and a final proofread before publication. But for an author on a budget, that's a lot! So what do you really need?

Ultimately, only you can decide, but these questions might help:

• What stage is the novel at? Earlier stages benefit more from a dev edit, while a line edit is usually better if the novel's close to finished.
• What aspects of your manuscript are you confident about? If you know the plot and chapter structure is good, for example, then you probably don't need a dev edit.
• What level are your writing skills at? For example, experienced writers who have published a solid story or two might (MIGHT!) have less to gain from a dev edit. Newer writers might benefit from a deep edit as a way to acquire a lot of knowledge all at once. (Note that everybody needs a good line edit.)
• What can you afford? A single round of editing can be very expensive, with no real guarantee of a return, so only you can decide what's most important to you. Maybe you can lean on beta readers for free developmental feedback. Or maybe you have a good sense of craft but less of whether this story will work, so you risk skipping the line edit. Or maybe you want to get a deep edit to learn as much as you can from it to apply to all future revisions.

Again, you're the only one who can decide, but also, talk to your (prospective) editor! Even before you hire them, most editors are happy to discuss what kind of editing might be best for you, and many (like me) offer free sample edits that can help you figure out what kind of feedback seems most useful.

Do your research and trust yourself. You know what you need better than anyone.

Who Are You Writing For?

With the US's ongoing slide into a literal banana republic,* it is very difficult for me to think about writing and writing tips. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

* Wikipedia defines a banana republic as a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Show me the lie.

But one thing I keep thinking about—that applies equally to writing a sci-fi novel or arguing on Facebook—is who are you writing for?

Because here's the thing. There will always be people who don't like what you have to say. They will tell you your story is slow or predictable or confusing or has too many made-up words. They will try to convince you that the US government's actions aren't authoritarian actually, and why do you keep comparing everything to Nazis?

These people are not your audience.

Write for the people who enjoy your work, who identify with your characters, who know it's unconstitutional for press outlets to be denied access because they still call it "Gulf of Mexico."

I mean, sure, you want as many people as possible to enjoy (or agree with) your writing, and you should continue to work on your craft (and empathy and accurate information) toward that end.

But you can't please the haters. Don't spend your time on it. Diluting your vision can rob your work of what makes it unique and valuable. Arguing with someone who believes Elon's dismantling of the government is fine, actually, wastes both your time and theirs (not to mention the mental health costs of arguing online).

Remember who you're writing for. They're your people. Write for them.

You don't even have to acknowledge the others.

But What Can *I* Do?

When I rebooted this blog, I told myself it was going to be for writing and editing tips. But now, the US president decided to do an authoritarianism, and I mean... come on.

A lot of us are feeling fear, despair, and motivation to do something but also confusion about what will help. This is my attempt to distill what I've been learning, what each of us can do to help, and why even the smallest act matters.

What Action Feels Like

I think one of the most important things to remember is that, very often, it will feel our actions have no effect. We want to call our representatives and see laws enforced. We want to donate to an organization and see criminals face consequences. We want to call out what's happening on social media and see minds changed.

It almost never works like that.

But these actions do matter.

One person on a street corner holding a sign that says "Nobody elected Elon" feels pointless, but that small, seemingly ineffectual protest can encourage others. It names the falsehoods and gaslighting for what they are. It encourages others that they're not alone in seeing what's happening. One person can even give some the courage to stand alongside them, until that one person becomes thousands.

Action looks like a meaningless ripple over and over and over, until one day, it's a tidal wave.

Actions for Yourself

You can't help anyone if you aren't okay. There's a reason airlines tell adults to put their mask on first before helping a child. But how can you do that?

• Stay informed. Find trustworthy sources so you know what's going on. A major authoritarian trick is to convince people that they can't trust the mainstream media, so that facts are just their word against their enemies. But there will always be people and organizations who care about truth, objectivity, and democracy. Be discerning and seek them out.
• Stay sane. You need to be informed, but you don't have to swallow a 24/7 firehose of bad news. Pace yourself. Focus on the topics you care about. Give yourself permission to step away. You don't have to be aware of everything, nor can you. Trust others to take what you can't.
• Find joy. Read books. Watch movies. Enjoy music. Be with those you love. Remind yourself why any of this matters.

Direct Actions

Everything above is important, but what can you do? There is a lot, it turns out, so long as you remember that it doesn't have to feel impactful to be impactful.

• Bother your representatives. Bug them in person if you can. Call if you can't. Email if you've got nothing else. It doesn't matter whether your representatives are for or against the current administration; every voice serves as ammunition or encouragement.
• Join communities. There are people already out there resisting. Most of them aren't advertising it online; they're just doing it. Find them. Join them. Ask how you can help. Listen and learn.
• Donate to organizations that are fighting. Don't break your bank, but as with every action, every little bit helps.
• Protect your people. If you know folks who are directly affected by the administration's actions, help them. Speak in their defense. Stand beside them. Protect them if you can. (Though as with helping anyone, find out what they find helpful before just diving in.)
• Talk to people about what's happening. Only you can decide what conversations you can handle and with whom, but in-person conversations can be far more effective than online ones, especially if the person you're talking to knows you care about them.

Resistance

If you're in a position where the administration is looking right at you, action is scarier but also more impactful. Always take care of yourself, but in as much as you can...

• Resist
• Protect
• Do not comply
• Play dumb
• Move slow
• Make things worse

Helpfully vague, I know, but if you're in such a position, ways to resist may become more clear, and sometimes just slowing things down can be enough to give others time to mount a response.

Online Actions

I'll be honest. Living overseas makes me wonder if there's anything I can do that will matter. Social media feels so ineffective, and I'm still figuring out how best to use it. But here are some things I've learned:

• Inform. Not everyone is an information-gatherer. For some, you might be their only source of information. Don't assume everyone knows what you know.
• Encourage. Don't flood people's feeds with doom. Encourage them. There are good things happening out there, and hearing about them is often what people need to take action themselves.
• Delight and amuse. Be a source of light and humor. These are far more effective tools than rage and despair.
• Limit pointless arguments. The effectiveness of social media to change people's beliefs is... arguably not great. We've all had arguments with That One Guy who's "just asking questions," until it becomes clear they never wanted a genuine discussion. Ignore them. Mute them. Block them. Your information, encouragement, and joy is not for those who have decided but for those with ears to hear.

• Be kind and compassionate—not just toward those who need help but also toward those on "the other side" when they begin to see or question what's really happening. Schadenfreude and "I told you so" are so, so cathartic, but the way through this danger is to work together—all of us, from every side and background and belief. Don't shame people. Welcome them.

Above All, Don't Give Up

A lot has happened these last weeks, and that is intentional. They're trying to flood the zone, to overwhelm the public and the media so nobody can focus on any one thing. But we're not a single entity. Working together, we can focus on several things at once.

The suggestions above are really just a kind of starter pack. There is much more that can be learned and done, and people are already doing it. Keep learning, and don't give up.

Authoritarians want us to give up, but their power is brittle, and they know it. Force and fear can only hold them up for so long. Eventually, they will crumble.

Heck, that's how the US started. We can continue the same way.

What To Do With All That Feedback

If you're serious about writing, then you need to be serious about getting feedback. You might ask friends to read your work, swap drafts with writers online, or hire an editor—or even all of the above! The bottom line is you're too close to your story to be objective, so you always need to see how it flies with other people.

And when you do, you will often find one or more of the following happens:

• Readers provide conflicting feedback—one likes a passage, while another hates it.
• One reader suggests a sweeping change that changes your vision for the novel—it's not what you were trying to do.
• A reader hates a part that you absolutely love.
• Readers are confused about something you know you explained.

It can be frustrating, especially for new writers, to try to figure out how to handle feedback like this. You want to please everybody, but it seems impossible!

A key way to approach this is to treat the feedback like a doctor: interpreting it as symptoms, diagnoses, and prescriptions.

SYMPTOMS are what the reader feels as they're reading. Maybe they're confused, frustrated, or bored. The important thing to remember is that the reader is (almost) never wrong about what they feel. It doesn't matter what you intended; if the reader is bored, they're bored. Start there.

Many readers will then try to provide a DIAGNOSIS of what they think the problem is. They might think they're bored because they don't care about world-building, or they're confused because a fantasy term wasn't explained properly. Remember that the reader is not your doctor. They are usually right about what they're feeling, but they're not always right about why.

Maybe the world-building is really interesting, but in that particular moment in the story, the reader cares more about whether the protagonist escapes the people hunting them. Maybe the fantasy term is explained perfectly fine later, but there needed to be just a little more context so the reader could understand the sentence where it was introduced. (Or maybe that particular reader isn't used to holding things in abeyance.)

Readers aren't always aware of what causes their feelings, but if you assume that their feelings are real, then you stand a much better chance of addressing the root cause of the problem.

Finally, some readers will try to PRESCRIBE A SOLUTION. Readers are often wrong here. They know what they're feeling, they maybe know why, but they aren't you. They don't know your story or what you're trying to accomplish. They don't live in your head. Most people's prescriptions are likely to be wrong.

Who Can You Trust?

It's important to learn who to trust. Trust readers to know what they're feeling, but beyond that? It depends.

You can probably trust readers who are fans of books like yours. They might know the market better than you, or they might have insight that you lack. Their solutions might not perfectly fit your story, but their diagnoses might spark some good ideas.

You can usually trust readers you've worked with or those who really get your work. You'll know these folks from your relationship with them.

You can often trust professionals. Editors aren't perfect—they can provide bad diagnoses and prescriptions like anyone else—but the more experienced they are in your genre, the less likely they are to give you bad advice.

More than anyone else though, trust yourself. You alone know your story and what you are trying to accomplish, and you alone are responsible for turning the story into whatever it becomes.

Sometimes, a reader's diagnosis or prescription will feel right—it will strike a chord, possibly even solving multiple problems for you at once. This is great! It's exactly what you want feedback for.

But other times, a prescribed solution won't sit right, and you won't really know why. Trust your feelings, but don't ignore the feedback entirely. Something didn't work for the reader, and it's up to you—and only you—to figure out what.

If it's not an experiment, why bother?

I've had to take an extra break here due to sickness (and what a time to take a break!), but I read something a few days ago that's stuck in my head. It's from this article by David Moldawer about how your technique will never be good enough (meaning that's not a reason to stop creating):

"If it's not an experiment," Schütte writes, "why bother?" Any new work is an experiment. How can any experiment be executed perfectly? What you're about to write hasn't ever been written before, right? That means no one's ever read it. Therefore, you have no way of knowing for certain how it should be received, let alone how it will. How can you perfect your approach to making something no one's ever made before?

I have spent a significant amount of my writing time worrying about finding the perfect words, the perfect characters, the perfect plot—worrying so much that I often don't write at all. I know I am not alone in this.

And that's why this stuck in my head. The story I'm working on is an experiment. It's literally never been told before, and nobody knows how it should be told. How could they?

And so... how could I possibly know?

The only way to figure out how to tell the story is to put words on the page and see what it's like. Try things. Change things.

Experiment.

It's almost freeing when you think about it like that.

How to Write SFF: The Concept of Abeyance

If you're going to write sci-fi or fantasy, then you need to know about abeyance. Abeyance in fiction is the reader's willingness to trust that something they don't understand will be made clear later.

All fiction uses abeyance to some extent. For example, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time begins like this:

2.           It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed.

On first read, the reader doesn't know what dog, why its eyes are closed, or who Mrs. Shear is,* but they trust that the author will fill them in eventually. That's what good fiction does.

* They also don't know why the first chapter is number 2 instead of number 1, which is a pretty cool and subtle bit of abeyance on its own.

All fiction does this—it's part of the mystery that draws readers in—but sci-fi/fantasy takes abeyance even further, casually using made-up words as though the reader already knows what they mean.

Take a look at these examples. Terms or phrases in bold require some level of abeyance:

[Foundation by Isaac Asimov] His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hypervideo, and occasionally in tremendous three-dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was.

[The Peripheral by William Gibson] They didn't think Flynne's brother had PTSD, but that sometimes the haptics glitched him. They said it was like phantom limb, ghosts of the tattoos he'd worn in the war, put there to tell him when to run, when to be still, when to do the badass dance, which direction and what range. 

[The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien] In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. 

[Dune by Frank Herbert] By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow—hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels. 

["Pawn's Gambit" by Adam Heine (me)] The netter’s timing couldn’t have been worse. I’d been in Savajinn a week, looking for a knocker named Tarc. A whole bleeding week. When Tarc finally agreed to meet, at the Sick Savaj, that’s when the netter decided to show up. 

Some of these terms are explained shortly after. For example, Tolkien explicitly describes what hobbits are but only after a page or two of acting as though the reader should already know.

Some of them are obvious from context. For example, bleeding is obviously an intensive like "damned" or "bloody."

Others are never explained directly but their meanings are clarified through later context. For example, Foundation eventually addresses the Empire and Synnax, and "Pawn's Gambit" eventually hints that a netter is something like a bounty hunter.

Some of these aren't literal terms at all. "A witch shadow," for example, isn't meant to be literal, but in speculative fiction, the reader can't be sure until they know more about the world!

And some of these things are never explained. It's up to the reader to figure out what they mean, or might mean, from the limited clues they are given—or they might never learn any more than what's given.

Often, these last ones don't matter. For example, it doesn't matter what a hypervideo or a suspensor lamp actually is; it's enough to know that they are some form of video and light source, respectively.

Others matter quite a bit. For example, Flynne's brother's haptics are a key part of his character, but the reader doesn't really get a straightforward explanation of what they are—only contextual clues that the reader pieces together as the story continues.

Why do this?

Why drop terms and phrases that might confuse the reader or frustrate them? Here are a few good reasons:

1. It's immersive. Term-drops like this help the reader feel like they are stepping into another world. Conversely, if you stop to explain every little thing, it can pull the reader out of the story.
2. Sci-fi/fantasy readers expect it. This kind of mini-mystery—piecing together the shape of the novel's world—is one of the things genre fans love about speculative fiction.
3. It streamlines the narrative. It keeps the action moving and alleviates the need for the dreaded infodump.

Using abeyance requires a balance, but it's an important tool that every speculative fiction writer should be aware of.

Won't this frustrate readers?

So, I'll be the first to admit that some readers really don't like this kind of in-world term-dumping. When I was writing "Pawn's Gambit," one critiquer offered to send me a book written entirely in the Scottish dialect because "You deserve it past [sic] the headache I got from reading your short story."

You can't please everybody.

But you also don't have to. The other twelve critiquers who read the same story loved it (as did Beneath Ceaseless Skies), and my novel set in the same world—with all the same slang and obfuscated dialect—got me an agent. So long as the reader can understand what's happening, they don't need to understand every bit of in-world jargon. In fact, a lot of readers will enjoy it.

Finding a Balance

It's difficult to figure out how much is too much when requiring abeyance of your readers. Finding the right balance is an art, and you have to make mistakes to figure out what works. Here are some tips to do that:

1. Understand your audience. Sci-fi/fantasy readers are generally more tolerant of abeyance, but even within the genre, every reader is different. Read books like yours and pay attention to how much they use abeyance in their own writing to get a feel for it.
2. Employ beta readers. I cannot stress enough how helpful beta readers are for writing a novel. They're kind of like a focus group for the things you are unsure of. Every writer needs some.
3. Hire an editor. I mean, obviously I would say that, but you know, only hire one if you really need them.

Even with beta readers and editors, you want to find those who know your genre or are part of your intended audience. A professional editor who doesn't read much sci-fi might push you to include more infodumps than a sci-fi editor would, for example.

Lastly, trust yourself. Yes, it's hard to read your own work with fresh eyes, but you are the only person who knows what you're trying to do. Listen to the feedback you get, but listen to yourself too.

I mean, you are writing what you want to read, right?

Do I Need an Editor?

Hiring an editor can be expensive and scary, but do you need one? That depends on a lot of things—your publishing goals, current progress on your novel, where you are as a writer, your financial resources, etc. Ultimately, it's a question only you can answer.

Today's post is an effort to help you make that decision. I'm aware there is a potential conflict of interest in that I am an editor-for-hire, but you're all very smart. I trust you can take my opinions to make your own informed decisions.

I'm Just Starting My First Novel

If you're just starting to write—you haven't even finished a draft yet—I'm going to say no, you don't need a professional editor.

An editor could provide high-level feedback on your first chapters or even your outline. Depending on your experience and personal goals, that might be really useful to you. But for most people, you will learn far more by finishing a novel (including but not limited to whether the writing life is even for you) than you will from professional feedback at this stage.

If you really want help with that first novel, then what you might want is a writing coach, not an editor.

I Finished My First Novel

That's great! Finishing a novel is hard! The question now is what do you want to do with it? You need revisions, and you very likely need extra eyes on it for objective feedback, but do you need a professional editor for those things?

Maybe. First, consider the following:

• Do you want to publish this novel for a larger audience (i.e., people you don't know)?
• Is this novel so important that you want to get it just right? (Let it be known that most writers feel this way about their first novels.)
• Have you gotten feedback from others yet?
• Can you ruthlessly rip your novel apart? Are you willing to delete whole chapters, rewrite whole sections, or worse?
• Can you afford it? And can you afford multiple rounds of editing if it comes to that?

If the answer to most of these is no, then you might not need a professional editor yet. The price of editing has to be worth what you get out of it—including how much of the editor's advice you are able to act on!

Before seeking a professional editor, try to get feedback from people you know. You can learn a lot from other writers or even friends and family, and it won't cost you any extra.

Don't know any other writers? Dig around online. Hang out on social media. Put out a call to swap beta reads. And keep track of the people who say yes! Not only can you get extra feedback this way, but it's also a great way to find new friends.

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Let's say your novel is finished, you've gotten high-level feedback (professional or not), and you've completed your revisions. Your novel is pretty good, you'd say. Now, do you need an editor?

Depends. What do you want to do with that novel?

I Want to Get an Agent

In general, agents are looking for two things: (1) is your story something they can sell and (2) is it written well enough to sell it. After you've finished the novel, there's little you can do about the first one—the agent will either like your story or not.

The second is where an editor can play a role, but is hiring one necessary? Again, this is a maybe. If you have no other way to get feedback, then a professional editor can provide that for you. If you've received several rejections—I'm talking dozens, probably hundreds of rejections, maybe even on multiple novels—then a professional editor might be able to help you figure out why and how to move forward.

Do not assume that an agent will edit your novel for you. Most don't, and those that do are usually just looking at massaging certain selling points so they can more easily pitch it to publishers.

But also, don't assume you need a professional edit to get an agent. You do need feedback, but it may or may not need to be professional at this point. That's up to you.

I Have an Agent

If you have an agent and are shopping your novel to publishers, then ask your agent about this. That's what they're there for, after all.

If you have a publisher, then you probably don't need a freelance editor. The publisher is likely doing that work as part of your deal.

I'm Ready to Self-Publish

You've finished your novel, gotten your feedback, revised it like crazy, and now you're ready to push that button and rake in the dough. Should you get a professional edit first?

Yes. HECK yes! At the very least, you want a proofread to make sure there are no obvious errors, but you probably also want a line edit (sometimes called a copyedit) to identify weaknesses, inconsistencies, and make your prose really sing.

A publishing press will do this for you, big or small. It's part of the deal that benefits both the press and the author by putting your best foot forward. But if you are your publisher, then—just like getting a book cover, typesetting, marketing, etc.—you are the only one who's going to do this for you.

Don't assume you can catch everything yourself. I have edited for a number of excellent authors, and no matter how good or experienced they are, I have always found ways to improve their work—not because they aren't as good as they think, and not because I'm so awesome, but because a novel is never perfect, and it is always worth the money to improve it.

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This doesn't cover every possible scenario of course, but these are the most common points at which you might consider hiring a professional.

And for your second, third, or fourth novel? I'd say the calculations are the same, except now you have more experience as a writer (and possibly as an agent-seeker or a published author, depending on what you did with those first novels). If anything, you can trust your gut even more about whether a professional edit can help you.

If you are considering a professional edit, I'm happy to help. I can even provide a free sample edit to help you decide. But there are many, many other editors who can help you as well. I encourage you to do your research, compare, and find the best editor for you and your work.

If you're willing to do all of that, you are unlikely to regret it.

Prequels, Can They Ever Be Good?

The year was 1999. My generation hadn't had a new Star Wars movie in sixteen years. We believed the series was done. Over. The trilogy had been groundbreaking, but it was in the past never to be revisited. Then, George Lucas announced the release of The Phantom Menace.

It is difficult to convey to my Gen Z kids how big a deal this was, how over-the-top excited we all were to walk into that theater to see the first new Star Wars movie in sixteen years...

...and how thoroughly disappointed we were walking out.

I did not enjoy The Phantom Menace. A lot of us didn't, and this experience cemented my skepticism toward movie releases for decades.

It's pretty easy to find examples of prequel let-downs. The Star Wars prequel trilogy. The Scorpion King. The Grindelwald movies. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.* It happens so often that it raises the question: Is it possible for a prequel to be good?

* And I apologize if you love any of these examples I chose. Although you might be in the minority, I love that these bring you joy anyway. Don't let me or anyone steal that from you.

My answer—informed as it was by my teenage Star Wars disillusionment—used to be no, of course not, prequels, by definition, are a bad idea. But as more counterexamples appear, I'm beginning to change my mind. What makes prequels bad is what makes any movie bad (e.g., when it's a blatant cash grab) but they can be done well.

I think a good prequel requires three things:

• An intriguing question
• A story that stands on its own
• Characters who grow

Let's take a look.

An Intriguing Question

For a prequel to be interesting, it has to promise an answer that fans of the original actually want. Why does Maleficent hate the king and queen so much? How did Mike and Sully become friends? How did Vito Corleone become so powerful?

An intriguing question isn't enough to make a prequel good, but it's a necessary start. If the fans don't care about the mystery that connects the prequel to the original, then it's hard to care about the prequel at all.

Also...

The question can't be dumb. We don't care how Han swindled the Falcon from Lando or what Obi-Wan was doing in his cave while Luke grew up. We don't need to see how the wizard came to Oz or learn why Cruella de Vil wants to skin puppies. The originals give us enough information that we can fill these gaps in our head. The questions might be interesting, but they're not worth making a whole new story about.

The answer can't be dumb. Han Solo's name can just be his name; it doesn't have to be a thing. And God help me but the mystery of the Force was so much cooler without a scientific explanation. If you're going to use a prequel to answer some outstanding mystery, your answer has got to be cooler than any fan theory out there (spoiler: that's very hard to do).

A Story That Stands on its Own

If the goal of your prequel is solely to explain where the protagonist got all her character quirks, then it might not be a story worth telling. If you're going to write a whole novel (or make a whole movie) out of an origin story, that story should be just as compelling to a newcomer as it is to the fans.

How to do that is the same as telling any story: give the protagonist goals and motivations, obstacles, stakes, difficult choices... all the things that go into telling any story.

Do not just walk us through the protagonist's upbringing as they pick up each piece of their iconic outfit.

Characters Who Grow

This is part of telling a standalone story, but it's important enough that it demands its own section. In a prequel, your fans already know how or where the protagonist ends up. We know Elphaba becomes the wicked witch. We know Cassian ends up a jaded pilot for the Rebel Alliance. We know Obi-Wan ends up an old hermit in a cave on Tatooine. What we don't know is how they got there.

This can be great (an intriguing mystery even!) if your protagonist starts off in an unexpected place—Elphaba as a misunderstood sorceress with a heart of gold or Cassian as a down-on-his-luck orphan who wants nothing to do with the rebellion against the Empire.

It works less well if your protagonist starts in the exact same place, physically and developmentally, as they finish. The end of Revenge of the Sith had already placed Obi-Wan on Tatooine. He had already learned to keep his head down, just wanting to keep Luke and his family out of trouble from the Empire—the same place and with the same goals and motivation he had at the beginning of A New Hope.

This makes it very hard to care about his actions in the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. He's already where we know he's going to end up! There's nothing he can learn (that wouldn't undercut the action of the original movies)! He doesn't really grow, so there's no compelling reason to watch.

Ensuring that your characters grow and change in the prequel can prevent this.

What a Good Prequel Can Do for You

Done well, a good prequel can be a joy to fans of the original while also fully entertaining the uninitiated. It can give your audience those dopamine hits of fan service while still delivering a new, fantastic story.

A good prequel can also make the original better—adding depth or new perspective to an old, familiar story. It can create new fans and make existing ones want to revisit that world again.

I'm still wary about prequels. More often than not, the backstories in the audience's heads are cooler than the one you can give them. But there are ways to do it well, to expand the world of your story and tell a new story that's worth telling.

You just need to care about it and put in the work.

Writing as Resistance

Politically speaking, a lot happened since I left. I knew it would—I was traveling to the US on Election Day, after all—but the results are not what I hoped. (According to current voting counts, they're not what a majority of voters wanted either.)

It's been almost a month since the election, and people are still hurting. Still scared. Still anxious. And why wouldn't they be? We don't yet know what will happen next. I know not everyone believes the US is headed toward an autocratic hellscape, but historical precedent does us few favors here.

To those of you who are worried like me: It's okay to be anxious. Feel what you gotta feel. I'm still considering what I can do in the coming months and years, but here's one thing I do know:

We can write.

Stories give us hope. When the protagonist gets back up after being left for dead, it makes us believe we can do the same. When the heroes win against all odds—when Katara defeats Azula, when Sam carries Frodo to Mount Doom, when Luke strikes the Death Star's core—it reminds us that those in power are vulnerable.

Even the coziest stories give us joy and an escape, and these are every bit as necessary as hope. Stories also share the power of love and connection. They remind us what we are fighting for.

Stories give us symbols. Alan Moore inspired the face of Anonymous, and Katniss's three-finger salute has been considered cause for arrest. Symbols are powerful. They remind us that we are not alone. They terrify oppressors by reminding them how outnumbered they are.

Stories foster empathy. Empathy is the antidote to fascism. It is vital to creating a world we can all live in together.

No matter what you feel about the present time, even if you feel powerless, know that your stories matter and are absolutely necessary.

There's a reason fascist regimes always ban books.

It is the same reason we need to write them.

Personal Status

Some quick, personal updates for those of you who have been lacking such things.

As I said in July, my long-term gamedev contracts ended, and I am all in on the freelance train again. Honestly, I'm happy about that. I love editing. It lets me help authors (which I love) and maintain an incredibly flexible schedule (which I need). Only problem is I have to constantly find jobs.

Here are some burners I've got going to address that:

• I'm a contractor for Scribendi, Inc., editing everything from resumes to research papers to admission essays. It's not my dream job (and the pay is only okay), but it keeps me somewhat afloat (and has done since 2017; I'm very thankful for them).
• I'm now also a contractor for Cambridge Proofreading (because Scribendi work was sparse, but my daughter said, "Hey, aren't there other companies like Scribendi?"—turns out she was right).
• I have recently contracted as an editor/coach with KN Literary Arts. This is very cool in theory. Among other things, I love the idea of coaching, and this would let me work on novels and memoirs. It's still early days, though. We'll see how this pans out in terms of stability.
• And of course, I'm always seeking clients right here on the site. These are my favorite (and not just because they pay the best). I am always excited when one of you sends me an e-mail about helping you with something you've written.

All of this is slow going, but it's going. There was a time, years ago, when I was getting clients semi-regularly and also, like, streaming and playing D&D online and stuff. I hope to find some of that again.

The hard part is building trust and patience in myself. There's a lot (A LOT) to be said for predictable work and income. But freedom's pretty great too. If I can create some stability with it, that would be amazing.

What about writing?

That's happening, but it's very much back-burner at the moment. It's difficult to allocate time for it when I could be making money instead, but I haven't quit yet. Just seeking a bit more freelance stability first.

Ah, but I do have something new sitting with Broken Eye Books. Gotta wait for that, though.

Publishing, man. It's slow.

And the kids?

Well, a bunch of them have recently graduated high school or are about to, which is going to change my schedule in unpredictable ways. Theoretically, I'll have more time when they leave and/or take care of themselves, but we'll see what happens.

Like Master Yoda says...

One last administrative note: I'll be traveling for a couple of weeks, and the blog will be quiet during that time. I should return by December at the latest. Subscribe or watch my socials to stay up to date.

What Improvement Actually Looks Like

One of my favorite games of all time and one of the hardest high-precision platformers I have ever played is Celeste. This game asks you to traverse a series of deadly rooms through a combination of jumps, dashes, and wall climbs. Most rooms can be traversed in a matter of seconds, though you will often die dozens of times before that happens.

Some rooms are much longer. A successful run through the final room, for example, can take more than two minutes. Here's a clip if you want to see it (SPOILER):

I spent hours of trial and error trying to traverse this room. My kids watched sometimes, and I found an interesting phenomenon: Every time I said, "I'm getting better! Look how far I can get," I would immediately die several times on the early, "easy" parts that I thought I had figured out.

It was frustrating (and embarrassing). I felt like I'd learned nothing, like my previous successes had been luck, and I was lying to myself that I was improving at all.

That's because, like most people, I believed this:

It makes sense, right? Put the time in, and you will get better (and you'll never go back down to a previous level, because you can't! You're better now!).

But what happened to me was this:

I would get consistently better and then suddenly get worse—a lot worse, in places that I thought I had already figured out. It led me to believe that I hadn't gotten better at all. I became disillusioned, frustrated, and discouraged.

I bet you're familiar with this feeling.

This pattern—trying to improve, getting better for a bit, then failing more than we think we should—can be seen over and over again in everything: playing piano, learning to snowboard, writing more words per day, lifting weights, breaking a bad habit, improving ourselves through therapy, and on and on.

It can be frustrating when we feel like we've slid backwards, like we're not improving at all and will maybe never improve.

But if you keep going, you find a strange, new truth:

Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line. It has peaks and dips and plateaus and more dips, but so long as you continue, it always, always goes up—even when it doesn't feel like it.

Failing repeatedly in Celeste (while telling my kids, "Look what I can do!") helped prove this to myself. I wanted to finish the room, and I got frustrated every time I died. To succeed, I had to change my goal from "finish the room" to "practice toward consistency."

I would celebrate the small victories: when I did an early bit of platforming well, when I became more consistent at a part that used to give me trouble, even when I died in a way I never had before. I wasn't reaching new lengths in the room, but I was slowly improving and, perhaps more importantly, enjoying every run even though I died hundreds(!) of times.

This applies to writing too. Maybe I don't hit 1,000 words every day, but I can celebrate that I am hitting 500 every day—or 200! Or 50! I can even celebrate that I just sat down to write multiple days in a row. I can celebrate writing a sentence or even simply opening my document without fear.

And when I fail at these things, I can remember that's part of the process too. Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line, and I'm going to fail sometimes. It's impossible not to! But forward is forward.

All of which is to say: don't give up. So long as you keep going, you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Trust the process.

Using Description to Convey Emotion

I have a confession. Historically, I have been very bad at description. I didn't like it. I skimmed it when I read it (do you know how much description there is in The Count of Monte Cristo or Les Miserables?), and I paid it little attention when I wrote it (I still do in my first drafts).

Over time, I recognized how description could be good, but I still thought that I wasn't good at it. I thought I wasn't "that kind of writer."

I have since learned that description is not only vital for grounding the reader, but it is also a useful—often critical—tool for conveying emotion.

And like every skill, it is something that can be learned.

A lack of description is one of the most common weaknesses I see when editing authors' fiction. I talked about grounding the reader before. Today, I want to talk about using that grounding to convey emotion.

The Con Artist and the Ninja

This example is adapted from an old WIP of mine. Domino is a young con artist, and Ko is basically a ninja. In this scene, they have just been arrested and are on their way to the governing authorities. Domino is worried that things aren't going as he planned.

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino could be in serious trouble.

This short description is fine. Serviceable. We know who's here, where they are, and what they're doing, and the sweat on Domino's shirt even gives us a hint of his emotional state.

But we can do more. We might describe the carriage ride, for example, and use that to convey Domino's worries.

The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest.

The jolts don't directly tell us what Domino's feeling, but they imply it. If he were calm or happy, he wouldn't feel "every jolt in his chest." Instead, he might "sway with the rhythmic rocking of the carriage" or notice "the music of the wheels against the cobblestones." All of these accurately describe sound and feel of the carriage, but each one evokes different emotions.

We could also describe Ko a bit more, conveying not only how the ninja appears but how Domino feels about him.

Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Here, we get the contrast between Domino's and Ko's emotional states, and the word "irritatingly" tells us how Domino feels about it. In doing so, the reader can feel what Domino is feeling—not just worried about seeing the Marshal but frustrated that Ko doesn't feel the same.

That's probably enough description to paint the scene. (It might even be too much, but that's what editors are for.) Let's put it together and see:

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino might be in serious trouble.

It doesn't take much, just an extra line here and there to paint more of the scene while also showing the emotions you want the reader to share.

Think about what's happening in the scene—what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or even tasted. Then, think about what the characters are feeling and use that to color what is described and how.

It'll take practice, and that's okay! The original passage I started with had been through several edits and beta reads, and I still found ways to improve it just now. (Kinda makes me wanna go back to this WIP, to be honest.)

Just keep writing, keep learning, and trust that you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.