In this part of our series about the jargon of the writing community, we’ll talk about terms that relate to writing or editing your work. You’re likely to hear these phrases from critique group members, beta readers, or your editor. Think of these terms as “good writing advice”.
Oxford Comma (aka Serial Comma): A comma placed after the penultimate (next to last) item in a list, before the conjunction (“and” or “or”). There’s a lot of debate about this in literary circles, but the Oxford Comma can avoid confusion about what you’re trying to say. Compare these two sentences.
No serial comma: I want to thank my parents, John and Martha.
Serial comma: I want to thank my parents, John, and Martha.
There was even a recent court case that was decided on the basis of a missing serial comma, so be careful!
Plotter/Pantser: These refer to styles of writing. A Plotter plans and outlines their book before they write. A Pantser just sits down at the keyboard, puts their characters into a scene, says “Action!”, and records what happens to them. The author can only see as far ahead as their headlights show.
They’re called Pantsers because they write “by the seat of their pants”. This term comes from the early days of aviation, when pilots didn’t have any instruments to tell them what the plane was doing. They only way they knew was by feeling the vibration of the plane—literally, by the seat of their pants!
Kill Your Darlings: A lot of people think this refers to killing off your favorite character. But what it really means is deleting part of your book that you think is the most wonderful thing you’ve ever written, but that doesn’t add anything to the story. This can include side plots, secondary characters, scenes descriptions, or anything that doesn’t move the story forward.
Head-Hopping: This refers to changing the POV in the middle of a scene. You’re reading the scene from one character’s perspective, then suddenly you’re in another character’s head. This can confuse readers, which can pull them out of the story into their own head and make them ask, “Wait… what’s going on here?” And that’s not a good thing. This is another complicated subject, and new authors should read up on it. A good editor will spot head hopping immediately and call you out on it! Here’s on article with a good discussion of head-hopping:
What is head-hopping, and is it spoiling your fiction writing?
Show, Don’t Tell: This is telling: “Sarah was furious. ‘You can’t do that to me!'” You’re telling the reader what Sarah is feeling. This is showing: “Sarah’s face turned red, and she took a step towards John and poked him in the chest with her finger. ‘You can’t do that to me!'”
Showing can engage the reader more, and it also leaves something to their imagination or lets you leave subtle clues about what’s going on.
“‘Are we going out for dinner tonight,’ Marcie asked. Mike sighed and looked out the window.”
Why did John do that? Is Marcie always pushing him to go out somewhere, when he would rather stay home? Does this imply conflict in their relationship? Or is he just tired tonight? This can be an effective way of building suspense in the story, which keeps the reader turning the page.
This is an area well worth study. Here’s an article with examples to get you started:
Show, Don’t Tell: Tips and Examples of The Golden Rule
Infodump: Infodumps are the ultimate form of “telling”—a large block of background information, anything to a paragraph to a page or more. This is often found in fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and other genres with settings other than our current world. An infodump could also be part of the main character’s back story, which may or may not be relevant to the plot. I once read a story that started out by “introducing” the main character… and many of their friends and relatives. As I continued reading I kept expecting some of those people to appear again, but none of them ever did.
I read another book where the author interrupted an action scene to describe the condition of the ground… for two pages! I imagined the characters standing around while the author talked about the tire tracks in the mud, and then taking of running again.
There are better ways to present background information. But the author first has to decide whether it’s necessary at all. It may be some of the best paragraphs you’ve ever written. But if it bogs the story down, cut it out. (See “Kill Your Darlings” above.) And literally, cut it out! Select the text, press ctrl-x, and then paste it into a file or folder where you keep deleted text. (My folder is named “The Cutting Room Floor”.) You might be able to use it somewhere else!
Here’s good article on infodumps and how to avoid them:
Novel Boot Camp – Lecture #3: How to Avoid Info Dumping
“As you know, Bob…”: This is a form of infodumping that happens in dialog, where characters discuss something that they already know in order to fill the reader or viewer in. It’s so prevalent on television, especially in medical and police procedurals, that it’s become a joke and has it’s own entry on TV Tropes. This article explains how to recognize and eliminate it:
As You Know, Bob: Info dumping in dialogue
World Building: You open a book and you’re not in Kansas any more! You might be in Paris, but 250 years ago or 1,000 years in the future. You could be on a strange planet in a galaxy far, far away, or a fantasy world where magic works. In this type of setting, back story is important. The reader has to be able to understand how things work in this alien setting. This is where world building comes in.
In order to present a environment that the reader is willing to accept as “reality” within the story, the world has to have a consistent structure. This could include history, culture, technology, ecosystems, politics, religion, and other factors. The reader has to be willing to engage in “willing suspension of disbelief”. For example, knowing that light sabers or transporters don’t exist, but forgetting that you know that for the duration of the story.
(Historical note: Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term “suspension of disbelief” in 1817.)
It’s important to lay out enough of that structure in advance to make the rules of the world consistent. Unless you’re a pantser, in which case you need to be prepared to do a lot of revision to make it consistent after the fact! And you need to reveal that information as necessary within the flow of the story, instead of infodumping! Who’s ready for a balancing act?
You’re expecting a link at this point, right?
Worldbuilding: How to Create a Believable World for Your Fiction Characters
Story Arc (AKA Narrative Arc): This refers to the “shape” of your story. The classic story arc is a bell curve. The action rises, peaks, and falls. The dimension of the curve can be character growth, action, suspense, emotion, or any other feature of your story. Here’s an interesting article about different types of narrative arcs:
Story Arcs: Definitions and Examples of the 6 Shapes of Stories
The Hero’s Journey: Extending the story act concept further, The Hero’s Journey breaks the story arc into steps. In his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell identified a 17-step story arc that he said was the basis for every story. That’s a debatable claim, but it certainly applies to a lot of books and movies, such as Star Wars: A New Hope and The Lord of the Rings. There is a 12-step version of The Hero’s Journey (no, it doesn’t begin with admitting that you’re a fictional character) that might be a bit easier to wrap your head around. Here are a couple of articles that lay out the 12- and 17-step story arcs:
The Hero’s Journey – Mythic Structure of Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth
What is the Monomyth? An introduction to the Hero’s Journey
Author Voice: This is the quality or style that makes a writer unique. Compare the writing of several authors; for example, Ernest Hemmingway, Cormac McCarthy, and Raymond Chandler. Their styles are different, and if someone handed you a random book by one of them opened to a random page, you could probably tell who the author was pretty quickly.
Character Voice: People have different ways of expressing themselves based on their nationality, upbringing, personality, intelligence, sense of humor (or lack thereof), and any number of other factors. Giving each of your characters their own voice adds depth to your story, and helps the reader keep track of who’s speaking or narrating the scene.
How many times have you read a one-star review of a book where the reviewer is complaining that the characters are all flat and you can’t tell them apart? The author probably didn’t know about character voice, and all the characters are speaking with the author’s voice.
What, no links? Nope, I’ve been making things too easy for you. Do a search on any of the terms in this article and you’ll find dozens of pages on that topic. Read all of them! Or at least as many as you can handle. Bookmark the ones that resonate with you, and then read other articles from those sites. You’ll get a lot of information (infodumps!), and you’ll often find confliction opinions on “the right way to do things”. There are some “good practices” that are worth following, but there is no One True Way to write. Many successful authors started out by breaking the rules.
NanoWriMo (AKA NaNo): National Novel Writing Month. This is an annual event that challenges you to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That’s about 1,667 words a day. It’s a workout, it’s fun, and if you win you get a nice certificate. (You can get a t-shirt too!) It also connects you with a very supportive writing community. If you’ve been asking yourself if you can really write a novel, give NaNo a try. Even if you only make it halfway, you could still end up with a novella!
What other writing terms have you heard about the craft of writing? Add your questions and suggestions in the comments!
The next article in this series will talk about terms related to revising and editing your work.
I’m learning that killing my darlings is about trust in the process; I have to trust that I can use that line/character elsewhere, or that the idea is worthy enough to mulch and show back up in some other form. Great post!