Ian Smith, ERWA Flasher Gallery editor

I recently read an entertaining-enough adult romance story which provides a good example of the need to do some research, even in fiction.

No, I won’t name the book or author, as I don’t think that would be fair, but I did e-mail some constructive comments to the author.

Firstly, let me say I thought it was a perfectly reasonable adult romance, a variation on the “bad-start-to-happy-ever-after” theme. The main male character was British, the main female was American. They were both actors who met while working on a production in the UK, and a large proportion of the story took place in London. It had all the usual elements, a bad start on first meeting, then becoming friendlier, working through misunderstandings, nearly splitting up and then their happy ending. The steamy bits were nicely done, and came at a perfectly reasonable point in the development of their relationship.

But it struck me that the (American) author hadn’t thought about the setting. There were a number of things which made me think “not the Brtain I know”, and these rather irritated me. As the saying goes, the devil’s in the details.

The American character was described using what sounded like a modern smart phone at the same time that the British character was using a “brick-like” one. No matter how tempting it might be to make a joke about “backward Brits”, we’ve always had much the same range of mobile phones as the US. And they’ve NEVER been “cellular phones” in the UK, always “mobile phones”.

A passing reference was made to “foggy London streets”. London hasn’t been notably foggy for decades. The Clean Air Act 1956 was a response to London’s “Great Smog” of 1952, and fog is now rare in major cities. The popular idea of a foggy London in fiction probably dates back to the Sherlock Holmes stories, which were set in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

At one point, the female character was looking at all the unfamiliar pound notes in her purse. Being pedantic, we’ve not had pound notes since 1988. If you want to bemuse a contemporary character with unfamiliar British money, we have dual-colour £1 and £2 coins, and have had plastic £5 notes since 2016 and plastic £10 notes since 2017. These are a bit annoying, as they slide past each other very readily. Paper pound notes are still legal tender in Scotland and the Isle of Man, but these wouldn’t be recognised in England and Wales. As in the US, card payments are about as common as cash ones.

The script used the word “chippie” as a slang term for a young woman. For most Brits, that’s where we buy our take-away fish and chips, but it’s also used as an informal reference to a carpenter. Female bus conductors and ticket collectors were sometimes referred to as “clippies” in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and I suppose that could easily be mispronounced.

The characters referred to each other as “dear” in conversations. We don’t generally do that, outside some regional and/or social groups, and many Brits would actually find it pretty patronising. We have quite a range of regional accents and dialects across the UK, and these can be a minefield to British writers, let alone ones from other countries. Quite a lot of people in Britain are puzzled by dialogue from time to time when watching episodes of “Shetland” or “Vera”, TV drama shows where the characters have strong regional accents.

When the two main characters were making friends, he took her to a pub and bought her a pint of Guinness, his favourite tipple. Guinness is certainly a popular drink in Britain, but I thought it highly unlikely that a British man would buy an American woman a pint of it by default, even if it’s his drink of choice. Maybe a half-pint, but he’d be far more likely to offer her wine or lager. She might taste his, out of curiosity, and probably pull a face. Most pubs will offer a range of beers, lagers and ciders, often ranging from mass-produced brews to craft beers. Women typically drink half-pints, but plenty now drink pints, and, if they try to match the guys drink-for-drink, probably spend a fair proportion of their evening visiting the ladies loo.

See how I snuck in some genuine British slang, “loo” for toilet? Sneaky, eh? It’s also commonly used in Australia and New Zealand, according to wikipedia.

The character also referred to Guinness being better direct from the brewery, which is widely accepted as a fact. But the brewery is in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, so not exactly convenient for anyone in London to pop out for a quick pint.

The male character was “throwing darts” in the pub with his mates. We “play darts”, not “throw darts”. Yes, we obviously throw darts, but that’s the verb, not the expression for the game.

He stopped off at a liqor store for some alcoholic drinks. We don’t have retail outlets called “liqor stores”, and rarely refer to it as “liquor” in everyday English. We usually buy alcoholic drinks from supermarkets or “off-licences”, shops which sell alcohol for consumption off the premises. The term relates to our licencing law for alcoholic drinks. Some off-licences are essentially supermarkets for wine.

He also ordered some food to take away from a pub. It’s pretty unusual for pubs to do take-away food, especially in towns and cities with lots of fast-food outlets. They often make a better profit on the drinks customers have with food they eat in the pub than on the food itself. If he wanted to pre-order take-away food, he’d contact a particular outlet. In reality, I guess he’d be likely to use one of the popular app-based services to order food to be delivered to his home.

There are some differences between UK and US English which can trip up writers from both sides of the Atlantic. For example, Brits would not say they were pushing things “off of” or taking things from “inside of” something. We push things off, or take things out. Little details, yes, but silly mistakes can make a reader pause and mentally leave the story for a second or two.

So, what can we do?

Research, that’s what!

Google really is the writer’s friend, so get stuck in and use it.

Social media is such an easy way for writers to ask their “friends” in other countries for information, facts or advice. Recruit a few as beta-readers and pay close attention to their feedback, especially about details. You could join an international constructive critiquing group for more private sharing of drafts and comments.

Watch British productions on TV or British films (movies in the US) for research purposes, and pay attention to the props, the locations, the way the characters talk. It isn’t always “accurate”, but it’s usually pretty reasonable. Read books or listen to audiobooks written by British authors set in modern-day Britain.

Want to look around the real, modern-day Britain from the comfort of your own home? Just use streetview.

If an American was reading a story I’d written in which an American character didn’t ring true for them, or I described something “American” which struck them as incongruous or even plain wrong, I’d appreciate being told about it, ideally politely.

How else can I learn to write better?

Two of the questions I see frequently posted in some Facebook groups for writers run along the lines of:

1 – I’ve written my story, now what?

2 – How will I know when I’ve finished editing?

My answers, which are much the same as those offered by many others, are:

1 – Revise it.

2 – You never do – you get to an “it’ll do” stage.

Questions like these are far more common in the groups for those with less experience of writing, and I phrase my responses in what I hope is an encouraging way. Let’s face it, every writer appreciates motivation to revise a story they’ve just spent weeks, months or even years working on. And are quite possibly a little fed up with…

I like the quote “the first draft is just you telling yourself the story”, attributed to the late Terry Pratchett, a writer notable for producing rather a lot of very popular books. When I’m working on a story, it certainly feels like that to me, as if I’m trying to write out something I already know, but can’t quite remember.

The participants in the ERWA “storytime” workshop have probably got used to my way of working on longer stories, typically writing and posting one chapter a week for comments anyone is willing to offer. I’m more of a pantser than a plotter, and I find it really helpful to have the discipline of a self-imposed target. Yes, sometimes I realise I really needed to have introduced something in one of the earlier chapters. I recently finished the first draft of a 57,000-word story and only realised something important about my two main characters while writing the final chapter. So, something to work on during revision.

Once I’ve finished, I find it useful to wait a few weeks before starting on revisions. It’s always provided me with a slight “detachment” from the story, which seems to help me be rather more objective about it. For me, revision is about trying to tell the story to readers as well as possible. I pay attention to things like the time frame and chronology; consistency of locations, descriptions and characters (“continuity issues”); trying to make action scenes clear; clarifying who “her” and “she” are in scenes involving two or more women, and so on.

For me, character development is important; how do my main characters change as a result of their experiences, and how do I show that in my telling of their story?

My working practice is to work away and frequently save the new versions with different file names. There’s little issue with disc space these days – my current draft of a 49,000 word story is only 3.5 MBytes. And once I reach the end, I’ll review and revise it again, usually three or four times in total. Eventually, I reach a point where I feel I’ve done as much as I can, even though I’m sure it could be better. Or maybe I just reach the point where I’ve simply had enough of the story?

Before I submit a story, I want it to be in a good shape. I’d like the editors to think I’ve adopted a “professional” approach to my writing, as that might help them feel confident I’ll have the same attitude while working with them.

When a story’s been accepted, every editor I’ve worked with has helped me tell it better than I could have done on my own. Yes, of course I feel anxious when I got the first e-mail from an editor with their annotated copy of my story. But every time, the comments and suggestions were helpful and constructive.

Self-editing (or revising) is one thing, but editing someone else’s work is quite another. I’ve offered detailed constructive comments as a beta-reader, but never tried to edit even a short story. I think that anyone willing to invest that much time and effort into helping another writer develop their own story deserves our gratitude and admiration, as well as fair payment.

Even when the editor and I have agreed that it’s “done”, there are still things we could have changed. I don’t suppose many writers are ever completely happy with their published stories. As their experience grows, no doubt they realise they could have written things differently, added a few more scenes to give more depth to the story, and so on.

As my publisher recently gave up the struggle and returned my rights, I’m revising the three novellas involved to submit to another publisher. These were the first three in a planned series of five, and the first draft of the fourth is ready for revision, too. It’s interesting to look back on stories I wrote three or four years ago, now that these characters and their stories have developed in my own mind. It’s a chance for me to think how they and their relationships develop across the series, how things move on from one book to the next, and address anything I think isn’t as good as I can make it.

So, you’ve written your story? Great, that’s an achievement in itself – most people don’t finish books they set out to write.

You’ve told yourself the story.

Now revise it.

And revise the revision.

And maybe revise that revision.

Then you’re ready to let other people read your story.

If they’re beta-readers, you may find it helpful to ask for comments on specific things, like characters, dialogue, or the development of relations, as well as general feedback. Read and think about their comments, and revise the story as you think is necessary.

If an editor’s the next person to read it, you can expect to produce another revision or two… But at the end, you’ll have a better telling of your story.

As an aside, I’ve not tracked down the source of Terry’s quote, but I found this interesting article, a transcript of Terry Pratchett and Gerald Seymour in conversation with David Freeman at the 2001 Cheltenham Literary Festival. Clearly, Terry’s way of writing wasn’t quite what you might guess from the quote, and it neatly illustrates the contrasting ways these two authors found worked for them.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/08/fiction.terrypratchett

Ian Smith

ERWA Flasher and Quickie Editor

This post is about how to avoid repetition in your writing, or to put it another way, how to avoid repetition in your writing (see what I did there?).

Writers sometimes use repeating elements intentionally because it’s a powerful tool for adding emphasis. Poets use repetition and anaphora to give rhythm and cadence to their writing. But what I know about poetry could be inscribed on the sex organ of a dwarf-ladybird, so I have no intention of trying to explain how repetition should be used to enhance your writing.

Here’s one of my favourite examples of intentional repetition, where the same phrase is used several times to emphasise the writer’s message.

This post is aimed at how to avoid the unintentional repetitions that find their way into our stories.

Repetition isn’t just about telling the reader the same information several times, overusing certain words or using the same word more than once in a sentence.

Avoiding repetition is about making your piece of work as diverse as possible, and you can do this by varying the word choice, the sentence structure and the paragraph length.

All writers have their own style and their own voice, and they also have their own repetitive quirks. It usually takes someone else to point them out to us – either our editor or readers offering a critique. Once you become aware of these quirks, you can use the ‘Find’ tool on Word and go through your manuscript to see if you need to remove or replace any of them.

This is referred to as a ‘Britney Edit’ (oops, I did it again).

The internet is full of help pages and tips on how to avoid repetition in your written work, and below are some of the ones I think are the most helpful.

1. Read your work out loud.

Our eyes skip over our own words—especially when we’ve read them so many times. But by reading them out loud it gives a new perspective, and it makes it easier to hear you’ve used some words about twenty times in a chapter. Read slowly and listen to your words, then cut anything your hear too often.

2. Avoid overused words

Unique words are fairly easy to avoid. Once you’ve used antidisestablishmentarianism, it’s easy to remember you’ve already enlightened your readers to your brilliant vocabulary. It’s more likely to be the common words that are the problem. Apparently, five of the most frequently overused words are: so, still, though, very and well. Check your own stories and see how often you use these words, and then decide if you actually need them or not.

I was first alerted to my overuse of ‘realise’ by a guy in the US. Each time he saw my UK spelling, underlined in red, it highlighted the fact I had about ten instances of the word in each chapter.

3. Separate narrative from dialogue

If you intentionally have a character using a particular word or phrase in his dialogue to make him more recognisable, try to make sure you don’t overuse that word or phrase anywhere else in the story.

4. Buy yourself a thesaurus

To avoid repeating words, a quick and easy solution (if you’re using Microsoft Word) is to right-click on the word and choose ‘synonyms’ from the dropdown menu. This will give you a few common alternatives. This is also useful when eliminating duplicated words within the same sentence. However, Microsoft don’t seem to have considered authors of erotica when they filled in the synonyms. For most of the common terms we use for body parts, they suggest we consult a thesaurus, but as alternatives for ‘cock’ they suggest raise, tilt, lift, incline or angle.

5. Rotate your characters’ names for pronouns.

This is another area where reading out loud can help you find a good balance. Although you want the reader to be sure who is speaking, you don’t want to ram it down their throats (unless that’s part of the scene you’re writing).

Pronouns like he and she tend to be ‘silent’ words and hardly noticed.

But if you’ve ever written a sex scene involving more than one character of the same gender (for example, MM, FF, MFM or MFF), you’ll be aware how pronouns are much less user-friendly in those circumstances.

6. It’s not just the words; think about sentence and paragraph variation

Try and introduce variety into the length of the sentences, with some short and some longer (though be conscious that overly-long and complicated sentences make it difficult for readers, especially if they’re only using one hand).

Vary the structure of your sentences, and make sure you don’t start each sentence in the same way. If every sentence begins with the same words or has the same structure, then the pace of your story will be the same and it will make it feel repetitive. It’s the same thing with paragraphs. These can be anything from a single sentence to five or more sentences. They’re there to give readers a break—but giving them breaks at exactly the same time over and again gets repetitive.

After you’ve finished your piece (be it a chapter or a full manuscript), quickly skim the first few words of each paragraph to make sure you’ve not repeated paragraph intros. It’s very easy to do without noticing it.

7. Sometimes you can use the same words

As mentioned earlier about pronouns being ‘silent’, another word that seems to slip by readers without them noticing is ‘said’. This is a word you can use many times, as opposed to characters ‘hissing’ or ‘snarling’ too often, which readers would notice.

I try to minimise speech tags when I write, but that’s a personal thing. I see lots of writers who use he said/she said on almost every line, and apparently that doesn’t really count as repetition. But I do think that making your character’s voice identifiable helps minimise the use of speech tags.

In conclusion, avoiding unwanted repetition is about making sure your stories are diverse at every level. This includes your words, your sentences and your paragraphs.

Once you’re made aware of your own particular repetitive quirks and the mistakes you commonly make, they become easy to avoid.