Writing With AI: Editorial Sidekick or Genre-Mannequin? You Decide.

By Eliana Fulton

Introduction: A Bit of a Disclaimer

In the early days of fiddling around with ChatGPT, I once asked AI to rewrite a sample passage as if Amy Tan had written it. The result was a soulless amalgamation of metaphors she had used in previous works thrown together into mediocre mush. Although it was cool that the AI could make something with an aftertaste of such a fantastic writer, I would’ve rather reread “Fish Cheeks” or The Joy Luck Club. Only a human being can conjure up a world through art that is vivid and real enough to feel as though you are seeing it through their eyes. That is my disclaimer for why this post focuses on using AI as a tool for advancement and efficacy and not for large scale generation.

Last year I personally wrote a more extensive analysis of AI’s role in the publishing field at large, and YellowBird’s founder, Sara Kocek, provided a very insightful interview. One comment she made that really stuck with me was:

“What makes writing good is that it reminds us what it is to be human, and right now, AI can’t do that.”

Since then AI technology has advanced, and the broad conversation on how people in the publishing industry might use it has increased. While ChatGPT still can’t write with the emotion that a human being can, it gets a lot more convincing with every update. In fact, there is a social media trend of comparing the outrageous and easily spotted AI videos from a year ago to the scarily convincing deep fakes that are not circling the internet.

Don’t fret. AI is not going to replace creative minds any time soon because 1) AI can never be as inventive as real people who are influenced by their unique cultures and experiences and 2) there have been enough adverse reactions to the “uncanny valley” feel of AI to keep it from mainstream media.

In every evolving industry, successful people need to adapt to changes, and publishing is no different. By keeping an eye on the standard that larger publishing houses set for their editors and writers, those looking to publish in the future can stay ahead of the game. For example, Yellow Bird Editors do not submit unpublished works from clients into public AI chats to prevent risk of copyright infringement. Copyrighting literature from AI’s training programs is already a firm standard Penguin Random House has put forward.

Many people in creative fields are scared of AI, and while I would personally prefer that we aim to use human creativity, it’s becoming an important part of this field. If we ignore it disdainfully, it will overwhelm us in the near future, so we should learn how to manage it as a tool.

Things to consider before using AI

1. AI is using other people’s recycled ideas, so remember that you are already 100 times more creative than it is.

2. Every 20-50 queries you submit to a chatbot costs data centers about 500 ml of fresh water to cool down their server—so there is a significant environmental impact.

3. The information you are putting into this chat to ask a question can be used to train the large language model to answer other users' questions.

4. The large language model that trains accessible models like Chat GPT uses the entirety of the internet. This can lead to false information and/or unintentional biases (racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc.).

5. Most media literate readers can spot AI’s writing.

Writing is Hard. Grab Some Training Wheels!

Despite what some poets may say, writing doesn’t come naturally to most people. It is a skill that you have to develop through study and practice. English is full of inane idiosyncrasies, so think of AI as your free writing tutor— a grammar and craft know-it-all that is happy to correct you at any time. Additionally, AI can give you introductory advice on how to improve the quality of your writing.

The most obvious use for AI in writing is checking grammar and mechanics. I recommend using programs that are designed specifically for that because chatbots are not very good at taking and changing long blocks of text. They can give you general feedback but cannot replace an editor!

I’m sure most of us already know, love, and appreciate Grammarly, so now for the good stuff: How can AI help me while I’m writing?

When it comes to drafting, the best quality of AI is that it can do a lot of grunt work really quickly. For example, take a look at this sentence I wrote:

“Townes laid sleeping on my purple comforter as he cuddled my cardigan, his backside on top of my black pleather purse.”

Now, there’s a lot I don’t particularly like about this sentence, but I’m not sure how I want to change it. Instead, I’ll see if my good friend Copilot has any bright ideas.

I showed the AI the sentence that I wrote, but I didn’t make it very clear what I was unhappy about. Let’s try again:

Now I have around 15 versions of this sentence with different descriptors and details, but none of them quite feel like my voice. To remedy this, I’ll combine a few that I really like:

”Townes, the ever purring Maine Coon, lay fast asleep against my plush purple comforter, his paws wrapped around my cardigan and his back pressed into my black pleather purse.”

Notice that there are certain details that the AI can’t accurately expand on, such as the exact breed of my cat or the quality of my comforter. However, AI can recommend synonyms, adjectives, or help you find that one word that’s just on the tip of your tongue. The more specific you make your request, the better.

A lot of word processors already have AI writing tools built into their software, but those tools simply offer suggestions. A chatbot, on the other hand, can help explain why your writing is too drawn out, not engaging, or at the wrong reading level. Understanding the “why” is what improves your skills as a writer.

As you’re reviewing your draft, AI can help you bulk up frail ideas or themes, adjust your tone to set a certain mood, and suggest structure or organizational styles. For example, if you’re working on a different type of project than you’re used to, you could ask the bot to give you an example outline. I always find it best to ask for several variations on answers, like I did with my cat query.

In fact, when I asked my favorite chatbot, Copilot, what it could do for my writing, it responded, “Think of me as an editorial guide rather than a ghostwriter—I help shape your words rather than replace them.” (By the way, this is not a plug for Copilot–I just like that it’s free, big, and links its information to real websites.)

Creative Projects

One thing most creative writers have in common is that you can find really weird stuff in our search history. Now AI can answer all of those strange hypothetical questions for you! It can explain how someone with certain psychological conditions might react to an event, or how someone with a rare ailment might be cured. I remember one of the first fiction writer questions I had to ask the internet was, “If you hit someone over the head, how long would they be unconscious for?” I’m glad my parents never found that in my search history. They would have been very concerned.

The good news is, you no longer have to turn to weird subreddits or Quora, because AI can probably tell you the answer. However, I recommend fact-checking most of what it tells you, which is why any AI that links its sources (like Copilot) is preferable.

If you need a setting, have your AI list out five different environments and see if any of those spark an idea. From there, the chatbot could tell you what animals live in those habitats, what adaptations humans would have to survive in those habitats, or what kind of weather would be the most common. At this point, you could probably turn to the internet, and return to your AI conversation whenever Google fails to answer the more niche queries.

If you don’t know where to start your creative writing project, AI can remind you what elements you need to consider. Tell your chatbot about what you’re writing and what your concerns are. It can give you an itemized list of ideas for a solution, but it’s up to you to apply them effectively.

Throughout this process, it’s important to remember that writing is supposed to be hard. Practicing creativity is important, so try to use AI as a moving walkway rather than a crutch for idea generation.

Final Thoughts

There is a certain book—I won’t say the title—rounding out some best sellers lists, that I am convinced was at least partially written by AI. I refuse to read it after reading several reviews that describe the extremely generic world building and passages that eerily resemble other popular books. However, the book is popular online because it is an echo chamber of its genre, and there are many young readers who cannot yet discern the unoriginality of this story within the genre.

I don’t know for a fact whether this author used any AI to generate their writing, but the book's existence paints a grim picture of what the future of literature will look like if we let AI do the writing.

Let’s think of literature as we do the Met Gala red carpet. When you’re writing, you want your product to be like Zendaya or Bad Bunny. Your book is unique to you and stands out while still fitting within the theme or genre you’re writing in. You might make stylistic choices that remind us of other books or even add small accessories that reference specific icons, but the outfit altogether is distinct, and how you wear it makes it yours. You could ask AI to help you come up with color combinations or explain the theme in more detail, but if it designs the outfit for you, you’ll be a black suit with a fun pocket square that you threw in for a pop of color.

As writers continue to experiment with AI, I want to encourage you to not let robotic writing outputs make you self-conscious of imperfections in your own writing.  When we write, we make mistakes, and that’s OK. Comparing your first draft to AI’s writing would be like comparing Michelangelo’s “David” to a mannequin. One of them is cleaner, more uniform, and made faster, but no one is lining up to see a mannequin.

Should You Wave Your Prologue Goodbye? (When Prologues Work and When They Don’t)

Does your book-in-progress have a prologue? If so, that might be a problem. According to the dubious wisdom of the blogosphere and the crotchety advice of literary agents who see too many duds in the slush pile, prologues are frowned upon. Agent Kimiko Nakamura wrote in Writer’s Digest that “almost every agent agrees that poorly executed prologues are the quickest route back to slushville. Prologues reflexively cause agents to skip to Chapter 1 without a look back.”

With warnings like that one, it’s no wonder writers cut their prologue for fear of ending up in the trash folder. As a freelance book editor, though, I’ve seen writers alter the strongest parts of their manuscript because of a one-size-fits-all decree they’ve read on an agent’s (or another writer’s) blog. By deleting your prologue, you might be deleting the best part of your book—the part of your book, even, that would get an agent to request more pages.

So what makes a good prologue good, and a bad prologue bad? I’ll delve into detailed examples below, but first, here are a few rules of thumb.

Good Prologues Oftentimes…

… Occur in a different time and place than the rest of the book. (But they shouldn’t be used as information dumps for backstory. Details about past events should be integrated throughout the novel via exposition, dialogue, or a character’s inner thoughts.)

 … Showcase a narrative perspective that diverges from the rest of the book. (An omniscient prologue, for example, in a third-person limited novel.)

… Are written in a different tone than the rest of the book. (Heightened prose if the book’s prose is simple; minimalist if the book’s prose is florid.)

… Provide key information that the novel’s primary narrator doesn’t know about. (Again, though, this should be a limited, strategic piece of information; prologues shouldn’t be used as information dumps.)

Bad Prologues Are Generally…

… Conspicuous information dumps for information and backstory. (Yeah, this happens a lot.)

… Written as exposition rather than as a compelling scene/s. (Prolonged exposition is a sign that your prologue is an information dump.)

… Written in the same point-of-view or narrative perspective as the rest of the book.

… Written in a melodramatic tone. (This often corresponds to a scene that’s a failed hook.)

…. Focused on a dramatic scene that doesn’t end up connecting in an interesting way with the rest of the book.

… Written after the rest of the book was finished because the writer worried that Chapter 1 wasn’t good or didn’t have an enticing hook. (It’s better to work on fixing Chapter 1.)

Prologues as a Whisper to Your Reader

Author Bharti Kirchner wrote an excellent article for The Writer magazine in which she explains that a prologue, particularly in sci-fi and fantasy novels, “can provide readers with a basic understanding of the setting and culture of an alternate universe before the story begins.” Consider the prologue of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. In it, three men of the Night’s Watch —a military group guarding a great northern wall — search the wilderness for eight dead bodies. As the three men discuss what killed these people — did they freeze to death? — the reader is overhearing their conversation, thereby learning all sorts of tidbits about Martin’s fictional world.

After the men discover that the bodies are missing, they’re attacked by a group of mysterious creatures. One of the Night’s Watch men, Will, watches as a terrifying shadow confronts Royce, his Night’s Watch compatriot:

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees.

Will then witnesses an event that will become pivotal to the Game of Thrones universe for five books to come (and counting). He sees that Royce doesn’t stand a chance in fighting this fearsome apparition because its weapon causes Royce’s sword to shatter:

A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles… He [Will] found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning.

This prologue notwithstanding, Game of Thrones is written in the close third-person, with each chapter told from the point-of-view of a different main character. At the book’s outset, none of these characters have seen an “Other,” as these creatures are called, so Martin used his prologue to establish a delicious, suspenseful case of dramatic irony: The reader knows that the Others are real, but the book’s narrators don’t. In an interview with The Writer, author Jennie Shortridge described this situation well: “I like to read prologues because I know the author is whispering a secret to me,” she said.

Many newbie writers withhold information from the reader for too long in an attempt to create suspense. But why should a reader care about a mystery if they don’t even know its parameters? In Game of Thrones, Martin provides just enough information to make the reader terrified of the White Walkers (let’s just drop this “Others” nonsense), but little enough to let the reader join the book’s characters in solving the myriad mysteries surrounding them.

Prologues That Are Actually Chapter Ones (And Chapter Ones That Are Actually Prologues)

As an editor, I often notice that the first 50 pages of a manuscript contain a handful of sections that could each be the book’s first page. The author didn’t know where to begin, so instead of choosing a beginning, they chose two or three, and then struggled with how to sequence them. I call these “false starts,” and they’re usually well-written because the author imagined each as the grandiose opening sequence. These paragraphs stand out because they don’t integrate well with the surrounding material.

A clumsy solution to this multiplicity of false starts is to make one of them the prologue. In an interview forThe Writer, author Jennie Shortridge said that “the most common mistake I see when writers try to use prologues is that they’re simply writing Chapter 1 and calling it a prologue.”

While a good prologue stands apart from the rest of the story — taking place in a different time, or told from a different point-of-view — an unnecessary prologue is often told by the same narrator, and written in the same style, as the rest of the book. Even if well-written, this type of prologue might turn an agent off because it indicates that the author simply couldn’t figure out how to integrate the prologue’s material somewhere else. “They [prologues] are sorely overused and seem like a cheap device,” literary agent Andrea Hurst told The Writer. “Better for writers to be creative—come up with ways around them and start the novel with a great first chapter.”

The Book Thief is an example of a prologue that’s good, but might as well have been called Chapter 1. In it, the book’s omniscient narrator, Death Himself (a grim reaper type figure), tells the reader about the book’s protagonist, a girl who he calls the book thief. He (Death) informs the reader that terrible things will happen in this girl’s future, and Chapter 1 begins by detailing the first of these terrible things.

Alluding to future (or past) events in an omniscient voice is classic prologue material, but in this particular case, it turns out that the entire book is narrated by this glib Death guy, and he oftentimes alludes coyly to future events. The Book Thief’s prologue could easily have been the the first chapter. The litmus test is to simply imagine that the prologue is labeled “Chapter 1,” and that the current Chapter 1 is labeled “Chapter 2.” If everything still makes sense (or reads even better, as might be the case), then you probably have a chapter, not a prologue.

We also see Chapter Ones that would have made great prologues. The first Harry Potter book is a perfect example. Remember that opening scene where Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Hagrid bring baby Harry to his aunt and uncle’s doorstep? That scene conspicuously stands apart from the rest of the book, which is mostly told from the limited perspective of 10-year-old Harry. In the opening, though, an omniscient narrator holds the reigns, and we glimpse the inner thoughts of Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, and Harry’s aunt and uncle.

Yet that opening is labeled Chapter One. The commencement of Harry Potter’s POV starts with Chapter Two, and Chapter Two begins with a sentence that effectively bridges the 10-year gap between the two chapters: “Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all.”

This little quark in one of the world’s most widely-read books reminds us that “chapter” and “prologue” are just labels, after all, and while there are widely-recognized formats for which label correspond to which narrative tactic, authors sidestep the rules all the time. In his masterpiece 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez evaded the issue altogether by using unlabeled breaks between chunks of text rather than parts and chapters. Marquez’ unique decision reminds us that whatever the label, those spaces of white between sections do seem to be vitally important. Whatever the case, most remember the opening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as being a prologue; indeed, a quick Google search revealed bloggers using it as an example of an effective prologue.

Another Chapter One that’s really a prologue is the first chapter of Fight Club, where Edward Norton, errrr, the book’s unnamed protagonist holds a gun to his throat/Tyler Durden’s throat. Who knows, maybe someone told both Chuck Palahniuk and J.K. Rowling that literary agents don’t like prologues, so they slapped on a Chapter One.

So… Should I Keep My Prologue?

If you’ve carefully considered the components of a bad prologue and are still convinced that yours is good, go ahead and keep it if you’re planning to self-publish. If you’re querying agents, you can tailor your strategy query-by-query. If an agent has specified that they don’t like prologues, you should query without it, or make your prologue the first chapter instead—absolutely don’t this, though, if changing the prologue to “Chapter 1” creates a bad transition into Chapter 2. If you don’t know an agent’s stance toward prologues, the safer bet might still be to cut the prologue since prologue hostility seems widespread.

That being said, agents dislike prologues only because they’ve read so many bad ones. It takes only one sentence to recognize good writing, so if your prologue has a good start, the agent will keep reading. A friend of mine received offers from two agents (and requests for full reads from many more) based on a submission that included a prologue—a very good prologue. In the end, it’s the writing that counts, and they’re not just saying that.

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Katherine Don is a journalist and author or co-author of eight nonfiction books, including Power of the Dog from St. Martin’s Press, Armchair Reader: The Book of Myths and Misconceptions from Publications International, and The Story of Harper Lee, a YA biography of Harper Lee from Morgan Reynolds Publishing. Katherine’s essays and journalism have appeared at Salon, The Atlantic online, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor at Bustle.com and Romper.com. Her first screenplay, a short film that she co-wrote with a friend, was the first-place winner in the screenwriting category at the 2014 Los Angeles Movie Awards. Katherine holds a bachelor’s degree in biological anthropology from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in literary journalism from NYU.

HIRE KATHERINE TO EDIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT! CLICK HERE TO REQUEST A QUOTE.

Genres of interest: Narrative nonfiction, academic works, books of journalism, essay collections, memoir, health/wellness, book proposals, and other nonfiction book projects.

Available for: Manuscript critiques, content editing, developmental editing, query letter editing, and private writing coaching.

Who Hires a Book Editor?

“Who hires a book editor?” was my question when I joined Yellow Bird and another online editing company in 2014. I had spent 23 years writing and editing for large, traditional publishing companies before getting into the online, edit-for-anybody business.

Many authors in search of an editor are aspiring novelists, and the quality of their writing varies dramatically. Some are professional level. Others are great storytellers but their grammar is a disaster—or vice versa. I’m amazed by the number of fantasy and sci-fi submissions. Some of these books are in excess of 200,000 words, with the author often asserting that his or her initial book is the first of a trilogy. I edited one author who penned a 130,000-word fantasy novel and said it was the first book of a three-trilogy set! What’s 9 x 130,000?

I have edited both fiction and nonfiction over the last two years, and I’ve been blown away by the variety of the subject matter. These are some of the online nonfiction submissions I’ve edited:

• Brennan, a special-ops soldier, wrote about his experiences in Iraq—about his desire to kill and how fellow soldiers exploded into pink mist before his eyes. Derek, a jaded platoon medic, told Brennan: “That’s why we’re dying. People want training and the military to be all soft and cuddly but then wonder why their overweight, television-addicted little pussy got his arms blown off because he wasn’t looking around properly because he has the attention span of a hummingbird.”

• Jeff, a former Hollywood prostitute and Colt Studios model, wrote about the famous gay men he slept with, including Elton John!

• Keena grew up in the African bush as the daughter of paleontologists. Her diaries discussed her life-and-death adventures with lions, hippos, and crazy baboons…and the scariest creatures of all: junior high girls when she returned to suburban Philadelphia.

• Rex penned a biography of fellow Vietnam War veteran Ace Cozzalio, an eccentric, heroic helicopter pilot who always wore an 1800s cavalry uniform, complete with white hat and saber.

• Tina was raised by a coldhearted mother who adopted (basically stole) Tina’s two children and prevented her from seeing them for 15 years.

• Author Damon reminded me of a black Forest Gump. He was confined to juvenile detention simply because his father wanted him to be more disciplined; was unjustifiably bullied by cops on the streets of L.A.; lived through the Watts riot of 1965; and explored drugs in Vietnam, which caused him to attack his officer.

• David, who created the live play-by-play technology that you see on MLB.com and ESPN.com, described his court battles with Major League Baseball, which tried to use its legal muscle to invalidate his patents.

• Tana was looking for a roommate after her divorce. She found a seemingly nice fellow who owned a house in Florida who agreed to rent her a room…then turned psycho and wouldn’t let her leave the house!

What’s your story?

What Spell-Checkers Don’t Catch

By Yellow Bird Editor David Aretha

Before I edit a manuscript, I always inform the author that I’ll be checking the text for spelling. “That’s something you can skip,” one author told me. “I already ran it through the spell-checker.”

Ah, yes, the infallible spell-checker, invented in the 1970s and honed to perfection over the decades by multi-billion-dollar software companies. Given that a flash drive the size of a Bic lighter can safely store ten thousand book manuscripts, surely the spell-checker is bullet-proof when it comes to recognizing all the words in the dictionary.

Well, it isn’t. For example, it didn’t catch multi-billion and bullet-proof in the previous paragraph, which should be multibillion and bulletproof.

Unfortunately, the spell-checker is about as effective as this winter’s flu virus. It catches simple words and correctly leaves misspelled ones underlined in red, but it sheepishly tiptoes out of the room whenever it comes to certain compound words.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the word bible that most book publishers follow, loves to smash compound words together. According to this dictionary (and others), many words that we think are open compounds or hyphenated compounds are actually closed compounds. According to Merriam-Webster,boarding house—which slides through the spell-checker unscathed—is actually boardinghouse. The spell-checker will give the green light to first-hand, even though M-W spells it firsthand. When authors look at my edited manuscript, they are often surprised to see that I changed the spellings of dozens of their compound words in order to adhere to Merriam-Webster.

If you’re looking to self-publish without hiring a professional editor—or you want to appear as professional as possible when you submit your manuscript to a publisher—you should scroll through M-W and get a sense of all the smushed-together compound words. You’ll find stomachache, schoolteacher, andtransatlantic.

I have long come to the realization that I should scrutinize all hyphenated and open compound words. If I think such words have even a remote chance of being closed compounds, I drop them into the search box of www.merriam-webster.com. Very often, my hunch is correct.

Below are some surprising closed compound words, according to the publishing world’s favorite dictionary. You don’t need to memorize these spellings, but I suggest you take two minutes to study the patterns. You’ll see, for example, that counter- and -up words may not always have a hyphen, and that the spellings of waitperson and congressperson indicate that other job+person words are also closed compounds.

absentmindedness

afterburner

antiaircraft

beachcomber

bedsheet

bloodsucker

bookmobile

bullheaded

butterfingers

cheesecloth

concertgoer

congressperson

counterclockwise

counteroffensive

counterrevolution

countertop

crackerjack

crewmen

cubbyhole

deathbed

deathblow

extracurricular

farmhouse

flashlight

footlocker

freestanding

freethinker

freshwater

gearshift

ghostwriter

gumdrop

gunpowder

hairdresser

halfhearted

handcart

hardheaded

headfirst

headgear

homeowner

hotbed

icebreaker

jobholder

kindhearted

landfall

laughingstock

levelheaded

lifelong

lighthearted

longtime

makeup

matchbook

moneymaker

mouthwatering

officeholder

offshore

openhanded

otherworldly

outdistance

overabundance

overaggressive

overcompensate

overgeneralization

painkiller

pawnshop

pigheaded

pincushion

plainclothes

plaything

policyholder

praiseworthy

racecourse

racetrack

ringleader

roundabout

rumrunner

saltwater

sandblast

schoolhouse

seacoast

secondhand

shipbuilding

shorthanded

shortsighted

sledgehammer

sleepwalking

stepdaughter

stockbroker

straightforward

summertime

sundress

sunup

tagline

thundershower

townspeople

troublemaker

turnaround

underdeveloped

underemphasize

uppermost

waistline

waitperson

washtub

wavelength

weatherproof

wholehearted

windowpane

windowsill

workstation

waitperson

Don’t Give Me That Look! How to Improve the Emotional Cues in Your Manuscript

I’ve written blog posts about gesture before, but this particular one has been keeping me up at night! As I am about to embark on revisions for my upcoming novel (forthcoming in 2016), I keep thinking about how to capture the “looks” between two characters. It’s common to find “looks” within a manuscript. After all, how often does one character look or “gaze” at another in a moment of dramatic or even romantictension. Ooh La La!

I have a challenge for you, dear reader! Go to the story you’re working on, open the file, and do a word search. Find any incarnation of the word “look/looks/looking.”

Hurts, doesn’t it? YIKES.

In my WIP right now, I have 176 “looks.” I’m not sure how horrible that is as of yet because I’m still editing, but I know that I tend to overuse “looks” so I thought I would share some of my writing/revision process.

I keep wondering what it is that I hope to elicit from “a look” between characters. In cinema, we have the advantage of various zoomed in shots, savvy editing, camera angels, etc. On film, a look between two characters can say so much more than a line of dialogue ever could. Yet, in fiction, we have the hefty job of creating the cinematic experience in the mind of our readers. We need to create the camera angles and trigger an emotional response with our words.

We also need to ensure that a look will show us something about our characters and their world instead of just telling the readers that eyes are meeting. We can’t assume that the reader is going to understand what is being unsaid between two characters. It is up to us, the writers, to make the gaze mean more. As I revise and as you revise, I hope that these three tactics will help you make the most out of this kind of unspoken communication.

THREE WAYS TO MAKE “A LOOK” WORK HARDER (AKA I am trying to take my own advice):

1. Make sure that the look reveals something important/unknown about your character.

Who are the two people looking at one another? Why is the look important? If two characters make eye contact that doesn’t illuminate something about the characters or their relationship, then we don’t need it.

Now, I’m not saying that every single look in a manuscript has to carry weight. Generally, when you have two characters in a scene together and one looks at the other, you need to consider what is it you are trying to communicate. Here’s an example from my current WIP:

“Where are you going?” Mr. Hall says.

“You do what you want,” I say to Lila who meets my eyes and then quickly looks away. “Take the role. It’s yours. I don’t want any part of this.”

What I am trying to show there is that Lila is self-righteous. She’s hurt my character badly, but doesn’t want to make eye contact because she’s a jerk. Have I shown that? Nope. I need to make the moment work harder so that the reader understands Lila’s character through that shared gaze.

I don’t know if this is how I’ll ultimately end up revising but I could try something like this:

“Where are you going?” Mr. Hall says.

“You do what you want,” I say to Lila who snaps at her gum, eyes to her cell phone, and with a casual flip of her hand, tosses her hair over her shoulder. I’ve never hated the smell of bubble gum so much in my life. “Take the role,” I say to her smacking jaw. “It’s yours. I don’t want any part of this.”

I’ve added action, I’ve made Lila gesture differently, revealing her indifference and also employed sensory detail so that we know how my character feels about Lila’s behavior.

2. The “look”” needs to either be the focal point of the scene or it needs to push the plot forward in some way. Again, not every single “look” can matter but the ones that do should earn their place within the narrative.

Ask yourself: What can the look between your two characters change/reveal? If the answer is nothing, then think deeper and reveal the information between them in a new or varied away. This leads me to my last suggestion.

3. Deepen the gesture.  Is “looking” the only way that people interact with one another? No way!

Consider the emotional moment that is occurring between these two characters. Perhaps all of these “looks” are really a roadmap for you to go back and deepen the relationships between these two characters when you are ready to revise. As you draft, leave all the “looks” in as placeholders, but definitely go back.

When you do, ask yourself what other ways these two characters can interact? Sensory detail? Touch? Food? Action/Reaction? What is the look standing in for? What do your characters want to say?

Well, that’s it for me! I hope that I’ve illuminated some tactics to try to deepen the way your characters inhabit the pages of your story!

I wish I could go on and on about this! In fact, I probably could.