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Editing fiction: Worldbuilding

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In this post, Andrew Hodges looks at how editors can help authors to create convincing and consistent worlds in their fantasy and science fiction novels.

Worldbuilding is the creation of fictional worlds in stories. In this blog post, I’ll cover some common problems editors encounter with worldbuilding. These can be tackled in a developmental edit, a line edit, or both.

Defining worldbuilding

First up, here’s some exciting news: in April 2023, the Merriam-Webster dictionary added worldbuilding to the dictionary! Here’s their definition:

The creation of a fictional world (especially within the science fiction and fantasy genres) that is believable and consistent within the context of the story.

Merriam-Webster also notes three variant spellings: worldbuilding, world building, and world-building. I prefer the joined-up version, but Merriam-Webster favours world-building while accepting all three variants. The Oxford English Dictionary hasn’t included the term (yet!).

So what is worldbuilding exactly? Well, it involves big ideas, which the fantasy author MD Presley calls a fantasy conceit, such as:

  • How might people live if the ground were poisonous at night?
  • What if people’s height was proportional to how healthy they were?
  • What if people were only allowed to live until they reached 30 years old?

And it also involves nuances of setting, such as clothes, technologies, medicines, architecture, food items, weapons, vocabulary and so on.

What problems come up with worldbuilding when editing?

1 Unclear worldbuilding

Sometimes, authors don’t mark the fictional world as different enough from our world. They may describe scenes on another planet that make a reader think of 2020s London, for example.

Imagine two characters making milkshakes in a kitchen. That kitchen may be designed roughly the same whether it is in a semi-detached house in a Dorset village, on the USS Enterprise’s holodeck or on a spaceship circling around Jupiter. The broader context needs to be as clear as the immediate setting. The kitchen could be beautifully clear in the narration and the worldbuilding vague, or vice versa.

AQ: Can you make the wider setting clearer to the reader here? For example, you could mention the view through the kitchen window briefly. This would make it clear to readers that the characters have a view of Saturn’s rings while drinking their milkshakes.

Library blurring into a sunny sky

2 Infodumping

This is when the author includes too much information in one go about how certain aspects of the world work. These details often slow down the pacing and can break reader immersion in the story. The relaying of such background details is called exposition, and it can happen in narrative or dialogue (especially ‘As You Know, Bob’ dialogue).

For editors, it’s useful to know about any subject expertise or interests the author has here. Asking the author a few questions about their writing context and general life background in an onboarding questionnaire can really help. Infodumping can creep in when the author discusses a subject they know a lot about, are passionate about, or both.

It’s especially problematic when it happens in the first few chapters. On this note, the science fiction and fantasy author Brandon Sanderson coined the term ‘infodump equity’. This is the idea that the more readers are invested in the story, the greater patience (or even desire!) they will have to learn more worldbuilding details. Like readers’ tolerance for more backstory as they get to know and relate to the characters, readers will have more patience for worldbuilding once they’ve entered and got to know the fictional world.

Line editors and developmental editors should point out excessive infodumping in a tactful way, and make calls within the context of the story and the audience.

AQ: You’ve discussed tree physiology on the planet Iror-B for three pages here. I suggest you remove any details that aren’t relevant to the plot, as not all readers will be interested in this topic.

3 Inconsistent worldbuilding

The big ideas linked to worldbuilding have ripple effects that some authors have not carefully figured out. If the most obvious implications are simply avoided or treated inconsistently, then readers will find the world unconvincing and unbelievable.

For example, in a novel about vampires, if on page six Edward says he burns on contact with daylight, then it makes no sense if he’s baling hay in the afternoon sun on page ninety-seven. You could introduce new worldbuilding details that make this possible. For example, a vendor selling sunscreen to vampires could launch a successful business on page eighty-five. But then there’s a danger of points seeming contrived to fit plot points.

If inconsistencies leap out at you when editing, readers are likely to notice too. And that’s why it’s important to raise an author query (if your role permits it). Inconsistencies can create problems with believability and plausibility, which can break reader immersion in the story.

Man reading a book under a tree at night

4 Harmful stereotypes

Harmful stereotypes exist in all genres of fiction. But with science fiction and fantasy, editors need to pay special attention to the new social groups that writers invent in their worlds. These are sometimes based closely on real-world cultures, and draw on stereotypes that link to, for example, colonialist, orientalist or racist descriptors. Editors need to watch out for such stereotypes and raise a tactful author query when necessary.

AQ: The orcs in your manuscript are dark-skinned. This seems inconsistent with their living underground in the Misty Mountains, and these racial stereotypes will alienate many modern readers.

When raising an author query about conscious and inclusive language, Crystal Shelley’s course on conscious language offers important tips on how to do so in a way that does not come across as a personal attack on the author. A focus on possible reader and audience perceptions the author may not have been aware of or considered can help.

And the orcs example is a useful one for another reason too: worldbuilding is never about building a world completely separate from ours. It is always based on a comparison with the real world and all details not discussed explicitly are usually assumed to be the same as in the real world (for example, that a group living underground for generations would be pale-skinned because they would have little melanin).

What to include on a style sheet

Science fiction and fantasy novels have longer style sheets than other fiction genres because they include detailed worldbuilding notes. For instance, I include brief notes on all the social groups in the story, a special column for worldbuilding details (objects and nuances of setting) on my style sheet, and a separate section for any big worldbuilding concepts or rules. Timelines may also be more complex if the story involves time travel or moving between various worlds.

Summary

In short, the experience of reading a science fiction or fantasy novel involves getting to grips with a new vocabulary and world in which different rules operate. These rules need to be consistent and believable, and drip-fed to the reader in a way that doesn’t bore them or pull them out of the story. These are challenges that developmental editors, line editors and copyeditors grapple with every day in their work. If you’re interested in learning more, I highly recommend these resources:

  • Mythcreants have loads of articles on worldbuilding and other aspects of fiction developmental editing. You can check out their site or join their Patreon to support their work.
  • Club Ed offers a specialist course in Editing for Worldbuilding and Setting.
  • MD Presley has lots of useful resources – including books and workbooks – on worldbuilding.
  • I run a newsletter where you can ask me worldbuilding questions. I’m also developing courses on worldbuilding and on fiction craft for new science fiction and fantasy writers.

About Andrew Hodges

Headshot of Andrew HodgesAndrew Hodges runs an editorial business called The Narrative Craft in Edinburgh, UK. He loves line-editing fiction and ethnography and enjoys chatting with science fiction and fantasy authors about worldbuilding and point of view issues whenever he can.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: header image by David Menidrey on Unsplash, library blurring into a sunny sky by Mysticsartdesign on Pixabay, man reading a book under a tree at night by Josh Hild on Pexels.

Posted by Eleanor Smith, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editing fiction: Romance

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In this post, Maya Berger looks at how fiction editors can help authors to create romantic relationships that feel true to the rest of the story.

Content warning: general mention of non-consensual relationships and dynamics in fiction (no specific examples).

Characters in a work of fiction are complex creatures. They have personalities, back stories, motivations, physical appearances, schedules and interpersonal relationships – and a line editor needs to make sure that all these details are consistent, realistic within the fictional universe and engaging for the reader throughout the story. Add a romance into the mix, and now the editor also has to consider things like characters’ attitudes towards dating, sex and gender roles in relationships; whether the character becomes unrecognisable once they’re in love; and representations of consent.

This post will look at some of the major character considerations for editors to keep in mind when line editing romance and intimacy in fiction. It offers tips on ensuring that a story’s romantic elements preserve character consistency, framing and inclusivity, and handling consent issues sensitively.

Meet the lovebirds

When we’re line editing fiction in general, we look for well-developed, consistent characters with clear motivations, relatable thoughts and actions, and realistic and satisfying character arcs. And we can apply the same criteria to romantic character arcs and intimate dynamics.

What does the story say about the characters in a couple (or throuple, or other polyamorous configuration, as the case may be)? If your author has supplied character sketches, you’ve got a head start on this; otherwise, as you edit, note details like:

  • what qualities they value in their loved ones
  • how they react to stress
  • how highly they prioritise their career
  • how they like to spend their free time

and ask yourself whether the characters show these traits in their romantic interactions.

Then, look at what the romance contributes to the reader’s engagement with the characters. Does a romantic dynamic add to character development and reveal hidden truths about a character? Does a character’s crush motivate them to perform the actions that drive the plot forward, or does a character’s behaviour within a romantic relationship reveal an ulterior motive of theirs? If the answer to all these questions is ‘no’, or if the romantic dynamics feel out of place or tacked on just to give a character something to do, query this with the author.

There are often little additions you can suggest to turn an isolated intimate moment into a scene that adds depth to the story. For example:

Before: ‘She kissed Ilana, losing herself in the sensations.’

After: ‘She kissed Ilana, losing herself in pleasurable sensations for the first time since the war began.’

Before: ‘If the heart-stoppingly beautiful barista was working today, he would finally ask them out.’

After: ‘If the heart-stoppingly beautiful barista was working today, he would finally ask them out – he was determined that his infernal stutter would not get in the way this time.’

Editing romance for character consistency

Be on the lookout for unexplained inconsistencies between how a character acts, speaks and thinks in romantic and non-romantic scenes. If you find any, ask the author about them.

Here’s an example of a query with suggestions for addressing such a character inconsistency:

Character A’s flirting is playful, but in all his interactions with his friends and siblings he is intense and pretentious, and readers may find the difference jarring. If there is something about Character B that brings out Character A’s hidden playful side, please make this clearer in the text.

I’d also suggest having Character A notice the difference in himself and react to it: is he ashamed to be letting his guard down around Character B, for example, or does it make him appreciate Character B all the more? Alternatively, you could add some light-heartedness to Character A’s other relationships or make him more intense with his lover so that he’s still recognisable in every scene.

With this query, I’ve prompted the author to consider how they intended to portray Character A in the context of their romantic and other relationships, and I’ve given them some corresponding options for improving the text.

Editing romance for consent orientation

The Pervocracy states that, ‘A consent culture is one in which the prevailing narrative of sex – in fact, of human interaction – is centred around mutual consent.’

When examining the romantic dynamics in a story, try to establish the story’s consent orientation – its underlying attitudes and assumptions about the seeking and granting of consent. For example, the author may have written dialogue with a joke about following someone home that they intended as flirty banter but that comes across like a lyric from ‘Every Breath You Take’. In a case like this, you can suggest having the character sheepishly realise what they’ve implied and apologise for being creepy, framing the character as a villain and having other characters react negatively to the joke, or replace the joke with a different funny line that doesn’t rely on making someone feel unsafe for its punchline.

The vocabulary and tone play a big part in setting a story’s consent orientation: for example, is the author trying to create an atmosphere that is inappropriately erotic when a character is showing reluctance or distress? And ask yourself which characters are portrayed sympathetically. The answers to these questions will help you determine the story’s position on consent and whether the author is being exploitative, not just in terms of the romantic elements of the story but with all the story’s interpersonal relationships.

As an editor, you may encounter scenes of non-consensual or traumatic relationships and acts, particularly in crime fiction, horror and historical fiction. Sometimes these scenes will be integral to a character’s story or establishing historical accuracy and realism, but you can always choose not to take on a project with these elements or step away from a project that you’re uneasy about.

When editing a story with non-consensual elements, I suggest advising the author to add a content-warning disclaimer in the front matter of the story to help readers know what to expect, if it’s not already clear from the cover, the blurb or the genre and marketing of the book.

Even though the inclusion of a non-consensual scenario might be necessary in a story, that doesn’t give an author carte blanche to glorify coercion or violence in an intimate relationship, and an editor can suggest rewording or reframing a character or scene to avoid glamourising these things the same way that we might for murder, fraud or any other crime. This brings us on to …

Editing romance for character framing

As well as the non-consensual dynamics mentioned above, even within the realm of consensual relationships there is potential for misogyny, jokes in poor taste, gender essentialism and other content that can alienate readers. Again, note the characters’ reactions to each other and to what is happening, as well as how the narrator treats the characters. Do the sympathetic characters’ actions and dialogue support the framing of them as swoon-worthy?

For example, if Character D describes Character C as ‘the woman of my dreams’, but this ‘dream woman’ constantly insults and belittles Character D in front of their friends, do the narration and the other characters also see Character C positively? If they do, you can raise a query with the author, along the lines of:

Character C insulted Character D in front of their friends seven times in the previous two chapters. This doesn’t seem consistent with the description of her as ‘the woman of my dreams’, with how well liked she is within their friend group, or with the narration’s framing of her as a sympathetic character.

To avoid putting off readers, consider having fewer instances of Character C insulting her partner and/or having Character C apologise and make good-faith efforts to change. Alternatively, you can reframe Character C’s actions by giving them consequences within the story, such as having Character D or their friends call out Character C and telling her that her behaviour is unacceptable.

two people with tattoos on their arms hold hands

Editing romance for inclusivity

The traditional male romantic leads in Western fiction (tall, white, non-disabled, young, cisgender men who were sexually attracted to women) and their female counterparts (cisgender, young, non-disabled, white, and seeking a monogamous romantic and sexual relationship with a man) leave a lot of readers unrepresented.

Thankfully, as many fiction genres have become more diverse, so have the romances within them. And as editors, we can encourage authors to include positive representation in their stories by moving beyond stereotypes or subverting them.

When characters with romantic storylines are from racialised or sexual-minority backgrounds, or when they are older characters or characters with impairments, illnesses or neurodivergence, challenge any negative stereotyping around things like:

  • their capacity to feel and express desire
  • their attitudes towards casual sex, having and raising children, and LGBTQIA+ relationships
  • the gender roles they occupy.

Conclusion

  • Get to know the characters with romantic storylines, and note whether they show the same traits in their romantic interactions and in the rest of the story.
  • Establish the story’s consent orientation and pay attention to how the dialogue, tone and character framing reinforce it.
  • Encourage positive representation of diverse romances and challenge negative stereotyping.

Further reading

To find out more about integrating romance into a work of fiction, check out Candida Bradford’s blog post on writing a romantic subplot, TV Tropes’ Romantic Plot Tumor page, this blog post from KJ Charles on consent in sex scenes and my blog post on how to write more diverse sexuality in fiction.

About Maya Berger

Maya Berger is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. She specialises in editing and proofreading erotic and romantic fiction, speculative fiction, and academic texts in the humanities and social sciences, and she appeared as a guest on The Editing Podcast speaking about editing erotica. Maya also launched The Editor’s Affairs (TEA) in 2020 to help fellow freelance editors manage their business affairs. She lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: heart and books by Kaboompics, couple by a lake by Adam Kontor, couple holding hands by Marcelo Chagas, all on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Editing fiction: Dialogue

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In the first of a series of posts on editing fiction, Katherine Kirk looks at how editors can help authors create engaging dialogue that really brings individual characters to life.

Style manuals like New Hart’s Rules and guides like The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction can help editors know exactly how to punctuate an interruption or how to capitalise a stammered first name, but there’s more to great conversations than the lengths of their pauses. Sometimes we need to dig a little deeper into them, and at a line editing level, this can start to feel a bit abstract. It can be hard to explain to an author how to add more subtext to a snippet of dialogue: ‘You need to not write more things not being said’ sounds like some kind of magic trick.

This post will look at how great dialogue starts with the character, it changes depending on whom they’re talking to, and how editors can add or subtract to bring those voices out.

Start with the character

If a novel’s characters aren’t distinct enough from each other, their voices will blur into one and the reader will soon forget who’s who and why they should care.

A strong character voice comes from who that character is at their core. Their background, their beliefs and their agenda all play into how they speak. If you’re working directly with an author, you can ask them probing questions like: ‘These characters live in the US but are originally from the UK, having moved there when the children were quite young. How much of their British accent has remained a decade later?’

The answers will inform word choice and what sort of rhythm the characters use when they speak. For that reason, I usually don’t wait until the end of my main pass through a manuscript to ask the author these types of questions, but send them along as soon as possible.

If you’re not working directly with an author, then you can only work with the information they’ve given you in the manuscript itself, which is why it’s a great idea to read the whole thing first, before editing. In your style sheet, make notes not only of the concrete details like a character’s age or hair colour but also about characteristics that could inform the way they speak. If they have a pet phrase or verbal habit, see if it’s used consistently. Does their spoken voice match their inner voice? Is there a good reason for it not to?

Paying attention to these aspects of the character’s voice can help you to pick up on where characters might start sounding the same. For instance, what maybe started as a verbal habit for one character might have been applied to multiple characters, nullifying its effect. Or it may be an author habit instead. If an author is relying only on these verbal habits to distinguish characters from each other, they might be overused and feel repetitive. Authors of YA may be tempted to have their teen characters say ‘like’ in every sentence; while this might reflect how some real-life teens speak, overuse may irritate readers. Don’t be afraid to suggest removing some of them.

Pet phrases aren’t the only tool we can use to make the voices more distinct. Some other options might be:

  • talking around the issue vs getting to the point (look at sentence structure here)
  • utilising gratuitously verbose lexical terms vs using short, simple words
  • airily drifting in and out of a conversation with pauses and ellipses vs jumping in and thrashing about with dashes
  • popping in slang vs using very ‘correct’ formal language. Regional slang, age-specific slang, and industry jargon can all tell us a lot about a person, and about a person who refuses to use it.

The roles we play

I am her mother, his wife, her teacher, his naughty little secret, their ally, your worst nightmare, and that will affect how I speak to you. People who know each other well develop a kind of shorthand and can read each other’s subtext better, so characters who are close might not need to have every question answered. I often find that deleting the answer to the question (especially a yes or no) loses nothing. The reader can infer the answer from context and how the conversation proceeds, and it feels snappier and more vivid.

Here’s an example with every question answered. Note how slow it feels.

‘Where is he?’ I asked, reaching for the frozen peas.

‘He’s out back, I think.’ She turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to look at me. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘I’m not hungry. The peas are for the swelling.’ I pressed them to my throbbing cheek. ‘Did you tell him?’

‘I didn’t tell him,’ she said. ‘I knew it would make him angry.’

‘Because you know how he gets,’ I muttered.

‘Yes. I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I didn’t tell him.’

When the characters are family, as these two might be, then much of this does not need to be said. Cutting text out can turn it into subtext, making the conversation feel less stodgy and more suspenseful. If there’s a tag along with an action beat, we can probably take the tag out too and use the action beat as attribution on its own. Where it’s clear who’s speaking, we don’t need any attribution at all. Here’s an extreme example of how it might be pared down:

‘Where is he?’ I reached for the frozen peas.

‘Out back.’ She turned away. ‘I didn’t tell him.’

‘You know how he gets.’

‘I know.’

What if they were acquaintances?

‘Where is he?’ I reached for the frozen peas.

‘He’s out back. Working in the shop, I think.’ She turned away. ‘Did he do that?’

‘You couldn’t have known.’

‘I might have. But it wasn’t me that told him.’

Here, they need to give each other a little more information, and the shared knowledge of years of history is gone. They speak in slightly more complete sentences and give each other more grace.

How the characters negotiate the control of the conversation (or turn-taking) could also show their intimacy. It might change over the course of a novel. A meet-cute might have our lovers verbally stumbling over and butting up against each other, but by the end of their love story, they’re listening to each other, reading each other’s subtext and finishing each other’s sentences. Or it could go the other way, with a couple who used to be able to read each other’s signals now finding they’re no longer fluent in their shared unspoken language, and they might misread it.

What if our two characters dislike each other, and one of them is a little tougher? Let’s have the tough lady interrupt more and use more colloquial language, and contrast it with the other by having more hedging and hesitation. We might need to add an action beat to make the character more vivid.

‘Where is he?’ I reached for the frozen peas.

She spat out an apple seed. ‘I ain’t his keeper.’

‘Did you tell him? That I–’

‘Course not.’

‘It’s just that, well, I wouldn’t blame you if you had.’

‘Well I didn’t.’

Their relationship affects the words they choose to say, the questions they dodge and the assumptions they make. Dialogue that fails to take these elements into account tends towards soulless conversation that is just furthering the plot, reacting to an event or revealing a secret.

How much can an editor change?

It tends to be easier to take things out than to add things in. Whatever we remove, the words that remain are still entirely the author’s. Luckily for us, authors tend to bloat dialogue rather than be too brief, so we usually just need to do some careful snipping. But sometimes the dialogue feels like it’s just scaffolding and it needs something more substantial.

When it comes to adding stuff in, editors are limited in what we can do. It’s not our job to write the book. But we could provide examples. My favourite trick is to mine the narrative for key phrases that ring with the character’s voice and move them into sleepy dialogue to wake it up. I might borrow a phrase from one speaker and give it to another, or flip who says what. That way I’m using the author’s own words to patch the hole rather than speaking for them. If there isn’t a handy phrase nearby, I’ll provide some examples in my best imitation of their voice and let the author choose.

If you’re asking them to add something, you must have a good reason for doing so, and be very clear in your directions. Be specific about what exactly needs to be added, why and where. Review their revisions to check they haven’t introduced errors. And remember that it’s not your book.

Summing it up

  • If you read a manuscript in full before you dive in, you can get to know the characters a little better.
  • Take note not only of what characters are but who they are, and how that affects their voice.
  • Make note of their relationships, and check if these relationships are reflected in their conversations.
  • Trim out the unnecessary padding and let the best parts of the dialogue shine without being smothered by redundant dialogue tags or awkward attempts to show dialect.
  • Be just as careful taking out as you are adding in, and don’t fix what ain’t broke. Ask more questions and respect the characters as much as you respect the author.

For more insight into making dialogue sparkle, I recommend Louise Harnby’s dialogue resources, this blog post by Emma Darwin, and Sophie Playle’s fabulous explanation of ‘As You Know, Bob’ dialogue (and how to avoid it).

About Katherine Kirk

Katherine Kirk is a fiction editor who has lived all over the world, including China, South Korea, Ecuador, and Morocco, and she’s not done yet. She works on all types of fiction for adults, especially Science Fiction, Fantasy and Literary Fiction. She is a Professional Member of the CIEP.

 

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.
Find out more about:

 

Photo credits: speech bubbles by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels; couple by Samson Katt on Pexels.

Posted by Sue McLoughlin, blog assistant.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.