Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part IV: Timeline

The Style Sheets — Part IV: Timeline

by Amy J. Schneider

In this final installment on the style sheets I keep while copyediting fiction, I discuss the timeline. Just as with character and location descriptions, the timeline must be kept consistent with the fictional world of the story, and sometimes also with actual events in the real world. I’ve found that authors often have difficulty maintaining a consistent timeline. Good thing I’ve got their back! Let’s look at one way to keep the timeline on track.

The Layout

I don’t often see timelines created by others, whether created by the copyeditor of a previous book in a series or provided by the author. When I do, it is often in a straight text format: paragraphs beginning with “Day One” or “Monday, September 3.” Occasionally it’s more of a plot outline, by chapter.

I’m more of a visual thinker when it comes to time and calendars, so I lay out my timeline as a Word table that’s set up like a monthly calendar. It has a header row with the days of the week, and the weeks extend for as long as the story lasts. This makes it much easier for me to spot when, for example, a school day falls on a weekend or we have only two weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Details to Track

So what kinds of details go on the timeline? Any references to time, whether specific or relative. Occasionally the author helps me out by including time indicators as heads in the text: “Friday night” or “March 26.” Great! On the timeline they go. Each item is preceded by the number of the chapter in which it falls (because in electronic editing, pagination may change depending on the user’s settings).

Occasionally the story may hinge on real historical events. Check those dates! Query if there are mentions of the day of the week that do not align with the actual dates. An online perpetual calendar such as the one at timeanddate.com can be helpful. Some calendars also include holidays. Some authors may not care whether their historical events, especially very old ones, align with the actual calendar for that date. But query any discrepancies anyway and let the author decide what to do.

Time references are often vague, and specific times or days of the week are not mentioned. In such cases, I simply note the reference and take my best guess as to where to place it in the table. “A few days later” might be two or three days. You can use other clues, such as whether it’s a weekday (judging by school days or business hours) or references to “later this week” and the like. Occasionally you may need to shift days around to better fit the calendar, and this can often help show you whether the timeline is accurate. If you have days that are not specific (for example, a day that is listed under Tuesday may not be specifically identified as Tuesday in the text), include a note to that effect at the top of the table. The phrasing I usually use is “Days of the week are indeterminate, except as noted.”

I haven’t yet run into a fictional setting where names of days or months are made up, or are divided differently than in the real world (for example, nine-day weeks and twenty-five-day months), but I did recently edit a novel that divided the day into an unusual number of hours in which each hour of the day had a name. Those divisions went on the general style sheet as well as on the timeline, where mentioned.

The following are some examples of specific things to track:

• As mentioned earlier, any reference to time, whether fixed or relative: midmorning; three weeks later; Wednesday
• References to weather, moon phases, sun position, seasons: the setting sun, a crescent moon, it rained all morning, a cool spring evening
• School days, workdays, church services: Make sure the kids aren’t going to school on Sunday. This is where tracking relative mentions of time comes in. If a scene specifically takes place on a Thursday, and then three days later Joanie gets in trouble at school, that should raise a red flag. Similarly, I once queried whether New York City has a morning rush hour on Sundays. And if a person who works a nine-to-five job is in the office along with all of her coworkers on a Saturday afternoon, business as usual, that’s a good time to query as well.
• Critical plot events: Tracking the day on which an important event happens will give you something to refer to later on: “Three weeks after the accident…”
• Character ages, birthdays, and other life events: If Linda was 26 at the beginning of the story, in May, then she can’t be 29 the following spring.
• Watch for “missing” holidays and big events (such as milestone birthdays), if their absence is remarkable. In a military thriller, a character may not be concerned about celebrating his 50th birthday, but in a homey country-themed romance novel, it would be unusual for the Christmas season to pass without comment.

Pay attention to logical inconsistencies relating to the passage of time. In a Civil War novel, I queried the author when a group of soldiers took more than a month to march 100 miles. That’s less than 3 miles a day, which seems unusually slow. In another story, a person left his room at eight p.m.; “the hours passed”; and then it was nine p.m. Either it’s later now, or less time than “hours” has passed. An event that was in the timeline three months ago would likely not be referred to as “the other day.”

I use a short horizontal line within days to indicate scene breaks. This helps if for some reason a scene needs to be moved or if there is a question about when exactly an event happened, if the description is vague.

Sometimes you may be able to fix timeline discrepancies by adjusting vague references (the author might have written “three weeks later” when it’s really two weeks, and making that change does not disrupt other elements) and writing a query to explain the reason for the change and ask the author if the edit is OK. Similarly, sometimes you can simply change “Thursday” to “Friday” and query. But you must be absolutely certain that you are not introducing another error. In other cases, the problem may be just too convoluted for a simple fix. In that case, write a query outlining the problem, make any suggestions that you can, and leave it to the author to fix (or not, if that is the author’s choice).

Nonlinear Time

Occasionally a story has characters moving in parallel timelines. Perhaps they have separated and are journeying in different directions (or are moving toward each other). Recently I edited a novel with parallel timelines (in alternating chapters): the odd-numbered chapters were about a person who was lost, and the even-numbered chapters were about the people who were looking for him. These can get tricky, but I simply do my best to align the days to keep events straight. In one novel, on the day when two timelines were supposed to join together again, they were actually several weeks apart. Query! Here, again, a note at the top of the timeline is needed to indicate that things may be fuzzy.

Similarly, some stories have flashbacks or otherwise jump around. Usually I separate these with a horizontal dividing line across the entire table and perhaps a line or two of explanatory text.

Conclusion

It may take some practice and experience to tune your ear to the sometimes vague and subtle references to time while copyediting a work of fiction. But your authors will thank you for it!

I hope you’ve gleaned some useful information from these articles over the past several months. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. Beginning in May, Thinking Fiction is being taken over by Carolyn Haley; I’ve worked with Carolyn and I know the topic will be in good hands. Meanwhile, I plan to continue my own discussion of fiction copyediting in my own blog later this year. If you’d like to read more, follow me on social media and watch for upcoming announcements. Finally, I thank Rich Adin for getting me to dip my toe into the blogosphere.

Amy J. Schneider (amy@featherschneider.com), owner of Featherschneider Editorial Services, has been a freelance copyeditor and proofreader of fiction and nonfiction books since 1995. She has shared her insights on copyediting fiction as a speaker at the Communication Central conferences, in writing for the Copyediting newsletter, and in an audioconference for Copyediting.com. Amy can be reached at LinkedIn, via Twitter, and on Facebook.

Related An American Editor essays:

• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part III: Locations
• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part II: Characters
• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part I: General Style

Advertisement

Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part III: Locations

The Style Sheets — Part III: Locations

by Amy J. Schneider

In any novel or short story, the characters move around the world they inhabit: within buildings and throughout neighborhoods, cities, and even sometimes spiritual realms. Let’s talk about how to keep that motion logical. Many of the general concepts discussed last month in “The Style Sheets — Part II: Characters” apply here as well, so you may wish to review that article as we go along.

Here We Go Again: Details, Details, Details!

Last month I talked about the proclivity of copyeditors to keep alphabetical lists of characters, and how doing so isn’t really all that helpful for maintaining continuity. And so it is with geographical details. Rather than simply listing all places alphabetically, it’s much more useful to group places by their relation to each other: a house with all its descriptive interior and exterior details, shops that are near each other, streets and how they are connected, and so on.

One exception I do make to the no-alphabetizing rule is that after the edit is done, I often have a list of minor features such as streets, rivers, or businesses that do not have any extra information associated with them. These I will alphabetize by category—all the streets, all the rivers, and so on—just for ease of finding them.

Keeping It Real — Or Not

Many novels are set in real locations, and for the most part you’ll need to make sure that the details given reflect reality. Have you ever read a novel set in a location with which you are well familiar and scoffed when a street ran in the wrong direction, or a building was miles away from its real location? (One of my favorite examples from the world of television was from the 1970s sitcom Happy Days; in one episode some characters walked from Milwaukee to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in about an hour. Anyone who’s driven from the area where I grew up to Milwaukee knows that it is indeed about an hour from Fond du Lac to Milwaukee — in a car.) When specifics are given, check them out. Get out your atlas or pull up an online map.

However, bear in mind also that authors often introduce deliberate fictionalization, much in the same way that phone numbers in movies and on television are often of the “555” variety. So when you find such errors, bring them to the author’s attention, but query whether the error is deliberate.

For completely fictional locations, such as fictional towns or fantasy worlds, you may find it helpful to draw maps to help you (and the characters) keep your bearings.

Details to Track

With locations, as with characters, track anything that could be contradicted later. If a character’s bedroom window faces west, we don’t want her awakened in the morning by the blinding sun. Don’t let a solid wooden door turn into steel. And so on. Let’s look at what sorts of things you might want to put on your style sheet:

• Cardinal directions and distances (the mountains are west of town; the comedy club is a few miles from Benny’s apartment; the fictional town of Midvale is a 3-hour drive from St. Louis; the laundromat is at the southwest corner of the intersection)
  • This point also relates to the timeline, discussed in next month’s article: if the characters take a day to travel from point A to point B, but a week to return, it’s time to query. Either there’s a problem with the number of days that have passed during that return trip, or there should be a good reason for the delay.
  • Also watch for the relationships between locations; if a hotel is just outside the city limits, how can the bar across the street be 5 miles out? This is where grouping by location can help you catch inconsistencies.
• Names of regions, cities/towns, streets, geographical features, businesses, buildings; any proper nouns (including real names that might be spelled different ways: Walmart, 7-Eleven)
• Descriptions of interiors
  • Décor, colors of walls/furniture/drapery, furniture type and placement; locations of rooms, windows, and doors; other details (the house has only one bathroom; Betty’s house has a business landline)
  • Right/left: rooms off hallways, doors, wings of mansions; turns taken while walking/driving to get from point A to point B (if specifics are given) (the main staircase turns to the right; Robert’s office is on the left side of the hallway off the living room)
  • Where the sun rises and sets (remember our early riser!)
  • Number of floors in buildings, locations of rooms (watch out for British usage here; in British usage, the ground floor is at street level and the first floor is the next one up, whereas in American usage we start with the first floor)
  • Remember that if an apartment is on the fourth (American!) floor, you will climb only three flights of stairs to get to it.
• Descriptions of exteriors: landscaping, architecture (the cemetery is not fenced; Lydia’s house has a flagstone path from the small front porch to the sidewalk; neat flowerboxes at every window)
• Business hours and regular events (the gas station is open every day; if the book club always meets at Beans & Books on Tuesdays, then what are they doing there on a Saturday?)

Again, as for character details, you can simply copy descriptions from the manuscript to your style sheet to save time, and edit as desired to save space. Note the chapter number where the description first occurs.

I Found a Contradiction; Now What?

Again, refer back to “The Style Sheets — Part 2: Characters” for guidance on resolving discrepancies. If there is a minor difference, it’s probably safe to change and query. But if the problem involves a factor that’s critical to the plot, bring it to the author’s attention and suggest solutions if you can.

Remember that when you are wearing your copyeditor hat, you are like the continuity director for a movie. If the locations are meant to represent real locations, it’s your job to make sure they are accurate. If they are fictional (or fictionalized), make sure they stay true to themselves within that fictional world. Next month, I’ll talk about keeping an accurate timeline to ensure that the story does not breach the space-time continuum (unless it’s supposed to!).

Amy J. Schneider (amy@featherschneider.com), owner of Featherschneider Editorial Services, has been a freelance copyeditor and proofreader of fiction and nonfiction books since 1995. She has shared her insights on copyediting fiction as a speaker at the Communication Central conferences, in writing for the Copyediting newsletter, and in an audioconference for Copyediting.com. Amy can be reached at LinkedIn, via Twitter, and on Facebook.

Related An American Editor essays:

• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part I: General Style
• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets—Part II: Characters
• Thinking Fiction: The Style Sheets — Part IV: Timeline

Thinking Fiction: An Overview of the World of Fiction Copyediting

Today’s essay introduces Amy Schneider and a new monthly series, “Thinking Fiction,” to An American Editor. Amy’s focus will be on fiction editing and writing. Please welcome Amy as a new columnist for An American Editor.

________________________

An Overview of the World of Fiction Copyediting

by Amy J. Schneider

When I mention that I spend a fair amount of my professional life copyediting fiction, colleagues (especially those who have edited only nonfiction) and laypeople alike are fascinated. Wow, so you earn your living by reading romances and thrillers? Neat! Well, as with all editing there’s a bit more to it than just reading. Nonfiction editors recognize this, but they worry about getting so caught up in the story that they forget to edit judiciously. Or they worry about sullying the author’s creative work. In my contributions to An American Editor, I hope to address some of these issues and share my approach to copyediting fiction.

What Fiction Copyediting Is Not

• If you are an aspiring or actual novelist, this is not the time or place to try to take over the telling of the story or critique the work. Your job is mechanical only. You may certainly set your writer’s or critic’s hat off to the side and glance at it from time to time as you copyedit, but do not even think about putting it on. A common saying among editors is “It’s not my book,” and this certainly applies when we are copyediting fiction.
• This is also not the place to apply your own moral code. Unlike in most nonfiction, you may encounter naughty words, unpleasant people and actions, blasphemy, and (gasp!) sex scenes. Your job is to copyedit the narrative and dialogue in all its unsavory glory. You may certainly choose not to accept projects in genres such as erotica or violent military or paranormal thrillers — but once you do, you’re duty bound to edit the text respectfully and keep it true to itself. (Is that term for a sexual act one word or two? Decide and put it on the style sheet. Not every style sheet is one that you would show to your mother.)
• In fiction, grammar, punctuation, syntax, style, and the like are much more fluid. Fiction authors often use words to paint a picture, create a mood, wax poetic. Characters may or may not speak grammatical English, whether in dialogue or in first-person narrative. If you are a stickler for language perfection, you must retrain your brain a bit when copyediting fiction. Mind, it’s not a free-for-all, and when copyediting for a publisher you need to balance house style against the author’s voice, but you must also be aware of when it’s okay (or even necessary) to break the rules.

Making the Transition from Nonfiction Copyediting

When I started freelancing, my bread and butter was copyediting college textbooks. Very formulaic, strong adherence to rules. So when I started editing fiction, like my nonfiction editor colleagues mentioned earlier, I worried about interfering with the story or offending the author. But really, copyediting fiction is just wearing a different hat. Instead of keeping the text 100 percent in line with the real world, it is your job to ensure that the story is internally consistent within its own world, whether real or fictional. This means checking both real-world facts (are there mountains in Wisconsin?) and fictional ones (which colors of magic stones are sentient and which are not?); errors in either case may interfere with the reader’s enjoyment of the story (keeping in mind that authors sometimes deliberately fictionalize locations and other facts for various reasons). If the book is part of a series, ideally the same copyeditor will have handled the series from book one onward to ensure continuity across the entire story arc (I’ll talk about series copyediting in a future essay). Here are some of the things you’ll handle as you copyedit:

• General style sheet: Every book needs one, and fiction is no exception. You need to track treatment of numbers (e.g., they are usually spelled out in dialogue, but not always). You need to keep a list of abbreviations for both real and fictional entities. How is dialogue punctuated? How are we treating internal thought, telepathic dialogue, remembered speech, handwriting, text messages, and so on? These need to be noted on the general style sheet. Which terms of address are capped (Officer, Detective) and which are not (ma’am, sweetheart)? The author may choose one style or another. Or the publisher may request that the author’s style be changed. Because these choices are so fluid in fiction, you need to note them for each book.
• Characters: Some authors keep rigorous track of their characters’ attributes — but many do not. Or they make changes but don’t catch every instance. Marcel becomes Malcolm. Julie’s eyes change color from blue to green. Greg is left-handed but wears a golf glove on his left hand (oops — most golfers wear the glove on their nondominant hand). Lee is single and an only child — so how is it that she has a niece? Back when you edited book one in the series, you noted that Claude could read ancient Greek, but now in book three he has mysteriously lost that ability. Time to query!.
• Locations: Again, you’ll track both real and fictional locations. Cathy’s bedroom is on the second floor, and the walls are painted blue. Sticksville is 25 miles from Cityscape. The tree on the west side of the park is a magnificent oak. And so on. So when Cathy walks in the front door of her bungalow and down the hall to her green bedroom, it’s time to query.
• Timeline and plot: The level of detail here will vary. Some authors use only vague time markers (a few days later; by spring), if any. Others are more specific, mentioning dates, days of the week, and times of day. You need to note all references to time, whether vague or not: Carlos’s birthday is next month. The Friday night knitting club meets tomorrow (in which case today had better be Thursday). The last mention of time today was nine a.m.; has the action moved along sufficiently that it can now be midnight? I use a Word table that looks like a monthly calendar page to track time-related facts, because that’s how my brain works; it also helps me follow timelines that range over weeks or years, to make sure that six weeks isn’t really three or that it’s not snowing in Minnesota in what should be July.
• Kid gloves: The most important part of your fiction copyeditor’s uniform is your kid gloves. As I alluded to earlier, a work of fiction is the author’s creative work — the author’s baby. Often there is no clear “right” or “wrong.” Query carefully and tactfully. If wording seems awkward enough to pull the reader out of the story, suggest a revision and explain the reason, rather than making the change outright. (Remember that it’s not your book.) I use the word perhaps a lot when querying: “Perhaps substitute [word or phrase] here, [give reason]?” Couch your queries in terms of what’s best for the story or for the reader’s enjoyment.

In future essays, I’ll discuss these and other topics in more depth. I look forward to engaging with you and getting down to the nuts and bolts of editing fiction.

(For another perspective on fiction editing, see Erin Brenner’s The Practical Editor: What You Need to Know to Edit Fiction — AAE)

Amy J. Schneider (amy@featherschneider.com), owner of Featherschneider Editorial Services, has been a freelance copyeditor and proofreader of fiction and nonfiction books since 1995. She has shared her insights on copyediting fiction as a speaker at the Communication Central conferences, in writing for the Copyediting newsletter, and in an audioconference for Copyediting.com. Amy can be reached at LinkedIn, via Twitter, and on Facebook.