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About Jim Dempsey

Jim Dempsey is a book editor who specializes in detailed analysis and editing of novel manuscripts through his company, Novel Gazing. He has worked as an editor for more than 20 years. He has a master’s degree in creative writing and is a professional member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and is a trustee of the Arkbound Foundation. Jim is fascinated by the similarities between fiction and psychotherapy, since both investigate the human condition, the things that make us uniquely human. He explores this at The Fiction Therapist website. If you have a specific concern with your novel, send an email to jim [at] thefictiontherapist.com, or visit the website to ask for a free sample edit. You can follow Jim on Instagram @the_fiction_therapist.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • The Good and Bad of Storytelling
  • Ground Your Characters with All Five Senses
  • Editing at Your Own Pace
  • Writing and Napping
  • Writing and Hiking
  • Your Words or Your Editor’s?
  • A Simple Guide to Symbolism in Stories
  • Writing When You’re Not Writing
  • Create Conflict in Your Characters
  • Do You Really Want to Be a Writer?
  • Manipulate Your Readers’ Point of View
  • What Really Drives Your Characters?

    • The Good and Bad of Storytelling

    By 15 Comments

    Since this has been a week of lies and rumors (or has it?), I thought I’d continue the trend.

    I don’t know where I first heard this—a screenwriting blog some years ago, I think—but it described the Coen brothers’ writing process. Ethan and Joel have been top screenwriters in Hollywood since the late 80s and the 90s with hits like Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo and The Big Lebowski. They’ve continued their success ever since with many more movies, including No Country for Old Men, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and the forthcoming The Tragedy of Macbeth (maybe they’re not responsible for all the plotting on this last example, or some of the others too).

    In other words, they know how to write.

    The story goes that one brother writes a scene, usually ending with the main character in an impossible position, and then hands the writing over to the other brother to see if he can write the protagonist out of that situation, only for him to end the scene in yet another hell, before passing it back again.

    Back and forth and back and forth they go—according to the rumor—until they have another smash hit.

    Their process then seems to be to consistently find a series of impossible obstacles for their main characters to overcome. The audience go through that same emotional rollercoaster of tension and despair as these cinematic heroes face death once again only to feel that relief and elation as they yet again prevail. [Read more…]

    Ground Your Characters with All Five Senses

    By 8 Comments

    When I’m writing—these articles, for example—I often compose a kind of first draft in my head, and I usually do it when I’m out on a long walk with the dog. For this article, I knew I wanted to get across the idea that writers can introduce elements from one or all of the five senses to make settings and characters more realistic. So, on my walk, I thought about how I could approach this. Then I noticed my dog, Dexter, was nowhere to be seen. This is very usual. We both get caught up in our … [Read more...]

    Editing at Your Own Pace

    By 9 Comments

    Writing is usually a fairly solitary experience, except maybe when your cats walk across the keyboard and add their contribution. But the publication process can be different, especially if you want to stand out among other authors and deliver a professional manuscript that can compete with the many thousands sent to publishers and agents every year, along with all the novels by indie authors and those already on the shelves. For many writers, a major part of that professionalization is … [Read more...]

    Writing and Napping

    By 16 Comments

    Many years ago, before I became a book editor, I worked in radio. It’s great work. I learned so much about dialogue and, with broadcast time always limited, I came to appreciate the art of telling a story concisely. But one great thing about working in radio is the voice-over studio. It’s where the reporter goes to record the intro and links between the pieces of pre-recorded interviews. It’s often a small room filled with all that audio gear and lined with soft, cushiony foam. It often … [Read more...]

    Writing and Hiking

    By 15 Comments

    Charles Dickens died this day, June 9, 150 years ago. He gave many pieces of writing advice throughout his incredible career, the most famous, and probably best, of which was: “Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” It was the motto against which he judged his own work. He also recognized the toll writing can take on an author, the “wear and tear,” and saw the importance of taking a break from writing, of having distractions away from quill and ink, computer and keyboard. You must … [Read more...]

    Your Words or Your Editor’s?

    By 16 Comments

    This month’s fiction therapy is a reply to a question from a member of the WU community, Nanette J. Purcigliotti. I had edited some of Nanette’s work, and she had some questions afterwards, with concerns that I think many writers have about working with an editor. Here’s what she wrote: “I thank you again for your revised suggestions. But they are your words, not mine. That doesn't make me comfortable. How do I get around that?” A fair question, I think, and I completely understand … [Read more...]

    A Simple Guide to Symbolism in Stories

    By 16 Comments

    It seems we cannot get enough of pandemics. Dean Koontz’s novel The Eyes of Darkness jumped to number three in Amazon’s charts, with a reported increase in sales of 3,000%. It’s about a virus, a biological weapon, developed by China, called Wuhan-400. Spooky, right? Especially since it was written in 1981. Maybe it’s mostly conspiracy theorists buying that one. But what about Albert Camus’s The Plague? His 1947 novel has seen a sales boom, too, these last weeks. Here, though, the plague is a … [Read more...]

    Writing When You’re Not Writing

    By 18 Comments

    This month for Fiction Therapy, I answer a question from a member of the WU community, Al Rutgers. Al is 63 years old and has been writing in starts and stops for 15 years. He says: I’ve studied the craft of writing by taking some university writing courses, some online courses, and reading books and blogs about writing. My favourite way of studying writing is to write, in longhand, chapters of novels, stories or essays by writers I admire: John Steinbeck, Alice Munro, Joan Didion, Zadie … [Read more...]

    Create Conflict in Your Characters

    By 8 Comments

    There are no murders, no kidnappings, no killer robots, no evil wizards, no spies, no ghastly villains, no wars and not a single shot fired in Sally Rooney’s 2017 debut novel. In fact, the title pretty much describes what this book is about: Conversations with Friends. And yet this is a captivating page-turner of a book. The kind where, when you finally look up from the pages, you realize it’s an hour later and your coffee is cold. It’s that good. So how does she do it? How does she take … [Read more...]

    Do You Really Want to Be a Writer?

    By 18 Comments

    When people ask what I do and I say I'm a novel editor, they tell me they'd love to write a book some day, once the kids are grown up, when they have more time, or if only they were good enough. Some people have already given up trying. They say, ‘I suppose if I really wanted to write I’d have done it by now.’ But that’s just another excuse. That argument assumes we all fall naturally into what we want to do, when in fact it’s much more natural to find an excuse not to do it. We all … [Read more...]

    Manipulate Your Readers’ Point of View

    By 4 Comments

    After seeing lots of hype in the media, I’ve been catching up with the HBO series Succession. The writers are there are expert at manipulating their audience. Their basic message is straightforward and not subtle. The main characters – members of a family that owns a multinational media and entertainment empire – are horrible, selfish and self-absorbed. They treat everyone with contempt. But they reserve their true disdain for those outside the immediate family, in other words, those who are … [Read more...]

    What Really Drives Your Characters?

    By

    There’s a lot of writing advice that tells you to find your characters' goals. If you can work out what drives them in their lives, you can use those goals to drive the story. Most of this advice will tell that your character should have two goals: internal and external. The alcoholic detective’s external need is to find the killer while his internal need is to get over the loss of his wife, which is what drives him to drink. The young student at the school for magic needs to combat evil … [Read more...]