Jim Dempsey

About Jim Dempsey

Jim Dempsey has worked as an editor for more than 20 years. In 2012, he set up his own book editing company, Novel Gazing, and offers proofreading, copy-editing and developmental editing services. The company works with publishers and self-publishing authors. Jim has a master’s degree in creative writing, and uses his passion for stories – all kinds of stories, fiction and nonfiction – to coach authors, helping them to develop their writing skills. When Jim isn’t editing, he’s still reading, and reviewing books for Bookmunch. Jim is a professional member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.

Give Your Hero a Hard Time

February 23, 2018 By Jim Dempsey

“Be a sadist,” said Kurt Vonnegut. That’s number six on his list of eight creative writing 101 tips. He added, “No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

Vonnegut knew what he was talking about. He made awful things happen to Billy Pilgrim, his leading character in his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. It was not enough to send Pilgrim unprepared into the thick of World War II and have him captured by the enemy, Vonnegut then sends him into the worst firestorm of the war—Dresden in February 1945. And that was just the start of poor Pilgrim’s problems.

Vonnegut’s inspiration came from his own life. He’d been a prisoner of war held in a slaughterhouse in Dresden in February ‘45. Fortunately, it’s not essential to go through quite such a trauma to create great leading characters. There are far easier ways to give your hero a hard time.

For Robert Towne, who won an Oscar in 1974 for his screenplay Chinatown (remember what a rough time he gave Jack Nicholson’s character, Jake Gittes?), the best way to get tough on your hero is to ask: What are you afraid of? If you can discover your characters’ fears, then continually confront them with those fears, you’ll create memorable, engaging characters.

This might sound like every story should be a horror, but that’s not the case. In Chinatown, for example, Jake is obsessed with being a detective, to the point that he’s willing to work for free. His weakness is women, and he wants to protect them. His fear is that a(nother) woman will be harmed or even killed while he feels responsible for her. This fear and this need to protect leads him to misinterpret events and miss important clues, getting in the way of his obsession to be a good detective.

Fundamental fears

As the author of your story, you can of course simply assign your character a fear. But the best characters, the ones we remember, have personalities—and therefore fears—that are intrinsic to the story. They make sense in the story’s world. To take an extreme example: if the main character of your romance is afraid of snakes, it will only interrupt the story if you then drop that character into a pit of snakes every few chapters for no other purpose than to invoke some tension (except, maybe, if the love interest is a snake charmer).

Here then is one way to get to the depths of your characters’ fears. [Read more…]

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Three Ways to Discover Your Character’s True Motivation

December 1, 2017 By Jim Dempsey

Please welcome Jim Dempsey back to Writer Unboxed today, this time as our newest regular contributor! Jim is a professional member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and works as a book editor at a company called Novel Gazing. In his own words, Jim tells us that:

I’ve been editing for just over 20 years, and the thing that still fascinates me about literature – or any art – is how it can tell us so much about ourselves and what makes us uniquely human. In that respect, fiction especially has a lot in common with psychology, and I’m always interested in the points where these two meet, and what psychology can teach us about fiction, and what literature can teach us about being human.

You can learn more about Jim and his services on his company website, and by following him on Twitter (@jimdempsey and @novel_gazing).

Three Ways to Discover Your Character’s True Motivation

It might seem obvious to say (or just plain odd), but your characters don’t know they’re part of a story. Except for some metafictional works, your characters think they are real people. They want to behave like real people – and readers want them to behave like real people. That means that the actions they take and the choices they make are all done for a reason. What they do has to make sense to them (and the readers).

Your main character chose to be a hero, at least the hero of this story. Certain circumstances led them to that decision and the position they’re now in. They chose to act in one way rather than continue with how their old life was going. It wasn’t a random decision. It was motivated by events, the past and influences from other characters (who also don’t know they’re in a story).

Your characters – especially protagonists – will make many choices over the course of the novel. They will go this way or that. Knowing what truly motivates your characters can help you decide which direction they, as a real person, will choose and – more importantly – why. This will make your characters even more believable, more human, and the story more engaging.

Readers don’t need to know the precise details of everything that led to this moment in the story except those that are relevant to the narrative. But it is useful if you – the author – know that backstory and what drove them to this point. These three exercises will help you to discover what truly motivates your characters.

1. The opposite job

Let’s start with something fun. The New York Times had an article recently about opposite jobs. Based on the details of the skills required for certain occupations, determined by the Labor Department, the newspaper developed a tool where you can type in your job and it will tell you the opposite job, the job that requires completely different skills.

The tool lists the skills needed for each job, so you can check to see if your character has what it takes to be in that occupation.

The opposite of a writer, for example, is a mobile home installer. The latter are, apparently, better suited to ‘developing and building teams,’ and ‘scheduling work and activities,’ which I think just means they don’t procrastinate quite as much.

The opposite job of a waitress is a physicist. Physicists don’t have the same ‘ability to reach with arms, hands and legs,’ so will probably propel the burger to your table via a rocket, and that’s too dangerous.

Once you have your character’s opposite job, you can think about why they decided to become an architect, aircraft mechanic or whatever and not a meat packer or locker room attendant.

A useful thought exercise is to work out what decisions they could have taken in their ‘life’ that would have led them to this opposite job. Working out what they could have done, the choices the could have made, will help you see why they decided to go the other way and end up in the position they are in now.

The opposite job of an editor, by the way, is a model. Not because all editors are ugly but because models can’t quite hunch over a desk like we can.

Note: if your character is a wizard, warrior, spy or medieval knight, then you’re out of luck. Apparently, the Labor Department doesn’t have data on those particular skillsets.

2. The eulogy

Another way to bring your character to life is to think about their death.

Imagine your main character has died. It might be suddenly or at the end of a long life, long after the story has ended. Picture their funeral, the people (fictional or real) who would be there and whether it’s a grand ceremony or something simple.

Nobody knows this character better than you, and now you have to give the eulogy at that funeral. What will you say?

It’s a good writing exercise to at least jot down some ideas if not the full eulogy. Would you say something about their family, for example? Which close friends would get a special mention? What did the character achieve in life? Was work the most important thing? Did they have another vocation that drove them to success, however big or small?

You could even describe the whole funeral, and think about who would be crying the most, who would be sitting there bored and who would be missing or peering in from outside.

The result will be a description of this character’s path in life and include the things they valued most. From there you will learn who and what is most important to your character, and that will tell you what drives your character, what motivates their actions and choices.

3. What if… [Read more…]

How to Keep Track of All Your Novel’s Details

October 13, 2017 By Jim Dempsey

Please welcome Jim Dempsey back to Writer Unboxed today! Jim is a professional member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and works as a book editor at a company called Novel Gazing. In his own words, Jim tells us that:

‘I’ve been editing for a little more than 20 years, gradually making the shift from nonfiction to fiction, which is where my heart really lies. After a few years, I was so busy editing novels that it made sense to pool resources with another two editing friends, and together we set up our own company called Novel Gazing. That was in 2012, and although I have continued with a few nonfiction clients, I spend most of my time editing fiction for publishers and self-publishing authors. I enjoy the challenge of fiction, making sure all the pieces fit together to make a perfect whole.’

You can learn more about Jim and his services on his company website, and by following him on Twitter (@jimdempsey and @novel_gazing).

How to Keep Track of All Your Novel’s Details

I recently worked on a story that had two Mondays in the same week. When I pointed this out, the author was so embarrassed to have made such an obvious error, but it’s a simple mistake to make. Raymond Chandler apparently forgot to reveal who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, and one character in The Iliad was still around to witness his son’s death even though Menelaos had killed him much earlier.

It’s those minor characters that are usually the problem. The little details. You know your main characters perfectly, you can see them in your mind’s eye. But was her mother born before the war or just after? Did he meet his first wife when he was a freshman or was he already a sophomore?

Editors have a similar problem when they start to work on your book. They don’t know anything about your characters, the world they live in, who did what or when, but they still have to keep track of it all. They have to be able to point out that John, who had a bad limp in chapter 3, is now escaping over back-yard fences like an Olympic hurdler or remind you that the witness spoke with a heavy British accent when she was first interviewed but sounds more like a Southern belle when the inspector revisits her later in the book.

Keeping track of all of these details and idiosyncrasies is essential for the editor, and it’s useful for authors too to make sure your characters, settings, style, and backstories are consistent.

Avoid confusion

Having two Mondays in the same week and other issues with your story’s timeline in particular can be time-consuming errors to correct. It can mean that everything after that blip gets knocked out of sync too. And a simple find-and-replace to change every Monday to Tuesday won’t work as you then have to change every Tuesday to Wednesday and so on, plus check for every mention of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ and ‘day before’ too.

More importantly, a disturbed timeline can confuse readers: ‘I thought the murder happened on Monday, but now she’s saying today is Monday.’ It’s enough to make them drop your book to pick up another. Or worse, leave a scathing review.

It’s especially important to be on top of the timeline in stories if your story doesn’t run in a strict chronological order or you have several or alternating plot lines. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to easily keep track of your novel’s timeline.

One way is to use specialized software. Many of you will have heard of Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php), which was specially developed for long-form writing. As well as a word processor, the program lets you order your story with index cards on a virtual corkboard, and it comes with a detailed outlining feature.

If you’ve got a more complex storyline, perhaps a saga spanning many generations or a series covering the lives of multiple characters, then you might prefer Aeon Timeline (https://www.aeontimeline.com). It’s compatible with Scrivener—you can drag and drop documents between the two programs—and has a feature that will alert you when a character appears to be in two places at the same time. It will even work out your characters’ ages as the story progresses.

Other similar software for novelists includes StoryMill (http://marinersoftware.com/products/storymill/), Storyist (http://storyist.com/), and The Novel Factory (https://www.novel-software.com/). These all have features to track your characters, plot and timeline, and have some version of the corkboard and index card arrangement.

You have to pay for these programs, and you’ll have a bit of a learning curve before you’re working fluently with any of them.

Keep it simple

A simpler alternative, of course, would be to use an actual corkboard and index cards, or a large whiteboard. Or stick pieces of paper on the wall, providing you have understanding housemates if your timeline ends up stretching a little too far.

A more discreet alternative, if you don’t want to flash your novel’s specifics to everyone just yet, is to use a spreadsheet program like Excel or Numbers. But a table in a Word or Pages works just as well.

When I start editing a new novel, I set up a series of spreadsheets to keep all the details of the timeline, characters, and settings together. When I come across a description in the text, I make a note in the relevant table.

For example, my character description sheet has two columns, one for the character name and one column for the description. If I read something like: ‘Lynn combed out her long, dark hair and put on her glasses to finally read the note,’ then I add the name—Lynn— and the description—long, dark hair; glasses; shortsighted.

Over the course of the novel, I build up a picture of Lynn with the other details I come across: lives on the fifth floor; buys a flat latte every day from Stay Up Latte.

I do the same with descriptions of locations in the novel. For example: Stay Up Latte—two blocks from Lynn’s apartment; on the corner; best carrot and hazelnut cake on the north side.

The timeline table needs a few more columns. [Read more…]

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How a Professional Editor Can Improve Your Writing

August 20, 2017 By Jim Dempsey

Please welcome Jim Dempsey to Writer Unboxed today! Jim is a professional member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders and works as a book editor at a site called Novel Gazing. In his own words:

“I began my professional career as a journalist, working mostly in radio, and then, in the late 1990s, I adapted radio stories for the web. This meant editing my colleagues’ work to be read rather than heard. That took a lot of on-the-job training, courses, and a close attention to detail since radio journalists don’t need to have great grammar or spelling skills. Stories – pretty much all stories, fiction or non-fiction – have always been my passion. I studied them to get a Master’s degree in creative writing, and have always helped friends with their stories as they wrote novels. That gradually expanded to friends of friends and kept going until I was editing novels full time. I started Novel Gazing with two fellow editors in 2012, but that journalist in me still likes to get out now and then to write articles about editing, writing and, of course, stories.”

You can learn more about Jim and his services on his website, and by following him on Twitter (@jimdempsey and @novel_gazing).

How a Professional Editor Can Improve Your Writing

Editors do more than correct errors and rearrange sentences, they also develop a deep understanding of your book so that your readers will understand it too. Take a look at the two samples below. Which one is easier to read?

Most people would say that 2 is an easier read (note that I asked ‘easier,’ not ‘better’ – I’ll come to that in a moment).

And all it took to make the text clearer was some straightforward copy-editing. That means more than simply adding some commas and periods – the editor also has to understand what the author is trying to say.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always clear from just reading the text. Where there are doubts about the author’s intention, the editor has to ask for clarification.

This time I wasn’t able to ask the author. Samuel Beckett, most famous for writing Waiting for Godot, died in 1989.

This extract is from Molloy, and Beckett knew what he was doing when he wrote it. In the context of the novel, his style works perfectly. It emphasizes the sense of confusion. The wandering sentence is as lost as the character expressing it.

So, my revision of Molloy would be to miss the point of what Beckett was trying to say.

The understanding editor

And that’s why it’s important for an editor to understand not only what you, the author, is trying to say with each and every sentence but also understands what you want to say with your entire manuscript and how you want to say it.

To get that understanding, the editor has to read your work closely and appreciate why you have chosen those particular words and expressed them in that particular way. The editor has to know what you are trying to tell the reader.

To do that, the editor also has to see your book as the readers would see it – ideally as your target audience would see it. The editor has to spot any ambiguities, anywhere the readers could misinterpret the text or where their understanding might not match your intention.

That could mean revising something as simple as a mention of floppy disks in a YA novel set in contemporary times. Or it could be a European author writing, ‘It was 38 degrees outside,’ in a book intended for a U.S. audience – the author is imagining sunstroke conditions while the readers see the characters shivering.

Those are details, easily solved, but bigger-picture issues can be more difficult to overcome.

A clear message

This point became clear to me in a novel I edited recently (which inspired me to write this article). It was about a woman who enjoyed her life; she made the best of every day, but felt she had done everything she had ever wanted to do. She had, at 50, finished her bucket list and felt that her life was finished.

This character, to put it very simply, enjoyed the act of living but not her life.

That can be a difficult concept to grasp. In fact, it’s the kind of concept that needs a whole book to explain adequately (rather than my oversimplification above).

And, as you might imagine, there are moments in the novel when other characters don’t understand the protagonist’s point. In a way, the story is a reflection of how readers can misunderstand an author’s intention.

For that to work, the main character (and therefore also the author) has to be clear when she explains what she wants. Some characters might still misunderstand the words (as some readers will), but the author has to make sure that character expresses her intentions well.

In this case, as I read through the manuscript, I highlighted any lines that could confuse the reader, anywhere the reader could misinterpret what the character (and the author) was trying to say. I pointed out the different ways readers could interpret these lines and then suggested how the author could revise them to make the point clear.

And that’s how it works for any book, not just this one. The novel’s message doesn’t have to be precisely defined or expressed ‘out loud,’ and it might not even be immediately clear to many readers, but they at least shouldn’t be led to believe it’s something other than what the author intended.

Converging ideas

The editor acts as an intermediary between the you and your readers. The distance between your intention and the readers’ interpretation shouldn’t be too great. Where there is a gap, the editor will try to close that space by explaining to the author where any ambiguity arises and offer some revision suggestions.

A professional editor, therefore, can add the commas and periods, and even tidy Samuel Beckett’ sentences to make the text easier to read, but the real craft of an editor lies in being able to understand your novel. That’s why it’s so important to find an editor that you are personally comfortable with, someone you can be honest and open with.

But how do you find that person? [Read more…]

About Jim Dempsey

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