How Do We Write?

[MJE]

I always feel its much easier to read when paragraphs are indented. One thing I hate about the layout of our weekly serials on this site is that paragraphs aren't indented and I find it much harder to read! 8)

I actually sent your serial to Keith as you wrote it, Rob, with indented paragraphs, so it is his programme that is removing the indentations.

     As a matter of curiosity - why is this done? I have to admit I would have a bit of a problem if someone removed indentations I had put in, or software did it. At present I write my fiction in H.T.M.L., because I think it is more likely to appear as a web page than as a printed book, and also because it is a universally accessible format, unlike some word-processing formats such as Microsoft Word; and, in that code, I actually put my indentations in with non-breaking-space characters (typed as " " in the code), because I am aware that some software removes ordinary spaces, and I think using non-breaking-space characters gives the best chance of having the indentations retained in different software situations or viewing conditions. I don't use style-sheets for the indentations because if the story page gets separated from the style-sheet (when copied elsewhere, for instance), or read on software that doesn't read style-sheets properly, then the indentations will be lost.
     I reserve empty lines for larger section breaks such as a change of topic or viewpoint or to convey elapsed time in fiction, and it makes these harder to recognize if *every* paragraph is separated by an empty line.

Regards, Michael.

[Rob Houghton]

That's interesting, Julie...I thought that might be what you meant...but all the books I've ever read about writing, and all the publisher's house styles I've studied, demand that paragraphs be indented with no gap between paragraphs. Its the way I've always been told to lay out fiction writing. Usually they advise not to 'justify' paragraphs at all but to indent five spaces for each new paragraph.

I always feel its much easier to read when paragraphs are indented. One thing I hate about the layout of our weekly serials on this site is that paragraphs aren't indented and I find it much harder to read!

     This is my understanding of how it's always been, too - and I lay out my own stories like this (and, as I'm sure everyone has noticed, my forum posts too). To me it's just the proper way to lay out writing.
     I agree with you, Rob, about the layout of the serials, and I would be inclined to alter the code to put in the indentations before printing out anything, to make it look "book-like". In fact, a puzzling thing I've noticed about the serial pages is that, while the chapters are coming out one by one, there is no indentation and there are empty lines between paragraphs (a format I heartily dislike, especially for fiction), but when the complete story is posted as a single file, indentations are put in and the empty lines eliminated. (It is possible to make this change very easily by using a different "style sheet" (coding technique for web pages), and the actual story files don't have to be changed - just a reference to a suitable style-sheet put in near the top (this is invisible to ordinary readers).) Does anyone know why these differences in layout appear at these different stages?
     So I was surprised to hear Julie say that she had found a publisher not wanting indentation in manuscripts, and they put it in themselves. That is certainly not the usual practice I've read of over a lifetime of reading "how-to-write" type books, which are unanimous in advocating the style Rob described.
     Apparently a non-justified right margin actually makes reading easier (I have heard that research has discovered), which is presumably why that is advocated - which still leaves the puzzle of why most fiction is printed right-justified.

Regards, Michael.

Thanks, Michael! I was hoping someone might agree with me on this one, because I've read it hundreds of times! Most publishers, in my experience, certainly would expect manuscripts to be submitted with indented paragraphs, I'm sure (unless something has drastically changed in the last five or six years since I last submitted a manuscript!).

I personally find a piece of writing very hard to read if it is in paragraphs separated by a space. It's not quite so bad in places like the forums, or a factual piece, but I find a fiction story flows less well when it is laid out without indents and with a space between paragraphs. When I re-read my 'Five Go Off On A Narrowboat' story on this website, I was quite surprised how badly it flowed, compared to my own personal indented paragraph version!

[MJE]

I guessed you had, Tony - maybe these days its looked on as better not to indent paragraphs? I guess it's something to do with the website layout template (not that I know anything about the technicalities!!) but I just personally feel a piece of writing flows better when there are indents. :-)

     Anyone know why some regard it as better not to indent? I have a basic knowledge of H.T.M.L. and style-sheets, certainly nothing highly advanced, and I'm not quite sure what "website layout templates" are. But I would jib a bit at the idea that software like this should determine the way a story is presented. I would think it should be up to the author to determine that, and quality software should be flexible enough to accommodate that properly.

I remember reading once that many publisher's won't even read a submitted manuscript or sample chapters if they aren't laid out properly with indented paragraphs!

     Yes - I have read that too. I don't know why they are so strongly insistent upon that. It seems a bit excessive to even refuse to read something that doesn't conform. But I wouldn't have a problem with that anyway, because it's the format I believe to be best, and would follow myself.

Regards, Michael.

[Chrissie777]

...But if we take something basic like punctuation or grammar, there are well-established rules for these which help the writing remain clear, and I think it would take quite a strong and compelling reason to justify departing from these. I was just curious what your view about this is, Rob (or anyone else who wishes to comment). I have occasionally read fiction that did odd things with punctuation, grammar, and the like, and, while I may have still been able to follow the story, these odd things would not help me, and very likely would add a distraction which took me out of the story to some extent, and just seemed completely unnecessary.

Good point, Michael!
I particularly noticed in self-published books that the authors often did a poor job with their spelling and punctuation which annoys me to the point where it destroys my joy of reading, of really diving into and enjoying a story.
Sometimes I wonder if these self-published authors have no friends who could read their manuscript first and help with punctuation, spelling and grammar errors/typos?
That's why I rather stick with well-known authors and decent publishing houses who believe in proof reading before publishing.

[Julie2owlsdene]

I've not read the book, but I was told that 50 Shades of Grey was self published, and the spelling and grammar was awful!

[MJE]

[...] although, as you rightly say, there have been notable exceptions which break these basic 'rules'

     And do you feel that this departure from the usual rules was justified and enhanced the story?
     I find it difficult to envisage a situation where I would want to do this myself. But I am reminded of an interesting science-fiction example. I have to say that I haven't read the book (it was a difficult book of the sort that would interest me but I would find difficult to get into and so tend to put off really trying to tackle it), but I noticed this as I flipped through. It was Robert L. Forward's "Rocheworld", which featured intelligent alien life forms on a double planet that humans encounter, and different aliens seemed to communicate telepathically in different ways, as part of their personality, and their speech was both opened and closed by odd punctuation marks in places of quotation marks - a different punctuation mark for each individual - presumably as a way of making each individual different from each other.

I do think some other 'mechanics' of writing can be broken - spelling has often been something that is played about with - especially if writing in dialect - for example the Brer Rabbit stories, or something written in other dialect. (can't think of any real-life examples at present!)

     Again, I suspect I would be conservative here, although dialects are an obvious example. Even so, some "how-to-write" books advise extreme restraint in playing about with spelling to suggest dialects, so that you might do it only with a few words, not several words in every sentence.

Then there's the 'layout' as I mentioned. I only have a couple of examples - maybe 'layout' is the wrong word...but for example the way that speech is laid out - or a book that doesn't have paragraphs. I read a book once which was totally speech, with no named characters - or rather no attributions of speech - only references in the dialogue. It was an experiment and I found it difficult to read - but it broke with convention.

     I tend to see things like that as gimmicky, and I can't see myself doing that. Some books have no chapters, and I suppose that could make things a bit difficult, too - at least difficult to find convenient points to stop reading for the time being, then know easily where to pick up again later.

I was probably also thinking of conventions such as one story being told in chronological order - sometimes time can be altered in a book - it could start at the end and work to a date further back for example. Teacher's would probably never encourage such a thing - at least, not when I was at school - but that doesn't mean it couldn't be attempted (and I'm sure it has!)

     I could accept that a little more easily, but probably still think telling a story forwards is almost always the best way.
     Easier to accept is an alternating narrative between different sets of characters, and that may or may not play around with the time sequence.
     With my lack of success in my own writing, I hesitate to talk too much about it here, as if I were already a writer (I don't think I can really call myself that); but a novel I've done part of starts with two groups of characters who don't know each other but are going to meet part-way through the novel and make friends. It's a somewhat Blyton-type adventure (although probably more grown-up) and each group encounters a mystery, and when they meet they pool their ideas and realize they have been solving different parts of the same mystery, and this pooling of knowledge advances things further. The first half (possibly even more) of the novel will tell the alternating story threads in chunks of a few chapters at a time. (I have so far developed only one of the story strands to a significant degree, but I have planned that it will definitely have this structure.)
     I hope to finish this some time and possibly write further stories featuring all the characters. I conceived a series, but thought this would be an interesting way for them to meet for the first time, instead of having a conventional first book where they all already know each other or meet very early before anything's happened.

Creative Writing, when I was doing A Levels (I have an A Level in Creative Writing'!) was part of 'English Language' - which dealt more with being creative - by which they simply meant writing from your imagination and creating something. It included poetry and mock newspapers and short stories, plays, novels etc. Creative Writing, to me anyway, is just an umbrella term for 'creating something from your imagination'.

     A Levels, Creative Writing - I've done none of that - just ordinary English classes in school, and years of writing on my own. I hope that lack of specialized training is not too much of a handicap to me writing good work.
     So I take it, Rob, that "creative writing" would also include just ordinary, conventional fiction that follows all the traditional rules.

Regards, Michael.

[MJE]

Thanks, Michael! I was hoping someone might agree with me on this one, because I've read it hundreds of times!

     So have I. No doubt it is true - and we can see that the vast majority of books (both fiction and non-fiction) are printed that way, so it's obviously the standard. That makes it all the more puzzling why in other situations most people now do it the other way and seem to consider it proper. I find it hard to see why anyone writing fiction especially does this, because I would expect most would want it to look book-like.

Regards, Michael.

[Julie2owlsdene]

I have always written my stories without indentations.

When the book is published I believe all the indentations are done in the editing etc.

In the script I have been sent of yours, Rob. You only have indentations up to page 139. You then continue without any until the end. So maybe someone mentioned that is the way it should be done, I don't know.

Which is why I said that you should redo that script, without the indentations, and only use the 1 and a half spacing or even single, as there are very wide gaps between each sentence, this would then greatly reduce your page numbers.

Your story is well worth considering this presentation and re-sending off, I think.

[Daisy]

I must admit I was surprised to see the weekly serials with spaces between each speech and paragraph and would much prefer to see the indents as they are in books. Does the spacing on the website really make it easier on the eye? I'm not sure as we haven't had the opportunity to see another format. (At least I can't remember if it was ever different.)

[Chrissie777]

I've not read the book, but I was told that 50 Shades of Grey was self published, and the spelling and grammar was awful!8)

I once ordered a self-published book by amazon.de. It was a novel located on the isle of Jersey (this was a year or two before we went to the Channel Islands and before we met you at the Spade Oak).
This book contained many typos, was an amateurishly-written crime story, but the worst was actually the font. It was so small that I needed a magnifying glass in order to read it. If packages from Germany to the US wouldn't take as long, I could have returned it and received a refund. Instead I donated it to the local public library which was in the process of establishing a foreign language(s) section.

Well, I didn't get my money back, but later complained about the plot holes, the many typos, most of all about the tiny font in the book reviews at amazon.de (which did cause a fight with the author herself who was pretty mad at me and wanted me to change my one star rating of her book to a higher star rating, but I refused to give it 2 stars or 3 stars).

[Julie2owlsdene]

Good for you, Chrissie.

[Rob Houghton]

I have always written my stories without indentations.

When the book is published I believe all the indentations are done in the editing etc.

In the script I have been sent of yours, Rob. You only have indentations up to page 139. You then continue without any until the end. So maybe someone mentioned that is the way it should be done, I don't know.

Which is why I said that you should redo that script, without the indentations, and only use the 1 and a half spacing or even single, as there are very wide gaps between each sentence, this would then greatly reduce your page numbers.

Your story is well worth considering this presentation and re-sending off, I think.

Thank you, Julie.

The strange layout of my manuscript has to do with the fact it was originally saved in different files - one for each chapter, and then, before I sent it to Nigel to read, I put all those chapters into one file like a proper book. During copying and pasting, some of the formatting was lost. Originally, all the paragraphs were indented, and in the same font etc.

The book was originally laid out as per what I'd read in 'how to write' books - of which I've read about 12 or 13 over the years - at least one and a half spaces between lines (this is so a publisher's proof-reader can write changes in the space between the lines) and with indented paragraphs.

In contrast to you, I have always used indents to start paragraphs - right from when I first started typing stories on a type-writer aged about 9. Its what I've always done, and when I wrote essays, I had to 'un-learn' it because essays shouldn't be written like that!

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's good to see you posting, Michael (MJE)!

     I agree with you, Rob, about the layout of the serials, and I would be inclined to alter the code to put in the indentations before printing out anything, to make it look "book-like". In fact, a puzzling thing I've noticed about the serial pages is that, while the chapters are coming out one by one, there is no indentation and there are empty lines between paragraphs (a format I heartily dislike, especially for fiction), but when the complete story is posted as a single file, indentations are put in and the empty lines eliminated. (It is possible to make this change very easily by using a different "style sheet" (coding technique for web pages), and the actual story files don't have to be changed - just a reference to a suitable style-sheet put in near the top (this is invisible to ordinary readers).) Does anyone know why these differences in layout appear at these different stages?

I must admit I've no idea why the layout changes but I'm sure Keith must know.

(Having thought about it, maybe it's because the weekly chapters will usually be read online - I myself appreciate extra spacing when reading from a screen - whereas the complete books are intended to be printed off.)

Some years ago I wrote articles for magazines and I always followed their submission guidelines. Publications differed on some details (I can't remember whether they normally wanted paragraphs indented) but one feature they all required was "double spacing" - i.e. a space between each line of text and a double space before each new paragraph. As Rob said, that made it easier for proof-readers/editors.

I used my own name for one-off articles and poems. However, in a magazine called Competitors' World I had pseudonyms for my two regular slots, each of which ran for about eighteen months if I remember correctly. The magazine was aimed at people who liked entering tiebreaker competitions. My first column was a lightly humorous account of my family and the daft or unexpected situations we found ourselves in while following our hobby of "comping". My own children were small at the time but in the column I was the mother of a teenage boy called Nathan and a slightly younger girl called Samantha, and I called myself Antonia Bell.

The second column had the title 'Anna Bailey's Comping Corner' and I gave advice on entering competitions - e.g. where to find entry forms, how to write tiebreakers, which magazines and newspapers contained competitions, etc. Tiebreaker competitions were popular back then and I used to enter quite a few. I once won a vacuum cleaner plus £500 worth of electrical goods of my choice by writing a tiebreaker for a competition in the magazine Good Housekeeping. Another time I won £500 in a limerick-writing competition for Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles. I also won lots of smaller cash prizes, T-shirts, books, toys and games, an umbrella, glassware, etc.

I tried writing a few short stories for women's magazines but sadly they were all rejected.
     

[Julie2owlsdene]

Have you ever thought about writing the articles etc again, Anita? That all sounds so fascinating.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I haven't been too well in recent years but maybe one of these days!