Edit Elle is my guest this week and we bring you all a well rounded conversation about editing, why a writer might need an editor, what makes a good editor and we talk about spicing up your settings (with live examples!). You can find out more about Elle at https://editelle.com/.
Sign up for the Author Platform webinar:
Want to support the show?
Go here: https://pencilsandlipstick.com/supporttheshow
Looking for tips on writing, publishing, and storytelling? Join my writers’ newsletter! https://www.subscribepage.com/katcaldwellnewsletter
Want more information on my books, author swaps, short stories and what I’m reading? Sign up for my readers’ newsletter.
TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:
Kat
Welcome back, everyone, to Pencils & Lipstick. Today I have with me Elle of EditElle. Hello, Elle. How are you doing?
Elle
Hi. I’m doing well. How are you doing, Kat.
Kat
Good thing you don’t have Ss. I would have messed it up.
Elle
All the alliteration does make a difference.
Kat
Before we go into the interview, will you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from?
Elle
Sure. So I’m based in Alberta, Canada. And so I am an editor and Author Accelerator certified coach of fiction. I always have trouble saying that too. You’re worried about my name. So, I opened I opened my freelance editing business in May of 2018, and a couple of years ago I certified as a book coach.
Kat
So what made you become an editor? Are you a writer as well? Are you an English major?
Elle
Well, not an English major, but I actually did a lot of languages and stuff in university so I did French and Spanish too, in university, side-by-side, and English as well too, but I never think of that. I did the three languages all side-by-side, but I didn’t consider English like a language. It’s the path I took so that I could read. I did a lot of language stuff and a million other things too. It’s on my website if you really want to see some of the list. So it ended up being like, communication and culture and then all of the jobs that I’ve ever done, I’ve been like the editor and writer for their newsletter or stuff like that. So if someone needs something edited or written, it was always sent to me. But I actually got into the fiction editing because I was asked to. I was on maternity leave with my second child. I don’t know if you’ve heard that website Voracious Readers, anyway, so you get basically ARC copies or like, free books, and they just ask that you review them, so that they can get some more views on there and you get free books. So I was on maternity leave and nursing all the time and reading all the time, and I actually left someone a really bad review. And all of their other reviews were five stars, but they had full repeated chapters, it was not the cleanest book. And I had a really hard time with it. And after I left the review, the author actually messaged me. And I said, you really need to hire an editor. And they’re like, well, can I just hire you?
Elle
Oh, that’s nice of them. I would have expected them to throw something at me through the Internet.
Elle
Expecting it to be defensive. And I said like, oh no, I’m not an editor. I just do that sort of thing in my other jobs. But I’m not like an editor. And so I turn them down. I was telling my husband about it, and he was like, well, why not? Yeah, why don’t you do that? Because I do write. I’ve never finished a book or anything like that, but I’ve always written as long as I could remember. So like, books and story and stuff is always something that I love and so why not? Then I looked into it and I took some courses on I’m going to forget the name, Editors Canada and got a mentor and stuff like that. And then I opened that.
Kat
Did you open that up while you were still working? Or did you say you were just going to focus on editing? Like, did you quit your other job? And you’re like, yeah, I’m just going to go fulltime.
Elle
No, I didn’t quit my other job, but I was on maternity leave. Yeah, I had a new baby at the time.
Kat
A perfect time to start a new project for sure.
Elle
I was spending most of my time nursing my baby, and so I could just have it up. And I was doing all of this on just while nursing a baby. Yeah. And then when I first started out, I did a whole bunch of stuff for free. Just because we had talked about this before. You can get it in theory, but you really don’t get it until you’re actually doing the work. So I did a bunch of stuff for free at the beginning and started to build up my client base.
Kat
This isn’t a COVID thing. You were already doing this before COVID.
Elle
No, this was before COVID This was in end of 2017, beginning of 2018, and I opened in May of 2018.
Kat
Wow, that’s very cool. So then you and I are both Author Accelerator fiction coaches. I like to tell people all the time, go to Author Accelerator, it’s a really good program. So what made you go and become a certified coach?
Elle
I don’t know if you’ve seen this in editing, but a lot of editors are like, they will not accept manuscripts until they are like, at a certain point. And then a lot of authors are getting really discouraged because they need like they have stories and they have the passion for it and they really want to do it, but they just need more training. And these people can be people that do have an MFA in creative writing. And it is still a struggle because you can be an excellent writer and have terrible grammar. You can have amazing stories and not get the difference between different homophones and that’s fine. So a lot of editors really say, like, oh no, I won’t work with someone like that. I won’t work with it until it’s mostly clean. And I found that with a lot of editors. And so I started coaching because I don’t feel that way. I feel like if you have a story and you want it to come out, then you should have the support to get it out there because no one gets it. And there are a lot of books, like there’s like, I think the Stephen King’s on writing or whatever says, not everybody can write, but I really feel like it can be taught and it can be something that muscle that you work. And so I was already coaching, but because there are so many editors that are like, no, we don’t teach, we don’t do this. We do our job in the manuscript, we give it to you and you do your job. And so I saw someone else on my Instagram feed that had certified with Author Accelerator, and I saw that it was a book coaching thing. And a lot of the stuff that she was posting from what she was learning really spoke to me. That’s how I work. And I wanted a community that I wanted to have those resources. I went tonight and I did that so that I could see what other people are doing and compare it to what I was doing and just have that support. And I really, really liked the part where they teach you more about the querying and stuff like that. Because when you’re jumping in as a freelance editor, you’re really about the indie publishing a lot more until you contact publishers or publishers contact you. It was just really what I needed to feel more confident and feel like I was giving. And I just like to start building my skills. I’m going to make my authors keep on building their skills and trying new things and reading your books. I’m constantly doing that too.
Kat
I think it’s unfair for editors to send things back to writers and be like, this isn’t clean. You’re like, what does that mean? That’s what frustrated me a lot with just working with different editors or just trying to, like, having that gut feeling with my own writing. I mean, like, okay, something’s off here, but what is it? And knowing that there’s really no place to go before I found out about book coaching, where it’s like, I know an editor is just going to say no. I think I’ve had one editor for one manuscript was like, this is too late in the story. And you think, okay, as a new writer, why? And why are you so irritated? And what’s your suggestion?
Elle
Yeah, okay, so how do I fix this?
Kat
Right. I mean, it comes after this, it’s linear. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. And yeah, they just want to be done, do the manuscript, be done, move on. And I really liked reading the artful edit. They showed how now I can’t remember the writer’s name. What was the writer’s name? The Great Gatsby guy, Fitzgerald, right? So he goes back and forth with his editor, and his editor is a coach. Like, he is sending pages to his editor, and his editor is giving feedback and then giving suggestions. And he didn’t send one big manuscript. He sent chapters, which I was just like, oh my gosh, that’s what’s missing in our writing world these days.
Elle
That’s one of the things that, when I was working with clients and they’re sending me their full manuscript for a developmental edit, and then I’m sending all their feedback, and then I’m like, do I digress, because this is a great story and I don’t want them to get be discouraged, but there’s, like, ten potholes and our characters don’t quite make sense. Or like, there’s like 800 characters, and I don’t actually know who the main character is. But you send all of that information, and I’m sending a 20-page edit letter to them, and I know if I just sent that to someone, they would be totally overwhelmed. If you can’t ask questions after, it’s so hard. But then that’s more considered coaching. But I just have with all my edits anyways, because I’m never just going to be like, here you go, have fun drowning.
Kat
And don’t contact me again. I’ve had an editor who I wrote back, oh, man, if I think of all the money I’ve spent, that’s a different rabbit hole. And I asked her like, okay, can we get together on a zoom? And she said, no, that’s not included. And I was just like, okay, I guess I’m going to go find another editor. I need a second opinion but that’s going to cost me a couple of hundred more.
Elle
Yeah, after you’ve already spent depending on the editor, it’s already a couple of $1,000, right? So it’s like, okay, you just do the feedback, but I don’t get anything after. I don’t get any support. I’ve had a couple of clients learn, they’ve come to me, and they were really, like, starting out defensive and stuff like that. And you need to have that, like, conversation. You need to have a little bit back and forth. Why are you defensive about this? What seems to be really irritating you about this feedback? Because if I’m giving feedback and they’re like, you’re just wrong. I don’t just want. To sit there and be wrong. I want to know why they feel that I’m wrong. Because a lot of the times when I give a suggestion and the author’s like, no, I would okay, can you explain why no to me? And they’re like, oh, because this is part of this story, or this is what’s coming in book two and stuff like that. I’d be like, oh, that’s great. Let’s scrap this suggestion and move, let’s change it. I don’t want them to sit there and stew in their anger. But I’ve had a couple of clients that they’ve come to me like that, and then their main thing that they’re so defensive about their stuff is because they came to me after an editor told them that they shouldn’t write, that they should quit writing. And it’s not like, apparently this is not a rare thing. There are editors out there telling people to quit writing.
Kat
Oh, my gosh.
Elle
Yeah. I don’t understand how that’s a good business practice or how that can possibly build your clientele.
Kat
No kidding. That’s so snobby.
Elle
You need to go take an English course before you can do this. And I know a lot of the coaches don’t teach, and they don’t do the grammar stuff, and that’s totally fine. I do, so if they’re like, what course should I take? Do you have books? Yeah, I can definitely point you towards some books you can read. But if you got a question, just come to me, because a lot of times you could go and you just take a general English class or a general writing class. It can be like, the person that’s teaching you, they could be just writing for blogs, or they can just be nonfiction and or they are only mystery writer teachers and you are writing a romance. It’s not going to be it’s not going to be the same thing. So why don’t we just chat about it and why don’t we find that solution? And like I said, I’ve done so many different language classes, I know how to break it down, so I just do that with my clients.
Kat
Grammar is, like, the tiniest part, right? Like putting it together, a sentence. Because there’s lots of writers out there whose style is not grammatically correct, and people still like it. I was reading V. E. Schwab the other night, and I was like, that sentence is weird, but it’s her style. And if you’re into the story, if you like fantasy, you get into it, and it doesn’t bother you as a reader, right? Because the biggest part of writing is the story, like the characters and what’s going to happen to them. And I can ignore a couple of commas, and quite frankly, I don’t care if you have one before the and or not, some people do, but that’s nothing compared to the… But honestly, grammar can be learned, so can storytelling, but a grammar class isn’t going to help you if your story is lacking character or setting or structure or whatever.
Elle
Yeah. And your voice because every story has been done, your voice is going to come through in the way that you use the grammar. And if you’re just throwing by the book, it ends up being very dry and you don’t have this voice. And a lot of what we latch on to is the voice, too. So if you’re just doing the standard, like, textbook grammar, you’re not necessarily hooking your reader. It is good to know that if you put certain words separated, then they might attach to the wrong one. I saw an elephant in my pajamas the other day. What was your elephant doing wearing your pajamas? Those sorts of things, it’s good to know. But you don’t need to be able to say what a polysyndeton is to be a good writer.
Kat
Thank goodness, because I don’t know what that means.
Elle
It’s just like when you keep using the coordinating conjunction over and over again to make your point. It’s like, I’m not an author or a writer or a speech, where you’re doing, like, I’m not this or that. When it just keeps going, it doesn’t have to be or it can be. And and like she grabs her cell phone and her keys and her elephant and her like when you’re just, like, really trying to put the emphasis on.
Kat
Tell everyone that you have a Mary Poppins bag is what you’re trying to tell them, right? There are things that will make your editing process easier. Even with my coaching clients, I show them how to use Word because depending on their age, they might not know that they don’t have to bar space into their paragraph. This will make their writing easier, their flow easier, my editing easier, and whoever else, they go on formatting the bookings.
Elle
So you don’t have to scroll through 20 chapters. You can just click to chapter, those things. And you don’t get that when you just send a manuscript and get it back and there you go. That’s what you paid me for, right?
Kat
Now that we’ve convinced everyone to get a book coach or to hire you and get an editor and book coach in one. The reason that I saw you or met you, I guess, over the Internet was that you did a webinar which was excellent on setting. And I made the time to show up. It was like in the middle of the day, and my alarms went off and I got in there and I was really pleased with your webinar. It was really fascinating to listen to you talk about setting, because setting let me see. Setting is one of those things that I think some commercial writers, so anyone who’s doing genres, like mystery cozy, mystery thrillers, things like that, they don’t always give a lot of thought to their setting. And sometimes, actually, sometimes literary writers don’t either. There seems to be like a disconnect, like, okay, now I need to add setting details. Okay, there’s a green lamp and there’s a coffee mug over there. As we’re talking about these grammar classes that you can take, which could or might not help you. So do setting classes or suggestions, you read a blog post. Oh, I should add like sensory details. Okay. The wood floor was cold. And I was excited because your webinar wasn’t like that at all. At all. And you say that you talk about setting with your writer. So where do you start with setting? How do you approach setting when you’re dealing with your writers?
Elle
My clients are probably sick of me talking about setting because we talk about setting when they’re doing the blueprint, when they’re outlining, when they’re planning. We talk about it in developmental editing. Every time they send me a chapter for their copy editing. Probably the only time I don’t talk about setting is that proofreading where it’s too late. But it’s something that is missing in a lot of books. Or if it is there, it is not used to the best of our ability, right? You can probably think of it right now, and especially for people that aren’t fantasy readers. I don’t know if you’re big into fantasy, but I am, like fantasy is one of my big things. But a lot of people say that they don’t like fantasy because they sit and they just describe an entire world and political system and social climate and everything at the upset. And they have an amazing setting. But it reads like a textbook.
Kat
Yeah, I’ve read a few of them.
Elle
So a lot of people, when they think of fantasy, they think of like, that that’s a poorly written fantasy. And that’s also one of the reasons that a lot of people don’t read prologues is because a lot of people use prologues are just like, I’m going to give you all of the details right now, and then I’m going to just go into dialogue for the rest of the book.
Kat
And you should remember what I told you.
Elle
Yeah, exactly. I think it’s like C. S. Lakin, and I’m going to paraphrase again here, I really should just have this written down somewhere. But she says in one of her craft books, giving your readers details is like handing them a rock to hold each time. So every time you have a detail, like the sky is blue, here’s a rock, there is marble countertops, here’s a rock, like I’m wearing green shoes today, here’s a rock. Every time you give them a detail, they’ve got to try to hold this and they’ve got to try to remember this. Because we all know that if it’s in there, I say we, coaches, and somewhere in the back of our minds as readers, we know that the details are supposed to be important. They’re supposed to come in. The check off that says, don’t hang a gun on the wall in act one if you’re not going to use it in act three. You have to be using the details that you’re giving the readers. So you’re passing them all these details and they’re trying to hold on to they’re trying to remember it, and you’re going to just start dropping things. And you might be holding on to the color of the wall and you’ve just missed a guy.
Kat
I love that analogy, that’s awesome. Because I think what a lot of people like the writing advice out there is don’t info dump, which doesn’t mean anything to most writers, like, okay, I’m going to cut down my intro then by half. But that’s not what you’re talking about either.
Elle
No. When you have your setting, you want it to be an active setting, right? You don’t just want to give the details and then give the stories. The details need to be part of the story. The setting and the character and the plot, that is all intertwined, they are not separate. And sometimes writers can really get that the plot and the character, those need to go together. Whether or not you’re like first the character or first the plot, that depends on how your brain works and how the story came to you. But they are intertwined. Like, you can’t have the plot without the character, and if you can just put any old character in that plot, you don’t have a strong enough character. But they forget that the setting is also part of that. So the setting almost needs to be used like a character. It needs to be active. It needs to be a part of it. And if you have a character in one certain setting and they grow up in this certain setting, they’re going to be like, if you like, I think we did the water world place where it just has, like little huts on sticks. If that’s where you grew up, surrounded by water and just have a little huts on sticks and you have to get from a boat to go see your neighbor. If you grow up there, you’re going to have a very different character than if you have someone that’s grown up on the side of a mountain where you have to melt snow to get the water. Or you’re always worried about ice and bundling up, whereas on the water you’re always hot. Or you’re going to have very different characters and you’re going to have very different body language and different ways of dealing with people. But sometimes what we’re doing is we’re just throwing the character and we’re saying, like, oh yeah, they’re in a coffee shop, right? In the coffee shop, what does that tell us about anything?
Kat
Like, if you grow up on a hut, you might not know what a coffee shop is, and you might not know how to behave. But this is really true, that goes into where your character came from, right? And then being able to then take them and put them in a setting and then realizing that they’re going to act differently and everything’s going to affect them. When I moved to DC. I was in an Uber with a guy from Texas, and since I lived in Texas before, he was like, yeah, I’m moving back. I asked why, and he said, because you can’t see beyond the horizon, there’s too many hills. And it really freaked him out. So, like, the same thing that you’re saying, your character is going to react differently depending on the setting that they’re in because of who they are. It’s all intertwined.
Elle
Yeah. I know you’ve heard this example before, but if you have a character that’s suited up in hockey gear on the ice and they’re having a little disagreement with someone, they might give them a little shove. That’s not super weird in hockey, maybe it’s not like, technically allowed, but giving them a little shove, especially when we go see it. That’s just normal, right? But take that same little argument and that same little shove on a cliff, right? That’s not the same plot anymore. That’s not the same character. It’s not the same consequences. You don’t want it to be just as generic. Like the little shove in a coffee shop maybe is maybe not so cool. Like, why are you touching me? Why are you shoving me? Maybe you spill some coffee, but it’s not really going to have the same impact. And when you’re looking at your plot or your theme, like, what you want to say, you want to think about what the setting is going to do to support that, right? You don’t just want to say, oh, yeah, I just want there to be like, explosions and ducks and a boat. And then you’d be like, okay, so if this boat is on a mountain side, that’s going to be very different than the boat in the ocean, and it’s going to be very different than a boat in, I don’t know, in a forest. Where this boat is it’s going to make a difference. If you’re going to have the boat explode, where is this boat exploding? How does that change things for anybody? It makes a huge difference. So when you’re thinking up and you’re trying to figure out, you try to make it a plot that matters.
Kat
So what I find is some of my writers will have the boat because they think it’s cool and they’ll have the car and they’ll have beautiful prose about their setting and it’s too much, as you said. My reader brain starts going like, wait, I thought that I needed to understand that the bodyguards weren’t there. Because clearly something’s going to happen because the bodyguards aren’t there anymore. So why did nothing happen? The reader brain goes into all those little details, right? So I either see like, there’s too much beautiful prose, maybe, but too much or there’s none. And I actually have no idea where the characters are ever throughout this story.
Elle
Floating heads.
Kat
Yes, that’s what we call floating heads, right? They’re just talking like great dialogue, maybe do theater. Do you find those two extremes as well when you’re working with writers?
Elle
Yeah, it’s very common. Usually what happens there is that, once again, that they’re separated, right? So if you are instead introducing those details as the character is meeting the details and kind of knowing even if you’re a pantser, if you’re going back and editing, knowing where it’s supposed to go. And if you’re going in and you’re talking about the yellow wallpaper and there’s nothing to do with wallpaper or it has no significance whatsoever, later, then you can be like, okay, I don’t really need the yellow wallpaper, right? So you can edit it out afterwards. But a lot of those times are coming through where it’s like, I know I have all these great details for this world, and I just want people to see it exactly how I see it. But that’s when you have too many details. But no matter what you do, the readers are not going to see it the same way that you do. You need to give them enough details that it’s going to make the world come alive, and then they can fill in the blanks. And then the details that you’re using are things that the character is acting with. So if you’re bumping into a vomit yellow chair and then the character bumps into it and makes a joke about it and then passes by it, then that is now an active detail. And we’re expecting that that chair or the yellow, or maybe they do vomit on it and it disappears, then that’s an active detail. But it has to be like you want it to be like, is it important that we know that we don’t see the vomit? Is someone going to not see the vomit and then they’re going to slip in it and crack their head openly?
Kat
We’re going to wonder. As you said, I like the rock analogy. You’re going to be like, wait, but nothing happened with it. The best way to use those, as you said, the active details, basically, by the end, the chair represents her always holding on to her ghost from the past, and then she gets rid of it at the end or something, like it has to have some sort of thematic meaning to the story. I think part of our issue as writers is we see so many films, and there are lots of beautiful films, I think of Amelie and how they have all these beautiful little details, right? And you almost want, like you said, your writers tell you, you want everyone to see it like you see it. And it’s also true. I was told this with my very first book. You do not have control over how the reader will see it. You have to let it go, and you have to sit on that as a writer. But it’s true, let it go.
Elle
Yeah. I say this to my writers all the time. Some people, they’ll walk in and the room smells like marble, it’s like cigarette smoke. My tongue is not working around that one today. So it smells like cigarette smoke. And for some people, that’s like this nostalgic, like, oh, it smells like my grandma, and stuff like that. They might write that detail in there, and they’re thinking like, oh, everyone’s going to get nostalgic with this. It’s just like this detail. But if I think of walking into a room that smells like smoke, I’m like, asthma attack immediately. Disgusting. I hate this place. And we’re going to see what it means to the character is where it’s going to be important. What it means to the character, means to the story means, like, how it ties in with your theme or point or whatever you want to call it. And I think it’s like Donald Maass says, dry details are only dry if they don’t mean anything to anybody. So if you are adding that detail and you’re also adding, that smells like my grandma. I lost my grandma ten years ago or whatever, and it’s like, you know what? Grandma would hate for me to just be sitting here in this stupid interview. Like, my grandma has told me to do what I wanted, and then what I need will come after. Then that smoke has meaning. It’s not just a detail. It has meaning for the story.
Kat
And it’s pushing the character to a decision, right?
Elle
Yes. It’s helping with the decision. It’s helping change the plot. It’s helping add characterization, like, obviously she’s close to her grandma. Obviously she’s not someone that is following her heart’s desire at this moment. You shouldn’t have only one story function for each detail. So that’s another thing when you’re going through and you’re editing or you’re putting in this detail, if you’re having it, just be like, I have the smoke. Because that’s a sensory detail.
Kat
Because everyone tells us that.
Elle
I love sensory details. I love having the sensory details. I love grounding us in the setting. I love grounding us in the character’s skin. That’s great, what else is it doing? If it has one story function, that’s a waste of words.
Kat
Yeah. I won’t remember the title of it, but a beautiful short story. The character walks in, and she has chosen to not have kids, and so her life is very orderly, and she walks into a house of a mom and she does sort of a list of like the messy mantle and the bottle under the couch that might have been there for a while. She’s putting all these details and in the end you fill up your head with them. And I went back and looked at a few weeks ago, and it’s actually just a paragraph, but my whole brain filled in everything. And it worked to give you the sense, before you even meet the next character, who she is. She is overly worked, busy, couldn’t care less about organized, I mean, maybe it bothers her, but she doesn’t have the time. And this bothers the main character because she doesn’t understand how, so you get the sense of discomfort and all that. So that’s kind of what you’re talking about, right? She’s not just telling you about the room for no reason. It is actually introducing the next character working as more than just words, I think.
Elle
Yeah, that’s right. Because in that example, we’re having the sensory details and we’re showing characterization for both characters. The one that’s reacting to the mess, the one that lives in the mess. And that brings it to, setting is different, setting should not be responded to in the same way by different characters. If a neat freak walks into my house, I have three kids, three young kids.
Kat
Let’s just say two-year-olds.
Elle
Yeah, the two-year-old. Yeah, the two-year-old that likes to literally go through the house and just like dump boxes of toys or go in the color drawer and be like… Someone that walks into my house then is a neat freak and maybe a germaphobe or something like that, they just come in and they see this clutter.
Kat
They might walk out.
Elle
They might just walk around and that’s going to change the story, right? If we’re supposed to sit and have some coffee or they’re supposed to babysit and they just can’t even tell, beating my health, that’s going to change the story, right? Whereas like me, I walk in and there’s a lot that I’m just going to kind of gloss over. I’m not even going to bother putting that away because they’re going to take it out twelve more times today. Or if I see like the thing dumped over and I’m supposed to be rushing upstairs like, okay, am I going to stop and clean this up or am I going to rush over to my meeting? And that changes the meaning of the setting. It changes the carpeted floor versus a tile floor, means something different for me walking in versus my child with the snowy boots walking in, right? So those settings make a difference to the character. When you’re choosing your settings, you’re also really choosing your character and you’re going to look and see what these settings mean to the character, which is why a lot of craft books that you’re going to read and a lot of things we talk about entering I think that’s like a big one and Save the Cat, like entering the new world, right? There’s so many craft books, so I had to stop and think about it for a minute.
Kat
And they all have names for the same thing, quite honestly.
Elle
Yeah, different names for the same thing. They’re all things very similar. But when you’re entering the new world, you have what they’re used to and what they’re comfortable with. So when you’re talking about your character and you’re also talking about the setting, what are they used to like? Are they a homebodied? Do they stay here? Are they like a germophobe? Everything is super neat and clean. What is going to happen when their house explodes and they get thrown into a homeless shelter? All of a sudden, you’re putting them in a new setting. They’re entering their new world, and they’re not going to respond the same way. They’re not going to be as comfortable. So you want to think, like, how can my setting make my character uncomfortable? How can my setting push my character growth? And if you’re usually, if you’re going like, three paragraphs or too much without hitting your setting, that means that your setting is just kind of, like, fading into the backdrop, and it doesn’t mean anything to the character anymore. It has to mean something.
Kat
Yeah, but then with book club fiction, I don’t even know what we have so many names of the same things. I guess we would have called it literary fiction, but I think now they’re trying to branch it out. So book club fiction or women’s fiction, where it really has to do, or at least us writers claim it has to do with the character. It’s just about the character. And a lot of times the plot is a little slower, but I would say, and I think you would agree with me, the setting then is so much more important. Like, okay, they’re at the seaside, and yeah, I can envision a beautiful seaside, but what is that doing to this character? And why does it matter? Because otherwise, if you could put her on the side of a mountain or in a city and it’s the same thing, then why am I reading the book? It’s almost more important, or maybe just as important.
Elle
Yeah, I would say the setting is important in all genres.
Kat
Fiction almost like the writers, thriller writers understand it. Horror writers definitely understand it. You still have to hone that craft. I get the women’s fiction or, like, the slower books, and sometimes it’s the sensory details just to show the beautiful prose. It’s not pushing the character.
Elle
And I would say that this is really the difference between those books that stick with you and that you’re living them versus the books that you just read, right? And when I’m working with my clients, like I say, I will help you write the book that you can feel. You don’t just read it, you feel it. And that comes with the setting. So I was trying to think of what, like, women’s fiction I would have kind of recently read.
Kat
It’s hard because I don’t know what it is.
Elle
It usually always has, like, more than one, but like Spells for Forgetting, Adrian Young, I don’t know if I haven’t read one. So technically it is in the women’s fiction sort of thing, and there are different things about it that are better or less intriguing and stuff like that. But if you’re thinking about that, it has a lot to do with romance. But the setting, if that setting wasn’t there, it would not be the same book because they live on an island, and the island is kind of like magical and kind of helps things along. But the whole world doesn’t have magic. It is the island that has the magic, and the island calls them back. So when they’re out in the city and stuff like that, they’re constantly feeling the pull. And the big thing, too, when we’re thinking about setting, is that it’s not just like the room you’re in, right? The setting is also like the cultural and social aspects.
Kat
Yes, that’s true.
Elle
So the cultural and social aspects is also part of it. So when you’re walking down a cobblestone street, it’s not just a cobblestone street because that could be like Beauty and the Beast, like happy, bonjour, all of that. Or you could be walking down the cobblestone streets without plumbing, and there’s like literal. Yeah, you could go like Les Miserable. You could be like, walking down the street. And nobody is supposed to be out. It’s locked down. Why are you out in the street? Walking down the street, could that get you beaten? That culture of the social aspects is also going to change how that setting is perceived and what that moment means and what the plot is, because you’re not going to feel that confident and cool walking down the street, when everybody is supposed to be in lockdown or there’s a werewolf running the street, or that same street. Doesn’t matter how many details you give about it, once again, it comes back. What does it mean to that person?
Kat
I really like the example that you gave because I think sometimes we can have our story. It’s pretty much done, but you feel like maybe something’s lacking and it’s good to think of all these things. But you gave an example of, like I want to call it a breakup, but like a really significant point in a book, where you had it written as a coffee shop and then on the farm. And these are things that you can think of as a writer, like maybe first draft, second draft, whatever you wrote there in the kitchen, or they’re having a fight, and then you can go back and think, okay, but what are they actually fighting about? Is he working too much? What if she goes and meets him at the office? And what would that change about it? Or what if he walks in late to a dinner party that she’s started? Like, whatever that dynamic that you’re trying to put in the book, you can make it mean, so much more if you change the setting. And that’s a really eye opening thing, I think, for writers.
Elle
Yeah. And I do have the example.
Kat
Yeah. You want to read it?
Elle
If you want.
Elle
Yeah, I really like it.
Elle
You want to suffer through my voices? Because it might be a little more difficult for the podcast listeners to hear, like, to see what I’ve talked about with it. So laugh all you want. That’s okay. So, like, a good bad example. And this comes to, like, where the setting and the character are really intertwined, right? So in this example that I have, the female character in here is a farmer. And the other one is like, a businessman or whatever. This is a random example that I wrote for a client of mine.
Kat
But it’s perfect.
Elle
So we’re going to mention them, like, sitting in a coffee shop. Okay. And this comes with, like, the body language and stuff that they would probably have in a coffee shop. And it’s a scene that all of us have read, like 8 million times. So in a coffee shop. “I love you,” Jay said, staring out the window at the passersby. “I don’t know why that seems complicated to you,” Elizabeth shrugged and blew gently on her coffee. “I don’t think you understand all the work that comes with that. I’m here, aren’t I?” Elizabeth sighs and takes a drink from her cup. So we don’t know anything about that.
Kat
We’re like, why? Why is there work?
Elle
You could be like, hey, Elizabeth, like, give them a try. Why are you being so harsh?
Kat
Are you bipolar? It could be anything, right? Literally, it could be anything.
Elle
Yeah. And it sounds like he’s so sweet. He’s saying, like, I love you, and she’s kind of, like, shrugging him off. But we don’t know who they are. We don’t know exactly how they’re feeling. How does he actually feel? Like, you can say, I love you, like, you’re my sister. I love you as a friend. Or you can be like, trying to get in someone’s pants.
Kat
Exactly, we don’t know.
Elle
Yeah. So we don’t know anything about them from this. What I did with this example is I switched and I took it, like, outside of barn, saying it’s, like, at Elizabeth’s farm, right? And I have the exact same dialogue here, and I’ve literally copied and pasted it. And all they’ve changed is how they are interacting with their setting and the setting that they are in. So, “I love you,” Jay said, stepping gingerly over what he hoped was mud. Maybe it was done. It was hard to tell him this. God, forsaken place. “I don’t know why that seems complicated to you.” Elizabeth laid the frantic, squawking chicken on the block and gestured with her chin for Jay to step back to where he’d been before. “I don’t think you understand all the work that comes with that.” Jay holds his breath as he steps back over the questionable dark substance, careful to avoid nails as he steps back onto the wooden plank refuge. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Elizabeth lifts her eyebrows and the axe, then swiftly puts an end to the squawking. Jay looks away, stifling his gag. So now you can see she’s a farmer, she’s not squeamish. She’s just like she could just, like, catch and butcher chicken in the middle of a conversation, right?
Kat
I mean, fascinated already. Then we see the work, and then we see the like, are you sure, Jay? Are you really sure? And we want to see what goes on.
Elle
Yeah. All of a sudden, you’re inside of it. This doesn’t have a story around it, but it feels like it does, right? This is the only section of that story that’s all that’s ever been written. But it feels like there is so much more going on. And all that I’ve changed is the setting, how they interact with it. If they were outside a barn and still sitting, coffee and staring, that would be weird. It would be weird.
Kat
Smell their coffee with the dung.
Elle
Sometimes you get that, too. They’re like, okay, so I’ve changed the setting to a farm now. And now we’re sitting at a farm table drinking coffee. No, it’s still not quite there, right? And so this is why I end up talking about this with my clients so much, is because it can be like, okay, I get it. I got it. This is good. They are now on a farm doing the exact same thing. But then that’s a backdrop. That is not a setting. That is the backdrop.
Kat
I like the distinction. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s like what you said at the beginning. It’s interconnected with the character and trying to think of your setting as an extension of them. How can it show the reader more without info dumping on them? Just, like, writing words and words. And she’s actually quite unsquemish because she’s slightly on the autistic scale. And when she was younger, she was like, okay, nobody cares.
Elle
Yeah. If we had to get all of that same information that we just kind of, like, felt in this last one, we would have to have paragraphs and paragraphs of info dumps. So if you’re, like, sitting and looking at an info dump, think like, okay, how can I actually show this? What would be an action? Because it’s one thing to say, I love you, and another thing to be there, like, catching the next chicken for her.
Kat
I do want to see the end of this chapter. You need to write the rest of this.
Elle
I do that a lot in my Instagram. I’ll just be half exhausted, up with the toddler all night and be like, oh, I haven’t posted today. And I’ll just make this random example and they’re like, what happens next? Hey Elle, what happens next?
Kat
You write the story that’s for you. Speaking of Instagram, will you tell people, especially if you give examples, we all want to follow you on Instagram. If that’s true, what is your Instagram handle?
Elle
It’s @editelleediting, I can type it here.
Kat
Seriously, the alliteration?
Elle
Well, you can tell that I’m usually working with the written word. I don’t do a lot of it. I’m not the smoothest talker, I’m the introvert.
Kat
Right. We are all readers here. I’ll have it in the show links below as well. But are you open to seeing clients? What do you do? Do you do long term coaching? Do you do classes, workshops? Tell us a little bit about that.
Elle
I kind of do habit of all of it for fiction. So the classes are still kind of like a work in progress. I kind of announced that I was going to do them and then I started home schooling my children.
Kat
That gets in the way.
Elle
I haven’t actually launched them yet, but they are kind of like partially there. So I will be doing Zoom classes hopefully this starting this year or maybe in the next couple of months is my plan. Children like to derail plans.
Kat
But we’ll follow you on Instagram so we’ll know about that.
Elle
If you’re following me on Instagram, you will find out when they are actually launched. There’ll be Zoom classes where I’m going to leave when you sign up, if you have a section that’s difficult or you want an example from your own writing, you can send it to me and I will use it as an example in the class and we can work on it together and discuss it. I know I did the webinar presentation for Author Accelerator, but I really prefer to talk about it and make sure that I’m not just talking and going in one ear out the other. And in these classes I would like to do a bit of body doubling writing, which is like we are in the call, here, find a section in your manuscript or wherever you are next and write it, or your outline or wherever. Where we actually did spend some time writing and I’m there if you have questions or if you need to bounce something off. So kind of do a bit of a presentation and a bit of back and forth and make it so that, because I think you’re probably like me, I will do all of the webinars, I will join every masterclass and course and I will show up for it. But I’m always, when I’m doing that so that I’m a better editor, obviously, but also it’s for my writing and it’s always procrastinating in my writing. In these classes, and they’re going to be $10 Canadian. Just like something easy, accessible, not free, but accessible, nothing ostentatious. And so you come and you’re going to actually write in the classes. And of course, like, setting up and figuring it out and trying to be…
Kat
And realizing that at every stage of writing, a workshop or a class is nice. It will rejuvenate you. You’ll remember all the things that we know somewhere around here. But it’s nice to put it into practice right there with other writers. That sounds wonderful.
Elle
And for it not to be just like a book that’s already famous, like bringing in those examples, I don’t do a ton of that because they’re already famous. And they’ve already gone through 8 million rounds of editing and they’ve already really pushed through this. I could tell you tons of different books and how it’s connected and stuff like that, but if you haven’t read it, it means nothing. And if you have read it, you’re like, oh, I wish I could write like that. And it’s not being like, okay, so here is your manuscript right here. This is a line from your manuscript. Let’s flush this out right now. And you’re actually moving forward rather than procrastinating. Your writing is meant to like go forward.
Kat
Yes, I like this. I like this a lot. So if we follow you on Instagram, we’ll find out when the classes are starting.
Elle
Yes. Okay. And I also have a website editelle.com.
Kat
And you work one-on-one with people as well?
Elle
I actually do mostly one-on-one. The classes are going to be like group things, but I currently only work one-on-one. I do the coaching. I do like long-term coaching or just a short-term set up coaching, developmental editing, copy editing, and proofreading as well. So I kind of do all of that only for fiction. And all you have to do is I’m open to clients. I do tend to book a little bit out, just depending on the month. And then I usually try to kind of leave like one spot open as I’m booking, one spot open for each month. And then because there’s always like, that one person that’s like, oh, I wrote a novella and I want it published before the other one, and I really need you. And so I kind of like, leave that space sometimes I can fit people in. Can’t always, I do have bookings into November and stuff already too, so I wouldn’t contact me if you’re like, for sure, like, last minute, I have 120,000 novel that I need edited next week.
Kat
I don’t think any editor does that, I’m pretty sure, yeah. And just FYI to any writer out there who hasn’t gone through this process, it’s very rare to find an editor who, like, next week can take you. It’s always good to be looking for editors, feeling them out, maybe doing if they do free chats or whatever and just like, taking classes because their time schedule isn’t always the same as yours, amazingly enough.
Elle
Yeah, exactly. If you were to email me, it might take me like two business days to even get back to you. I do work with authors all over the world, so I do kind of have weird hours and often. Like I said, I’ve got three small children, but I homeschool at home, so I often am working in the middle of the night here. But then that’s kind of regular hours for someone over the UK. Even just like getting a response takes time, for a lot of us too.
Kat
I missed the whole email from two days. I was like, oh, they did write me back.
Elle
You also get all those spam, he followed you on Instagram and we want you to rep our fake company. Like you get all those and sometimes it gets buried.
Kat
Absolutely. But we’ll have your links in the show notes and your Instagram and people can go over to editelle.com and I’ll be following you on Instagram. And probably take one of your classes because, you know what? We can always keep learning about our settings. Because as writers, we see it in our heads and sometimes it doesn’t get on the paper the same way. Thank you so much, Elle, for coming on and talking to us about settings. I’m sure that I will see you. Soon and everyone will find your links in the show notes below.
Elle
Thank you so much, Kat.