Matty Dalrymple talks with Howard Lovy, a developmental editor and ALLi’s content and communications manager, about six questions every author should ask to improve their craft. They discuss maintaining narrative immersion, balancing detail with engagement, and ensuring characters drive the story. Howard shares practical tips on avoiding common pitfalls, keeping scenes purposeful, and writing from the characters' perspectives to keep readers engrossed in the narrative.
Listen to the Podcast: Six Questions Every Author Should Ask
Sponsors
This podcast is proudly sponsored by Bookvault. Sell high-quality, print-on-demand books directly to readers worldwide and earn maximum royalties selling directly. Automate fulfillment and create stunning special editions with BookvaultBespoke. Visit Bookvault.app today for an instant quote.
This podcast is also sponsored by Gatekeeper Press, the all-inclusive Gold Standard in Publishing, offering authors 100% rights, royalties, satisfaction and worldwide distribution. Gatekeeper Press, Where Authors are Family.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
If you’re an ALLi member, head over to the SelfPubConnect forum for support from our experienced community of indie authors, advisors, and team. Simply create an account (if you haven’t already) to request to join the forum and get going.
Non-members looking for more information can search our extensive archive of blog posts and podcast episodes packed with tips and advice at ALLi's Self-Publishing Advice Center. And if you haven’t already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally.
About the Host
Matty Dalrymple podcasts, writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage as The Indy Author. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors, and her articles have appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine. She serves as the campaigns manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Matty is also the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with Rock Paper Scissors; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with The Sense of Death; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including Close These Eyes. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.
About the Guest
Howard Lovy is a developmental editor with 40 years of experience in writing and editing for newspapers, magazines, and news services, and a decade specializing in book editing. He provides manuscript evaluations and works closely with authors on both fiction and nonfiction projects. Howard is also a novelist, with his debut novel, Found and Lost: The Jake and Cait Story, set to be released on April 29, 2025.
Read the Transcripts
Matty Dalrymple: Hello everyone. I am Matty Dalrymple. I'm the campaigns manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors, and I am here today with ALLi's content and communications manager, Howard Lovy.
Most of our listeners probably know you as the host of the Inspirational Indie Author Interviews, that is one of the streams of the ALLi podcast, but they're going to get to know a whole other side of you, the whole other side of your professional life, because we're going to be talking with you, Howard, about some of the tips you can share from the other part of your professional life.
Just to give our listeners a little bit of background on that, Howard Lovy is a developmental editor with 40 years of experience in writing and editing for newspapers, magazines, and news services, and a decade specializing in book editing.
He provides manuscript evaluations and works closely with authors on both fiction and nonfiction projects.
Howard is also a novelist and his debut novel, Found and Lost: The Jake and Kate Story is set to be released on April 29th, 2025. So, congratulations, Howard.
Howard Lovy: Thank you. Sort of a jack of all trades, master of some, I hope.
Matty Dalrymple: It is very fun to have you on the other side of the microphone, so to speak, because as the host of the editing and design stream, I'm always looking for folks who can talk about editing, both from a craft point of view, but also from a business point of view.
We're going to be talking about the six questions that every author should ask.
So, I always like to put out the consideration there that these are things that will improve your craft, but they will also improve the success of your book out there in the world, because if the book is better from a craft point of view, it's going to be better from a financial point of view as well.
Howard, you had sent us the six questions in advance, so we're just going to walk through them and see where this conversation takes us.
The first question is, I love this, am I breaking the spell?
Talk about what you mean by, am I breaking the spell?
Howard Lovy: Yeah. I deal with all kinds of different kinds of experience level from novices to veterans. But one thing that I noticed, even among veteran memoirs, and for this I'm talking primarily nonfiction in memoir, is a tendency to write about the fact that they're writing.
Now, if you're a famous writer like Stephen King, the craft of writing is fine, but often they're not interested in you looking back and rediscovering your own lessons. Nonfiction and memoir authors often interrupt their own stories with reflective phrases like, “I always regret,” or, “today I know,” and they pull the readers out of the moment to make them think of an older person looking back and experiencing the events alongside the narrator.
I call that breaking the spell or looking behind the curtain, where readers rather than being immersed in the story, are thinking about an older person sitting down and writing their memoirs. You're not writing about writing.
Let me give a couple of examples. Here is what I call the wrong way.
I was only 23 when I made that decision, and looking back now, I can see how naive I was. If I had only known what I know today, I never would've trusted him.
You're talking about an older person looking back on a mistake you made. In a book, readers are with you from beginning to end and they see your character arc. They can see how you've changed over time, but if you break the spell and write on off the bat, say, I learned my lesson, then you've already ruined it for them. They're not experiencing it with you.
So, another way of wording that would be, I was 23 and sure of myself. Too sure. His smile was easy, his handshake firm, and when he promised me the deal of a lifetime, I believed him. I signed the contract.
So, you're hinting that maybe something wasn't quite right, but you're still in the moment with the character, and that could be true in fiction or nonfiction.
Matty Dalrymple: Yeah, I like that idea that there's that aspect of the narrator, the point of view character, whether fiction or nonfiction, talking about themselves, and also that idea of giving away the punchline. So, I really like that second one because you're hinting, like, you'd read that and you think, oh, I suspect that this isn't going to go well, but you're not going to slap the reader in the face with it.
Howard Lovy: Yeah, and more often than not, it's first time be memoirists who go into this trap because they're older now, wiser, and they've decided to write their memoirs so other people can learn from their mistakes. But you get to that preachy moment too fast. Maybe at the end, in an epilogue, you say, here's what I learned.
But often, we'll get into more of this later, but reading is a very participatory sport. The readers have to work a little bit too and not have everything explained to them.
Matty Dalrymple: I think it's off-putting anyway, in the same way that we don't like people preaching to us in real life, we don't necessarily like people preaching to us on the page either.
It's a good way to distance yourself from the reader if you're immediately jumping into that kind of preachy position.
One of the other tips, the second question every author should ask is, am I saying too much?
Howard Lovy: Yes, I'm very much in the camp of more is less. I'm not to an extreme, where we have dialogue that's very cryptic, but I think sometimes too much explanation is almost insulting to the reader.
Readers can get a little endorphin rush when they figure things out for themselves. If you overexplain a character's emotions or motivations or themes, you slow the pace down.
One exercise that I ask some of my clients to do is, if you feel like your chapter is long and meandering, write a one paragraph synopsis that includes a note to yourself on what you're trying to accomplish in story progression and character development, and that'll help you identify where to trim unnecessary details.
So, I have another example here. Here's the “wrong way”.
Maria's hands trembled as she reached for the letter. She was nervous, afraid of what it might say, and her mind raced to the worst-case scenario. Her stomach clenched with anxiety and she took a deep breath trying to steady herself.
So, we hit readers over the head with how she's feeling.
Matty Dalrymple: How could she be feeling, I wonder?
Howard Lovy: Here's an alternate way of doing that.
Maria's hands trembled as she reached for the letter. She drew in a slow breath, then exhaled through her nose. Her name was scrawled across the envelope. She swallowed hard.
So, we're getting the same thing across, but we're not saying exactly; she was nervous, she was afraid. It's that old cliche, show not tell.
How is she nervous? What does that mean if you're nervous? You exhale, you draw in a slow breath, your hands might tremble, but you're not saying she was nervous. You're showing how she was nervous.
It's a way, subliminally, people can experience it through the eyes of your character.
If there's some nameless, faceless narrator telling you what she feels, then the reader seems a little more removed from the action.
Matty Dalrymple: I'm always interested in this. This is the ongoing argument I have with my editor is that he feels I should be more overt about things, especially because I write in a series and sometimes, I'm referencing things that happen in earlier books, and there's always that tension between how much should you recap stuff that's gone on in earlier books and things like that.
I always feel like, as a reader, I'm willing to just go with it to maybe a greater extent than he would be, and figure that, if the author knows what they're doing, I'll figure out later on what's going on.
This is really coming home to me. I'm reading a book called Squeaky Clean by Callum McSorley, which is way grittier than I normally read. If you're like a little queasy, I maybe wouldn't recommend it, but it is very good. But it's written by a Scottish author, and it takes place in Glasgow, and he writes a lot of his dialogue in like a dialect. Plus, he's referring to a lot of words that I just don't know what they mean.
Fortunately, I have a friend who's Scottish, so if I really get stuck and I can't figure it out on Google, then I can say, what in the world is he trying to say here, and he will clue me in.
But I'm really willing to go pretty far, just guessing even at what the characters are saying and still really enjoying it.
So, I think that's one where, as you said before, let's give the reader some credit that they're going to be willing to go on the trip with us and discover these things along the way.
Howard Lovy: Exactly. For me anyway, that's part of the fun of reading. What are they talking about there? Let me think about that, and maybe there'll be a reference later. Maybe it's something I have to look up, I don't know. I don't want to have to go running for the dictionary every time I see something I don't understand, but I like to do a little work and not have everything spelled out.
Same thing with endings. Some people don't like this, endings that are open for debate; what really happened and what did this character really mean? Let's talk about it. I like those.
Matty Dalrymple: I'm on the fence. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I don't. But it is fun. It's a fun mental exercise. Even if it can be frustrating it's a fun mental exercise.
Howard Lovy: If you're writing a series, then there's always the next one.
Matty Dalrymple: Yes, exactly. In a series I'm definitely willing to live with that, because I figure if I pick up the next book, then I'm going to find out, and I do that all the time in my one series.
The third of the questions that an author should ask, are my characters telling the story? Talk about that a little bit.
Howard Lovy: Yeah. I mentioned this earlier, is there a disembodied, nameless narrator telling you exactly what the characters are doing and how a plot is unfolding and what people are thinking, or are you doing it through the characters?
I think most of the time, and there are exceptions, the best stories unfold through the eyes and the quirks and the voices of the characters, and not through a distant narrator summarizing events. That goes for fiction or nonfiction.
You can show their experiences through action, through dialogue and emotions.
For example, you can say the conversation was tense and uncomfortable. That doesn't tell us anything.
You can let the tension come through. Balled fists, clipped words, starting glances, even in nonfiction. It's not the plot that tells the story, but it's the people.
To me, that's the fun of reading a book, where you get to know these characters.
It's also the fun of writing a book too, where you get to know these different characters and their quirks and their obsessions, and some people repeat certain phrases or have certain mannerisms that really distinguish themselves, and that's the fun of reading and writing, rather than a narrator telling us.
Here are my examples for that one. Here's the wrong way.
The conversation was tense. Jake was angry and Sarah knew pushing him would only make things worse.
Here's another way of doing it:
Jake's jaw tightened. “So that's it?”
Sarah folded her arms. “Someone has to decide.”
Jake exhaled sharply, fists clenching at sides.
So, you're getting the anger and the tension through the subtext of the dialogue. You're not saying they had a tense conversation, you're showing them having a tense conversation. That, by the way, is not an excerpt from my own book where there's a character called Jake, I just made that a different Jake.
I was going to use real life examples, but I don't want to embarrass any clients or former clients, so I made up this dialogue, but they're very indicative of some of the stuff I see.
Matty Dalrymple: I think that it's very interesting because there are two, maybe seemingly contradictory pieces of advice that people could get.
One is that you're showing, not telling. So, you're illustrating how a character's feeling or what they're thinking by what they're doing. In other words, what someone in the room with them would see, and yet you're also trying to hit that balance of not distancing yourself from the character either.
Do those sound contradictory to you, or do you just think that they're two versions of the same advice?
Howard Lovy: Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing.
One exercise that I have some authors do is, if there's too much narrative in a chapter, I'll say, write the entire chapter entirely in dialogue. Include body language, tone and subtext, but let the characters themselves drive the scene and they usually come back with, “wow, that was a lot of fun. I got to know the characters better.”
The final draft won't necessarily be all dialogue, but it was a good exercise for them to really distinguish between the characters, and to really drive the story forward where narration is not even an option, it's all through the characters.
I think you have a much richer, more layered experience as a writer and a reader that way.
Matty Dalrymple: Yeah, I really like that. I've also heard that from Jeff Elkins, The Dialogue Doctor, who's advice, not surprisingly, is write it all in dialogue, nothing but dialogue, and I think that's a great piece of advice and can really give people a perspective on the scene that they wouldn't get if that's not their normal way of thinking about a scene unfolding.
Another of the questions that every author should ask is, am I on street level or flying at 40,000 feet?
Howard Lovy: Let me explain that, and I just had this experience with another new client this week where he says, here's my first draft. And what I read was not really the draft of a manuscript, but more like the beats of a manuscript. Like, these are the things that happened in this story, so and so did this, and then so and so did that, and this is what it meant.
It's more like a plot summary than an immersive experience. It was at the 40,000 feet.
What I try to get authors to do is go down to street level. If you're on Google Earth and you're hovering above it, go down to street level and discover the joy of being in the moment with their characters.
One thing that a lot of memoirists make the mistake of saying is, “I would do this,” or “I would feel that.” Bring readers to the specific moment and let them see what actually happened.
That's what we mean by show not tell, zoom in on real moments, real decisions, real actions.
There's some places where you want to skip over some things, some biographical details, I graduated in such and such a time, and if you want to skip over that's fine. But where the real creativity happens and the real joy of reading and writing happens is when you describe things specifically rather than hover above it.
Here are more examples for that.
When I lived in Paris, I would sit in cafes, watching people go by. I would drink espresso, write in my journal and think about how much I loved the city.
So, you're hovering above that cafe in Paris saying, I would do this, I would do that.
At street level, it's more like, the espresso was bitter. The metal chair wobbled beneath me and a couple argued at the next table, their voices sharp over the clatter of spoons. I'd pressed my pen to the page trying to capture it all.
You're saying the same thing, essentially, but you're at the street level rather than hovering above it.
Matty Dalrymple: I love that second description. There's a stark difference there.
I think it'll be clear to everyone which one of those is more effective.
I've also had the experience being a judge for some short fiction contests, of reading entries that, like you're describing it, felt more like the beats or the outline, and I think, this would be a fabulous 110,000-word fantasy novel. This is not an engaging 1500-word short story, and I make up the story that this person had this thing that they wanted to share, and they had an opportunity that was limited to 1500 words, so they made it 1500 words.
But if your story requires 115,000 words, then just take 115,000 words at least out of the gate. Because you want to be able to immerse yourself in the world, and those details are what make it possible for reader to do that.
Howard Lovy: And you don't necessarily have to write a 115,000-word book to include all the details. You can still write a short story and be immersive. You just have to pick and choose which scenes, and I'll go a little more into that in our next category.
Matty Dalrymple: Let's move on to number five, which is, does every scene and chapter move the story forward?
Howard Lovy: Yes. Oftentimes, especially first-time novelist, they feel like they need to explain everything, and what we do is lose the momentum. Have you heard the term “in media res?” I don't know if that's a literary term or if it's used primarily in TV and movies, but it's where at the beginning of the pilot of a TV show, suddenly you're the middle of the action. You don't know what happened before, but suddenly somebody is running for their lives. A bad guy is chasing them or whatever. You don't know what happened, but you cut right to the chase and viewers are left to wonder what happened. Then after that emotional start, then you can backtrack and let the readers figure out how they got there.
What I see a lot of, and maybe this is just me, she walked to the door, she turned the knob, she stepped outside. Unless you're doing that to serve a narrative purpose, if you want a heightened tension, like what's at the other side of that door. If that's part of the story, then that's fine, but if not, if you're just describing a process, that's not even interesting to me.
My examples are, Emily walked across the room, reached for the door, turned the knob, stepped outside. The sun was shining. She took a deep breath and stretched before pulling out her phone to check the time.
Here's an alternate way of saying that.
Emily stepped outside and shielded her eyes from the glare. Late again. She tightened her grip on her phone and started walking.
Matty Dalrymple: That's something I definitely struggle with. I tend to put in way more of that detail, like walking to the door, turning the knob, and then I have to go back and I have to start taking out and rearranging things to avoid what I think is the other pitfall, which is they're on one side of the room and then suddenly they're loading the dishwasher, like whatever it is.
Giving enough to make the actual physical transitions understandable and not abrupt for a reader, but not harping on things that aren't important, and that can be really tricky. I can spend a lot of time saying, can I take this phrase out and it still makes sense? Can I take this phrase out and it still makes sense?
Howard Lovy: The question to ask yourself is, what is driving your story? Why should readers turn the page? Is this scene revealing something new? Whether it's revealing something new about the plot, about the character, about the backstory. Every chapter, every sentence, I think, should reveal something, even if it's something trivial about the character, at least you're revealing something new.
If getting up and walking to the door, if you have a certain kind of gait, then describe it, that's fine. That's revealing something new about the character. But if you're doing it just to show readers that you know how to get up and walk to the doorknob, that doesn't tell us anything new. So, I read things like this all the time, and even experienced writers, and part of me wants to take out my red pen and take it out. That's one of my pet peeves anyway.
Matty Dalrymple: Yeah, that is the downside of being both a reader and a writer, is reading stories from just pure entertainment or enjoyment and also the analytical side of it.
I think another associated piece of advice that I've heard, and I wish I could remember who I heard this from, so I could credit them, is that idea that you share a piece of information at the moment it's needed.
So, you don't necessarily need to know what the person's gait is and what they were wearing and what hair color they had, and whether their clothes were rumpled or neat, or whether they had a stain on their shirt, all at once.
You wait until the reveal of the fact that their clothes were rumpled and stained is important to the reader.
But not, here's my other pet peeve, not waiting so long that they have an idea in their mind of what the person looks like, and now you're going to contradict it.
Because one of my pet peeves is, I remember reading a book by an excellent author. I love this person's work. It would be very difficult for me to find any fault with it, but the one thing that drove me crazy is, I had gotten to page 300 of a 400-page book. She had done these beautiful character portrayals, so I had these really clear senses in my head of what these characters not only were like, but looked like, and then she mentioned that the character had red hair, and it totally took me out of the story because up until that point, I'd had 300 pages of not imagining this person with red hair.
So, don't leave some of those things until the last minute, but spread them out as possible.
What do you think about that?
Howard Lovy: Unless there's a reason for the red hair reveal. If all we know about the murder suspect is that she has red hair, or something like that; if it's a clue along the way.
But if it's just author neglect, yeah.
Matty Dalrymple: Point number six is a summary, a question people can ask to give an overview of the previous questions, and that is, are my readers immersed in the moment?
Talk a little bit about the importance of having a reader immersed in the moment.
Howard Lovy: As a reader, the best feeling is forgetting that I'm reading, where I lose time and I'm suddenly late for something in my real life. Am I experiencing this story through the characters?
And by characters I also mean nonfiction too.
A few real life examples is, I had a client a couple of years ago who had ALS as a young person, and he wrote about his experiences with ALS, that's Lou Gehrig's disease, where you lose control of over your motor functions, and I kept pushing him to describe what it felt like to lose control of his muscles; the emotions, the sensations, the frustration.
I felt bad asking him to do it, but he said, no, I want to relive this so I can relive it for my readers, and it was a painful process, but in the end, we got it across in a way that really made readers feel his experiences.
This was a young, athletic man who's in a wheelchair now and can hardly move, and how it felt to slowly lose those functions.
That's what I mean by immersing the readers.
Using those previous five questions to ask, are you describing it at 40,000 feet? Is there a nameless narrator doing this? Are you experiencing it through dialogue and through the moment?
One client right now who's a PTSD survivor, he was reliving his trauma as he wrote his book. So, my job is to urge him to dig deeper but also respect his emotional boundaries, but the end result is a book that really immerses readers into his world.
These are tough topics to write about, but if you use these writing techniques to get people immersed in the story.
If it sounds like writing, if it sounds like you're writing a story, then you need revision.
Your goal is to allow readers to lose themself and forget that they're reading a book at all, and I think with these previous five questions to ask yourself you're on your way.
Matty Dalrymple: That's so great. I love the idea of having these on little post-it notes around my writing desk and just looking up every once in a while, and doing a check-in and seeing how I'm doing against these.
Howard, thank you so much. It is so fun to get a chance to talk with you as the guest rather than the host. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and what you do and your services online.
Howard Lovy: Sure. You can find links to everything I do at howardlovy.com. H-O-W-A-R-D-L-O-V-Y.
I'm an editor. I'm an author. I'm a podcaster, a journalist. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, but mostly I'm a developmental editor and I take everything from napkins with your notes on it to a finished, polished draft. I do manuscript evaluations, developmental editing, copy editing, and I tailor each service to the individual author.
Matty Dalrymple: Thank you so much.
Howard Lovy: Thank you, Matty.
