Alan Rinzler

Consulting Editor

  • Home
  • About
  • Author List
  • Services
  • Testimonials
  • FAQ
  • Video
  • Blog
  • Contact

The blog for writers

The Book Deal

Too much vertical space in your manuscript?

November 25, 2013 by Alan Rinzler

In filmmaking, vertical space is shorthand for script pages with lots of white and not a lot of words.

For scriptwriters it’s the rule. A script has dialogue, brief notes for action on the screen and not much else. It makes for quick reading and ensures a kind of textual scarcity that directors consider a virtue, since in the movie business, directors, not screenwriters, are the storytellers. They’re the ones who bring the action, dialogue, sound, light, color, and music together into a coherent narrative.

But this is just part of it. So much more goes on behind the scenes to ensure that the film can be made to the highest quality. In order to do so, many of these directors, amongst others, may have attended a film school to ensure they get the relevant experience to do the script justice. Every little component, from the words to the visual effects, has a part to play in the production of the film, and it’s up to the directors to make it as successful as possible.

For a book author, however, a lot of vertical space is usually a sign of trouble. Too much of it shows us there’s something’s missing.

Dialogue alone can’t build a whole and complete world on the page. The author can’t rely on the camera, microphone, or green screen to create a scene in the reader’s mind. The book author creates not just what people are saying, but what they’re doing, what they’re seeing, how they appear in the flesh, their interior thoughts, and the sense of meaning that carries the narrative arc to some kind of emotional climax.

Scan your pages. Do you need sunglasses?

How can you reduce the glaring white space and increase your readers’ satisfaction, fulfillment, and yearning for more?

As a book author, you’re the boss, the creative director of the work. You’ve got the power to use as many literary elements and techniques as you deem necessary to get under the surface of spoken words, and to craft the dimensions of your narrative to engage the reader’s attention.

What’s missing?

Balance

I worked with a well-known writer whose first draft had an overabundance of white space. There was nothing but dialogue between two characters. Nothing else. We spent months creating a multi-dimensional context, adding action, description, and meaningful details. We ultimately achieved a more readable balance between a pruned down version of the original dialogue plus these other literary elements, and the book sold literally millions of copies throughout the world.

Action

Tell us what your characters are doing — their movements, their reactions to the physical rhythm of people and objects around them.

Sensory description

Evoke in your reader’s imagination the shape and color of the story’s environment. Where are your characters? What elements of their physical context add to the emotional glue of the story? Not only the way things look, but how they smell, feel to the touch, taste on the tongue or in a character’s viscera, his guts.

Inner thoughts

Describe what your characters are feeling beyond just what they say. Whether using a first or third person narrator, you can spell out ongoing ruminations, internal responses, the secret, personal stuff.

Focus of attention

As the sole director of this work, you control the eye of the camera. You can create an emotional landscape by guiding your reader’s eye to specific objects and words — what Orhan Pumuk, the Turkish winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, describes as the “vast forest of moments and details”.

Exceptions

Vertical space may be a perfectly admirable quality when writing poetry of a certain kind, no problem. And there’s no rule or prohibition that should inhibit you from trying to write either all dialogue or very short paragraphs that create a special effect, a neomodern, literary experiment. Sometimes it works, though in my experience it’s pretty hard to accomplish.

I read a manuscript recently that had double columns all the way down, so you could read the same scene from two separate points of view at the same time. Challenging but interesting. And many years ago, I published a book of unbound pages with only a few words on each sheet that could be shuffled and read in any order. It was a big hit in France, but our translation sold only a few hundred copies.

But these are outlier ideas so proceed with caution.

What about you?

When you flip through your manuscript, do you see a lot of white space? Could be a clue that your story needs more depth and dimension to hold it together. Think of this as a quick diagnostic tool and try taking a closer look to see if those parts need development.

Let me know what you think. I’ll keep an eye out for any questions here in comments.

Filed Under: Craft of Writing Tagged With: Alan Rinzler, author, book, craft of writing, developmental editor, editor, fiction, freelance, vertical space

Comments

  1. Alan Rinzler says

    December 13, 2013 at 6:47 pm

    Alicia

    I have the same problems reading small dense type. When I work on a manuscript I like to increase the font to at least 14 points with 1.5 spaces between lines.

    This post, however, is more about the balance needed between dialogue (lots of white space) and dense text (the rest of the story). Book authors — unlike the movie scriptwriters referenced in this post — have the luxury of being able to write not just what characters say, but all the other elements — inner thoughts, description, when creating their literary reality.

  2. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt says

    December 13, 2013 at 5:22 pm

    The ideal always has to be: whatever doesn’t get in the way of reading the text, absorbing the story, and making the necessary mental constructs to have a complete story – in the reader’s mind.

    White space; text font, size, kerning, and line spacing; beginning capitals, first paragraph not indented, separators between scenes; margins and spacing on the page; headers and footers and gutters.

    Everything matters, everything needs to be in balance, and everything has to be transparent to the reader.

    I can’t count the number of books I’ve tried to read where the text is a massive block of pale grey tiny letters surrounded by huge blocks of white space, space that should have been used between letters, words, and paragraphs to make the text legible.

    Or the times I’ve given up trying to read a novel in sans serif type.

    In the modern age, where a page/book can be quickly re-typeset in a number of combinations, there are no excuses for some of the things put out into the world.

    Now, even more, as my eyes age, I just don’t bother.

    It’s a subtle way of ignoring the reader’s needs (in favor of what, I don’t know. Economy?).

    But it biases a reader against those books – and, as a writer, I don’t want that to happen to mine.

  3. Christine Bloom says

    December 4, 2013 at 8:15 pm

    I agree that there needs to be a balance between dialogue and prose on the page so the reader is brought into the scene through establishing the setting, tone, and inner thoughts of the POV character. I think it’s very important to give characters things to do in a scene so that as they are conversing with another character we might get insight into their frame of mind. But it needs to be done in such a way it doesn’t disconnect the reader from the scene or lead off into tangent.

  4. henri says

    December 2, 2013 at 1:52 pm

    Balance is the key. I recently had a short story make the final cut for publication in an anthology, but alas it fell short because of an overly large block of dialogue half way through.

  5. Greg Strandberg says

    November 27, 2013 at 12:06 am

    I like dialogue because it steers me away from huge blocks of text, which I might otherwise have a tendency to create. The problem I’ve got now is with dialogue tags. Instead of having solid lines of back and forth going down the page I’ve now got “he nodded” appearing way to much at the beginning of sentences. Better than “he said” in the middle? I’m not sure.

    Lately I’ve been breaking up driving dialogue with descriptions of where they’re going.

    “Step on it!”
    “I am!” Jim shouted as he turned onto Henderson.
    But it was too late, and by the time he made a right onto Front Street he was slamming his hand down on the wheel.
    “Shoot!” he shouted. “He got away!”

    People living in that city might love it, but I’m starting to think I’ve got to many street names popping up.

  6. Carmen Anthony Fiore says

    November 26, 2013 at 3:14 pm

    Being a prose writer as well as a screenplay writer, I would compare the white space in a novel as an equal to a dissolve after a scene in a screenplay to show a larger separation in time and place. But even speculative screenplays, cuts (quicker/less time elapse) and dissolves are used sparingly. In prose formats such as novels and short stories white space has a place but should also be used sparingly to avoid excess and to maintain effectiveness.

Trackbacks

  1. LinkedUp: December 12, 2013 « Beth Jusino Beth Jusino says:
    December 12, 2013 at 1:36 pm

    […] Step One: Study the Craft Scan your pages. Do you need sunglasses? The book author creates not just what people are saying, but what they’re doing, what they’re seeing, how they appear in the flesh, their interior thoughts, and the sense of meaning that carries the narrative arc to some kind of emotional climax.” […]

  2. Busy Mama » The Weekend Edition says:
    November 29, 2013 at 10:09 pm

    […] Too much vertical space in your manuscript? (The Book Deal)   […]

About The Book Deal

Welcome readers.  Let me introduce myself and offer up some credentials for the opinions, perspectives and insights in this blog. In nearly … more »

Working with Alan

I can’t thank you enough!

"Working together was interesting, challenging, and fun. I can't thank you enough for taking my stories and putting them in a comprehensible order, focusing more on my younger, formative days with my parents, and helping me remember great events that added so much to the book."

– US Senator Barbara Boxer. Her memoir, The Art of Tough, was published by Hachette in June 2016.

Figure out how to get Alan on your side

"Figure out how to get Alan on your side. He took my rambling manifesto and helped me hone it into a sharp, funny, culture-changing book featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Times of London, and most recently on The Daily Show."

– Lenore Skenazy, author Free Range Kids – How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry.

Enthusiastic, imaginative and razor sharp

"Alan is enthusiastic, imaginative, razor-sharp, concise. His line-editing is specific and actionable; his developmental advice truly invaluable, providing focus and direction to the often chaotic process of writing a first novel."

– David Tomlinson, author of The Midnight Man.

An advocate, friend and mentor

“Alan can tell you at one glance, where a manuscript works and where it doesn’t. More than an editor, he’s an advocate, friend, mentor, and a bullshit detector of the highest caliber.”

–  Celeste Chaney, author of In Absence of Fear

A 5-star Olympic Gold Medal for editing!

"Alan Rinzler has edited seven of my books, and no one compares to his competence as an editor. Everything I write he makes better. Alan knows the business, knows writing and understands a writer’s needs. He has my 5-Star Olympic Gold Medal for editing! I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him."

– Michele Borba, author of Building Moral Intelligence, The Big Book of Parenting Solutions, and others.

Featured Video

view more »

Ask the Editor

Tips for blending in the backstory

Tips for blending in
the backstory
2015-07-28T14:50:53-07:00
Tips for blending in the backstory
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/tips-for-blending-in-the-backstory/

Wake up your readers! How to thicken a plot

Wake up your readers!
How to thicken a plot
2015-07-28T15:29:05-07:00
Wake up your readers! How to thicken a plot
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/another-link/

Memoir or novel for my true story?

Memoir or novel
for my true story?
2015-07-28T20:47:16-07:00
Memoir or novel for my true story?
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/3172/

Is your book in need of emotional glue?

Is your book in need of emotional glue?
2015-07-28T20:51:25-07:00
Is your book in need of emotional glue?
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/is-your-book-in-need-of-emotional-glue/

Can I really become a better writer?

Can I really become a better writer?
2015-07-28T21:05:22-07:00
Can I really become a better writer?
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/can-i-really-become-a-better-writer/

7 techniques for a dynamite plot

7 techniques for
a dynamite plot
2015-07-28T21:17:53-07:00
7 techniques for a dynamite plot
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/7-techniques-for-a-dynamite-plot-2/

What to expect from a developmental editor

What to expect from
a developmental editor
2015-07-28T21:21:18-07:00
What to expect from a developmental editor
https://alanrinzler.com/testimonials/what-to-expect-from-a-developmental-editor/

Categories

  • Ask the Editor (23)
  • Book Industry Trends (81)
  • Book Proposal Critiques (4)
  • Craft of Writing (72)
  • Guts Ball: Editing Hunter Thompson (3)
  • How To Get Published (80)
  • Literary Agent Profiles (11)
  • Literary Destinations (3)
  • Marketing Your Book (33)
  • Memoir (7)
  • Parts of a Book (5)
  • Self-Publishing (34)
  • The writer's toolkit (3)
  • Writers at work (2)

Follow me on

2008-2025 © Alan Rinzler Consulting Editor