Note: Below is the style sheet for my novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, prepared by my fantastic copyeditor, Susan Bradanini Betz. While her marked pages were making their way to me through the mail, my editor Mark Doten at Soho sent ahead a series of files Betz had prepared as part of the process, including the following word list and general style guide. (There were two other documents we've decided not to share here, because they contain spoilers—one on the characters and one on the chronology.) Combined with Betz's incredibly helpful notes on my pages, these documents offered me a look into the novel that I'd never expected, an abstract sort of summary or outline in lists, and another way to see the stylistic choices I'd made—and, of course, the mistakes.
—MB
WORD LIST
(Sources: Webster’s 3 and 11. See “General Style” sheet re hyphenated compounds.)
almost dawn
almost lack
almost night
almost son
amid
ash trees
ax
baby raising (n)
baby things
barely chimney
barely rooms
barely winter
barely words
bear faced
bear-bane
bear-knowledge
bear-mother
bear-song
belly-hole
birth-song
blue white (per CMOS)
body bent
broken boned
brownish red
burned
calling-down
cancer-son
catalog
cataracted
chest space
child shape
claw-bones
darkless
dark-that-was-not-dark (n)
dawn’s light
day-like
dirt clouds
discernible
doorframe
dream-children
dwelled
egg clutch
elks
empty-handed (any pos.)
ever-mother (constellation)
faced: no hypen after noun
failure-son
fever smell
finger-fishes
fingerling-fish
first-father(constellation)
forever-past
gas lamp
ghost semen
ghost-child 143
ghosted son
gold-crown (constellation)
good night
good-bye
goose-bumping
great stairs
grotesquerie
groundbird
harriment (qu’d)
heart-proud
heavy looking (after n)
high pitched (after n)
horded
hormone-stink
house hole
indexer (index finger)
ink water
kitchenry (qu’d)
knelt
lake-black
lake-whale (constellation)
leaf-bare (for clarity)
learned him (Web. 2a)
lit WATCH!
long bearded (after n)
made believe (v)
maggoted
memory made
memory-lake
miscarries (n, qu’d miscarriages)
mock terrified
moonfall
mouth-shapes
mystery woods
naïveté
near fall
near fossils
near men
near year
not-child
once-cub (n)
once-father (n)
once-fires (n)
once-path (n)
other-mother
other-wife
parent-that-was
parent-to-be
pathed
pinkish red
pop-popping
protoknee
proved
rabbits (stet, 2nd in Web.)
reddish brown
right hinged
right-shrouded
right-straddled
ropy
roughhouses
S (letter as shape)
salt water (n)
salt-squid (constellation)
same faced
semi-badgers (pace CMOS)
shelf ridge
shone
sky-bear (constellation)
smoke smell
snuck
song grown
song-skinned (v)
song-stuff
sorrow-sweat
spasmed
spilled
squid’s dream
squid-ghost 163
squidness
squid-thing
stairs, a
star white
staved
stumble-rushed (v)
sung boards
sung floors
tall-tree (constellation)
tearing-apart
thunk
trap chain
tumored
ulcered, were ulcered inside of me
unchildness
unlighted
unreckonable
unrecordable
velvet robbed
wall-skin
watch-time
weather sick
wet (past of wet)
whatever-was-not-a-bear
whisper-singing
white bearded (after n)
white-blazing
wife-cooked
wife-song
worm-struck
yellow white (per CMOS)
MODIFIERS
again-unmarked face
already-fuel-poor gas lamps
already-swollen and bruised ankle
already-unthreaded skin
belly-holed secret (fingerling)
blood-and-boiling-tomatoes stink
ever-larger part 280
milk-stunk lips
more-adoring children
most frequent habitation
new-sung objects
now-treacherous yard
sometimes-bright blue of the sky
then-few rooms
then-lonely moon
then-new beard
too-many numbers
too-small space
tucked-away mystery
worse-hurt rest
GENERAL STYLE
Capitalization
...my voice saying no. WATCH!
Comma
serial comma
no comma with too or either (consistent existing style)
comma preceding “then”
had fit through any of the openings leading below, then surely we would have seen her there.
no comma preceding “and then” unless connecting independent clauses (some exceptions)
per author’s predominant style, no comma after introductory clauses or phrases (exceptions: to avoid “reading on,” as for “From that night on, my wife...”)
Italics
words as words
elements
Letters
as shapes: cap rom
Small caps
fingerling’s speech, squid’s speech
Usage
distinctions made:
who/whom
farther/further
that/which (with exceptions)
lay/lie
each other/one another
double, triple prepositions OK
from out her body
up from off
elliptical constructions:
from my vantage that sung floor . . . (rather than “vantage point”)
out back of the house (rather than “out in back of”)
came out the house
singular/plural:
none was (exception: none of its animals were left where I could see them)
When . . . , then . . . “When I did this, then I did that” vs. “When I did this, I did that” or “I did this, then I did that”: general qu. p. 17
most nonstandard and archaic terms OK:
we learned him in the ways
sore afraid
Verbs
Here was snout and claws
There were [plural noun]
tense:
Now I know that what still lived there 163 (referring to narrator’s present)
Words
nonstandard hyphenation of nouns and verbs OK; hyphen deleted if omission doesn’t affect sense or tone—for example, if the hyphenated compound is a simple adjective-noun combination, not a single concept
whisper-singing
song-skinned
bear-song
not-child
wife-cooked
memory made
song grown
baby raising
mock terrified
chest space
