The creativity you can bring as an author to science fiction is almost unlimited. You have an entire universe to play in! It’s why we all love science fiction so much. With almost boundless opportunities for bringing new alien races and technologies to life, there comes a much higher risk of errors creeping into your manuscript. When you’re in the flow and the story wants you to press on uninterrupted, you don’t want to keep stopping to check whether that spacecraft’s weaponry name has a hyphen or not. So unintentional inconsistencies can remain. Left unchecked, they can really derail your storytelling. As a proofreader, I regularly come across the same type of sci-fi errors. These are my top five to look out for.
Poorly formatted computer screen readouts. As you know, computers, or readout screens of some sort, can feature pretty heavily in sci-fi novels. It can be difficult to know how to format the text on the screen. Firstly, don’t use speech marks, unless the computer is an AI character who has a physical voice. Speech marks are generally for speaking characters only. Secondly, choose a separate font, preferably something ‘techy’ but clear to read. Personally, I like the font ‘Consolas’. Separate it from the text with line spacing at the beginning of the text and after. You could write it in all caps if appropriate (as long as the text is not too long) and put it in bold type. Leave the reader in no doubt that they are reading off a computer screen.
Inconsistent invented terms. It can sometimes take a bit of time for your reader to familiarise themselves with the terminology in your sci-fi world. Often, there are new alien names, languages, planets, cities and technologies to get to grips with. Making up weird and wonderful words is part of the fun of writing and there’s nothing wrong with that. These terms are your creative terms so there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way. The most important thing to remember is to be consistent. Decide on a style and stick to it throughout or you’ll risk confusing the reader to the point where they may give up altogether. Look out for things like missing hyphenation e.g. star-drive, stardrive, star drive; calling a species one name at the start and then changing your mind and calling them something else partway through or changing the spelling; confusing the pluralisation of terms e.g. a Xenth or the Xentha, the Serai used as both plural and singular without a pattern. These oversights can hugely undermine your novel.
Inconsistent capitalisation drift for world-specific terms. Is it Captain or captain? The swarm or the Swarm? There are general rules for when capitalisation should and shouldn’t be used but sometimes these won’t apply to your world-building vison. The trick is to decide what you want and stick to it throughout. Regarding capitalisation for military rank, ‘Captain Jones’ is capitalised as it refers to a formal title but not if it’s used as a common noun, ‘The captain is coming.’ However, I worked with an author who wanted all military titles capitalised no matter the context. This is absolutely fine, as long as it’s enforced throughout the text, which I helped him to do.
Number and unit formatting inconsistencies. Sci-fi often has a lot of technical detail, especially for measurements of time and space. Ensure your dates make sense chronologically: a chapter set in 2345 followed by a chapter set in 2380 depicting events happening in the past will only cause confusion and frustration for the reader. Equally, consistency on numerals and measurements of distances is important e.g. five light-years or 5 light years. Keeping the formatting the same for these types of measurements keeps things simple and easy for the reader. This is even more important if you’ve made up completely new measurements that your reader won’t be familiar with. Make sure you use new types of measurements in a way that makes it obvious what they mean, at least at the start.
Pronoun reference errors in multi-character scenes. When there’s lots of action and characters involved in a scene, it can be difficult to keep track of who is who, even more so when you throw in alien species with non-human or unfamiliar pronouns. Watch out for the word ‘they’ becoming too ambiguous and vague or accidentally using the wrong pronoun for the wrong character. You want to show the reader what’s happening in an exciting scene, not have them feeling like they’re trying to do long division just to try and keep up with what’s happening.
If you keep these five issues in mind when you edit your manuscript, you’ll be going a long way towards a clean and polished final piece. If you’re really serious about publishing, then professional proofreading is an absolute must. No matter how painstakingly you go over your manuscript, glaring errors can still get past you. Contact me if you really want to get your novel ready to publish!