In non-fiction, readers sometimes skip the footnotes and come back and read them when they finish the chapter. In fact, when footnotes are endnotes at the end of the book instead of chapter, I frequently just read them when I get to the end of the book. In non-fiction, you can do that. Footnotes do not add anything to a non-fiction story except more background. If you are writing a fiction book and using footnotes like this, it will fall flat.
You see, footnotes in fiction should add to the story - and not everyone can do that well. Many authors, famous authors, have tried and not fared well. Footnotes, by nature, break up the story. If you want to explain something, do it in text without diverting the reader down a side path. However, footnotes can work very well when they are part of the story. Still, I do not recommend them.
Most of the manuscripts I edit come from authors who have had little professional (university level) writing education. They majored in business, nursing, education, or didn't even attend college at all. Some of them don't even read the genre of books they are writing (or read any books at all).
Please note: If you want to be a professional writer, you at least HAVE to read or hire someone who does read to completely ghostwrite your book. If you do not read, you have no clue about plotting or how novels work, and quite frankly, you will end up sticking a glossary in the center of the book and switching from civil war south to gypsies in Europe halfway through. Yes, you can be self-published, but no, you should not be. Harsh, perhaps, but truthful. Would you want a doctor working on you who didn't read medical journals to keep up with the latest developments in medicine? Would you want a mechanic working on your car if he didn't even own one car of his own? On the road, do you want to be anywhere near the driver who has never driven a car before?As you can see, I do my own "footnotes" on my blog. They do break up the text, and you can come back and read them later. Despite the fact that I know how to use footnotes (although don't base your opinion of that on the way I use them in my blog), I would not want to insert them into fiction. You have to be completely immersed in the fantasy world of your book to make people happy about reading them.
The authors I work with are not. They have done a lot of research and want to share bits of information they learned. This can be done just as well by adding the information into the story subtly and discriminately. The reader should be able to know that you did a good job with your research just from reading it. At the same time, the reader does not need to know everything you researched.
This is true of non-fiction, too. When I write a scientific paper, lets say I look up 20 - 40 papers on the topic. I read through the abstract and determine which ones apply to my topic specifically. The abstract may weed out 10 - 20 that I do not have to read. As I read the rest of them in full, I again weed out some that are not quite addressing my topic. In the end, I may have 5 - 10 papers listed in my bibliography, and I may only have 3 pages of writing, but as long as the paper is focused it will be well received.
Now, in some non-fiction books, you pick them up and there are hundreds of footnotes. For the most part, these are references and not explanations of text. Frequently, they expand the story - "This marriage later caused the War of the Roses (see also Dexter, 1989)." If the story doesn't cover the War of the Roses, it is appropriate. Unfortunately, fiction writers tend to use footnotes to explain the story further: "Sarah has blonde hair and blue eyes and is a very pretty girl." Again, this can be used well, but it is not recommended. Explaining the story (in footnote or text) is NOT necessarily expanding it.
Yes, all rules in literature are made to be broken. However, if you do not know them and understand how to use them and when to break them, it is best to follow them.
In this article is really wonderful. I can understand your theme about the article. Thanks to you.
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ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the blog post! My question is, if I were to use footnotes in a fantasy novel (where the footnote appears at the bottom of the page), what would be the proper formatting within the manuscript? Should the footnotes be the same size as the rest of the text?
ReplyDeleteIf you are using footnotes, you should just use the footnote feature in Word (or the word processing program of your choice). Although using the same size as the rest of the text is tempting (because they would be easier to read), they would no longer look like footnotes and would likely confuse the reader.
DeleteI am writing a fiction book based in Japan and I am trying to use Romanji-Japanese in the novel and I was wondering if I could use footnotes to basically translate the various terms used. Do you think it would be appropriate to use footnotes for this purpose?
ReplyDeleteThat depends on how much Romanji-Japanese you are using. As long as you will not have to make extensive footnotes on each page, it would be fine to use footnotes for this purpose. In fact, if you were using Japanese characters, footnotes (or endnotes) would be the preferred method since a glossary would be difficult for non-Japanese speaking people to read.
DeleteIn general, if you use many foreign phrases (or made up words), you want to include a glossary. I am going to play with an online glossary for one of my books that is a quadlogy because I want to end the series with the glossary as Tolkien did, but I cannot put the books out quick enough and one of the complaints about the book was a lack of a glossary. I will probably make a post in the future about how the online glossary works for a series like this.
I am starting the chapters of my novel with epigraphs taken from rather obscure books of poetry for which permissions may be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Should I use footnotes or endnotes to show the publication sources and credit the authors of these epigraphs? Thank you!
ReplyDeletePoetry and songs or music are very touchy things. I do not advise anyone who is unfamiliar with copyright laws (or who has a copyright lawyer okay the project) to reprint the poetry or songs of others in whole or part. If you obtain permission to the work, they will generally tell you how to cite it. Otherwise, if you are certain the copyright to the poetry works you are using have expired (and cannot be renewed) in all the countries where you plan to make your book available, then you need to cite the original authors with the title of the work in the text, preferably right after the quotation.
DeleteOne problem with poetry and songs is that they tend to be short. In general (and I am not a copyright lawyer so please check with someone who is), if you are borrowing from something without permission and you take too much of it, you have broken copyright law even if you do include a citation. In fact, if you use more than 500 verses of the NIV Bible in your book, you are breaking copyright law unless you obtain permission. I will be addressing the differences between plagiarism and copyright in a future post.