Style Sheet: Tool for Editors and Authors

I recorded a Facebook Live on creating a style sheet for Owl Hollow Press on March 11. You can see the replay here:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=405398887412952&ref=search

What is a style sheet?

A style sheet is a reference document for your specific story. Traditionally, copy editors will make them for the manuscripts they’re working on as part of the copy edit. Let’s talk about this traditional style sheet to get familiar with how a style sheet works.

Style sheets are a way to organize the details of your story into appropriate categories. Common categories include characters, timeline, terms, and style. Within the characters category, each character is listed along with details about that character that have been mentioned in the book. The terms category includes phrases or words that are unique to your book, as well as words that have various spelling options, like grey/gray. The terms category would include what spelling has been chosen as the go-to for this book. The style category tracks various grammar, punctuation, and usage preferences an author has, like the Oxford comma or how to format scene breaks.

Hopefully you can see how keeping track of these details in a separate document specifically made for your manuscript is a helpful resource. It’s very rewarding to read about a character’s vivid blue eyes, check the style sheet, and leave a comment for the author about how this character’s eyes are actually green. No going back and searching through chapters to find where the character’s eyes were first described. No need to search for all subsequent eye color descriptions and making sure they match up. And that’s just one minor detail.

Style sheets are an editor’s friend, and you probably shouldn’t hire an editor if they don’t offer a style sheet as part of their edit. But what to look for in an editor is a topic for another day.

Editor style sheet vs. author style sheet

Let’s talk about how an author can benefit from a style sheet. If anyone knows a different name for an author style sheet, I’d love to hear it. Authors often make character bios that have background details on usually the main characters, but I couldn’t find anything that mentions bringing the details of a story and putting them into categories to make them easy to find and compare.

I recommend authors make style sheets of the sort that I make as a developmental editor. Making this type of style sheet may not be part of the process for other developmental editors work. The difference in the quality of my edits has been remarkable once I was serious about making thorough style sheets for my manuscripts.

Let’s start with how authors with a finished draft or mostly finished draft could use a style sheet. What I find particularly useful is that reading your draft to create a style sheet requires a more analytical read. The resulting style sheet is a summary of major points and characters and places through which you’ll be able to more easily identify weaknesses and inconsistencies.

Author style sheet

An author style sheet is going to be much more involved than a copy editor style sheet. You can forget about a style category, which only becomes relevant much later in edits. Categories I have in every style sheet are

• Characters
• Geography
• Timeline
• Unique Terms and Phrases

Then each book will have additional categories that are specific to it, such as

• Animals
• Magic system/rules
• Items of interest
• Words from other languages
• Culture

The best part is that adding the actual content to the style sheet is the easiest part!

1. Highlight the detail you wish to add to the style sheet
2. Copy
3. Open style sheet
4. Paste in appropriate category

Yes, you literally copy and paste from your MS into your style sheet. Don’t summarize or rewrite some detail—one of the main points of the style sheet is to identify what is currently in the story. The discoveries and insights you could have into your story thanks to the style sheet are endless. If you read through your style sheet after and realize your magic system is really low on detail, you know exactly what you need to beef up in the story. You may notice the timeline is a little wonky, or a character has several eye colors. The list really goes on and on.

You can find a link to a style sheet template that I created here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fj5o6PeOFhDit-AhHp6EeTp2hTsxx1mp/view?usp=sharing

For more self-editing tips, see my blog posts here for four more ideas:

https://oliviaedits.com/2021/01/29/editor-notes-secondary-characters/

https://oliviaedits.com/2021/02/05/editor-notes-realistic-injuries/

https://oliviaedits.com/2021/02/12/editor-notes-geography/

https://oliviaedits.com/2021/02/19/editor-notes-body-language-and-dialogue-tags/

Examples

Let me give some examples of what categories I used for different types of books. Below I give several books with a synopsis and a list of the interesting categories I used for that specific style sheet.

Kiki Macadoo and the Graveyard Ballerinas by Colette Sewall

Synopsis: When eleven-year-old Kiki MacAdoo and her talented older sister go to Mount Faylinn Dance Conservatory for the summer, they ignore the brochure’s mysterious warning that “ballets come alive” in the nearby forest. But after her sister disappears, it’s up to Kiki to brave the woods and save her sister from the ghost sylphs that dance young girls to their deaths.

• Characters—in addition to physical characteristics, don’t forget to include details like allergies. Kiki’s mom died before the book starts, and several details about things her mom liked influence Kiki’s preference for things—like polka dots and chocolate chip cookies—and those are the kind of details that could come up later in this book or maybe a later book. They’re also details that can’t get mixed up. Her mom can’t later be remembered as being gluten free.
• Also note nicknames
• Places: addresses, layout of house, conservatory, construction history of conservatory, layout of conservatory
• Rules for dance camp and dance camp schedule
• unique words: lubbly jubbly: British expression of happiness their mom used to say
• ballet terms
• Animals/nonhuman beings (there are fairies and fantastical beasts like the brown slawk and the Willies (spelled Wilis)
• Other items of interest: items mentioned that may have significance in later book, which I won’t mention here as they come at important moments in the story
• Formatting: how to handle ballet terms (italics) and how to handle looks; you’re weird look (italics)

Spirits of Chaos series by Nicole Conway—Scales and Wings

Synopsis: When New York City faces the threat of an ancient evil, a teenage boy must use a magical bracelet to transform into a monster-slaying dragon superhero.

• for a series, I make a style sheet for the first book, and a fresh style sheet for each subsequent book. For later books, I’ll go back and compare and make sure details match up and leave notes where they don’t. By the end of the edits, I combine the style sheets into a master style sheet for the series.
• Characters: include scar locations from previous injuries, school class schedule for characters and overlap classes with other characters
• Spelling: dragon-girl hyphenated, full-kur transformation hyphenated, goodbye one word, spellign of school is Saint Bernard’s, not St. Bernard’s, totem-wielders, etc.
• Formatting: reminder to italicize video game titles, signs are in all caps and no quotation marks, how texts are handled
• Places: windows in Koji’s room (since he leaves from it often)—some of the rooms changed from book 1 to book 2, so I make a note of that
• Aircraft (lots of military planes in this one)
• Special items, called totem/kur tools, that have to do with the fantasy/magic component of the story, that I want to keep the details straight on for the next book.
• Also noted other relationships that are relevant to later books, like Koji’s relationship with the government—is he taking orders from them or acting on his own, and how does that evolve?

The Girl and the Tiger by Paul Rosolie

Synopsis: When Isha is sent to live with her grandparents on the Indian countryside, she discovers a sacred grove where a young Bengal tiger has taken refuge. Isha knows that the ever-shrinking forests of India mean there are few places left for a tiger to hide. When the local villagers also discover the tiger, Isha finds herself embroiled in a life or death cultural controversy.

• Big one for foreign words, names, and places—takes place in India, lots of dialects of languages there, so a long foreign language list that said not only what foreign words meant but which language they were in so that characters from different regions were using right words. Author had specialist go over the list I made for the style sheet.
• Also needed to keep track of timeline closely and align with seasons and Indian holidays.
• For some broader aspects of the story, you might not be able to go day by day, so use whatever timeframe works. As Kala the tiger learns to hunt, I had things like “in month three, Kala gets her first kill”, month 6 Kala kills a stag, etc.

Conclusion

One benefit of an editor is that they aren’t familiar with your story, and the fresh eyes see things that as the author you can’t see. The style sheet is one way to give you a fresh set of eyes on your work because it’s your work in a different format. It may take some practice to create a style sheet that works for you—there’s no right and wrong with it. Follow your instinct when it comes to categories. If you feel like you have too many, just focus on characters or geography. It’s easy to get bogged down and pick too many categories to focus on. Focus on areas you’re worried about with a style sheet. Do what works for you and your story.