How Formatting Can Reveal Character, Tension, and Hidden Emotion

Cassie Newell (00:35)
Welcome

to episode 82. I'm Cassie Newell and I'm here with my co-host Angela Haas. And this month in August, we're doing quick bites. This month is busy for us and for many people as summer winds down, activities ramp up. So we just want to dive into some craft issues authors face,

but we're going to explore these in 20 minutes or less to get you some quick tips.

Today I want to talk about something we don't hear discussed very often, how authors can use formatting, sentence structure, and even blank space on a page to control pacing and emotion. You're like, what? How is this a craft tool? Totally is. So one of my favorite examples before we just dive into this is New Moon by Stephanie Meyer, where nearly that she has blank pages marked only by the passing of months.

To show Bella's isolation and emotional withdrawal. The formatting itself tells the story. And I was a total artistic creative geek for this. And they did it really well in the movie as well. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about blank spade, pay blank spaces on a page. I'm gonna fumble this a lot. sorry for the edits or blooper.

Angela Haas (01:50)
Thursday. Blooper

Cassie Newell (01:52)
Reels. so let's lead

Angela Haas (01:54)
reel.

Cassie Newell (01:54)
in let's lead in with a question. Do you think writers sometimes focus so much on whether a sentence is technically correct that they forget to consider how it feels on the page in order to use white space?

Angela Haas (02:10)
I mean, I think totally possible. I think sometimes even I, have been looking at my sentences, especially if you're in that line editing mode, right? You've drafted everything,

Cassie Newell (02:20)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Angela Haas (02:23)
characters are out, and then you're going line by line. And it's almost like when you c start to separate the sentences and just dissect them, you forget, wait, how does this fit into the bigger picture

Cassie Newell (02:37)
Right.

Angela Haas (02:38)
of

The page, you know, not just

Cassie Newell (02:40)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (02:40)
the chapter or how does this look on the page? And I've seen this done really well. I'm not sure if I consciously do it when I'm like drafting, but when I'm reading it back, either reading it aloud, or sometimes when I have an alpha reader point something out to me and I'm thinking, okay, this is how I can change the tone or the emotion.

The sentence is fine, but it doesn't really do anything, you know? So yeah.

Cassie Newell (03:14)
Right, it's not as impactful, maybe.

Angela Haas (03:17)
I think I just read this in one of the romance novels I just read. I think it's called Here for the Cake, but I'm not sure. Basically short chapters, which is was interesting for a romance, but really short chapters, and then one chapter was just

a sentence like I hate him. And that was chapter 20. That was her point of view. And then it went into his point of view. And

Cassie Newell (03:44)
I love that.

Angela Haas (03:45)
that was really I it caught me off guard. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (03:48)
I'm such a geek for that.

Angela Haas (03:49)
It caught me off guard in a way I was just like, yeah, you can do that. You know, that's all she thought in that moment. And then we moved on. So but it it really got the message across, She was just sort of in they were in their breakup phase, but it was like,

Got it.

Cassie Newell (04:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

I want to talk about how silence and white space do that emotional work because that's exactly

Angela Haas (04:14)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (04:14)
what you're describing. Like a pause or an unfinished thought or a line just left by itself, period. Like fuck. You know, period

Angela Haas (04:23)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (04:24)
or shit. Period. Like, and I love it when it's it keeps going sometimes. I mean, not egregiously,

Angela Haas (04:30)
Right.

Cassie Newell (04:32)
but I love that.

that hesitation or activity, whether that be mostly internal thoughts, that's where I see it really driving home. I think silence is part of grammar too. And I think people miss it. I consciously

Angela Haas (04:48)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Cassie Newell (04:51)
draft that way a lot of the time, but I find myself when I'm in edits expanding even more. Sometimes I'll be like, what were you thinking? Why are you going five lines this way? No, no, maybe three.

You know, and I'll I'll

Angela Haas (05:04)
Right.

Cassie Newell (05:05)
kind of just be a little bit of a puzzle master around that

Angela Haas (05:09)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (05:09)
because I I love it so much and I do think it's impactful. I love granted I'm an I'm an M-dash girl. I love when complete words aren't done too, and it just and somebody speaks over you, right? And that's a new line and like

Angela Haas (05:26)
Yeah. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (05:27)
all those things. And then sometimes I like it when a

person is having random thoughts and they're going in one direction, they stop, pause, switch, and then go in the next direction. But that has to be in the same paragraph or it doesn't work for me. So I'm just curious, because I think you do this, we I think we talked about this briefly offline, right? Because as a sci-fi writer, you tend to write shorter sentences anyway, right? So how do

Angela Haas (05:54)
Yes.

Cassie Newell (05:55)
you use what a character does not say to create emotion?

Angela Haas (06:01)
I I'm not sure if it's like what they're not saying, but just I I've used this technique before in like if someone is really thrown off guard or just especially in romance, it's usually the man that's like trying to make sense of what the hell, this woman is turning my mind into a pretzel. And I've done it where it's they just barf on the page these thoughts and then go, damn, you know.

That's the next line. And it's like,

Cassie Newell (06:29)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (06:31)
damn it. And I've done that before, but I feel like that that does create a little bit something about what they're not saying. It's just like this, damn it, you know.

Cassie Newell (06:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Haas (06:46)
But with sci-fi, it just depends because definitely when you're doing a fight scene, you can use shorter sentences. But what I learned from a coach.

That went through one of my first few fight scenes is it's a balance. It's almost like

Cassie Newell (07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (07:04)
short, long, short, short. It's a weird you're composing almost a sheet of music

Cassie Newell (07:12)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (07:13)
because if it's all short, the reader gets whiplash. If it's long, the action doesn't feel urgent enough. So I had to

Cassie Newell (07:23)
Exactly, yeah.

Angela Haas (07:24)
really learn to

Balance that with in the fight scenes. In world building scenes, also balance, but they tend to be longer, more prosy and poetic. But you can't have a run on sentence, which I used to do, you know, when you're just going on and on about describing something. It I find that it's it's balance more than anything.

Cassie Newell (07:49)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (07:50)
And and yeah, it does depend on your genre for sure.

Cassie Newell (07:53)
I do think in short, I utilize white space so

Angela Haas (07:58)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (07:58)
that I'm not over-explaining anything because I don't have time to

Angela Haas (08:01)
Right.

Cassie Newell (08:02)
do that. And second, I love letting the reader make their own assumptions.

Angela Haas (08:07)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (08:09)
so I tend to do that n not as a whole not a whole lot. Again, I'm trying to be short, but the space doesn't add word count. It just allows the emotion, the desire.

tension a lot of tension and angst in my stories

Angela Haas (08:26)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (08:27)
to kind of flourish a little bit more. so I just love that white space. But you were talking about sentence length and paragraph breaks and how that controls the pace of a scene. And I love it because you're right, like in effective fight scenes, arguments, even intimate moments, like just because you have a lot of dialogue going back and forth.

Creating those short bursts actually create pace, right? It makes it go faster because readers, they're not going across the page coming back. They're going boom, boom, boom, boom. And that's actually what causes the pace. And I had to look that up because I was like, why does it make it go faster? Well, because you're reading it faster. because it's

Angela Haas (09:12)
Right. Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (09:14)
just boom, boom, boom. When you're in a paragraph, you tend to slow down.

And things of that nature. So I thought that was really interesting. I I think creating more space on page consciously as a craft choice versus a grammatical choice, because if you really look at it grammatically, you probably somebody would say no, that should be in

Angela Haas (09:38)
Right.

Cassie Newell (09:38)
the same paragraph because it's the same thought or what have you. But I I think this is where creative license comes into play. And

I'm curious, do you do you feel like I feel like some people, I think it depends on personality, but do you feel hesitant to do those things grammatically or do you feel pretty open in order to do those things for your story craft wise?

Angela Haas (10:06)
I feel pretty open. I mean, actually, the only thing that makes me hesitant sometimes, we were talking about dash, just all the vitriol around AI,

Cassie Newell (10:17)
I know.

Angela Haas (10:18)
the witch hunt on AI. So now a thing is if you've got the three you know, it used to be authors could use like the three short little sentences, almost two to three words. And that was that had a real impact.

It has emphasis. It it it's giving the

Cassie Newell (10:39)
I

Angela Haas (10:40)
reader a chance to pause and really settle on those words. Now that's a sign of AI. And and Dash is a sign of AI. And all these things. I know.

Cassie Newell (10:47)
And I ca I just I disagree. I'm like, how is that a sign of AI? But

Angela Haas (10:51)
Well, because AI has trained on us human authors. And so people now think that that's AI versus purposeful because as a reader, I think.

Cassie Newell (11:04)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (11:04)
Some readers, not all, we appreciate our readers, obviously, but I think some of these people that are looking for AI so they can put it out there and get their viral moment. And I found something, I'm an AI detective, I don't think they really understand the craft. And all those things are purposeful. We're not just whistling Dixie and writing anything that pops out of our head and publishes it.

Those white spaces, those pauses are purposeful. You need to give your reader a chance to breathe, especially after in romance, deep emotional impact. I think even after intimate scenes, sometimes you have those real short reflection sentences, some more white space, pausing. And after an action sequence, you need some of those beats so that.

your audience your your reader can take a breath along with you. So I found myself sometimes editing those things out, but now I'm just like, you know, I'm just gonna write the way it feels good to me. And if someone thinks it's AI, that's really on them,

This kind of formatting can do. It can create humor, make things light

Cassie Newell (12:23)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (12:24)
and funny, you know?

Cassie Newell (12:26)
Yeah,

yeah, I agree. I think where I first r really thought about white space is writing poetry. So I have a book called

Angela Haas (12:36)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (12:37)
Red, which is prose and poetry together, around little Red Riding Hood growing up. And I I remember thinking, yeah, I'm doing this from a poetry perspective.

Angela Haas (12:51)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (12:52)
A very artistic, it was a passion project for me. And I would move certain things a certain way. I would even almost edit my poems to get my right beats down so that it looked right. Like some words were just too long visually. And I was like, what can I

Angela Haas (13:08)
Right, yeah.

Cassie Newell (13:09)
use? And I think poetry does that lovely, depending on the type of poems you're writing, structure-wise, things of that nature. But I think poetry is.

Really a great case study. If you're like, I don't

Angela Haas (13:24)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (13:24)
know what I don't know, and I don't want to read a whole novel necessarily to see a blank page and be caught up in the emotion of it. Poetry is a great place to go. get a poetry book. You will notice the space, you will notice how things flow and what it looks like on a printed page.

I'm curious, do you think this also has the same impact with e readers versus print? That question just popped into my head.

Angela Haas (13:54)
Honey Yeah.

I don't know because I think it's more impactful in print because you're seeing the page and you're almost holding something I mean you are holding something physical in your hand. Whereas

Cassie Newell (14:11)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (14:13)
I struggle reading on a screen just because it it does reformat things a little bit, you know?

Cassie Newell (14:20)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (14:21)
So the same impact you might have been looking for with fragmented lines.

may not format exactly the same way in an e-reader and may get a little lost in that translation. So I think it's more impactful in print, but I'm sure there's someone who exclusively reads e you know ebooks out there that might argue. I don't know. What are you what do you think?

Cassie Newell (14:47)
Yeah, I think it depends too, because when I think about my Kindle versus my iPad, I tend to read in my iPad, I don't have a change of format, but when I'm in my paper white, I have my own format that applies to books. Right?

Angela Haas (15:04)
Nice. Okay.

Cassie Newell (15:05)
Because I want a certain size font, I want a certain

Angela Haas (15:08)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (15:09)
page or space between sentences. And so it applies. Sometimes the intention

doesn't come through the same way because I'm tapping through a page faster because I'll have more pages than maybe it was intended to be. But because I'm reading at night and I like it black and white font versus white in my face, I noticed too, ornaments, if they are not transparent in background, I'll have that white sticker in my black every time. So I think, I think you're right.

I think it depends on the e-reader, of course, because if I'm just using an app on my iPad, it's a little different. I'm not I don't you normally change the formatting, but maybe that's a good lesson for readers too. Like if you want the intention of the author, don't change the formatting. But

Angela Haas (16:02)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (16:03)
I I just have it set up that all the books are kind of the same in my my paperwork my Kindle paper white because I'm reading it in bed, you know.

Angela Haas (16:11)
Yeah,

exactly.

Cassie Newell (16:12)
And I'm usually

not with my glasses on and I'm just, you know, trying to go to sleep. which is always a horrible thing because usually if a book's gripping, I'm like up till two. But yeah. So yeah,

Angela Haas (16:23)
Right. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (16:24)
it just kind of came to my mind because I was thinking, yeah, most poetry books, I'm reading them on paper and not

Angela Haas (16:30)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (16:30)
so much on an e book, e reader type thing. Yeah. Hmm.

Angela Haas (16:34)
Yeah. Yeah,

I think poetry, you've got to have the poetry book to me. It just feels more

Cassie Newell (16:40)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (16:41)
intimate because I feel like it's a it's such a lovely genre that I feel I have a lot of poetry books and I just love having a lot of them are smaller, they're more gift

Cassie Newell (16:55)
Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (16:55)
feeling. They've got the ribbon bookmark in them. They just feel like this little treasure.

Cassie Newell (17:01)
Yeah,

Angela Haas (17:02)
Yeah, but so

Cassie Newell (17:03)
I agree.

Angela Haas (17:03)
I think for a quick read and great point, a quick lesson on

Cassie Newell (17:11)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (17:12)
how to do that white space in the right way and flowing, each stanza into the next, starting with a poetry book is absolutely a great advice. So yeah.

Cassie Newell (17:24)
Yeah.

I think you can certainly study fight scenes and things of that nature too. there are great books out there about, you know, writing fight scenes and even, you know, intimate scenes or even grief. But I I think poetry is just so quick for you to see it and visualize it. Yeah.

Angela Haas (17:43)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And

I think really studying dialogue because the white space and how you format your dialogue based on who's speaking, that's something different too. Maybe there's a character who does speak in shorter sentences. They're a little more reserved. They're

Cassie Newell (18:03)
Right.

Angela Haas (18:04)
they're hiding from something. They're they're not being authentic or they're just shy or whatever.

Maybe they are speaking in very fragmented lines where you have someone who does speak in run-ons.

But those variations signal who your character is.

before you have a chance to tell your reader. You are varying their voice by making taking advantage of that strategic use of that white space. Especially if they're a if in sci fi it's a military general, they're gonna have a different look on the page to their dialogue than the excited sidekick or in romance, you know, the

Cassie Newell (18:51)
Yeah, somebody who's fumbling. Mm-hmm.

Angela Haas (18:54)
The golden retriever dialogue is gonna look different on the page than the more reserved grump versus sunshine dialogue. You know, that absolutely. Yeah, it's all

Cassie Newell (19:04)
Or somebody who's very commanding. Yeah. Yeah, agreed.

Angela Haas (19:09)
how they look, not just how they feel. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (19:11)
I know. I love it. And I

think the artistic personality or side of me just loves this topic as a craft topic because I don't think it's talked about very much. And if

Angela Haas (19:21)
Mm-hmm. No, no.

Cassie Newell (19:24)
if you're really looking to up your game, play with some space, you know, on the page. So I think this was a great, a great little tip, a little fast one. Yeah.

Angela Haas (19:29)
Absolutely. Yeah. Great tip. Absolutely. Yeah. We did it.

Cassie Newell (19:38)
Little fast one. So with that, I'm gonna say we'll just go ahead and wrap it up and say thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to leave us a review and rating wherever you listen to the podcast. It really helps us with visibility. And if you're interested in joining us in our romance corner, the Author Next Door After Dark

you can now find those special episodes right here in our regular podcast feed on the last Wednesday of every month. Till next time, keep writing, keep doing.