The annual ACES conference, originally slated to be in Atlanta, was held virtually this year. I’m a confirmed introvert, but I do love the informal conversations that take place at conferences. There was a vibrant, sometimes chaotic, chat thread happening alongside the sessions, and I also managed to corral some fellow fiction editors into an informal Zoom session between panels. I’m hopeful that the 2022 conference will be in-person, but with a virtual option for those who prefer it.

The two keynote speakers suited the spirit of the moment and the theme of the conference, which was “Refine and Refresh.” Alaina Lavoie, communications manager for We Need Diverse Books, spoke movingly of working through a global pandemic while also grieving the death of her father and living with a chronic illness: “Grief and rest are natural parts of being human, and capitalism and professionalism often make us feel like they aren’t.”

Anissa Gray, senior editor at CNN and now also novelist, spoke about the process of working with an editor on The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, noting that she threw out six months of work and started again from scratch after her editor helped her see that she was telling a much bigger, broader story than she had originally thought. Talking about the loss of trust that journalists and the media are currently contending with, Gray said, “If we can ensure that viewers and readers see themselves accurately and respectfully reflected in our storytelling, it can go a long way toward building trust.” Both speakers were honest about the problems we face, but optimistic about the solutions.

The session most relevant to me, and perhaps to all of you, was editor Christina Frey’s presentation on point of view. She provided a useful distinction between two different flavors of omniscient narration:

• Third person objective omniscient limits itself to externalities: imagine what a video camera can see and hear.

• Third person subjective omniscient can report internal thoughts.

As Frey noted, omniscient narration can be a good choice for novels with a large cast of characters, and subjective omniscient seems like it could be the best of both worlds, giving access to a number of points of view, including internal emotions. But she also notes how tricky it is to pull off.

The difference between subjective omniscient and third-person limited narration is narrow but very important. In third-person limited (also sometimes called “close”), a character’s internal thoughts can actually take over the narration. An omniscient narrator can’t take this final step—it can only report rather than narrate. For example:

• third-person omniscient: Emma remembered that her father had always liked gruel and wondered why he was sending his bowl away

• third-person limited: Her father had always liked gruel—why was he sending this bowl away?

It’s a subtle but important difference because in the omniscient example, the narrator is in control of what and how we see. After this sentence, the narrator might give us a glimpse into the thoughts of Mr. Woodhouse (maybe that gruel was burnt?) but only after a careful zoom back out from Emma’s mind. In the third-person limited example, however, readers would expect to stay deeply inside Emma’s experience through to the end of the scene. It’s an artistic choice between breadth and depth.

Other interesting takeaways from various sessions:

I learned from Karin Horler and Mike Pope that Google docs now has a “Review suggested edits” mode; they suggested keeping that open in one tab and then making additional edits on the same document in another tab, which... 🤯. Many of the writers I work with prefer Google docs, so I’m figuring out how I can bring my MS Word-based workflow there in some cases.

Lauren Applebaum and Tatiana Lee of RespectAbility encoded accessibility in their presentation itself, providing “open” rather than “closed” captions, as well as adding verbal descriptions of themselves and their backgrounds. This captioning distinction was a new one to me, and perhaps it is to you too: open captions are embedded in a video, so they are always on, while closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer. I was struck by how much the captions aided my own comprehension—yet another demonstration that accessibility benefits everyone. (If you want to see just what captions can do, check out this eye-opening and beautiful video that treats captioning as an art.)

From the same session, I learned more about people-first language (“woman with a disability”) vs. identity-first language (“disabled woman”). This is an area of active language change, and the guidance from Applebaum and Lee was to find out what your subject prefers, whenever possible. Many groups, such as the culturally Deaf community and the autistic rights community, have always used identity-first language, while other groups and individuals prefer people-first language. A helpful, frequently updated guide to writing about disabilities is the style guide put together by the National Center on Disability and Journalism.

One of the most anticipated sessions every year is the presentation from Paula Froke and the AP Stylebook team about new changes going live. While most of my work is guided by the Chicago Manual of Style, used by most US book publishers, changes to AP Style (used by newspapers and magazines) are big news because they help shape the current norms of language use. This year’s discussion was dominated by special topics, like COVID-19 and racism. A few notable changes or updates:

• Change from “anti-Semitism” to “antisemitism”, following the lead of the Anti-Defamation League, with the logic that capitalizing “semitism” implies that Jews are a separate race.

• Entry for “injuries” was updated to note that “they may be suffered, sustained or received”. Previous guidance had been that they could not be “sustained or received.” After tweeting this rule, the reaction was overwhelmingly scornful, which led them to make the change.

• Topical reminder (not a new change): “Asian American” is not hyphenated; refer to a person’s country of origin when possible (Filipino American); don’t describe Pacific Islanders as Asian Americans (thus the AAPI acronym = Asian American Pacific Islander).

• AP, like many style guides, changed their guidance last summer to recommend capitalizing “Black,” while leaving “white” lowercase. Froke noted that “it was a difficult decision, to say the least” and involved a wide group of people, with a range of opinions. The logic for lowercasing “white” is that white people don’t generally share the same cultural background or the experience of being discriminated against due to the color of their skin, and that capitalizing “white” could be interpreted to align with the beliefs of white supremacists.

• Editors who work in journalism, science editing, and corporate communications were dismayed that the term “health care” is still open rather than closed (healthcare), which made me gleefully happy that I work in fiction, where author preference generally rules.

• There was a lively protest in the session chat and on Twitter opposing AP’s guidance to prefer “he or she” over singular they, though it is still accepted.

If you are hungry for more notes from ACES (there was so much more!) check out the #ACES2021online tag on Twitter to see what other editors found most revelatory.

Check out our Resources page for more in-depth articles on writing, revising, polishing, and publishing your novel. Sign up for our weekly newsletter for fresh content, and you’ll also get our free PDF with recommended reading for writers!