Can I include Acknowledgement page in a novel?
I am a new author and I want to mention names of people who helped during my writing. Can I include Acknowledgement page in a novel?
I looked in many novels by famous authors and they don't seem to add Acknowledgement. (I am not talking about dedications.)
Additionally, are there any novels that include it?
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Acknowledgments that list about two or three pages of names have become an annoying fad that I would avoid.
Sam Sacks argues "Against Acknowledgments" in The New Yorker, because to him they diminish a book. Kate Messner warns in a blog post that you should "Think before you thank", because some help may have been given in the understanding that it would remain private.
Personally, acknowlegments feel like navel-gazing to me. Learning of the personal relationships of the author and the personal problems the author went through when she was writing her novel does satisfy my voyeuristic tendencies, but it also lessens my respect for the author that she cannot keep private matters private.
Eight years ago Nathan Bransford asked the readers of his blog how they feel about acknowlegments. If you want you can read through the 154 comments to learn what the consensus was. (Spoiler: Most find them okay.)
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Yes, you can, it is done often, and I see nothing wrong with them. Authors often spend years on a book, and it is normal human nature to thank the people that helped you through it.
People don't have to read it, of course, and I wouldn't worry about haters that don't like it, some people find fault with kindness and I don't get that.
Consider movie credits: They now acknowledge everybody that had anything to do with the film, including accountants, assistants, the janitorial staff. What does it cost them? A few frames of film? Not even that, a few megabytes of memory on disk, that's it.
I will agree that you should ask before you name somebody publicly. You can offer to give them a handle, like initials, or an initial for the last name. Leave them off if they don't want it.
Others do want it, sometimes agents and editors appreciate their contributions being credited. It doesn't diminish the work to credit other people for the help or insight they provided.
Many novels provide a "dedications", either in the front somewhere or as a separate page. This often acknowledges both personal and professional help.
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An acknowledgement page in novels usually appears in the end, rather than the beginning as you would see in scientific writings. There's one in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, there's one in Naomi Novik's Uprooted, there's one in Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and that's just off the top of my head. They're fairly common, at least nowadays (not sure about older books).
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