Category Archives: writing mistakes

Editors Speak: Things that Make Our Eyes Twitch

by
The IFW Editors

A couple of weeks ago, our editors contributed to a conversation about pet peeves, which led to last week’s blog on commonly confused words. Our editors are concerned about things that happen in writing that confuse the reader or pull her/him out of the story. Following are some of the things our editors advised writers to avoid.

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What drives me crazy is head-hopping. I’ve even seen it in published books—such as one from a best-selling author. In the middle of a dramatic scene, the main character is thinking of leaving her family and moving to the city to go to school. It was well written—until the author popped into the maid’s POV to describe what the character looked like. At that point I tossed the book across the room.

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Personification. Or, maybe I should say unintentional personification, because sometimes writers can intentionally use personification for comedic relief or for effect. But when you’re just reading along and see something like, “his knee didn’t notice the tree limb” or “the clock smiled down from the mantle,” you just scratch your head.

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I hate excessive “shopping lists.” He opened the suitcase and found underwear bleached sparkling white, undershirts that matched the underwear, socks in every dark color, brand-name deodorant, a razor and a replacement blade, a yellow toothbrush, mint whitening toothpaste, and the strongest mouthwash on the market. After the first two items, the reader’s eyes glaze over—if they haven’t quit reading. Decide what’s most important and never list more than three items. And, if none of them are important, skip the details!

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Some writers fail to mention a character’s name on the first page, using “he” or “she” over and over. Perhaps they think this adds mystery or intrigue, but all it really does is prevent the reader from feeling any sort of empathy for the character.

The converse is just as distressing, such as when ten or twelve new characters are introduced by name on the first page. How on earth can we make sense of that many people, especially when we don’t know who is the main character?

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One of my pet peeves: Long, rambling sentences that go on and on and start with one subject but end up with an entirely different subject, like a vacation that gets sidetracked because the map has a crease in it, which happened frequently before the days of cell phones and GPS devices, which have changed the world as we know it–and, perhaps, changed the subject of our sentence as well.

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One concerning thing that drives me crazy is the tendency of some writers to find up to a zillion ways to overuse prepositions in a sentence throughout a story until the sanity of the reader begins to melt into an abyss of blackness. YIKES! Cut the insanity! Cut the prepositions!

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Too many adjectives. And adverbs. And ellipses. And exclamation marks. And sentences that begin with conjunctions.

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This one recently became a pet peeve of mine: using unnecessarily large (read: pretentious) adjectives. I was reading a style guide that preached “simple and direct,” but every other word was annoyingly complex or obscure. Another pet peeve is using two or three adjectives in a series—to describe a single item—but the adjectives are all synonyms.

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It annoys me when a character “gawks”: John noticed the wind rustling the leaves of the oak tree instead of Wind rustled the leaves of the oak tree. A “gawking character” exists whenever a writer places a character between a reader and the action. Another example: Angelica heard the truck round the bend and saw it come down the street. Instead, write: Tires squealed, then a pickup sped around the bend and down the street.

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My pet annoyance is errors in paragraphing, such as when a paragraph includes dialogue (without tags) from one character and action from another. Example:

“Hey, Pops! Want to see me do a cartwheel?” He sucked on his pipe. 

 “Can you also do a split?” She sneezed six times, then nodded.

This should be written:

“Hey, Pops! Want to see me do a cartwheel?” 

 He sucked on his pipe. “Can you also do a split?” 

 She sneezed six times, then nodded.

Then we know who is speaking.

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My peeve: Using “creative” dialogue tags that don’t make sense:
“It was free,” I scowled. “What more do you want?”

“Extra jelly,” she laughed.

You can’t smile, scowl or even laugh words! You can say them, scream them, and state them, amongst others. You can also say something, then smile, scowl, or laugh. But these are actions and require a sentence of their own. They are not dialogue tags!

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We have tip sheets to address most of these situations, so if there are any you want to study in more depth, let us know and we’ll be happy to send you a tutorial.

Do you have the same pet peeves as us? Are there any annoying writing habits that aren’t on our list that you think should be? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Guilty!

by
Charlotte Firbank-King


As a new or accomplished writer, what are you guilty of?

Are you guilty of being arrogant? Is your reader the enemy you’re writing at because you really need to put your brilliant prose on paper? Of course, ninety-nine point nine percent of readers are about as bright as an amoeba on a bad cell day, so your genius is totally wasted. But this is about you and your obsession to write. Right? —WRONG.

Are you guilty of being clever? You use words, scientific or otherwise, that have readers paging through a dictionary like a chipmunk on crack to understand what the heck you’re talking about. For example: Cavernulous – just say porous already. Otherwise, you’ve killed the flow and probably the reader’s enthusiasm to read your story.

Are you guilty of gimmick writing? You write everything in the present tense because it suits your literary genius. Or you exclude a word you hate from the entire manuscript, like that, said or had. I’m all for cutting down on these words, but sometimes they’re needed. Do you omit punctuation or new paragraphs, or remove dialogue all together and just narrate? It can work, but you have to be inventive to hold the reader’s interest. There are many versions of artifices that only stroke the author’s ego and cause the reader to tear out his hair. All you do is make the experience of reading your story uncomfortable. You put a barrier between the reader and the story until all they see is the author intruding into their pleasure of the story.

At the end of the day, you need to ask yourself if you value your reader. Do you really want your reader scratching his head, paging back to try to understand what you’re saying, or skipping paragraphs that are annoying? Is your aim to make him think about the deep meaning of your story, or to make your reader feel dense?

A reader may not remember all the details of a story, but he will always remember how you made him feel. Readers want to laugh, cry, hold their breaths, or sigh with relief. Are you guilty of not evoking any of these emotions?

Are you guilty of telling the reader a character is being funny or sarcastic? Like, writing, “she teased lightly,” or “his words dripped with sarcasm.” Make your writing speak with actions, emotions, and dialogue.

Are you guilty of swamping the reader with details that don’t add to the story or of repeating information in case he “didn’t get it” the first time round? Giving readers every detail of what characters are doing is tiresome. Readers are smart. They will fill in details like characters needing to put on shoes and a jacket and fetching an umbrella before going into a howling rain storm. It’s okay for them to just shrug into a jacket and go—have them flick open the umbrella as they walk out. In short, don’t make shopping lists of actions and don’t give readers every detail from the socks to the hat to the brushing of his teeth.

Are you guilty of not editing, editing, and editing multiple times before sending the manuscript to an editor or launching it on Amazon? Can you be sure there are no plot flaws, typos, or grammatical errors? Show respect for your reader—and editor, for that matter, and EDIT, over and over before releasing the manuscript.

Are you guilty of creating too many coincidences to make your plot work? Every action and scene that leads to the climax must be believable. If a character says, “I can’t believe that happened!” the reader will probably be thinking me neither. If it’s improbable, set it up ahead of time. She fell off the mountain and a piton caught her jacket, saving her. Show us the piton long before it catches on her jacket—set it up, make it feel probable.

Are you guilty of throwing readers constant curveballs, then leaving then hanging while you move on to another scene? You can get away with this once, but not in every chapter. They want to know if the gun fired at the character killed them or not—and they want to know in this chapter. They don’t want to wait three chapters to find out, while the second character is hanging from a cliff by their jacket in the next chapter. It’s all about seamless flow—making it a great reading experience.

Are you guilty of misleading the reader with a “hook” in the first paragraph of the first chapter that doesn’t fit the plot? Your story is a thriller and the lead characters are making out in a park while their children play on the swings. Sonny Jim disappears and a frantic hunt ensues. If your book is about kidnapping or some other dark plot about kids being snatched, then you have the right hook. But if these characters never again show up in the book and your story is actually about an affair at an office, you’ve got the wrong hook.

Readers are not reading the story to admire your literary genius—they want to be entertained. It’s all about them and what they want and need. After all, they PAID for the book.

Above all, clothe yourself in humility. Realize that as a writer you are nothing more than a servant applying your skill to please your master—the reader.

Picture a world where you’re surrounded by people who can’t read. Would you still write?

Some pearls of wisdom:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

—Oscar Wilde

It’s the rare writer who excels at all aspects of the craft. There are masterful stylists who, at bottom, have remarkably little to say. And there are vigorous thinkers whose sentences plod along like the lumbering steps of a draft horse.

 —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

—William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

 

Story Outlines

 
by Charlotte Firbank-King
 
A story outline should apply to anything one writes. My personal preference is to create a document called “Story Outline.” By all means, use a card filing system if that feels easier. Whatever method one uses, make sure it has all the character names, their traits, habits, hair color, eye color, occupation or other information and characteristics that define them.

Formatting: There are general rules to how one should format a manuscript. Find the one relevant to what one is writing and put that into the Story Outline file as well. It’s easy to forget when one gets carried away with writing.

Using the twenty-first century method—a PC—create a Story Outline document to make a chart of the things above, then incorporate a plot outline. When changes are made or forced, note these so that the plot can be remolded to fit. I say forced, because characters have a way of reinventing themselves as one writes. As the writer, one sometimes doesn’t like the character created and we change their role in the plot. Writers will understand this screwed logic. I think we’re all a bit touched in the head.

Research should go into a separate file. Either reference the book used with the relevant pages or the copied and pasted info from the internet or other sources. Be sure to put the link in or name the source so that one can go back to check validity if necessary.

As the author, one usually has the plot all sorted in one’s head. The reader isn’t privy to this head knowledge. What may seem quite clear to the author may not be so clear to a reader. A plot is all good and well in one’s head, but crafting it to read seamlessly and cohesively is a whole new challenge. Pay careful attention to which character is doing what. It’s dead easy to have the names, times, positions or places mixed, thereby confusing the hell out of a reader. A common error, as an example, is the character kneeling or seated in one scene and the next moment they are pacing or in a new place completely with no transition.


A mistake writers often make is having too much mystery and never leaving any clues. This can cause confusion and the reader is forced to remember too many things. Anyway, readers enjoy trying to figure out what is coming next. You score a hit when the outcome is a surprise.

 
Finally, use Beta readers. (These are non-professional people who like to read. They usually pick up character and plot flaws.) Then have the manuscript edited and proofread to ensure that it’s grammatically correct and makes sense—flows. If even one beta reader or editor says they don’t understand what one is trying to say, take note of the comments. Another method is to read aloud or into a recorder and play it back. It’s always possible the critiques are the dense ones, but not likely.

 

 

I Am Thankful for Mistakes

by Sherry Wilson

I am Thankful for Mistakes
This week as we give thanks for all of the wonderful things in our lives and celebrate with family and friends, I started to think about my writing life. More particularly about how my writing life might be improved—how all of our careers might be improved—by an attitude of gratitude.

Throughout school we learn to write, so by the time we graduate, we figure we have a pretty good idea of how to write. But do we really? The shift between school and a professional level of writing is like the difference between school band and a professional music career. In both cases, there is room to grow, to learn, to get better.

I think it’s when we forget about this quest that things become more difficult for us as writers. We need to give ourselves permission to relax a little and enjoy the process. I mean, if you decided you wanted to play an instrument and you signed yourself up for piano lessons, you wouldn’t expect to play like Glenn Gould next week—or even next year, for that matter. You would practice. You’d put in your hours. You wouldn’t do it because you thought you’d be able to play like Glenn Gould. You’d do it for the fun of it. Because, while learning a new instrument is work, it’s also fun. That’s why we call it playing an instrument. But we expect much more of ourselves as beginning writers. We expect to write like Hemingway, or Bradbury, or Stephen King. But what we should do is just relax, play around with the words and the ideas, and make mistakes—lots and lots of mistakes. Try writing it one way and if you don’t like the results, then try something else. Make the mistakes. Learn your strengths and your weaknesses. Find your own, unique voice.

We need to give ourselves the gift of allowing ourselves to make mistakes—without judgment. I mean, you don’t judge every wrong note you play when you learn the saxophone. If you put yourself down every time you make a squeak, you’ll never learn to play. Just notice the mistakes and keep going. Next time through, try writing it a different way. What works? What doesn’t? Why? Do you see just how large this gift is? When you are able to separate yourself, the person, from the written work, you’ll learn so much from those precious mistakes. And you can be thankful for the mistakes because they bring you so much closer to the writer you want to be.

In order to be a great writer, of course, or any writer at all, for that matter, we have to put in our time—pay our dues and practice. We have to sit our butts in our chairs and write. Like the cellist who will never get better without taking the time to play, the writer will never improve if he doesn’t do the work. No amount of talking about being a writer or critiquing or reading will get you there. It’s all about the hours in the chair. 

One good side effect of this, though—regular hours in the chair lets the muse know where and when to show up.

Besides spending the time writing, I’ve learned that when gratitude becomes a daily focus, amazing things start to happen. I’ve seen this in my own life over the past couple of years. So now I want to extend this to my writing career. But what do I mean? How do you do it?

  • Make a list of the things you love about writing. Why do you do it? Why did you start writing? What makes you keep going? What parts do you absolutely love about the process?
  • Pick three things that you are most thankful for in your writing life. What are the three best things about the act of writing?
  • Write these three things on a piece of paper and tack it to your monitor where you will see it every day.
  • Get a stone, ring, necklace or some other symbol that you can carry with you throughout the day. Every time you touch this object, think about how grateful you are for your writing career. Close your eyes for a moment and think about what makes you happy. Maybe it’s that feeling when the words just pour out onto the page and you feel like they’re coming from a different place—like you’ve tapped into something bigger than yourself. Imagine yourself writing, the words just flowing through you. Let yourself feel the euphoria. Experience it as if it were real and happening to you whenever you touch the object. Get into the habit of doing this several times a day. At best your writing will flow better. At worst, you will spend several minutes a day feeling truly happy and content with your life.

So what’s it going to be? You can go through your writing journey feeling like you’ll never get anywhere—you’ll never be one of the greats—you’ll never find that one right story when all the planets align and something like Harry Potter will fall into your lap or pop into your head while you’re riding a train. You can count all the reasons you aren’t as good as some famous writer. Or you can spend your time feeling good about all you’ve learned and the progress you’ve made. You can be happy that you had a good session yesterday and confident that you will again tomorrow. You can enjoy the process.

The top three things that I’m grateful for:

  • All of my wonderful writing friends—those who critique my work, those who argue with me for hours over comma usage, and those who just let me vent when I’m having a bad day. Yes, these friends are any writer’s greatest asset and I’m forever grateful for my writing buddies.
  • Unfinished projects—even if my time is limited and I struggle to find time to work on my own projects, I’m so grateful they sit there waiting for me. My characters are so patient. They only occasionally wake me up during the night and prod me to get back to work.
  • Those brief moments of flow when the words just pour out onto the page. It’s as if the story is writing itself right in front of me. I cherish each moment and live for the next one.


Let’s all give gratitude a try and see what happens. I don’t know what will come of it, but what harm could it do? Let’s spend the next year working on improving our attitude of gratitude and see where we are next year.