What happens next? is the question we all want to inspire (in breathless tones) from our readers. But in order for something to happen next, something has to happen to begin with. At first glance, that’s a no-brainer, but it’s actually ridiculously easy to write scene after scene in which one big fat stinking hunk […]
August 14, 2011 by 101 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: 10 Stylistic Mistakes
In writing, little mistakes are often big mistakes. Make sure you’re not letting any of these potentially tragic gaffes sabotage your readers’ trust in your competency. 1. Don’t Capitalize Articles Such as “the” and “and” Articles (such “the,” “an,” and “a”) should not be capitalized in a title, except at the beginning. This: Summer of […]
July 3, 2011 by 47 Comments Beginning Your BookMost Common Writing Mistakes: Opening Lines That Lie to Readers
Your opening line may be bristling with energy, danger, and barbed fishhooks designed to reel in readers, but if the paragraph that follows pulls the old switcheroo, readers are more likely to be irritated than impressed. Let’s take a look at an example of a lying opening line: Jeanette rounded the bend in the mountain […]
June 5, 2011 by 132 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Overpowering First-Person Narrator
Stories told by a first-person narrator are increasingly popular these days. First-Person: “I went to school today.” Third-Person: “She went to school today.” First-person is often a narrative perspective that’s tricky to get right. The first-person narrator, more than any other type of narrator, is inclined to lapse into self-centered telling, in which the narrating […]
April 17, 2011 by 51 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Misused Speaker Tags and Action Beats
Don’t jeopardize your characters’ witty dialogue with punctuation and stylistic mistakes. Let’s a take a look at two means for indicating speakers and varying the rhythm of speech and narrative: the speaker tag and the action beat. How Not to Use Speaker Tags The speaker tag, which in its most basic form consists of the […]
March 20, 2011 by 66 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Why Vague Writing Is Weak Writing
Vague writing is weak writing. Precision is the domain of the skilled and confident author. As the creator of your worlds and your characters, you will always have the ability to make statements of authority in your writing. After all, if you’re not the authority in your stories, who is? What this means is that […]
February 6, 2011 by 49 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Poor Cause and Effect
As creators of story worlds, authors are privileged with a certain amount of inside information. We almost always know what’s going to happen to the characters before an event actually occurs. We understand cause and effect intuitively. The readers and the main character might not have seen that left hook coming from the antagonist, but […]
January 9, 2011 by 74 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Are You Using “There” as a Crutch?
When used as a pronoun, the utilitarian word “there” becomes an insidiously easy way for writers to get their point across. “There” gets the job done, no doubt about it. But using “there” at the beginning of sentences and phrases is the lazy way out. Whenever you see the word “there” used as a pronoun, […]
December 19, 2010 by 64 Comments Most Common Writing MistakesMost Common Writing Mistakes: Are Your Verbs Showing or Telling?
One of the most common bits of life-sapping “telling” found in a story’s narrative is also one of the easiest for writers to overlook. It’s also, fortunately, one of the easiest to correct. How Telling Verbs Can Block Reader Participation Take a look at the following impromptu example and see if you can spot the […]
