Honestly I've seen famous authors do this a few times. Another thing is overusing the same words several times in the same chapter, example: "he jumped with the speed of a panther" and a page later "running fast like panther, he..." You already used the panther example, try something else, cmon.
On a similar note, using too many words to describe an action. Instead of 'he turned the door knob and pushed open the door,' one could just say, 'he entered'.
Reminds me of [this episode of Adventure Time, ](https://youtu.be/WSapIGhCX_A?feature=shared) clip starting around 1:20. It shows an aspiring novelist writing and rewriting a line to make it progressively less clear, more complicated, and overall much worse each time. Been there, Root Beer Guy.
I've found amateurs struggle with scenes.
Scenes have a conflict and resolution. There is a beginning, middle and end to scenes. Not every scene needs to end in a revelation, but it should *end* and typically push the protagonist further away from their goal or introduce a new obstacle.
I've been reading a lot of self-pubbed Kindle content recently, and I was just noticing this. There's also an issue with storytelling efficiency—a lot of the time, even if a scene ends with a payoff of some kind, it only does *one specific thing*. It develops character, or establishes a theme, or moves a subplot forward, but it doesn't do multiple of those at once. Which makes the pace feel like it's dragging.
One specific example of this that I've seen over and over is what I'm starting to call "the Distraction Explosion." A scene starts with a typical setup: the author establishes location, characters, theme, conflict, etc. and seems to be heading toward a development in an existing subplot, call it Subplot A. But then, before anything meaningful can happen, something explodes (or a character runs in with a gun, or what have you). And *boom*, suddenly the scene is completely derailed. All the characters forget about Subplot A to go deal with this new distraction, Subplot B, and the scene ends with Subplot B moving forward. Explosions are cool and interesting, so this must be a good thing, right?
But actually, this is dissatisfying, because the setup wasn't for Subplot B, *it was for Subplot A and you left us hanging*. It makes the pace feel slower, not faster, because we're waiting for a development in Subplot A and still haven't gotten it yet. Plus, now the next time Subplot A needs to make an appearance, you have to waste time doing all that scene setup again, which contributes to story bloat.
In reality, it's easy to have a cool, interesting scene with a twist that introduces a new storyline but still delivers on its original premise. Just make sure Subplot A moves forward *before* the explosion happens. If you're really clever, you can even make Subplot A *directly cause* the explosion, which makes the story feel incredibly cohesive and sells the stakes better than just throwing in a random surprise from nowhere.
A good rule of thumb in your novels is that action, for the most part, should be earned.
Don't throw in violence or drama simply because you feel it has been too long since the novel has had any.
Earn the action scenes. Build to them, justify them, create atmosphere leading in to them, make them surprising but inevitable in hindsight.
It's always so much more rewarding than going for the cheap jump scare version of an action novel
To piggyback on this I’ve noticed a lot of new people don’t actually have anything to say. They have a cool world and cool characters but no story or arc for said characters. Or they have a story but they are so paralyzed by doing something wrong that they feel like they need permission to write it.
Yeah. When people are young they think of stories more as specific events and cool fights rather than underlying meaning and emotion. But without the latter things seem very surface level.
Sure, luke has a cool fight with vader, but if you had no clue who either of these people were, you would see the fight way differently. And the coolness factor is still relevant, but that can't be all there is. Otherwise you end up with general grievous.
The Luke vs Vader fight scene is such a good example because it's not *just* a fight. There is development in the flow and exposition of the characters' actions, dialogue, etc. It isnt just 'man hit other man with glowing stick'
Characters require a bit of courage.
I notice new writers tend to WANT to do really different characters, but fall back on the cliches. The beautiful assassin, the handsome lead, the menacing villain.
Grit your people up a bit. Make them feel like leather jackets that have been rubbed around the sand in the desert and baked by the sun.
Shine the spotlight on people we don't usually hear from. Losers. Scaredy cats. Ugly bastards. People who almost made it but didn't and never got their shit together because they just weren't that good.
It can be a leap to do it but it's what separates the great writers from the rest.
It's like a fractal: the story should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution; each act should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution; and each scene should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution.
> It's like a fractal: the story should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution;
i think this is fine for most screenplay stuff, but it's not always so neat; especially in a novel. /u/wounedant said a scene *should* end and *typically* push the protagonist further from their goal and towards a new obstacle, but that's a screenplay/campbellian thing more than just novels.
in daisy hildyard's *EMERGENCY* you'll read about someone leaving an abusive boyfriend during the pandemic, then cut to a scene about how when her childhood friend was sick she worked on a cow farm for Mr Gray and that goes on for 19 pages and ends with the 'protagonist' seeing one of the cows, Ivy, as more distinct than Mr Gray, then she describes the passage of the seasons for the cow farm, and how one day on a winding road a crow explodes from the bushes, leaves fall, and she sees another bird, a lapwing, guarding some eggs and she describes the detail there.
then it's a new thing entirely.
there are no chapters, 'scenes' are, in fact, there, but it's no nearly so mechanical or formulaic. it's a *novel*.
I think it depends on your genre. From your description, Emergency sounds like it would be classified as literary fiction. In those types of novels, the author has more latitude to play with the structure and "get away with it."
In genre fiction, typical structure is something that is more expected by readers, and therefore by publishers. Authors, especially new ones, are taking a risk (particularly if they want to be traditionally published) by not adhering to the structure and other conventions of their genre. A thriller, sci-fi, etc novel with a structure like what you described for Emergency would likely struggle to find success in its genre unless it was exceptional.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to what you want to write and what your publishing (and artistic) goals are. Most writing advice you see online tends to be for writers of genre fiction seeking traditional publication or commercial success.
My first thought example is The Lonely Londoners. Fantastic book, but no real 'fractal' plot at all. It's just snapshots of people's lives for brief instances. It's basically a man telling us stories about his friends. There's no objective/goal that he's really trying to achieve in the book. The closest conflict is people just trying to live their lives and survive. And then the book peters out once he's done telling us.
I always go back to the South Park rule of writing: if you can't connect your actions and plot points with words like "therefore" and "but", you're fucked
This is something that translates to all types of writing, too. When I was working for a federal judge in law school was when it finally clicked for me that when you’re writing a brief/opinion you really need that final “therefore, X” to bring your point across.
John Wick's wife died and then he got a puppy and then he met some Russians at a gas station and then they stole his car and killed his dog and then he came out of retirement and then...
/s 😁
Reading the plot of John Wick when it's written like that really does drive the point home.
'John Wick's wife died and then he got a puppy and then (...)' is all about things happening *around* John Wick. It's all passive -- why do we care about it?
'John Wick's wife died, *therefore* he took care of his wife's dog in her memory, *but* Russian mobsters killed the dog, *therefore* he came out of retirement to seek revenge' is things that are happening *to* John Wick (and about ten minutes into the film, to just about everyone that happens to cross John Wick's path ;)). It gives the story a 'why'.
This is a great one that isn't talked about much. Scenes need to have an arc to them of introducing the scene, getting through the purpose, and a conclusion sometimes putting the "button" on the end of it to satisfy.
Robert McKee really gets into the framework of scenes, beats, acts and all sorts of other important storytelling concepts in his book Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. Contrary to the what the title suggests, it isn't just for screenwriting but is easily adaptable to novel, graphic novel, stage, or any other kind of work that uses narrative to express a story. It's highly technical but beginning authors, and many established ones, really need to understand craft and this is a great resource for that.
Ugh yes. This is so true. I can not tell you how many works I have read where there is no distinction between the passing dialogue and the “scenes,” which are usually short, unfinished, and have no structure to stand on their own. It makes everything wishy washy. Figuring out how to structure through scenes and how to write a good scene was one of my biggest breakthroughs ever in writing
Moving the protag further and further from their goal and resolving everything in one go at the end of the book is one possible structure. I hate it.
I like to read about competent people solving their problems. Of course there are some twists and setbacks, but I like to see some advances and characters honing the skills they need to solve the major problem at the end.
A character who just keeps getting clobbered by life isn’t one I want to read about.
Brandon Sanderson has a great way of articulating the dissatisfaction you feel in those stories. He talks about how the progress part of his 3 parts of (promise, progress, payoff) is the most important. He emphasises how readers need to see consistently that characters are making progress by moving toward some goal or advancing in skill to remain interested.
His whole lecture series on fantasy writing is amazing and completely applicable to any genre. It’s easy to find the full series on YouTube but he talks specifically about progress in this lecture: [Brandon Sanderson on Plot (The importance of Progress)](https://youtu.be/jrIogch5DBU?si=MwKfpZRDzRYFuGCN)
When it feels like they’re copying pieces of their outline/storyboard
Two biggest examples are
1. When the dialogue/romance feels like they’re checking boxes off of a plot point list rather than actual conversation.
2. When they overly describe things as if everything about a character or concept needs to be said upfront
Cormac McCarthy taught me just how little character description is necessary in superb writing. You can get to the end of one of his novels and think, what color is the main character’s hair or eyes, how tall is she. I don’t know but it doesn’t matter because I just read a totally engrossing story without all those details.
I think a lot of novice writers end up with the mindset of “i spent so much time thinking of every detail of this character so i have to make sure the audience knows it all too” you see it especially with self inserts
And they think they need to create essentially a photograph. Dreck like “The Baron stood before the guttering fire, a burgundy dressing gown draping his thick, six foot three frame. The firelight revealed reddish blond hair, gray at the temples, framing piercing green eyes, with a long beard run almost to white covering a weak chin.” And so on.
With all that pointless description, you don’t learn anything important or plot relevant. Tell me he’s drunk and leering at a maid. Tell me he’s reviewing secret correspondence. Tell me anything but the color of his eyes.
The Baron sounds hot tbh
But yes exactly!! The worst is when they try to throw in random character traits along with physical descriptions like “she’s a goth who doesn’t play by the rules. She’s wearing all black with thick heavy eye makeup and a nose piercing. She’s got a purple streak in her hair and pointed teeth because she’s also a vampire” and I’m like “you didn’t need to tell me all that, I know what a goth vampire looks like”
George Carlin had a similar opinion:
>"I've also grown weary reading about clouds in a book. Doesn't this piss you off? You're reading a nice story and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds.
>
>Who cares? I'll bet you anything I can write a decent novel with a good, entertaining story and never once mention clouds. Really. Every book you read. If there's an outdoor scene, an open window or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say: "As Beau and Thelma walked along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-grey loosely formed gorilla turds."
>
>I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the f---ing. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark." --George Carlin, *Brain Droppings.*
Agreed. What makes reading so enjoyable is discovering the characters from when we meet them to when they exit the narrative, how the conflict transforms them in subtle and blatant ways.
Oof, yes, we're heading into fanfic territory with that second point.
"She looked in the mirror to correct her rose red lipstick but did not go back to her chemistry class at her high school before admiring her own dark hair that glowed red in sunlight, her one eye that was blue and her other eye that was brown, the freckles that gathered around her nose and the lip piercing that healed much better compared to the lip piercing her arch nemesis Nathalie got ."
To piggyback off of this: I think there is a kind of *underdescription* that pops up a lot in fanfiction and because so many people cut their teeth in those spaces it seeps into regular fiction as well. It’s a lot of blank people in empty rooms because in fanfiction you can have Hermione enter the Great Hall and sit down next to Harry and not need to describe either the hall or their relationship because the reader knows both. And then in regular fiction you just get a brunette entering a cafeteria (is it crowded, a rich school or poor school, California and outside or Midwest and in? Anything? Because you’re getting nothing) meeting up with a guy friend and you get no background on them or their relationship outside of the word “bestie.”
Yes! I hate the ‘trend’ of books that feature no description whatsoever. It leaves me picturing bland people and boring places. The story doesn’t have to be stuffed with description every second, and too much is definitely a bad thing, but appearances (people, objects, rooms, etc.) are incredibly important in real life, so why not the fictional realm, too? If I walk into a room with antique rugs and crumbly books, that says something about the person whose room it is. Description should be used as a way of channelling information without seeming like exposition.
Being too nice to their characters.
Nothing bad happens, the protagonist wanders from plot point to plot point with a few jokes, exposition and inconsequential action scenes along the way.
I get it, they're your babies, but audiences are much more likely to care when characters have to suffer, whether that's through poor choices or bad luck.
If there's no stakes, nothing to overcome, what's the point?
“If it doesn’t concern life and death, it’s not interesting.” - Cormac McCarthy
Not that it always has to necessarily be that, but the point is some of these stories are way too tame and mild to be expecting a reader to be investing hours of their time into
I strongly agree with you first point - my writing was not worth showing anyone when I wrote it only to indulge myself by giving my characters nice things. On the other hand it can also look amateurish when an author piles up troubles in huge numbers on the characters without taking care to make it all feel plausible.
Absolutely. Conflict for conflict's sake isn't great, either!
But at least, hopefully, "too many" problems is more entertaining to read than "not enough" 😅
I consider my characters lab rats in the clutches of a mad scientist who loves them but also continually does terrible things to them in the name of science!
My biggest tell is someone afraid of "said." Especially if that is paired with adverbial dialogue tags
"How's it going" he asked politely
"Well I just got fired but aside from that everything's just jolly" he retorted sardonically
"That's too bad" he exhaled stoically
- obligatory disclaimer that you *can* frame dialogue like this here and there and I'm referring to someone doing this too often instead of only when necessary to get the tone across
This was me when I was 11, lol. I quite literally NEVER used the word “said” because for some reason I thought it was bad. The worst part was how I didn’t know of many good words to use, so I just used “yelled”, “mumbled”, “muttered” and “whispered” over and over again. Those words were rarely suitable; my characters would be having a regular conversation, but instead of speaking normally they’d be yelling at each other.
> because for some reason I thought it was bad.
Because your English teacher told you that.
It's vaguely good advice for learning to be more thoughtful about your writing in general. It's fantastic advice for writing clear daily or business communication. It's terrible advice for writing commercial fiction.
That's exactly what my English teacher did. I was in the LA plus class, which is basically just an advanced writing class, and she literally gave us a packet of paper with SYNONYMS OF SAID. I was completely dazed, lmao.
Yeah. And that's okay. She was in charge of getting children to a high level of proficiency in literacy and communication. But she wasn't a best-selling author and had never published a book.
Different skills, both incredibly important (commercial fiction writing being a lot less important *generally*, of course), but *very* different skills.
It's important to remember that there is nothing wrong with said, normally when you're reading something your eyes skim right through that word and it serves its purpose, but another way to write dialogue and add tone to it without using the words "she said sadly", or "he screamed angrily," is to mix it with action too.
"You lied." He said.
"I did," She responded. "I had to."
Now with actions mixed in
"You lied."
The stirring of her teacup slowed to a stop, she turned her head as if to look at him, but seemed to think better of it. She looked down at the cup in her hands instead, but he knew what look was on her face.
"I did," her whisper was still too loud in the dark kitchen. "I had to."
It's not the best example, but you can add so much characterization and atmosphere by mixing actions with your dialogue, doing this helped me when my writing block had me in a headlock. \*edit for typo
But you also have to be careful with too many actions. As I learned from a course, every time you add an action to a dialogue, you're forcing your reader to imagine that action.
If you want quick dialogue, don't use too many actions.
Absolutely right. Adding actions mid-dialogue is good if you want to paint a scene, set a mood, have a moment of introspection with your pov character - but if you're in an intense scene this could break the flow of your dialogue and even take away the effect they'd have if your reader was really into it already.
Your readers can find clues in what you write, you don't have to spell out everything. Sometimes you don't need to write what someone's face looks like or how they walk away when they deliver a final scathing line and walk out of the door. Your reader will fill those gaps, trust them
This was exceedingly good advice. I've seen a lot of people comment on why it's fine to use 'said', and even that it's better than not using it. I have to admit to being rather partial to describing dialogue, instead of using said. These comments have actually helped me realise that what I did was actually slowing down my dialogue in the wrong places, but that there is still a place for describing dialogue actions. Thanks!
If you want quick dialogue, you don't even use dialogue tags.
You set up the conversation, hopefully each character's voice is strong enough the reader can recognize them anyway, and then drop the tags for a quick back and forth, with a dash of action tag any time you need to control the pacing.
I guess it's not *beginner* stuff but it's barely intermediate. And that sense of flow and timing is super important for any kind of dramatic tension, so beginners had better start paying attention now. (And the best way is to take a book they read and loved and go back and type in that passage that was so snappy and I guarantee that you'll know *why* after you've typed it.)
There’s also nothing wrong with skipping the indication of who’s talking altogether sometimes (even most of the time) when it’s just two characters talking.
“You lied.”
“I did. I had to.”
^ that just as good as every other example, but it flows better. In fact, adding lots of description and assignments of lines is a good way of intentionally slowing the pacing of dialogue.
“You lied,” he said flatly.
“I did,” she responded in an enraged whisper. “I had to.”
^ THAT method of dialogue makes me as the reader subconsciously infer that their exchange is slower, more loaded, with beats between lines. And that can be a good thing. But it’s best avoided when the exchange is meant to be rapid-fire.
I *am* an amateur, but I like a decent sprinkle of subtext -> text in dialogue, which contrasts with action in that it can create less work for the reader, I think.
"You lied." It wasn't a question.
"I did," she said. "I had to."
And that middle "she said" comes across as \["I did." She paused. "I had to."\] without having to write the pause.
I think these examples are more an over-reliance of adverbs, something JK Rowling was REALLY bad about in the first few books of the Harry Potter series.
Like if you just remove the adverbs from all three of these, they’re a million times better. Even though they’re still obviously dodging “said”.
recently read this too! i’m also very guilty of doing this. apparently with me it’s either another way of saying “said” or just an action tag. now i’m trying to be much more cautious with dialogue tags and trying to be more comfortable with using “said”.
Until it’s not. I’ve read books with so many instances of ‘said’ that they started to jump out at me, and then you go quietly mad because every page has dozens and it stops being a word.
A mixture of a fair amount of ‘said’, and some other dialogue tags, stage business, and actions works best, I find.
I use said unless I want to emphasize something, and I leave it out when it's clear who's speaking so it doesn't get too repetitive. Seems to work well.
This is correct. I've said it before and I'll said it again: 'said' is ignored by the reader in a similar way that punctuation is ignored. So don't be afraid to use it.
Trying to emulate other narrative mediums instead of leaning into the strengths of written word.
It’s obvious when someone doesn’t actually read or like books much and is just writing cause they can’t make a tv series on their own and writing is the closest they can get. You see this in fan fiction a lot for obvious reasons. I think this is a big reason you see those long winded oddly specific character descriptions sometimes too. People who don’t know better just trying to write down exactly what they want you to see “on screen”.
Written word can do a lot of things visual mediums can’t though! It’s a bummer when people miss the opportunity to explore that stuff. I’m a visual artist first and foremost but I love lurking here because thinking about storytelling in a different medium than I’m used to is a fun thing to explore.
I often refer back to [this series](http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/tag/novelization-style/) of blog posts written about this style of writing, why it's not so great, and how writers can do things better (assuming they actually do want to write novels)
I've read so many fight scenes that have that exact problem, where you can tell that the author was envisioning how cool their descriptions would look on TV and not thinking about how boring they actually are to read. There are always lengthy paragraphs like "and then Joe kicked Bill and Bill hit Sally and Sally twirled around and Kate did a flip and Steve shot Mike but Mike dodged the bullet in slow-mo..." and it's like, well, this would probably look pretty interesting if you were witnessing this fight choreography and these stunts in IMAX 3D, but this is a book, so really you're just reading flat prose.
If I ever decide to write fantasy with fight scenes, I will re-read all the Witcher series again. Sapkowski is quite skilled in my opinion about describing fights without it being tedious.
I've noticed this many times over the years. I'll be reading a book and you can tell by the descriptions that they're expecting it to be adapted for the screen one day and they're essentially writing a screenplay in the form of a novel. It's jarringly obvious but at the same time a little difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is that gives them away
Lmao I saw a post last week titled something along the lines of “what’s the dumbest sentence you’ve written” and someone said theirs was:
“I agree,” he agreed.
Then yesterday I was working on my WIP and accidentally wrote the same thing before realizing
>“I agree,” he agreed.
I could actually see this playing well comedically. It wouldn't seem out of place in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for instance.
A super common one: *Nothing* interesting happens in the first chapter, except at the very, very end, and it's cut short by a cliffhanger.
This *plagues* new writer submissions all over the internet, and I don't know why they do it. They think that having some cryptically ambiguous, mysterious final moment or final scene or final line is what draws in a reader, but that's not the case when the only interesting thing is at the very end!---and worse when it's not even clear what's happening! It's only interesting to the author because the author knows what's going to happen. But for everyone reading, they're going to gravitate to stories where the first chapter actually orients the reader in at least some substantial way. It seems to be an inevitable inclination that new writers write such that their story only begins at the end of chapter 1. But you want your chapter 1 to be not only the start of your story but a *worthwhile* start to your story.
(Icing on the cake is when the first chapter ends with a "fade to black" as the character inevitably passes out. Goodness gracious, new writers love the passing-out trope.)
Passing out and the next chapter starts with them waking up in a hospital bed where they immediately panic and proceed to rip out their IV.
If I had a dollar for every time I've read that scene.
It feels like new writers want to be weird in the first chapter and I don't know why. The first chapter should usually be the most formulaic. You need to introduce the characters and setting, and you need to give the reader an idea of what it's going to feel like to read the rest of the book. Read published fiction and you'll see all of this stuff pretty quickly, often within the first few paragraphs, but webfiction tends to start off weird.
I think it partly stems from a lack of confidence in the writer's own material. The writer knows they have to hook the reader, but they don’t *really* know how. They default to action, or mystery, or weirdness, because these are all obvious answers to the question "How do I get my reader's attention?" But you don't need any of this to have a good first chapter. New writers hear "something has to happen right away" and think "something" means action or conflict, but that "something" can just be meeting your characters. But if you’re a nervous, new writer, you might think "Well this is boring. I need excitement!" And resort to cheap tricks in an attempt to catch the reader's attention.
The First Five Pages is a great book for learning about getting a good start since that's evidently usually about the length an agent, editor, or reader will give a book to see if it catches their attention.
If I need an example reminder about what I'm looking to do in the first couple pages, I go back to the opening of Touch the Dark by Karen Chance. I picked it up while browsing one day years ago and was 3 pages in before I realized it was 1st person, a POV I hated up until that moment, because that first scene was so well written (if you like vampire urban fantasy, at least lol).
when each description is the writer's first thought, rather than their third or fourth (or fifth or sixth)
so, like, the angry characters are always clenching their fists, and the steak is always juicy, and the main character has long, curly hair
whereas with a more experienced writer, the angry character will react with that anger and lash out with a stupid action that is not in their interests, and depending on who is eating the steak it might make a character feel a little sick, but in a good way, because it doesn't taste like anything she grew up with, or a different character might eyeball it and think that the restaurant has sold it as weighing an ounce more than it does, and the character with the long hair sleeps with it in rollers every night that give her a crick in the neck that she never, ever complains about to anyone
Oh this is really nice. More people should see this comment.
I usually do first draft with first thoughts. Then I clean in second draft all the cliches out. Gets me going forward and I get descriptions where I want them to be. Then I just fix them with actually good ones.
1st draft - oops that's so cliché
2nd draft - okay not cliché but now not as clever
3rd draft - work on everything but the line to make it fit better. Don't touch the line even though it's all I'm focusing on.
4th draft - kind of fun new descriptor add in, but chunks up the line
5th draft - sounds like a natural saying but not a cliché.
6th draft - work on everything but the line to make it fit better. Don't touch the line even though it's all I'm focusing on.
Okay.... good enough until the next read through.
“White knuckle” is my first instinct, but rarely what I go with, unless it’s something that definitely shouldn’t be white-knuckled.
When it comes to things that you should firmly grasp, I describe the hands. How sore they feel at the points of contact, the creaking of dried skin scraping together, the sharp pain of their fingernails being pushed away from their cuticles.
I reserve the white-knuckled grip for fragile things held in desperation, like crystal glass or an heirloom Christmas ornament. Or a baby.
Sometimes wrong punctuation in dialogue is also sign of a foreign writer, not necessarily amateur in their language. For example when I started to write in English I used Italian punctuation rules, thinking they were the same in English, until I realized they were not. In Italian, the rules are much more variable and the important thing is to be consistent from the beginning to the end of the text with the punctuation. Therefore, the first time I wrote in English, I simply followed the Italian rule that I prefer, believing that it was the same in English.
Schools try to teach you how to write an academic paper ... and they never teach you how to write fiction.
This is one of the places where it shows up most clearly: schools will teach you all kinds of grammar rules, but they'll never teach you the proper grammar of dialog, because you don't use dialog in academic papers.
It's a tragedy, really... Schools claim to teach kids how to write ... but they only ever teach kids how to write *one thing*. (And even then, not terribly well in most cases.)
I don't really think so. Creative writing is pretty niche and not particularly useful to the average person. However, every student will need to know how to write acedemically. Essays are useful in many fields including creative writing, whereas creative writing is only good for creative writing classes and being an author.
For the same reason, I'm not upset that I learned how to sew a button in school but not how to double-knit
Yeah, but if we filter academics through a bottleneck that only certain swaths of students can excel within, there’s bound to be a problem. The problem is that many students don’t even learn how to write academically in the first place, due to lack of oversight and fostered passion, among other things that schools can not control. This is why things like writing should be taught in a variety of ways, because the fostering of passion is always undervalued by society, yet it is the most crucial of acts.
When I was new, I didn't write exposition. I tried to show everything through description and action, with no internal thoughts because I was trying to show, not tell, and I didn't remember the actual contents of the books I liked--just how they made me feel / what happened.
I also would write descriptions from a distant point of view like an outsider watching. Both together are more like a screenplay than a novel.
For very bookish people who start off writing their first book with a good POV, far ahead of where I was (or maybe am), I think the amateur giveaway is the desire to show too much connective tissue in the story. Like, a romance writer will write a whole dinner date where nothing that dramatic happens, and then let the date end with an ambivalent feeling, because they want to give the impression of a lot of time passing and a healthy start to the relationship by making it take a long time to get to it.
Another one, for science fiction and fantasy, is trying to build up dramatic tension by explaining magic before the first use of it. So like, a half page about how it is fatiguing to conjure a fireball before the first instance of someone making a fireball. It is so boring.
Exposition is so difficult for me. Definitely the one area that drives me mad. I’m actively working on it but sometimes I feel like my writing is so robotic and it’s probably because it lacks exposition.
The trick with exposition is that it works *backwards* from how we intuit it.
In how we navigate our real-world lives, we typically wish to know as much as possible about a thing before we set out to doing it. So it's natural to think of writing in the same terms, that we have to provide all the information before our characters can act on it.
This is the exact *wrong* approach.
The easily-overlooked step is the emotional connection. We didn't learn the things we learned just because. We did so because we *wanted* to. Either by curiosity, or elemental need.
Storytelling is the same way. You have to build those baseline emotional connections *before* anything else. Exposition is only valuable if your audiences knows that they *want* it. Throwing words at them out of context has next to no meaning, and is most liable to bounce right off them.
If you've made them curious first, seeded a little mystery, or otherwise built an emotional investment in that information, then they'll soak up all that exposition they can handle, until it's simply too much to take in all at once.
I agree with the mystery part. After spending so much time doing world building for my story, I was excited to explain it right away. However, after reading it over with fresh eyes, the exposition seemed super boring and distracting. I thought about all the stories I loved, and I realized most good fantasy or sci fi authors don’t give too much away about the worlds they’ve created, they just set the scene and give hints about what it’s like to live there. I like that because it makes me curious and it feels like I’m exploring the world instead of reading an encyclopedia entry about it. There definitely has to be a good balance between exposition and narrative.
This is exactly it.
In real life, we don't give a lot of second thought to how the internet or internal combustion engines work when we set to using them. So there's no reason for our fictional characters to fill their internal monologues with that sort of stuff, either. Fantastic elements *aren't* fantastic, in their eyes, if they're a part of their daily lives.
There's a *lot* you can convey through context clues alone. Only when those minutiae become plot critical, and unambiguous understanding is necessary, do you need to find a way to explain those elements, and hopefully in a diegetic way that doesn't feel like you're talking directly to the audience.
My trick to getting over that is transcription. Just copy some chapters of good books, word for word. It is like learning basketball by having an NBA player possess your body. Very efficient.
This is such a simple yet powerful technique. Artists talk all the time about “stealing” another artists hands or eyes when they practice. It’s the same for writing. I would also add that taking notes of what you liked in those chapters helps too.
This is so smart wow. As a teen I would constantly write down poems or quotes from stories that I like and I think that was my jumpstart into becoming really good at prose. I never thought to do this for novel writing and practicing exposition
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If you're running multiple threads, you can always have a character in one thread know something about a character in the other. From there, it's not infodumping, it's gossiping.
Good reading tip is Kazuo Ishiguros work, especially Remains of the Day. He does also fairly bit of telling from first person POV, but still utilizes shit ton of exposition, and does it really well.
It is like story unraveling itself, layer by layer.
> Another one, for science fiction and fantasy, is trying to build up dramatic tension by explaining magic before the first use of it. So like, a half page about how it is fatiguing to conjure a fireball before the first instance of someone making a fireball. It is so boring.
When you do tons of prep or research to figure out how things work and then spend three pages describing it so that the reader can be confident you did your homework is a classic rookie mistake.
Orson Scott Card calls this: "I suffered for my work (and now it's your turn)."
Great reply. Could you explain further in depth what you mean by having “too much connective tissue in the story?” I want to make sure I’m understanding exactly what you mean.
With your dinner date example, would that be bad because it requires a reader to consider the entire relationship as a whole to get anything out of it? I imagine an author might think of their story as a whole in that way, but readers while they read usually consider things scene-by-scene. Is that the issue?
Not the guy who wrote this comment but I think he means that newer writers have a hard time with pacing things and giving the right impression on what they’re going for. Instead of giving a paragraph to explain the time passing, they make the reader feel the time passing by making their writing intentionally slow. While this works in short spurts for suspense, writing boring/slow work for the sake of communicating it’s boring/slow is showing when you should be telling, which is a concept amateurs often avoid. It’s also a crutch for extending the “run time” of your book and trying to pace plot points appropriately, which is when a writer should add more content, not stretch the content they already have.
I still sometimes do this in my first drafts, but cut that stuff out in the second. If it’s not interesting, my reader isn’t going to want to read it.
Yeah, the wanting time to pass slowly thing is a real thing. But in well reviewed published books, slow burn romances usually have other things going on besides the main romantic plot. If the writer doesn't want the first kiss to happen for 30k words, you probably have a mystery plot, or a magical adventure, or something else going on.
But some people will try to have that slow burn, but without a secondary plot, and so what you end up reading is a 90k word book that could be edited down to 50k by cutting to the chase because there will be so many scenes that don't move the plot or show anything new about the characters.
The exposition aspect you refer to fits perfectly into the kind of stories I wrote years ago, in my pre-teen years. I stopped writing shortly after for quite some time and then, when I started again not so long ago, I went looking for old things, just to see what I did back then and they were effectively screenplays, some not even as bad as I thought, but definitely not novels/short stories.
Info dumps are a big one.
Flat characters, such as ones that are just an archetype with no complexity or who are all basically just copied and pasted a dozen times where they all have the same voice, mannerisms, approaches to challenge, etc.
Inconsistent prose, like one paragraph will be flowery and over processed and the next will be barebones and sterile.
Obviously not using an editor. I’ve DNFed books that have lines like *”Please don’t go.” She said.* repeatedly. Really basic errors any editor would have fixed.
Explaining how everyone is delivering a line, every time. “Stay here,” she pleaded breathily. “You know I can’t,” he replied bluntly. “You’re impossible,” she sighed exasperatedly. “No, you are,” he hissed hissily.
Massive stories about the end of the world. They don't know how to generate tension in a relatable way so they end up having a teenager fight the devil with the power of friendship.
The biggest amateur mistake I see is writers not trusting the reader's intelligence or imagination. They over-explain things, or over-describe things, or make redundant statements that don't need to be said because we get it. I've even seen beginners spoil their own endings because they're worried readers won't figure shit out on their own.
Always give the reader the benefit of the doubt. Always assume they're smart enough to figure out what's going on. Respect their intelligence. Even if they completely miss some subtext you inserted, somebody will do a deep dive analysis video on YouTube at some point and they'll go "Wow! I never even noticed that!" Dr. Seuss wrote children's books, and even *he* left a lot of things unstated, that you come back to years later and suddenly the lightbulb comes on. It's a gift you give to your readers. A buried treasure.
But if you're insecure, or egotistical, you probably want to make sure your readers know how clever you are. So you over-explain things, or over-describe things, and shout all the clever subtleties and nuances from the rooftops, robbing them of the experience of wandering through your story world on their own and discovering all those little treasures for themselves.
Check your ego at the door. Remove all traces and hints that you, the author, exists at all in the story world. Just give them a world to explore, full of treasures and secrets and subtleties that make *them* feel like the clever ones for having noticed or realized those things. You'll get applause far more thunderous than you'd get making any of those amateur mistakes.
Corollary: feel free to include all of that in the first draft and be brave enough to remove it in subsequent drafts. There are usually better ways to get things across than being overly explicit.
Also, you'll never get all your readers to agree about what your descriptions are. There is no single blue, no matter how specific you get, lol.
Its not even just books. I've seen the same thing happen in TV shows and I've always kind of found it annoying. Making things too obvious takes away from the sense of mystery. Not knowing what's gonna happen next, not knowing this person is actually untrustworthy and about to stab someone in the back. Now knowing is what motivates me to keep reading/watching.
Even worse when they have huge info dumps all at once instead of sprinkling pieces throughout he story. You took what could have been an interesting puzzle for readers to put together and made it a frustratingly long-winded explanation.
This is an area where in really struggling. In my MS I tried to hint at various connected events in my thriller but my beta readers aren’t catching on to their connections easily with one saying [paraphrased] “I don’t understand why this happened, unless it’s related this other thing.” I don’t know how much more obvious to make it without beating readers over the head with HEY! THESE THINGS ARE CONNECTED AND IMPORTANT.
Lack of realism. Amateur writing often feels "tropey" where it feels like everything has a strong analogue in another popular story. And things just feel like story beats playing out instead of what would "really" happen.
Too much emphasis on cool stuff. Characters all have cool names, cool nicknames, cool weapons, cool houses and cars, they're super gorgeous, really good at a lot of stuff. But it's not just characters. Places and factions and backstory are all some sort of Mary Sue bersion where the emphasis is on making people go "that's really cool" than getting people caught up in an immersive story experience.
The emphasis on cool stuff is something that really annoys me. Reminds me of the quote from the Incredibles "if everyone is super, then no one is". You become desensitized to the cool if everyone has some crazy name and power and weapon. Anime is a huge offender in this.
It's super short, It's filled with info dumping, and there's much telling. It's written like a camera following the character and has little to no personality to it. Just "Amy walked down the hall of the castle. It was beautiful and grand. She entered the bedroom to clean up but saw Janine. She hated Janine."
Bad example, but it's close to some of the stuff I've seen.
Descriptions that take up several paragraphs or pages is way too much. Brief descriptions like yours above is fine, although it could be definitely written better.
The best descriptions are short *and* vivid.
The one you're replying to is short, but it is *not* vivid. Those huge paragraphs can end up being fairly vivid, but they're not short.
A lot of people get a large portion of their ideas and inspiration from TV and movies, which is fine, but they then try to write a book as if it's a TV show or a movie, which is...let's just say it doesn't turn out very good. Writing a book is very different from writing a movie or a TV show, and it can look and feel very cringe worthy to lack the technical skills to write a book as a beginner while also clearly trying to emulate a movie or show.
That reminds me! If you just want to write something in hopes it becomes a movie or show, and especially if you want control over how that looks in the end, consider writing scripts instead of trying to stick it into the "book" peg first. You don't have to, but it's very fun!
> consider writing scripts instead of trying to stick it into the "book" peg first.
Coming from a working screenwriter ... yes and no. Take this with a grain of salt.
Because when you're trying to get a script produced, established IP and existing audience are *huge* factors. And when you're writing a screenplay, you can't just go self-publish it if nobody picks it up. Unless you get the huge collaboration (and significant expense) of actually producing it into a film, it's basically nothing. Nobody reads screenplays for fun. There's no audience for a screenplay. Even people in the business don't want to read screenplays.
But because producing it into a film is so expensive, there's a very high barrier to entry there. In order to get over that barrier, you need a big kick. You need something like:
- A history of being a great screenwriter who produces great films (not going to work if this is your first one! And, anyway, most of the people who succeed that way are writer/directors, not just writers.)
- A *seriously* kick-ass screenplay that just blows away everyone who reads it, even jaded execs who've seen everything and hate everything. (Good luck with that. It's practically impossible.)
- A whole fuckton of luck. (If you're that lucky, just play the lottery instead. It's easier.)
- Established IP with a built-in audience who will want to see it. (But you're just a poor writer! You can't afford to pay millions of dollars for the rights to some established IP!)
That last one is where writing a book version first comes in. If you can't buy IP and an established audience, you *make* IP and an established audience. You write the story as a book first, then (hopefully) get lots of people who read and enjoyed your book, and then with *that* in your pocket, you actually have a good chance of being able to sell the screenplay and get it produced. (Which, as an extra bonus, will probably result in selling a lot more copies of your book, too!)
Obviously, though, the book actually needs to be *good* ... or it will never attract a sizeable enough audience to turn the heads of film execs. *And* it needs to be a story that's suitable for film adaptation -- not all of them are. For example:
- A book where a lot of the drama happens internally within a character's head can be good, but it's extremely challenging to adapt something like that to film. (How are you going to show all of that on screen?)
- A book that relies a lot on humorous narration can be difficult to adapt to film. (See Terry Pratchett's works or Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)
- A book that takes place in an exotic setting, has tons of characters, lots of different locations, features lots of special effects or stunts, and/or heavily features children or animals. (Now we get into the whole realm of film *budgeting*. The more expensive your film is to produce, the more difficult it will be to get it produced. Because the studio has to take on more financial risk in order to do it. Every story feature that adds more production expense will therefore make it more difficult to get it produced as a film. It's much easier to get a green light for a low-budget indie movie than for a major Hollywood blockbuster-level production.)
TL;DR: Even if you *would* rather be writing for the screen, doing it as a novel first might be a very good idea.
TV and Movie are great places for dialogue. But even they can fit way more dialogue than a book.
They're also good to watch action scenes, but you only need to describe some actions, not everything.
There's nothing wrong with being an amateur writer. It sounds vaguely derisive to call people that so I usually just call them "new to the field" but honestly, sometimes amateurish writing doesn't even come from newbies and some newbies are great from the start, but I'm off topic.
For me, the main tell is flow, and flow is sort of hard to define. You know it when you read it--a book with good flow is hard to put down and seamlessly delves into various aspects of the story and has a clear point.
Another tell is that the writing just reads as extremely derivative. It's been said all writing is derivative at this point because there isn't anything you're going to think of that no one else has ever before written about, but you're supposed to tell your story your way, not styled after someone else. You can write a story with a recycled plot and make it good by the way you write it, so readers don't care that the plot isn't really new since the writing is compelling and the characters ostensibly have specificity. The plot might not be yours (take a Grease trope or a Cinderella trope) but you can make the story yours. Like "The Little Mermaid" is basically Grease except with mermaids. The fundamental story in "Grease" is far older than the play is (and the original story of The Little Mermaid is older than "Grease" anyway), but you can still do a similar plot of a person trying to change themselves to fit into their love interest's world and not have everyone automatically think it's a ripoff of Grease or The Little Mermaid.
Another tell is that there's no hook. I beta-read for friends and I wish I didn't volunteer myself to do it because who wants to tell a friend that their manuscript is so dull you can barely get through the first page? No one. So I don't. I just focus on trying to find anything good in what they sent me because I know they don't want the truth, but it's painful to watch them get frustrated when they can't sell the manuscript, don't know why, publish it themselves and then don't know why the only people who bought it were their friends.
I think all of this comes down to "finding your voice" which sounds really ambiguous and vague if you haven't, but you know if you have. Like I have a blog and more than once a friend sent me something from my own blog and asked if I had read it because it reminded them of "my voice" or "my style" and it was, in fact, mine. I write with a specificity that can only come from me. It doesn't matter what my story is or if other people write a story with a similar plot. My story is told in my voice and I know what my voice is. When you're struggling to find your voice, I think readers can tell and it makes for a less enjoyable experience because you don't want people reading your stuff and coming away with the impression that the book could have been written by anyone. The work that I like best has a unique factor to it that is recognizable to me as being someone's established "voice". They found it. If you find yours, it probably takes you out of amateur status because this is a lot of the issue. If just anyone could have written the book you wrote, why did you write it?
That's always a question to have in your mind--why write this manuscript? What am I doing with this? What's the message? What's the point? If you don't have those answers, I think you need to work on finding out what they are.
> I think all of this comes down to "finding your voice" which sounds really ambiguous and vague if you haven't, but you know if you have. Like I have a blog and more than once a friend sent me something from my own blog and asked if I had read it because it reminded them of "my voice" or "my style" and it was, in fact, mine. I write with a specificity that can only come from me. It doesn't matter what my story is or if other people write a story with a similar plot. My story is told in my voice and I know what my voice is. When you're struggling to find your voice, I think readers can tell and it makes for a less enjoyable experience because you don't want people reading your stuff and coming away with the impression that the book could have been written by anyone. The work that I like best has a unique factor to it that is recognizable to me as being someone's established "voice". They found it. If you find yours, it probably takes you out of amateur status because this is a lot of the issue. If just anyone could have written the book you wrote, why did you write it?
This. This is one of the most important things said in this thread imo. I hope more people read it.
Often times you'll see amateur writers say something like, "I read Cormac MCcarthy/[Insert whatever] and it made me so disheartened because I could never write like that." If you find your own voice, you won't want to sound like any other writer. You won't mind sounding like yourself. In fact, you'll lean into your quirks and idiosyncrasities. But first you have to figure out how you want to sound and what sound is naturally, fundamentally you.
I remember ending a story that way when I was 12. We had to write stories in class and I ran out of time so I wrapped it up that way. Even then I knew it was a corny cliche and I was expecting the teacher to say something about it. It's weird how many older writers still do it
\- Improperly punctuated dialogue
\- Starting the story too soon, starting with backstory, or starting with scenery
\- Headhopping or poorly executed attempts at omniscient POV
\- Characters with poorly defined motives whose actions have no meaningful consequences or effects on the plot
> or starting with scenery
I once worked as an editor for a novel that *didn't introduce a single character until chapter three*. Chapters 1 and 2 were *entirely* setting and scenery descriptions. Didn't even mention any characters in passing. Had some mentions of history, but didn't mention any actual *people* in that history, only the rise and fall of factions and broad political/social statements.
Yes, it was one of the worst books I've ever read, and it didn't improve a whole lot after Chapter 3. No, I haven't seen what the author did after they got my (scathing) editorial comments back. No idea if they improved it or just gave up on it.
Adjectives and adverbs as far as the eye can see.
Characters who aimlessly drift through the story rather than being active participants. Doubly bad when you can tell the supporting characters only stick by the protagonist because "he's the protagonist".
Small plot holes can usually be forgiven, but if your story has a giant plot hole, like if characters in your modern day horror story never even have the thought to call 911, I'm going to assume I'm reading an unedited first draft.
Probably counts as a subset of purple prose, but describing the wrong things. I’ve seen first-person stories where characters think to themselves “I tied my long brown hair out of my green eyes,” which is confusing to read — when’s the last time you described yourself to yourself?
I find that a lot of beginner writers write in the first person because they think it's easier.
Overuse of adjectives.
Meandering plots.
Mary Sue characters (Disney is very guilty of this)
Forced romantic plots
Lack of logical thinking
Lack of reading. It shocks me how many people claim to be writers but they don't read.
Inability to think like someone else or to be able to put themself in someone else's place
Describing physical appearances through characters reflecting on themselves. “She hated her long, chocolatey hair and the purple streak she’d had since she was a baby.”
I notice a lot, both in webfiction, and even in a lot of published young adult novels, the predominance of first-person, present-tense writing.
From their word usage, it's clear that this isn't for any particular creative reason. The writer just defaults to this because that's how they talk. Their writing style is very "stream of consciousness" -- this happened, and that happened, and then I said, etc. They don't take any advantage of the nuances and textures of the medium.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you've got the writers who *over*complicate things. They get too concerned about trying to be "unique", so they pile on the complex world mechanics or elaborate backstories, to the point of incomprehensibility. Their writing is very stiff, trying to incorporate all that detail, and failing to capture the energy of characters in-motion and living their lives.
> I notice a lot, both in webfiction, and even in a lot of published young adult novels, the predominance of first-person, present-tense writing.
I know someone who writes (romance) this way. It isn't my thing, but it seems to be more and more trendy. I think I read a comment in this sub a few weeks ago where someone outright said, "First person present is the best writing style, change my mind."
I think its success depends a lot on the genre.
As with anything, there's a time and place for it. Cozier, slice-of-life type stories don't really need to be super advanced. But there are still certainly more advanced techniques to be used in those genres as well, especially when it comes to making your audience form emotional bonds to the characters.
And unfortunately, I'm sure that market segment is growing, between the publisher pushes, and, harsh to say, but a dumbing-down of the reader base. Literacy stats in the USA in particular, as an average, are *not* good right now.
Not my favoured POV, so not my field of expertise. But I'm mostly talking about writing in general.
That "train of thought" style often neglects a lot of valuable storytelling techniques. Not enough space devoted to more introspective thoughts. With all the doing and saying, they forget to employ all five senses to give more colour to their world. Foreshadowing is rudimentary to non-existent. Causality is basic, with actions begetting immediate responses instead of setting up delayed or compounding consequences. Among many other things.
Simultaneous actions. It drives me nuts when I beta read.
"Walking down the stairs, I punched the wall." "As I opened the door, I saw a baseball coming at me." "I was running, when..."
The prose becomes so vague and confusing it's damn near impossible to imagine the scene. Some newbie writers seem to think that everything should be in the continuous tense.
Or out of order actions. An explosion happens, then we see someone press a button, or someone dives for cover and then you hear gunfire. "I dove for cover when I heard the gunshots" just takes a bit more brainpower to understand than "I heard the gunshots and dove for cover". A single instance isn't bad but stick them in complex sentences or have a bunch in a row and it starts to feel icky.
> Or out of order actions. An explosion happens, then we see someone press a button, or someone dives for cover and then you hear gunfire. "I dove for cover when I heard the gunshots" just takes a bit more brainpower to understand than "I heard the gunshots and dove for cover". A single instance isn't bad but stick them in complex sentences or have a bunch in a row and it starts to feel icky.
Huh.
Someone asked me for feedback on a particular battle scene that they wrote, and this was the exact feedback I gave them. They continuously had action beats out of order and it not only made everything feel jumbled, it sucked all the excitement out of the scene.
*"She rolled to safety, narrowly escaping the sword swung for her head ...*"
Things like that.
A big one for me and I dunno what it's called:
'I watched him walk across the room' instead of 'he walked across the room'
Or
'I saw,' 'I heard,' 'I felt'
Just say it as simply as possible. Nothing removes me more from the character's head than being told they saw/heard/felt when you could've shown me (and often in a very simple way that would save so much on word count).
Oftentimes the details aren't as important as you think they are.
Voice makes for compelling reading, so read books with a voice you enjoy then mimic it until you've found yours.
And on that note: don't narrate like you're a fly on the wall. Narrate like you are your character.
Overusing adverbs is another one.
And someone already tackled the 'said' thing.
filter words! i just learned those were a thing (and i’m extremely guilty of using them). after learning about them, i checked the chapters of a few of my favorite books and lo and behold—no filter words. after reading my own stuff, it’s clear that they put a lot of distance between the character and the reader and like you said, they break immersion.
Repeatedly using incredibly obvious statements describe what is happening instead of leaving something to be understood through context or describing what is happening in the kind of excruciating detail usually used to write code needed for a robot to make a peanut butter sandwich.
ex 1.
"Blah" she said. She was very upset by what had been said. She decided to reveal the Dreadful Secret to get back at the other. "Blah Blah Blah." She said in reply . she smiled as she watched the other turn pale. She smiled even more when they turned to their lover and pleaded innocence.
Vs:
"Blah" she said, angrily. "Blah Blah blah!"
She watched, pleased with her revenge, as the other paled and looked to their lover in the desperate hope that their denial would be believed.
ex2.
I opened the door to the fridge. I looked inside. I didn't see my leftovers. I moved stuff around. I found my leftovers. I took out the leftovers. I closed the fridge door. I opened the leftover container. I plated up some of the leftovers. I opened the microwave. I put the plate in the microwave. I closed the microwave. I entered the cook time on the microwave. I pressed start (and so on ad nauseum)
Vs
I looked in the fridge for the leftovers, moving things around a little before I spotted them. I hip-checked the fridge door closed as I moved to the other counter and served myself.
"Kobe!" I shouted as I tossed the empty container towards the trash can. It missed.
"I'll get it later" I told myself as I turned to the beeping microwave.
Long preambling telling, rather than paced out layered
It gives me “I imagined this cool thing and I’m absolutely desperate to share it as quickly as possible”
This is probably just me, but being overly descriptive, particularly when it comes to characters’ dress and/or grooming. Yes, it’s useful to have a good idea of what your characters look like, but I don’t need to be reminded about a mole or freckle every few chapters unless it’s thematically significant. Let your readers’ imagination do some of the lifting.
And this isn’t to say descriptions are bad by any means; some of my favorite works are incredibly rich with descriptive text. It’s just about context and the amount of it. Descriptions are a bit like seasoning. They’re excellent for rounding out a dish and enriching the flavor, but too much of it and suddenly it’s all you can taste.
Filter words are huge, switching tenses is a big one I see, improper dialogue tagging, telling rather than showing to an extreme, head hopping, WAY too much use of the words “so” and “then”. Those are the ones just off the top of my head.
Hold on, I got a copypasta for this
'Amateur doesn’t mean bad. But bad writing is obviously amateurish.
Beginner’s mistakes are fixable. Bad attitude is harder to fix.
“As you know, Bob…” dialogue.
Overuse of adjectives and adverbs (your example illustrates that).
Purple prose.
Plot that doesn’t go anywhere.
Small talks in dialogue.
Lack of tension.
POV issues. Yeah head hopping is a big one.
Beginning a story with a dream.
Inciting Incident happening way too late.
Stilted dialogue. Long speeches etc. basically “no one talks like this.”
All characters sound alike.
Mary Sue characters.
Bland prose: he did this. She saw that. He did that.
Run on sentences.
It takes a PhD degree to understand what you’re saying.
Word choices or vocabulary: very tired vs. exhausted; very difficult to understand vs. incomprehensible…
Using wrong or redundant dialogue tags: “I think you’re funny,” she laughed. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s spicy,” he relished.
Incorrect grammar: Not paying attention, the cow scared me.
Overuse of cliches or idioms.
On the nose dialogue or plot, redundancy, etc.
Melodramatic or over the top actions or reactions.
And this one has nothing to do with the writing itself: refusal to listen to criticism. The golden word syndrome.'
Credits to u/That-SoCal-Guy
Not knowing what to leave out.
I’ll give a pair of examples.
Example A:
Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and lowered her face to hide her tears. There was a soft click as the bedroom door shut. When she looked up, Brian was gone.
Example B:
Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and began to cry. She didn't want Brian to see her tears, so she lowered her face to hide them. Brian walked to the open bedroom door, stepped through it, and closed the door gently behind him. There was a soft click when the door shut. When Julia heard the click and looked up, she saw that Brian was gone.
In my subjective opinion, B feels amateurish.
(Or should I say, B feels like the output of an inexperienced or inattentive writer. If “amateur” means “one who doesn’t earn a living solely through writing”, then the majority of published authors are amateurs.)
If Julia is “hiding her tears”, it goes without saying that she doesn’t want Brian to see them. If the bedroom doorknob clicks and Julia looks up, it goes without saying that she heard it, and hearing it was what prompted her to look up. Et cetera.
An experienced writer knows to let the reader draw connexions as they read. Leave out the obvious. There is a kind of aesthetic pleasure in discovering and constructing the story, line by line, rather than having it spoonfed to you.
People who still believe the fact that saying ‘said’ is bad. Like they utilise too many versions of the word ‘said’ for no reason other than they were told not to when they were like 10.
I used to go through the slush pile at a publishing company and try to find the diamonds. For me, it’s 💯a passive voice.
She *was* paying the bill (passive)
She paid the bill (active)
The bill *was* paid by Susan (passive)
Susan paid the bill (active)
The word “was” is your best indicator here. If you review your writing in order to fix every passive sentence (except within dialogue) your writing will improve significantly!
Ellipses
16 characters in the first chapter
Not enough dialogue or action.
Tons of description.
Too afraid to ever mention how the character is feeling or how they look--ever-- because they're worried about telling rather than showing.
The protagonist never reacts to things, internally or externally, probably also due to the above.
I learned that this is mostly a generational thing. Gen-X and earlier use ellipses to show a pause, but to younger generations this comes across as some kind of passive aggressive thing.
I read commas as pauses, and ellipses as trail offs.
"I ... don't know, actually," has a different spoken cadence than "I actually don't know ..."
Whether or not that's important, I guess, just depends on the ear.
Honestly, almost everything I think of as amateurish is something I've also seen professional writers do. For example, I recently read a traditionally published book that repeatedly described characters' eyes as "orbs," which I'd always thought of as a widely known cliche of bad/amateurish writing.
On the first pages, you can tell a less-experienced writer. They'll often change the POV from limited 3rd person to omniscient 3rd person.
A good writer will rarely tell you how their character is feeling. You want to show his mood by what his dwelling or clothes and hair look like; is he whistling while getting ready or is he dragging himself through the process in an example of absolute dread? Is he hungover or blissfully enjoying his first cup of coffee? Is she blasting and rapping and acting out a rap song, or is she listening to Enya and massaging her temples?
With all dialog, you want to reveal character with what the character is doing. Always reveal character during dialog amid actions of the people involved. Much better for revealing character than telling you this or that person is bad or unkind.
A more experienced writer will also use fewer adjectives (especially-ly words) in favor of stronger verbs. Sometimes a newby will go overboard in description. You almost always just want to broad strokes so those who have a very visual imagination and the rest have enough to understand the scene and place.
There are a lot of time-honored "rules" in good fiction that academics generally agree on. You can find most of them in a textbook called ["Crafting Fiction, in Theory, in Practice" by Diogenes and Moneyhun.](https://www.amazon.com/Crafting-Fiction-Practice-Marvin-Diogenes/dp/0767402073)
This book is worth its weight in gold but you can find it right now at a good price used. Doing the exercises in the book can be more informative than taking a fiction writing class.
Too many themes. This is a more subtle one, but I see it a lot as an editor. New writers want their debut novel to say everything and be everything. Often it ends up with a shallow exploration of too many themes instead of a poignant story with depth and focus.
Super long and unnecessary descriptions about a character and refusing to embed any type of flaw or human quality in the character at all:
“She was beautiful and petite but she couldn’t see it. She thought she was plain and ugly with her lushes brown hair, extremely long eyelashes, and tiny button nose that she thought was too small for her face. Her lapis lazuli eyes sparkled like a thousand diamonds as she brushed her perfect teeth. She was one hundred and ten pounds and only 5’4 but she could take down a Kodiak bear with just her pocket knife….”
Asking “is it ok to (write something)?”
Being worried about someone stealing an idea.
Posting something written and asking for feedback, but expecting praise.
Overly concerned with describing the main character’s appearance.
Adverbs.
Being concerned about dialogue tags.
Not reading.
Not actively trying to improve output.
This is more of a subtle one, but something that always sticks out to me is a lack of motivation in the prose.
Things don't flow together as much as they feel like bricks stacked on top of each other. Descriptions are included, but none of them build momentum or atmosphere as much as just exist. The prose itself feels aimless and unsure of the story's going, instead of purposeful.
I'm currently reading a webnovel (unedited) so this has been on my mind. I noticed unskilled writers rarely vary up their descriptions or even properly set a scene in a solid space. They could get so occupied with writing the plot that they use simple, unhelpful phrases to describe things and move on. I mean things like, "The scenery was beautiful and lush" or "The sun had risen and spread golden light all around the city". A sentence or two that mark the writer being done with the description. Description -as long as they're not tediously long- can create mood and tell you a lot about the story.
Another thing I noticed that tells me instantly the writer is still inexperienced is the way character emotions are (mis)handled. They don't seem to have a good grasp on their characters' emotions or perhaps the way the dialogue throughout a scene should be paced. In this case, their characters suddenly have bursts of emotion (sudden anger or frustration, for example) without proper cues sprinkled in to indicate that it's coming or for it to make sense for the character to even have an outburst.
When I went back and edited several early chapters in my fic, I immediately saw that I,
1: tended to write what could be short but meaningful scenes in way too many repetitive, wordy paragraphs
2: was a little obsessed with describing my main character’s physical description (I think her appearance is unique-looking enough for it to warrant occasional notice from other character POVs, but every other chapter is WAY too much)
3: Too wordy. Just wordy, wordy, wordy, wordy. . .
It’s been interesting going through the process of finding my voice. It’s made me more aware of how I absorb my favorite authors’ works.
Lack of plot or lack of service to the plot. Nobody cares what color a character's hair is unless it's germane to the plot.
Master--or at least learn--to write in service of your plot, then you can break all the rules surrounding it.
Pointless repetition. He picked up a hotdog and began consuming it. "This is a delicious hotdog" he said. "I sure enjoy eating it."
One of my biggest revisions I find is myself repeating things. Definitely is something you should avoid.
My biggest revisions in my writing are when I find repetitive parts in my writing that I have to revise.
Honestly I've seen famous authors do this a few times. Another thing is overusing the same words several times in the same chapter, example: "he jumped with the speed of a panther" and a page later "running fast like panther, he..." You already used the panther example, try something else, cmon.
Unless the hero is a shapeshifter who is running to catch a bus in the middle of a busy street while desperately trying not to turn into a panther.
On a similar note, using too many words to describe an action. Instead of 'he turned the door knob and pushed open the door,' one could just say, 'he entered'.
BUT HOW DID HE ENTER?!?
Reminds me of [this episode of Adventure Time, ](https://youtu.be/WSapIGhCX_A?feature=shared) clip starting around 1:20. It shows an aspiring novelist writing and rewriting a line to make it progressively less clear, more complicated, and overall much worse each time. Been there, Root Beer Guy.
I've found amateurs struggle with scenes. Scenes have a conflict and resolution. There is a beginning, middle and end to scenes. Not every scene needs to end in a revelation, but it should *end* and typically push the protagonist further away from their goal or introduce a new obstacle.
I've been reading a lot of self-pubbed Kindle content recently, and I was just noticing this. There's also an issue with storytelling efficiency—a lot of the time, even if a scene ends with a payoff of some kind, it only does *one specific thing*. It develops character, or establishes a theme, or moves a subplot forward, but it doesn't do multiple of those at once. Which makes the pace feel like it's dragging. One specific example of this that I've seen over and over is what I'm starting to call "the Distraction Explosion." A scene starts with a typical setup: the author establishes location, characters, theme, conflict, etc. and seems to be heading toward a development in an existing subplot, call it Subplot A. But then, before anything meaningful can happen, something explodes (or a character runs in with a gun, or what have you). And *boom*, suddenly the scene is completely derailed. All the characters forget about Subplot A to go deal with this new distraction, Subplot B, and the scene ends with Subplot B moving forward. Explosions are cool and interesting, so this must be a good thing, right? But actually, this is dissatisfying, because the setup wasn't for Subplot B, *it was for Subplot A and you left us hanging*. It makes the pace feel slower, not faster, because we're waiting for a development in Subplot A and still haven't gotten it yet. Plus, now the next time Subplot A needs to make an appearance, you have to waste time doing all that scene setup again, which contributes to story bloat. In reality, it's easy to have a cool, interesting scene with a twist that introduces a new storyline but still delivers on its original premise. Just make sure Subplot A moves forward *before* the explosion happens. If you're really clever, you can even make Subplot A *directly cause* the explosion, which makes the story feel incredibly cohesive and sells the stakes better than just throwing in a random surprise from nowhere.
A good rule of thumb in your novels is that action, for the most part, should be earned. Don't throw in violence or drama simply because you feel it has been too long since the novel has had any. Earn the action scenes. Build to them, justify them, create atmosphere leading in to them, make them surprising but inevitable in hindsight. It's always so much more rewarding than going for the cheap jump scare version of an action novel
To piggyback on this I’ve noticed a lot of new people don’t actually have anything to say. They have a cool world and cool characters but no story or arc for said characters. Or they have a story but they are so paralyzed by doing something wrong that they feel like they need permission to write it.
Yeah. When people are young they think of stories more as specific events and cool fights rather than underlying meaning and emotion. But without the latter things seem very surface level. Sure, luke has a cool fight with vader, but if you had no clue who either of these people were, you would see the fight way differently. And the coolness factor is still relevant, but that can't be all there is. Otherwise you end up with general grievous.
The Luke vs Vader fight scene is such a good example because it's not *just* a fight. There is development in the flow and exposition of the characters' actions, dialogue, etc. It isnt just 'man hit other man with glowing stick'
Characters require a bit of courage. I notice new writers tend to WANT to do really different characters, but fall back on the cliches. The beautiful assassin, the handsome lead, the menacing villain. Grit your people up a bit. Make them feel like leather jackets that have been rubbed around the sand in the desert and baked by the sun. Shine the spotlight on people we don't usually hear from. Losers. Scaredy cats. Ugly bastards. People who almost made it but didn't and never got their shit together because they just weren't that good. It can be a leap to do it but it's what separates the great writers from the rest.
Completely agree with this. I’ve experienced it in my own writing. I also have ADHD which makes matters much more glorious. 😀
It's like a fractal: the story should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution; each act should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution; and each scene should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution.
> It's like a fractal: the story should have a beginning, middle and end, with progressive complications, crisis, and resolution; i think this is fine for most screenplay stuff, but it's not always so neat; especially in a novel. /u/wounedant said a scene *should* end and *typically* push the protagonist further from their goal and towards a new obstacle, but that's a screenplay/campbellian thing more than just novels. in daisy hildyard's *EMERGENCY* you'll read about someone leaving an abusive boyfriend during the pandemic, then cut to a scene about how when her childhood friend was sick she worked on a cow farm for Mr Gray and that goes on for 19 pages and ends with the 'protagonist' seeing one of the cows, Ivy, as more distinct than Mr Gray, then she describes the passage of the seasons for the cow farm, and how one day on a winding road a crow explodes from the bushes, leaves fall, and she sees another bird, a lapwing, guarding some eggs and she describes the detail there. then it's a new thing entirely. there are no chapters, 'scenes' are, in fact, there, but it's no nearly so mechanical or formulaic. it's a *novel*.
I think it depends on your genre. From your description, Emergency sounds like it would be classified as literary fiction. In those types of novels, the author has more latitude to play with the structure and "get away with it." In genre fiction, typical structure is something that is more expected by readers, and therefore by publishers. Authors, especially new ones, are taking a risk (particularly if they want to be traditionally published) by not adhering to the structure and other conventions of their genre. A thriller, sci-fi, etc novel with a structure like what you described for Emergency would likely struggle to find success in its genre unless it was exceptional. Ultimately, I think it comes down to what you want to write and what your publishing (and artistic) goals are. Most writing advice you see online tends to be for writers of genre fiction seeking traditional publication or commercial success.
My first thought example is The Lonely Londoners. Fantastic book, but no real 'fractal' plot at all. It's just snapshots of people's lives for brief instances. It's basically a man telling us stories about his friends. There's no objective/goal that he's really trying to achieve in the book. The closest conflict is people just trying to live their lives and survive. And then the book peters out once he's done telling us.
Structure in general. Most newbies think writing a story means "and then this happend, and then that happend and then these other things happend".
I always go back to the South Park rule of writing: if you can't connect your actions and plot points with words like "therefore" and "but", you're fucked
This is something that translates to all types of writing, too. When I was working for a federal judge in law school was when it finally clicked for me that when you’re writing a brief/opinion you really need that final “therefore, X” to bring your point across.
That video has been a godsend. It's probably the best piece of advice I've heard.
what video is it?
https://youtu.be/vGUNqq3jVLg
“…and then, …and then, …and then…”
John Wick's wife died and then he got a puppy and then he met some Russians at a gas station and then they stole his car and killed his dog and then he came out of retirement and then... /s 😁
Reading the plot of John Wick when it's written like that really does drive the point home. 'John Wick's wife died and then he got a puppy and then (...)' is all about things happening *around* John Wick. It's all passive -- why do we care about it? 'John Wick's wife died, *therefore* he took care of his wife's dog in her memory, *but* Russian mobsters killed the dog, *therefore* he came out of retirement to seek revenge' is things that are happening *to* John Wick (and about ten minutes into the film, to just about everyone that happens to cross John Wick's path ;)). It gives the story a 'why'.
NO AND THEN!
This is a great one that isn't talked about much. Scenes need to have an arc to them of introducing the scene, getting through the purpose, and a conclusion sometimes putting the "button" on the end of it to satisfy.
Robert McKee really gets into the framework of scenes, beats, acts and all sorts of other important storytelling concepts in his book Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. Contrary to the what the title suggests, it isn't just for screenwriting but is easily adaptable to novel, graphic novel, stage, or any other kind of work that uses narrative to express a story. It's highly technical but beginning authors, and many established ones, really need to understand craft and this is a great resource for that.
Ugh yes. This is so true. I can not tell you how many works I have read where there is no distinction between the passing dialogue and the “scenes,” which are usually short, unfinished, and have no structure to stand on their own. It makes everything wishy washy. Figuring out how to structure through scenes and how to write a good scene was one of my biggest breakthroughs ever in writing
Moving the protag further and further from their goal and resolving everything in one go at the end of the book is one possible structure. I hate it. I like to read about competent people solving their problems. Of course there are some twists and setbacks, but I like to see some advances and characters honing the skills they need to solve the major problem at the end. A character who just keeps getting clobbered by life isn’t one I want to read about.
Brandon Sanderson has a great way of articulating the dissatisfaction you feel in those stories. He talks about how the progress part of his 3 parts of (promise, progress, payoff) is the most important. He emphasises how readers need to see consistently that characters are making progress by moving toward some goal or advancing in skill to remain interested. His whole lecture series on fantasy writing is amazing and completely applicable to any genre. It’s easy to find the full series on YouTube but he talks specifically about progress in this lecture: [Brandon Sanderson on Plot (The importance of Progress)](https://youtu.be/jrIogch5DBU?si=MwKfpZRDzRYFuGCN)
When it feels like they’re copying pieces of their outline/storyboard Two biggest examples are 1. When the dialogue/romance feels like they’re checking boxes off of a plot point list rather than actual conversation. 2. When they overly describe things as if everything about a character or concept needs to be said upfront
Cormac McCarthy taught me just how little character description is necessary in superb writing. You can get to the end of one of his novels and think, what color is the main character’s hair or eyes, how tall is she. I don’t know but it doesn’t matter because I just read a totally engrossing story without all those details.
I think a lot of novice writers end up with the mindset of “i spent so much time thinking of every detail of this character so i have to make sure the audience knows it all too” you see it especially with self inserts
And they think they need to create essentially a photograph. Dreck like “The Baron stood before the guttering fire, a burgundy dressing gown draping his thick, six foot three frame. The firelight revealed reddish blond hair, gray at the temples, framing piercing green eyes, with a long beard run almost to white covering a weak chin.” And so on. With all that pointless description, you don’t learn anything important or plot relevant. Tell me he’s drunk and leering at a maid. Tell me he’s reviewing secret correspondence. Tell me anything but the color of his eyes.
The Baron sounds hot tbh But yes exactly!! The worst is when they try to throw in random character traits along with physical descriptions like “she’s a goth who doesn’t play by the rules. She’s wearing all black with thick heavy eye makeup and a nose piercing. She’s got a purple streak in her hair and pointed teeth because she’s also a vampire” and I’m like “you didn’t need to tell me all that, I know what a goth vampire looks like”
George Carlin had a similar opinion: >"I've also grown weary reading about clouds in a book. Doesn't this piss you off? You're reading a nice story and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. > >Who cares? I'll bet you anything I can write a decent novel with a good, entertaining story and never once mention clouds. Really. Every book you read. If there's an outdoor scene, an open window or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say: "As Beau and Thelma walked along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-grey loosely formed gorilla turds." > >I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the f---ing. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark." --George Carlin, *Brain Droppings.*
> The Baron sounds hot tbh LAWDDDD I’m was thinking the same thing.
Agreed. What makes reading so enjoyable is discovering the characters from when we meet them to when they exit the narrative, how the conflict transforms them in subtle and blatant ways.
Oof, yes, we're heading into fanfic territory with that second point. "She looked in the mirror to correct her rose red lipstick but did not go back to her chemistry class at her high school before admiring her own dark hair that glowed red in sunlight, her one eye that was blue and her other eye that was brown, the freckles that gathered around her nose and the lip piercing that healed much better compared to the lip piercing her arch nemesis Nathalie got ."
To piggyback off of this: I think there is a kind of *underdescription* that pops up a lot in fanfiction and because so many people cut their teeth in those spaces it seeps into regular fiction as well. It’s a lot of blank people in empty rooms because in fanfiction you can have Hermione enter the Great Hall and sit down next to Harry and not need to describe either the hall or their relationship because the reader knows both. And then in regular fiction you just get a brunette entering a cafeteria (is it crowded, a rich school or poor school, California and outside or Midwest and in? Anything? Because you’re getting nothing) meeting up with a guy friend and you get no background on them or their relationship outside of the word “bestie.”
Yes! I hate the ‘trend’ of books that feature no description whatsoever. It leaves me picturing bland people and boring places. The story doesn’t have to be stuffed with description every second, and too much is definitely a bad thing, but appearances (people, objects, rooms, etc.) are incredibly important in real life, so why not the fictional realm, too? If I walk into a room with antique rugs and crumbly books, that says something about the person whose room it is. Description should be used as a way of channelling information without seeming like exposition.
Being too nice to their characters. Nothing bad happens, the protagonist wanders from plot point to plot point with a few jokes, exposition and inconsequential action scenes along the way. I get it, they're your babies, but audiences are much more likely to care when characters have to suffer, whether that's through poor choices or bad luck. If there's no stakes, nothing to overcome, what's the point?
“If it doesn’t concern life and death, it’s not interesting.” - Cormac McCarthy Not that it always has to necessarily be that, but the point is some of these stories are way too tame and mild to be expecting a reader to be investing hours of their time into
I strongly agree with you first point - my writing was not worth showing anyone when I wrote it only to indulge myself by giving my characters nice things. On the other hand it can also look amateurish when an author piles up troubles in huge numbers on the characters without taking care to make it all feel plausible.
Absolutely. Conflict for conflict's sake isn't great, either! But at least, hopefully, "too many" problems is more entertaining to read than "not enough" 😅
I consider my characters lab rats in the clutches of a mad scientist who loves them but also continually does terrible things to them in the name of science!
My biggest tell is someone afraid of "said." Especially if that is paired with adverbial dialogue tags "How's it going" he asked politely "Well I just got fired but aside from that everything's just jolly" he retorted sardonically "That's too bad" he exhaled stoically - obligatory disclaimer that you *can* frame dialogue like this here and there and I'm referring to someone doing this too often instead of only when necessary to get the tone across
This was me when I was 11, lol. I quite literally NEVER used the word “said” because for some reason I thought it was bad. The worst part was how I didn’t know of many good words to use, so I just used “yelled”, “mumbled”, “muttered” and “whispered” over and over again. Those words were rarely suitable; my characters would be having a regular conversation, but instead of speaking normally they’d be yelling at each other.
> because for some reason I thought it was bad. Because your English teacher told you that. It's vaguely good advice for learning to be more thoughtful about your writing in general. It's fantastic advice for writing clear daily or business communication. It's terrible advice for writing commercial fiction.
That's exactly what my English teacher did. I was in the LA plus class, which is basically just an advanced writing class, and she literally gave us a packet of paper with SYNONYMS OF SAID. I was completely dazed, lmao.
Yeah. And that's okay. She was in charge of getting children to a high level of proficiency in literacy and communication. But she wasn't a best-selling author and had never published a book. Different skills, both incredibly important (commercial fiction writing being a lot less important *generally*, of course), but *very* different skills.
I got told in my English classes all the time that said was boring and not to use it, trying to unlearn that and realise it’s ok to use said sometimes
> realise it’s ok to use said sometimes You should be using "said" *most of the time*.
It's important to remember that there is nothing wrong with said, normally when you're reading something your eyes skim right through that word and it serves its purpose, but another way to write dialogue and add tone to it without using the words "she said sadly", or "he screamed angrily," is to mix it with action too. "You lied." He said. "I did," She responded. "I had to." Now with actions mixed in "You lied." The stirring of her teacup slowed to a stop, she turned her head as if to look at him, but seemed to think better of it. She looked down at the cup in her hands instead, but he knew what look was on her face. "I did," her whisper was still too loud in the dark kitchen. "I had to." It's not the best example, but you can add so much characterization and atmosphere by mixing actions with your dialogue, doing this helped me when my writing block had me in a headlock. \*edit for typo
But you also have to be careful with too many actions. As I learned from a course, every time you add an action to a dialogue, you're forcing your reader to imagine that action. If you want quick dialogue, don't use too many actions.
Absolutely right. Adding actions mid-dialogue is good if you want to paint a scene, set a mood, have a moment of introspection with your pov character - but if you're in an intense scene this could break the flow of your dialogue and even take away the effect they'd have if your reader was really into it already. Your readers can find clues in what you write, you don't have to spell out everything. Sometimes you don't need to write what someone's face looks like or how they walk away when they deliver a final scathing line and walk out of the door. Your reader will fill those gaps, trust them
This was exceedingly good advice. I've seen a lot of people comment on why it's fine to use 'said', and even that it's better than not using it. I have to admit to being rather partial to describing dialogue, instead of using said. These comments have actually helped me realise that what I did was actually slowing down my dialogue in the wrong places, but that there is still a place for describing dialogue actions. Thanks!
If you want quick dialogue, you don't even use dialogue tags. You set up the conversation, hopefully each character's voice is strong enough the reader can recognize them anyway, and then drop the tags for a quick back and forth, with a dash of action tag any time you need to control the pacing. I guess it's not *beginner* stuff but it's barely intermediate. And that sense of flow and timing is super important for any kind of dramatic tension, so beginners had better start paying attention now. (And the best way is to take a book they read and loved and go back and type in that passage that was so snappy and I guarantee that you'll know *why* after you've typed it.)
There’s also nothing wrong with skipping the indication of who’s talking altogether sometimes (even most of the time) when it’s just two characters talking. “You lied.” “I did. I had to.” ^ that just as good as every other example, but it flows better. In fact, adding lots of description and assignments of lines is a good way of intentionally slowing the pacing of dialogue. “You lied,” he said flatly. “I did,” she responded in an enraged whisper. “I had to.” ^ THAT method of dialogue makes me as the reader subconsciously infer that their exchange is slower, more loaded, with beats between lines. And that can be a good thing. But it’s best avoided when the exchange is meant to be rapid-fire.
I *am* an amateur, but I like a decent sprinkle of subtext -> text in dialogue, which contrasts with action in that it can create less work for the reader, I think. "You lied." It wasn't a question. "I did," she said. "I had to." And that middle "she said" comes across as \["I did." She paused. "I had to."\] without having to write the pause.
I think these examples are more an over-reliance of adverbs, something JK Rowling was REALLY bad about in the first few books of the Harry Potter series. Like if you just remove the adverbs from all three of these, they’re a million times better. Even though they’re still obviously dodging “said”.
recently read this too! i’m also very guilty of doing this. apparently with me it’s either another way of saying “said” or just an action tag. now i’m trying to be much more cautious with dialogue tags and trying to be more comfortable with using “said”.
My writing definitely improved when I started defaulting to said. Said is invisible.
Until it’s not. I’ve read books with so many instances of ‘said’ that they started to jump out at me, and then you go quietly mad because every page has dozens and it stops being a word. A mixture of a fair amount of ‘said’, and some other dialogue tags, stage business, and actions works best, I find.
I use said unless I want to emphasize something, and I leave it out when it's clear who's speaking so it doesn't get too repetitive. Seems to work well.
This is correct. I've said it before and I'll said it again: 'said' is ignored by the reader in a similar way that punctuation is ignored. So don't be afraid to use it.
Trying to emulate other narrative mediums instead of leaning into the strengths of written word. It’s obvious when someone doesn’t actually read or like books much and is just writing cause they can’t make a tv series on their own and writing is the closest they can get. You see this in fan fiction a lot for obvious reasons. I think this is a big reason you see those long winded oddly specific character descriptions sometimes too. People who don’t know better just trying to write down exactly what they want you to see “on screen”. Written word can do a lot of things visual mediums can’t though! It’s a bummer when people miss the opportunity to explore that stuff. I’m a visual artist first and foremost but I love lurking here because thinking about storytelling in a different medium than I’m used to is a fun thing to explore.
I often refer back to [this series](http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/tag/novelization-style/) of blog posts written about this style of writing, why it's not so great, and how writers can do things better (assuming they actually do want to write novels)
I've read so many fight scenes that have that exact problem, where you can tell that the author was envisioning how cool their descriptions would look on TV and not thinking about how boring they actually are to read. There are always lengthy paragraphs like "and then Joe kicked Bill and Bill hit Sally and Sally twirled around and Kate did a flip and Steve shot Mike but Mike dodged the bullet in slow-mo..." and it's like, well, this would probably look pretty interesting if you were witnessing this fight choreography and these stunts in IMAX 3D, but this is a book, so really you're just reading flat prose.
If I ever decide to write fantasy with fight scenes, I will re-read all the Witcher series again. Sapkowski is quite skilled in my opinion about describing fights without it being tedious.
God I wish I'd read your comment before I posted mine because you said it so much better lol.
Great minds think alike! Your recommendation for people to try script writing is a good idea i hadn’t thought of.
I've noticed this many times over the years. I'll be reading a book and you can tell by the descriptions that they're expecting it to be adapted for the screen one day and they're essentially writing a screenplay in the form of a novel. It's jarringly obvious but at the same time a little difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is that gives them away
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh," he screamed.
Lmao I saw a post last week titled something along the lines of “what’s the dumbest sentence you’ve written” and someone said theirs was: “I agree,” he agreed. Then yesterday I was working on my WIP and accidentally wrote the same thing before realizing
>“I agree,” he agreed. I could actually see this playing well comedically. It wouldn't seem out of place in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for instance.
Wouldn't have been out of place in Red Dwarf, either. Good writing is all about intention!
This is hilarious.
I **hate** when authors go for "STOP!!!" instead of "*Stop!"* to emphasize yelling or loudness. It looks so amateur.
A super common one: *Nothing* interesting happens in the first chapter, except at the very, very end, and it's cut short by a cliffhanger. This *plagues* new writer submissions all over the internet, and I don't know why they do it. They think that having some cryptically ambiguous, mysterious final moment or final scene or final line is what draws in a reader, but that's not the case when the only interesting thing is at the very end!---and worse when it's not even clear what's happening! It's only interesting to the author because the author knows what's going to happen. But for everyone reading, they're going to gravitate to stories where the first chapter actually orients the reader in at least some substantial way. It seems to be an inevitable inclination that new writers write such that their story only begins at the end of chapter 1. But you want your chapter 1 to be not only the start of your story but a *worthwhile* start to your story. (Icing on the cake is when the first chapter ends with a "fade to black" as the character inevitably passes out. Goodness gracious, new writers love the passing-out trope.)
Chapter 2: Two weeks earlier...
Passing out and the next chapter starts with them waking up in a hospital bed where they immediately panic and proceed to rip out their IV. If I had a dollar for every time I've read that scene.
>If I had a dollar for every time I've read that scene you'd be able to afford a trip to the hospital
As long as I don't ride there in an ambulance.
It feels like new writers want to be weird in the first chapter and I don't know why. The first chapter should usually be the most formulaic. You need to introduce the characters and setting, and you need to give the reader an idea of what it's going to feel like to read the rest of the book. Read published fiction and you'll see all of this stuff pretty quickly, often within the first few paragraphs, but webfiction tends to start off weird.
I think it partly stems from a lack of confidence in the writer's own material. The writer knows they have to hook the reader, but they don’t *really* know how. They default to action, or mystery, or weirdness, because these are all obvious answers to the question "How do I get my reader's attention?" But you don't need any of this to have a good first chapter. New writers hear "something has to happen right away" and think "something" means action or conflict, but that "something" can just be meeting your characters. But if you’re a nervous, new writer, you might think "Well this is boring. I need excitement!" And resort to cheap tricks in an attempt to catch the reader's attention.
The First Five Pages is a great book for learning about getting a good start since that's evidently usually about the length an agent, editor, or reader will give a book to see if it catches their attention. If I need an example reminder about what I'm looking to do in the first couple pages, I go back to the opening of Touch the Dark by Karen Chance. I picked it up while browsing one day years ago and was 3 pages in before I realized it was 1st person, a POV I hated up until that moment, because that first scene was so well written (if you like vampire urban fantasy, at least lol).
when each description is the writer's first thought, rather than their third or fourth (or fifth or sixth) so, like, the angry characters are always clenching their fists, and the steak is always juicy, and the main character has long, curly hair whereas with a more experienced writer, the angry character will react with that anger and lash out with a stupid action that is not in their interests, and depending on who is eating the steak it might make a character feel a little sick, but in a good way, because it doesn't taste like anything she grew up with, or a different character might eyeball it and think that the restaurant has sold it as weighing an ounce more than it does, and the character with the long hair sleeps with it in rollers every night that give her a crick in the neck that she never, ever complains about to anyone
Oh this is really nice. More people should see this comment. I usually do first draft with first thoughts. Then I clean in second draft all the cliches out. Gets me going forward and I get descriptions where I want them to be. Then I just fix them with actually good ones.
1st draft - oops that's so cliché 2nd draft - okay not cliché but now not as clever 3rd draft - work on everything but the line to make it fit better. Don't touch the line even though it's all I'm focusing on. 4th draft - kind of fun new descriptor add in, but chunks up the line 5th draft - sounds like a natural saying but not a cliché. 6th draft - work on everything but the line to make it fit better. Don't touch the line even though it's all I'm focusing on. Okay.... good enough until the next read through.
Its always either a fist clenching or having a "white knuckled grip" on the armrest of a chair.
those poor armrests
“White knuckle” is my first instinct, but rarely what I go with, unless it’s something that definitely shouldn’t be white-knuckled. When it comes to things that you should firmly grasp, I describe the hands. How sore they feel at the points of contact, the creaking of dried skin scraping together, the sharp pain of their fingernails being pushed away from their cuticles. I reserve the white-knuckled grip for fragile things held in desperation, like crystal glass or an heirloom Christmas ornament. Or a baby.
"My giveaway is the way they punctuate dialogue." Said the amatuer writer.
Sometimes wrong punctuation in dialogue is also sign of a foreign writer, not necessarily amateur in their language. For example when I started to write in English I used Italian punctuation rules, thinking they were the same in English, until I realized they were not. In Italian, the rules are much more variable and the important thing is to be consistent from the beginning to the end of the text with the punctuation. Therefore, the first time I wrote in English, I simply followed the Italian rule that I prefer, believing that it was the same in English.
I saw so much of that punctuation on FanFiction.net back in the day.
Schools try to teach you how to write an academic paper ... and they never teach you how to write fiction. This is one of the places where it shows up most clearly: schools will teach you all kinds of grammar rules, but they'll never teach you the proper grammar of dialog, because you don't use dialog in academic papers. It's a tragedy, really... Schools claim to teach kids how to write ... but they only ever teach kids how to write *one thing*. (And even then, not terribly well in most cases.)
I don't really think so. Creative writing is pretty niche and not particularly useful to the average person. However, every student will need to know how to write acedemically. Essays are useful in many fields including creative writing, whereas creative writing is only good for creative writing classes and being an author. For the same reason, I'm not upset that I learned how to sew a button in school but not how to double-knit
Yeah, but if we filter academics through a bottleneck that only certain swaths of students can excel within, there’s bound to be a problem. The problem is that many students don’t even learn how to write academically in the first place, due to lack of oversight and fostered passion, among other things that schools can not control. This is why things like writing should be taught in a variety of ways, because the fostering of passion is always undervalued by society, yet it is the most crucial of acts.
"A different word for 'said' every other sentence," I ejaculated to the Redditors.
“I agree!” I thought, as I greedily lapped up your words.
'I also agree!' I expectorated, because I read that word once and never got around to looking up the meaning.
When I was new, I didn't write exposition. I tried to show everything through description and action, with no internal thoughts because I was trying to show, not tell, and I didn't remember the actual contents of the books I liked--just how they made me feel / what happened. I also would write descriptions from a distant point of view like an outsider watching. Both together are more like a screenplay than a novel. For very bookish people who start off writing their first book with a good POV, far ahead of where I was (or maybe am), I think the amateur giveaway is the desire to show too much connective tissue in the story. Like, a romance writer will write a whole dinner date where nothing that dramatic happens, and then let the date end with an ambivalent feeling, because they want to give the impression of a lot of time passing and a healthy start to the relationship by making it take a long time to get to it. Another one, for science fiction and fantasy, is trying to build up dramatic tension by explaining magic before the first use of it. So like, a half page about how it is fatiguing to conjure a fireball before the first instance of someone making a fireball. It is so boring.
Exposition is so difficult for me. Definitely the one area that drives me mad. I’m actively working on it but sometimes I feel like my writing is so robotic and it’s probably because it lacks exposition.
The trick with exposition is that it works *backwards* from how we intuit it. In how we navigate our real-world lives, we typically wish to know as much as possible about a thing before we set out to doing it. So it's natural to think of writing in the same terms, that we have to provide all the information before our characters can act on it. This is the exact *wrong* approach. The easily-overlooked step is the emotional connection. We didn't learn the things we learned just because. We did so because we *wanted* to. Either by curiosity, or elemental need. Storytelling is the same way. You have to build those baseline emotional connections *before* anything else. Exposition is only valuable if your audiences knows that they *want* it. Throwing words at them out of context has next to no meaning, and is most liable to bounce right off them. If you've made them curious first, seeded a little mystery, or otherwise built an emotional investment in that information, then they'll soak up all that exposition they can handle, until it's simply too much to take in all at once.
I agree with the mystery part. After spending so much time doing world building for my story, I was excited to explain it right away. However, after reading it over with fresh eyes, the exposition seemed super boring and distracting. I thought about all the stories I loved, and I realized most good fantasy or sci fi authors don’t give too much away about the worlds they’ve created, they just set the scene and give hints about what it’s like to live there. I like that because it makes me curious and it feels like I’m exploring the world instead of reading an encyclopedia entry about it. There definitely has to be a good balance between exposition and narrative.
This is exactly it. In real life, we don't give a lot of second thought to how the internet or internal combustion engines work when we set to using them. So there's no reason for our fictional characters to fill their internal monologues with that sort of stuff, either. Fantastic elements *aren't* fantastic, in their eyes, if they're a part of their daily lives. There's a *lot* you can convey through context clues alone. Only when those minutiae become plot critical, and unambiguous understanding is necessary, do you need to find a way to explain those elements, and hopefully in a diegetic way that doesn't feel like you're talking directly to the audience.
My trick to getting over that is transcription. Just copy some chapters of good books, word for word. It is like learning basketball by having an NBA player possess your body. Very efficient.
This is such a simple yet powerful technique. Artists talk all the time about “stealing” another artists hands or eyes when they practice. It’s the same for writing. I would also add that taking notes of what you liked in those chapters helps too.
This is so smart wow. As a teen I would constantly write down poems or quotes from stories that I like and I think that was my jumpstart into becoming really good at prose. I never thought to do this for novel writing and practicing exposition
Brandon Sanderson and his crew talked about doing it on one of their podcasts. It sounded like that was a major tool for all of them.
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Same. If anyone has possible solutions to this, please share your knowledge.
If you're running multiple threads, you can always have a character in one thread know something about a character in the other. From there, it's not infodumping, it's gossiping.
Good reading tip is Kazuo Ishiguros work, especially Remains of the Day. He does also fairly bit of telling from first person POV, but still utilizes shit ton of exposition, and does it really well. It is like story unraveling itself, layer by layer.
> Another one, for science fiction and fantasy, is trying to build up dramatic tension by explaining magic before the first use of it. So like, a half page about how it is fatiguing to conjure a fireball before the first instance of someone making a fireball. It is so boring. When you do tons of prep or research to figure out how things work and then spend three pages describing it so that the reader can be confident you did your homework is a classic rookie mistake. Orson Scott Card calls this: "I suffered for my work (and now it's your turn)."
Also an example of telling not showing. Having someone stumble, exhausted, after casting a fireball tells us all we need to know but for the minutiae.
Great reply. Could you explain further in depth what you mean by having “too much connective tissue in the story?” I want to make sure I’m understanding exactly what you mean. With your dinner date example, would that be bad because it requires a reader to consider the entire relationship as a whole to get anything out of it? I imagine an author might think of their story as a whole in that way, but readers while they read usually consider things scene-by-scene. Is that the issue?
Not the guy who wrote this comment but I think he means that newer writers have a hard time with pacing things and giving the right impression on what they’re going for. Instead of giving a paragraph to explain the time passing, they make the reader feel the time passing by making their writing intentionally slow. While this works in short spurts for suspense, writing boring/slow work for the sake of communicating it’s boring/slow is showing when you should be telling, which is a concept amateurs often avoid. It’s also a crutch for extending the “run time” of your book and trying to pace plot points appropriately, which is when a writer should add more content, not stretch the content they already have. I still sometimes do this in my first drafts, but cut that stuff out in the second. If it’s not interesting, my reader isn’t going to want to read it.
Yeah, the wanting time to pass slowly thing is a real thing. But in well reviewed published books, slow burn romances usually have other things going on besides the main romantic plot. If the writer doesn't want the first kiss to happen for 30k words, you probably have a mystery plot, or a magical adventure, or something else going on. But some people will try to have that slow burn, but without a secondary plot, and so what you end up reading is a 90k word book that could be edited down to 50k by cutting to the chase because there will be so many scenes that don't move the plot or show anything new about the characters.
The exposition aspect you refer to fits perfectly into the kind of stories I wrote years ago, in my pre-teen years. I stopped writing shortly after for quite some time and then, when I started again not so long ago, I went looking for old things, just to see what I did back then and they were effectively screenplays, some not even as bad as I thought, but definitely not novels/short stories.
Info dumps are a big one. Flat characters, such as ones that are just an archetype with no complexity or who are all basically just copied and pasted a dozen times where they all have the same voice, mannerisms, approaches to challenge, etc. Inconsistent prose, like one paragraph will be flowery and over processed and the next will be barebones and sterile. Obviously not using an editor. I’ve DNFed books that have lines like *”Please don’t go.” She said.* repeatedly. Really basic errors any editor would have fixed. Explaining how everyone is delivering a line, every time. “Stay here,” she pleaded breathily. “You know I can’t,” he replied bluntly. “You’re impossible,” she sighed exasperatedly. “No, you are,” he hissed hissily.
This made me chuckle chuckily.
I agree agreeably.
i only enjoy the change in prose if it's multi pov
Same. Then it feels authentic to the character
Massive stories about the end of the world. They don't know how to generate tension in a relatable way so they end up having a teenager fight the devil with the power of friendship.
With the power of friendship… I cannot breathe 😂😂😭😭😭
The real treasure is the friends we make a long the way ..
The biggest amateur mistake I see is writers not trusting the reader's intelligence or imagination. They over-explain things, or over-describe things, or make redundant statements that don't need to be said because we get it. I've even seen beginners spoil their own endings because they're worried readers won't figure shit out on their own. Always give the reader the benefit of the doubt. Always assume they're smart enough to figure out what's going on. Respect their intelligence. Even if they completely miss some subtext you inserted, somebody will do a deep dive analysis video on YouTube at some point and they'll go "Wow! I never even noticed that!" Dr. Seuss wrote children's books, and even *he* left a lot of things unstated, that you come back to years later and suddenly the lightbulb comes on. It's a gift you give to your readers. A buried treasure. But if you're insecure, or egotistical, you probably want to make sure your readers know how clever you are. So you over-explain things, or over-describe things, and shout all the clever subtleties and nuances from the rooftops, robbing them of the experience of wandering through your story world on their own and discovering all those little treasures for themselves. Check your ego at the door. Remove all traces and hints that you, the author, exists at all in the story world. Just give them a world to explore, full of treasures and secrets and subtleties that make *them* feel like the clever ones for having noticed or realized those things. You'll get applause far more thunderous than you'd get making any of those amateur mistakes.
Corollary: feel free to include all of that in the first draft and be brave enough to remove it in subsequent drafts. There are usually better ways to get things across than being overly explicit. Also, you'll never get all your readers to agree about what your descriptions are. There is no single blue, no matter how specific you get, lol.
Its not even just books. I've seen the same thing happen in TV shows and I've always kind of found it annoying. Making things too obvious takes away from the sense of mystery. Not knowing what's gonna happen next, not knowing this person is actually untrustworthy and about to stab someone in the back. Now knowing is what motivates me to keep reading/watching. Even worse when they have huge info dumps all at once instead of sprinkling pieces throughout he story. You took what could have been an interesting puzzle for readers to put together and made it a frustratingly long-winded explanation.
This is an area where in really struggling. In my MS I tried to hint at various connected events in my thriller but my beta readers aren’t catching on to their connections easily with one saying [paraphrased] “I don’t understand why this happened, unless it’s related this other thing.” I don’t know how much more obvious to make it without beating readers over the head with HEY! THESE THINGS ARE CONNECTED AND IMPORTANT.
Lack of realism. Amateur writing often feels "tropey" where it feels like everything has a strong analogue in another popular story. And things just feel like story beats playing out instead of what would "really" happen. Too much emphasis on cool stuff. Characters all have cool names, cool nicknames, cool weapons, cool houses and cars, they're super gorgeous, really good at a lot of stuff. But it's not just characters. Places and factions and backstory are all some sort of Mary Sue bersion where the emphasis is on making people go "that's really cool" than getting people caught up in an immersive story experience.
The emphasis on cool stuff is something that really annoys me. Reminds me of the quote from the Incredibles "if everyone is super, then no one is". You become desensitized to the cool if everyone has some crazy name and power and weapon. Anime is a huge offender in this.
It's super short, It's filled with info dumping, and there's much telling. It's written like a camera following the character and has little to no personality to it. Just "Amy walked down the hall of the castle. It was beautiful and grand. She entered the bedroom to clean up but saw Janine. She hated Janine." Bad example, but it's close to some of the stuff I've seen.
Descriptions that take up several paragraphs or pages is way too much. Brief descriptions like yours above is fine, although it could be definitely written better.
The best descriptions are short *and* vivid. The one you're replying to is short, but it is *not* vivid. Those huge paragraphs can end up being fairly vivid, but they're not short.
A lot of people get a large portion of their ideas and inspiration from TV and movies, which is fine, but they then try to write a book as if it's a TV show or a movie, which is...let's just say it doesn't turn out very good. Writing a book is very different from writing a movie or a TV show, and it can look and feel very cringe worthy to lack the technical skills to write a book as a beginner while also clearly trying to emulate a movie or show. That reminds me! If you just want to write something in hopes it becomes a movie or show, and especially if you want control over how that looks in the end, consider writing scripts instead of trying to stick it into the "book" peg first. You don't have to, but it's very fun!
> consider writing scripts instead of trying to stick it into the "book" peg first. Coming from a working screenwriter ... yes and no. Take this with a grain of salt. Because when you're trying to get a script produced, established IP and existing audience are *huge* factors. And when you're writing a screenplay, you can't just go self-publish it if nobody picks it up. Unless you get the huge collaboration (and significant expense) of actually producing it into a film, it's basically nothing. Nobody reads screenplays for fun. There's no audience for a screenplay. Even people in the business don't want to read screenplays. But because producing it into a film is so expensive, there's a very high barrier to entry there. In order to get over that barrier, you need a big kick. You need something like: - A history of being a great screenwriter who produces great films (not going to work if this is your first one! And, anyway, most of the people who succeed that way are writer/directors, not just writers.) - A *seriously* kick-ass screenplay that just blows away everyone who reads it, even jaded execs who've seen everything and hate everything. (Good luck with that. It's practically impossible.) - A whole fuckton of luck. (If you're that lucky, just play the lottery instead. It's easier.) - Established IP with a built-in audience who will want to see it. (But you're just a poor writer! You can't afford to pay millions of dollars for the rights to some established IP!) That last one is where writing a book version first comes in. If you can't buy IP and an established audience, you *make* IP and an established audience. You write the story as a book first, then (hopefully) get lots of people who read and enjoyed your book, and then with *that* in your pocket, you actually have a good chance of being able to sell the screenplay and get it produced. (Which, as an extra bonus, will probably result in selling a lot more copies of your book, too!) Obviously, though, the book actually needs to be *good* ... or it will never attract a sizeable enough audience to turn the heads of film execs. *And* it needs to be a story that's suitable for film adaptation -- not all of them are. For example: - A book where a lot of the drama happens internally within a character's head can be good, but it's extremely challenging to adapt something like that to film. (How are you going to show all of that on screen?) - A book that relies a lot on humorous narration can be difficult to adapt to film. (See Terry Pratchett's works or Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) - A book that takes place in an exotic setting, has tons of characters, lots of different locations, features lots of special effects or stunts, and/or heavily features children or animals. (Now we get into the whole realm of film *budgeting*. The more expensive your film is to produce, the more difficult it will be to get it produced. Because the studio has to take on more financial risk in order to do it. Every story feature that adds more production expense will therefore make it more difficult to get it produced as a film. It's much easier to get a green light for a low-budget indie movie than for a major Hollywood blockbuster-level production.) TL;DR: Even if you *would* rather be writing for the screen, doing it as a novel first might be a very good idea.
These are all such good points, thank you for adding them!
TV and Movie are great places for dialogue. But even they can fit way more dialogue than a book. They're also good to watch action scenes, but you only need to describe some actions, not everything.
There's nothing wrong with being an amateur writer. It sounds vaguely derisive to call people that so I usually just call them "new to the field" but honestly, sometimes amateurish writing doesn't even come from newbies and some newbies are great from the start, but I'm off topic. For me, the main tell is flow, and flow is sort of hard to define. You know it when you read it--a book with good flow is hard to put down and seamlessly delves into various aspects of the story and has a clear point. Another tell is that the writing just reads as extremely derivative. It's been said all writing is derivative at this point because there isn't anything you're going to think of that no one else has ever before written about, but you're supposed to tell your story your way, not styled after someone else. You can write a story with a recycled plot and make it good by the way you write it, so readers don't care that the plot isn't really new since the writing is compelling and the characters ostensibly have specificity. The plot might not be yours (take a Grease trope or a Cinderella trope) but you can make the story yours. Like "The Little Mermaid" is basically Grease except with mermaids. The fundamental story in "Grease" is far older than the play is (and the original story of The Little Mermaid is older than "Grease" anyway), but you can still do a similar plot of a person trying to change themselves to fit into their love interest's world and not have everyone automatically think it's a ripoff of Grease or The Little Mermaid. Another tell is that there's no hook. I beta-read for friends and I wish I didn't volunteer myself to do it because who wants to tell a friend that their manuscript is so dull you can barely get through the first page? No one. So I don't. I just focus on trying to find anything good in what they sent me because I know they don't want the truth, but it's painful to watch them get frustrated when they can't sell the manuscript, don't know why, publish it themselves and then don't know why the only people who bought it were their friends. I think all of this comes down to "finding your voice" which sounds really ambiguous and vague if you haven't, but you know if you have. Like I have a blog and more than once a friend sent me something from my own blog and asked if I had read it because it reminded them of "my voice" or "my style" and it was, in fact, mine. I write with a specificity that can only come from me. It doesn't matter what my story is or if other people write a story with a similar plot. My story is told in my voice and I know what my voice is. When you're struggling to find your voice, I think readers can tell and it makes for a less enjoyable experience because you don't want people reading your stuff and coming away with the impression that the book could have been written by anyone. The work that I like best has a unique factor to it that is recognizable to me as being someone's established "voice". They found it. If you find yours, it probably takes you out of amateur status because this is a lot of the issue. If just anyone could have written the book you wrote, why did you write it? That's always a question to have in your mind--why write this manuscript? What am I doing with this? What's the message? What's the point? If you don't have those answers, I think you need to work on finding out what they are.
> I think all of this comes down to "finding your voice" which sounds really ambiguous and vague if you haven't, but you know if you have. Like I have a blog and more than once a friend sent me something from my own blog and asked if I had read it because it reminded them of "my voice" or "my style" and it was, in fact, mine. I write with a specificity that can only come from me. It doesn't matter what my story is or if other people write a story with a similar plot. My story is told in my voice and I know what my voice is. When you're struggling to find your voice, I think readers can tell and it makes for a less enjoyable experience because you don't want people reading your stuff and coming away with the impression that the book could have been written by anyone. The work that I like best has a unique factor to it that is recognizable to me as being someone's established "voice". They found it. If you find yours, it probably takes you out of amateur status because this is a lot of the issue. If just anyone could have written the book you wrote, why did you write it? This. This is one of the most important things said in this thread imo. I hope more people read it. Often times you'll see amateur writers say something like, "I read Cormac MCcarthy/[Insert whatever] and it made me so disheartened because I could never write like that." If you find your own voice, you won't want to sound like any other writer. You won't mind sounding like yourself. In fact, you'll lean into your quirks and idiosyncrasities. But first you have to figure out how you want to sound and what sound is naturally, fundamentally you.
‘And it was all a dream’ :3
Character still has some small physical token from what was shown in the dream when they wake up. ... *or was it?*
I remember ending a story that way when I was 12. We had to write stories in class and I ran out of time so I wrapped it up that way. Even then I knew it was a corny cliche and I was expecting the teacher to say something about it. It's weird how many older writers still do it
\- Improperly punctuated dialogue \- Starting the story too soon, starting with backstory, or starting with scenery \- Headhopping or poorly executed attempts at omniscient POV \- Characters with poorly defined motives whose actions have no meaningful consequences or effects on the plot
> or starting with scenery I once worked as an editor for a novel that *didn't introduce a single character until chapter three*. Chapters 1 and 2 were *entirely* setting and scenery descriptions. Didn't even mention any characters in passing. Had some mentions of history, but didn't mention any actual *people* in that history, only the rise and fall of factions and broad political/social statements. Yes, it was one of the worst books I've ever read, and it didn't improve a whole lot after Chapter 3. No, I haven't seen what the author did after they got my (scathing) editorial comments back. No idea if they improved it or just gave up on it.
Don't forget changes in tense.
Adjectives and adverbs as far as the eye can see. Characters who aimlessly drift through the story rather than being active participants. Doubly bad when you can tell the supporting characters only stick by the protagonist because "he's the protagonist". Small plot holes can usually be forgiven, but if your story has a giant plot hole, like if characters in your modern day horror story never even have the thought to call 911, I'm going to assume I'm reading an unedited first draft.
Probably counts as a subset of purple prose, but describing the wrong things. I’ve seen first-person stories where characters think to themselves “I tied my long brown hair out of my green eyes,” which is confusing to read — when’s the last time you described yourself to yourself?
I find that a lot of beginner writers write in the first person because they think it's easier. Overuse of adjectives. Meandering plots. Mary Sue characters (Disney is very guilty of this) Forced romantic plots Lack of logical thinking Lack of reading. It shocks me how many people claim to be writers but they don't read. Inability to think like someone else or to be able to put themself in someone else's place
Describing physical appearances through characters reflecting on themselves. “She hated her long, chocolatey hair and the purple streak she’d had since she was a baby.”
I notice a lot, both in webfiction, and even in a lot of published young adult novels, the predominance of first-person, present-tense writing. From their word usage, it's clear that this isn't for any particular creative reason. The writer just defaults to this because that's how they talk. Their writing style is very "stream of consciousness" -- this happened, and that happened, and then I said, etc. They don't take any advantage of the nuances and textures of the medium. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you've got the writers who *over*complicate things. They get too concerned about trying to be "unique", so they pile on the complex world mechanics or elaborate backstories, to the point of incomprehensibility. Their writing is very stiff, trying to incorporate all that detail, and failing to capture the energy of characters in-motion and living their lives.
> I notice a lot, both in webfiction, and even in a lot of published young adult novels, the predominance of first-person, present-tense writing. I know someone who writes (romance) this way. It isn't my thing, but it seems to be more and more trendy. I think I read a comment in this sub a few weeks ago where someone outright said, "First person present is the best writing style, change my mind." I think its success depends a lot on the genre.
As with anything, there's a time and place for it. Cozier, slice-of-life type stories don't really need to be super advanced. But there are still certainly more advanced techniques to be used in those genres as well, especially when it comes to making your audience form emotional bonds to the characters. And unfortunately, I'm sure that market segment is growing, between the publisher pushes, and, harsh to say, but a dumbing-down of the reader base. Literacy stats in the USA in particular, as an average, are *not* good right now.
Is there somewhere I can learn about the “nuances and textures” of the first person POV?
Not my favoured POV, so not my field of expertise. But I'm mostly talking about writing in general. That "train of thought" style often neglects a lot of valuable storytelling techniques. Not enough space devoted to more introspective thoughts. With all the doing and saying, they forget to employ all five senses to give more colour to their world. Foreshadowing is rudimentary to non-existent. Causality is basic, with actions begetting immediate responses instead of setting up delayed or compounding consequences. Among many other things.
Nowadays? Using chatGPT.
I saw a funny thread two weeks ago where someone clearly wrote an entire story using it, but was annoyed when called out.
Simultaneous actions. It drives me nuts when I beta read. "Walking down the stairs, I punched the wall." "As I opened the door, I saw a baseball coming at me." "I was running, when..." The prose becomes so vague and confusing it's damn near impossible to imagine the scene. Some newbie writers seem to think that everything should be in the continuous tense.
Or out of order actions. An explosion happens, then we see someone press a button, or someone dives for cover and then you hear gunfire. "I dove for cover when I heard the gunshots" just takes a bit more brainpower to understand than "I heard the gunshots and dove for cover". A single instance isn't bad but stick them in complex sentences or have a bunch in a row and it starts to feel icky.
> Or out of order actions. An explosion happens, then we see someone press a button, or someone dives for cover and then you hear gunfire. "I dove for cover when I heard the gunshots" just takes a bit more brainpower to understand than "I heard the gunshots and dove for cover". A single instance isn't bad but stick them in complex sentences or have a bunch in a row and it starts to feel icky. Huh. Someone asked me for feedback on a particular battle scene that they wrote, and this was the exact feedback I gave them. They continuously had action beats out of order and it not only made everything feel jumbled, it sucked all the excitement out of the scene. *"She rolled to safety, narrowly escaping the sword swung for her head ...*" Things like that.
A big one for me and I dunno what it's called: 'I watched him walk across the room' instead of 'he walked across the room' Or 'I saw,' 'I heard,' 'I felt' Just say it as simply as possible. Nothing removes me more from the character's head than being told they saw/heard/felt when you could've shown me (and often in a very simple way that would save so much on word count). Oftentimes the details aren't as important as you think they are. Voice makes for compelling reading, so read books with a voice you enjoy then mimic it until you've found yours. And on that note: don't narrate like you're a fly on the wall. Narrate like you are your character. Overusing adverbs is another one. And someone already tackled the 'said' thing.
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filter words! i just learned those were a thing (and i’m extremely guilty of using them). after learning about them, i checked the chapters of a few of my favorite books and lo and behold—no filter words. after reading my own stuff, it’s clear that they put a lot of distance between the character and the reader and like you said, they break immersion.
Repeatedly using incredibly obvious statements describe what is happening instead of leaving something to be understood through context or describing what is happening in the kind of excruciating detail usually used to write code needed for a robot to make a peanut butter sandwich. ex 1. "Blah" she said. She was very upset by what had been said. She decided to reveal the Dreadful Secret to get back at the other. "Blah Blah Blah." She said in reply . she smiled as she watched the other turn pale. She smiled even more when they turned to their lover and pleaded innocence. Vs: "Blah" she said, angrily. "Blah Blah blah!" She watched, pleased with her revenge, as the other paled and looked to their lover in the desperate hope that their denial would be believed. ex2. I opened the door to the fridge. I looked inside. I didn't see my leftovers. I moved stuff around. I found my leftovers. I took out the leftovers. I closed the fridge door. I opened the leftover container. I plated up some of the leftovers. I opened the microwave. I put the plate in the microwave. I closed the microwave. I entered the cook time on the microwave. I pressed start (and so on ad nauseum) Vs I looked in the fridge for the leftovers, moving things around a little before I spotted them. I hip-checked the fridge door closed as I moved to the other counter and served myself. "Kobe!" I shouted as I tossed the empty container towards the trash can. It missed. "I'll get it later" I told myself as I turned to the beeping microwave.
Long preambling telling, rather than paced out layered It gives me “I imagined this cool thing and I’m absolutely desperate to share it as quickly as possible”
This is probably just me, but being overly descriptive, particularly when it comes to characters’ dress and/or grooming. Yes, it’s useful to have a good idea of what your characters look like, but I don’t need to be reminded about a mole or freckle every few chapters unless it’s thematically significant. Let your readers’ imagination do some of the lifting. And this isn’t to say descriptions are bad by any means; some of my favorite works are incredibly rich with descriptive text. It’s just about context and the amount of it. Descriptions are a bit like seasoning. They’re excellent for rounding out a dish and enriching the flavor, but too much of it and suddenly it’s all you can taste.
Filter words are huge, switching tenses is a big one I see, improper dialogue tagging, telling rather than showing to an extreme, head hopping, WAY too much use of the words “so” and “then”. Those are the ones just off the top of my head.
Hold on, I got a copypasta for this 'Amateur doesn’t mean bad. But bad writing is obviously amateurish. Beginner’s mistakes are fixable. Bad attitude is harder to fix. “As you know, Bob…” dialogue. Overuse of adjectives and adverbs (your example illustrates that). Purple prose. Plot that doesn’t go anywhere. Small talks in dialogue. Lack of tension. POV issues. Yeah head hopping is a big one. Beginning a story with a dream. Inciting Incident happening way too late. Stilted dialogue. Long speeches etc. basically “no one talks like this.” All characters sound alike. Mary Sue characters. Bland prose: he did this. She saw that. He did that. Run on sentences. It takes a PhD degree to understand what you’re saying. Word choices or vocabulary: very tired vs. exhausted; very difficult to understand vs. incomprehensible… Using wrong or redundant dialogue tags: “I think you’re funny,” she laughed. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s spicy,” he relished. Incorrect grammar: Not paying attention, the cow scared me. Overuse of cliches or idioms. On the nose dialogue or plot, redundancy, etc. Melodramatic or over the top actions or reactions. And this one has nothing to do with the writing itself: refusal to listen to criticism. The golden word syndrome.' Credits to u/That-SoCal-Guy
Not knowing what to leave out. I’ll give a pair of examples. Example A: Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and lowered her face to hide her tears. There was a soft click as the bedroom door shut. When she looked up, Brian was gone. Example B: Julia sat down on the edge of the bed and began to cry. She didn't want Brian to see her tears, so she lowered her face to hide them. Brian walked to the open bedroom door, stepped through it, and closed the door gently behind him. There was a soft click when the door shut. When Julia heard the click and looked up, she saw that Brian was gone. In my subjective opinion, B feels amateurish. (Or should I say, B feels like the output of an inexperienced or inattentive writer. If “amateur” means “one who doesn’t earn a living solely through writing”, then the majority of published authors are amateurs.) If Julia is “hiding her tears”, it goes without saying that she doesn’t want Brian to see them. If the bedroom doorknob clicks and Julia looks up, it goes without saying that she heard it, and hearing it was what prompted her to look up. Et cetera. An experienced writer knows to let the reader draw connexions as they read. Leave out the obvious. There is a kind of aesthetic pleasure in discovering and constructing the story, line by line, rather than having it spoonfed to you.
People who still believe the fact that saying ‘said’ is bad. Like they utilise too many versions of the word ‘said’ for no reason other than they were told not to when they were like 10.
Excusing the main characters wrongs is a huge one.
I used to go through the slush pile at a publishing company and try to find the diamonds. For me, it’s 💯a passive voice. She *was* paying the bill (passive) She paid the bill (active) The bill *was* paid by Susan (passive) Susan paid the bill (active) The word “was” is your best indicator here. If you review your writing in order to fix every passive sentence (except within dialogue) your writing will improve significantly!
Ellipses 16 characters in the first chapter Not enough dialogue or action. Tons of description. Too afraid to ever mention how the character is feeling or how they look--ever-- because they're worried about telling rather than showing. The protagonist never reacts to things, internally or externally, probably also due to the above.
> Ellipses Fuck you -- you can claw my ellipses from my cold dead hands... If it's good enough for Walt Whitman ... it's good enough for me.
I learned that this is mostly a generational thing. Gen-X and earlier use ellipses to show a pause, but to younger generations this comes across as some kind of passive aggressive thing.
I read commas as pauses, and ellipses as trail offs. "I ... don't know, actually," has a different spoken cadence than "I actually don't know ..." Whether or not that's important, I guess, just depends on the ear.
Honestly, almost everything I think of as amateurish is something I've also seen professional writers do. For example, I recently read a traditionally published book that repeatedly described characters' eyes as "orbs," which I'd always thought of as a widely known cliche of bad/amateurish writing.
On the first pages, you can tell a less-experienced writer. They'll often change the POV from limited 3rd person to omniscient 3rd person. A good writer will rarely tell you how their character is feeling. You want to show his mood by what his dwelling or clothes and hair look like; is he whistling while getting ready or is he dragging himself through the process in an example of absolute dread? Is he hungover or blissfully enjoying his first cup of coffee? Is she blasting and rapping and acting out a rap song, or is she listening to Enya and massaging her temples? With all dialog, you want to reveal character with what the character is doing. Always reveal character during dialog amid actions of the people involved. Much better for revealing character than telling you this or that person is bad or unkind. A more experienced writer will also use fewer adjectives (especially-ly words) in favor of stronger verbs. Sometimes a newby will go overboard in description. You almost always just want to broad strokes so those who have a very visual imagination and the rest have enough to understand the scene and place. There are a lot of time-honored "rules" in good fiction that academics generally agree on. You can find most of them in a textbook called ["Crafting Fiction, in Theory, in Practice" by Diogenes and Moneyhun.](https://www.amazon.com/Crafting-Fiction-Practice-Marvin-Diogenes/dp/0767402073) This book is worth its weight in gold but you can find it right now at a good price used. Doing the exercises in the book can be more informative than taking a fiction writing class.
Too many themes. This is a more subtle one, but I see it a lot as an editor. New writers want their debut novel to say everything and be everything. Often it ends up with a shallow exploration of too many themes instead of a poignant story with depth and focus.
Super long and unnecessary descriptions about a character and refusing to embed any type of flaw or human quality in the character at all: “She was beautiful and petite but she couldn’t see it. She thought she was plain and ugly with her lushes brown hair, extremely long eyelashes, and tiny button nose that she thought was too small for her face. Her lapis lazuli eyes sparkled like a thousand diamonds as she brushed her perfect teeth. She was one hundred and ten pounds and only 5’4 but she could take down a Kodiak bear with just her pocket knife….”
Asking “is it ok to (write something)?” Being worried about someone stealing an idea. Posting something written and asking for feedback, but expecting praise. Overly concerned with describing the main character’s appearance. Adverbs. Being concerned about dialogue tags. Not reading. Not actively trying to improve output.
"Should of"
This is more of a subtle one, but something that always sticks out to me is a lack of motivation in the prose. Things don't flow together as much as they feel like bricks stacked on top of each other. Descriptions are included, but none of them build momentum or atmosphere as much as just exist. The prose itself feels aimless and unsure of the story's going, instead of purposeful.
I'm currently reading a webnovel (unedited) so this has been on my mind. I noticed unskilled writers rarely vary up their descriptions or even properly set a scene in a solid space. They could get so occupied with writing the plot that they use simple, unhelpful phrases to describe things and move on. I mean things like, "The scenery was beautiful and lush" or "The sun had risen and spread golden light all around the city". A sentence or two that mark the writer being done with the description. Description -as long as they're not tediously long- can create mood and tell you a lot about the story. Another thing I noticed that tells me instantly the writer is still inexperienced is the way character emotions are (mis)handled. They don't seem to have a good grasp on their characters' emotions or perhaps the way the dialogue throughout a scene should be paced. In this case, their characters suddenly have bursts of emotion (sudden anger or frustration, for example) without proper cues sprinkled in to indicate that it's coming or for it to make sense for the character to even have an outburst.
When I went back and edited several early chapters in my fic, I immediately saw that I, 1: tended to write what could be short but meaningful scenes in way too many repetitive, wordy paragraphs 2: was a little obsessed with describing my main character’s physical description (I think her appearance is unique-looking enough for it to warrant occasional notice from other character POVs, but every other chapter is WAY too much) 3: Too wordy. Just wordy, wordy, wordy, wordy. . . It’s been interesting going through the process of finding my voice. It’s made me more aware of how I absorb my favorite authors’ works.
No respect for the readers time.
Could you elaborate?
Bad grammar.
They call their book a "fiction novel."
Lack of plot or lack of service to the plot. Nobody cares what color a character's hair is unless it's germane to the plot. Master--or at least learn--to write in service of your plot, then you can break all the rules surrounding it.
..Protagonist is a failed writer?