Alert! Beginner!

21. August 2010 by Gore Wehner.

As a creative writing instructor, I see the same mistakes made by beginning writers. First, let me say as an aside: this is a good thing! Excellent, even. Why? Because unless you make mistakes, you will not learn. It means you are discovering a path towards understanding how to  give your creation legs so it can carry out your intention. My classes are strongest when people who have never written a word in their life attend. It brings about wonderful discussion and I tend to learn from the experience, as well.

That said, here I will list the top five mistakes beginning writers taking my classes make, and how to avoid them.

1) Describing far too much in the first several pages of the story.

What do I mean? Let’s break this down. Most writers want to explain what the characters look like, their main characters’ backgrounds, what the protagonist thinks about the other people in the story, what’s happened in the past to bring about the situation the characters are in, and several paragraphs of environmental description. All in the first three or four pages. Whew!  That’s a lot to absorb, and we still haven’t gotten to the plot yet. A good rule of thumb is to write whatever you feel you need to in order to get the story straight in your head, then reread it to find  where the main action begins. Edit the rest  of the story out. You will probably find your entire first chapter will be gone. And that’s okay. Just hold onto the information in case it comes into play later in the book.

2) Using cliches and ‘ly’ adverbs instead of using creative word play.

My first drafts are full of cliches and ‘ly’ adverbs. Later, I seek these out and find a more imaginative way to reword portions of my story. Some ‘ly’ adverbs are essential for brevity, so I’m not insisting you take every single one out. But use them sparingly. Saying: “She walked happily down the sidewalk” sounds better as: “She skipped down the sidewalk.” Or be inventive: “She traipsed down the sidewalk, a crazy grin decorating her face.”Just keep in line with the tone of your story. One odd but clever sentence woven through paragraphs of less colorful language will sound awkward. As for cliches…unless a character speaks in cliches, leave them out. Overused phrases have lost their spark. (Yes, That was a cliche! Wanted to see if you were paying attention.) In other, and better, words: Overused phrases are like dull knives: they still do the job, but not as well as something shiny and sharp.

3) Not writing in the genre they enjoy reading.

This may seem out of place, when all my other advice sounds to technical, but it’s very important.  For one thing, you won’t finish writing that novel or short story you aren’t passionate about. If you love vampire stories…I don’t care how saturated editors say the market is…write about vampires. If you love mysteries, learn how to write them and go for it! Trust me, you will be happier in the long run.

4) Not giving each character their own personality and voice.

I can not stress this enough. Many years ago, I had an agent critique my manuscript (Mark McVeigh, a wonderful person, I might add).  He read the first ten pages of my middle grade manuscript and pointed out he couldn’t tell the difference between my two female protagonists. To him, they sounded one and the same. But they are very different! I wanted to point out. But I held my tongue because I couldn’t back up the claim. Weeks later, when my bruised ego was ready to pick up the manuscript again, I looked at it with new eyes and had to agree…there wasn’t much to differentiate them. So I got busy developing their personalities, and my novel is so much better for it (Thank you, Mr. McVeigh!).

The last and final problem that occurs with the beginning writers I meet is:

5)  Too much telling!

You will see this over and over again in my posts. Why? Because it is the number one thing you can do to bore your reader. I once gave a workshop presentation teaching people how to engage the reader using the five senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, seeing. With every paragraph you write, make sure there is something there that the reader can identify with. A reader’s eyes will quickly glaze over with the sentence: “He ate the fruit. It tasted delicious. He ate another.” (Yawn.) I’m bored typing it. But what about: “The first bite was an explosion of sweet and sour, the yin and yang of the fruit world. The juices dribbled down his chin, but he couldn’t stop eating. He grabbed the second fruit, its red flesh so sinful he almost felt guilty touching it.”  What sentence tells us more about this character and what he’s doing? I used the senses of touch, taste, and added how he felt. Wham! Instant interest.

So there you have it, the most common mistakes I’ve seen teaching my writing classes. Hopefully you will apply my advice to your own writing, but if not, take a creative writing class.  You, too, can be a teacher’s delight!

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