What are five common mistakes to avoid in writing?
Q&A With Shay Each Sunday
I wrote a blog a few months ago on my top writing advice for beginning authors, so some of this is covered there, but I’m taking it a step further on what to actively avoid here.
Q: What are five common mistakes to avoid in writing?
A: 1. Telling vs. Showing. In my last blog on top writing advice my first tip was to SHOW don’t TELL. So here, it’s the same thing. Avoid telling. What is meant by showing vs. telling is usually appealing to the senses in some way rather than giving a factual statement. For example: Instead of saying, “she was sad.” (This is the “telling” sentence to avoid.) You want to show your reader that sad emotion in visceral detail: “tears streamed down her face, her shoulders shook, her chest heaved.” Etc etc. This isn’t possible every single time and you don’t want to go over-the-top with your showing because then you’ll start to enter purple prose territory (which is number 5 to avoid on this list). When editing and revising, analyze your sentences and see if there was a better way to say it, see if you appealed to any of the senses, and ask yourself if you are telling when you could have shown it better—or even worse, if you did both! A lot of times writers won’t trust their readers, and when they have actually already shown something well, they’ll add the “tell” after just to ensure it was understood. A bad (and obvious) example: “Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders shook. She was so sad.” I used to (and sometimes still do) have a problem falling into this—though hopefully not to that extent!
I think one of my professors at SLC said something like, “you should appeal to the senses at least every 3-5 sentences.” I could be remembering that wrong, but it’s a good exercise to keep in mind, because you want your reader immersed in the scene, not simply reading “facts” or dry emotions that they can’t really feel.
2. Adverbs. Avoid them like the plague! (And speaking of, avoid cliches, too. Maybe I should have given cliches a number of their own on the list, but just simply strive for originality. Cliches are usually “telling” phrases anyway.) Now back to adverbs, which are also pretty much always “telling” words. They occasionally have their place in my opinion, especially if they are an interesting or rare adverb, but most of the time they are a cheap or lazy way out of showing the scene, emotions, and feelings of a character. For instance, consider this line of dialogue: ““No way!” she said, jokingly.” For the record, “jokingly” is my most hated adverb, and I’ve DEFINITELY used it. We could easily rewrite that sentence to show that the girl is joking instead: ““No way!” she said, laughing, and she shoved him in the shoulder.” Just say no to adverbs.
3. One-dimensional characters. You should know as much as you can about your characters as people, otherwise they are like cardboard cutouts. If you can’t feel their emotions then you haven’t dug deep enough. Characters can’t just do and say what is easy and convenient for you as the writer, their actions have to actually be in sync with who they are as people. Think about how your own real life interactions go, what your own dialogue is like, how real people act, and translate that to your writing. Whether it’s a fantastical or realistic world you’ve created, the characters still have to be believable within the scope of that world. Give them depth and allow them to grow. Hemingway said, “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
4. Switches in tense or point of view. If you are going to write in first person, make sure you stay with that POV throughout your story. Imagine how jarring it would be to be inside the first person narrator’s head the whole time and then suddenly instead of saying “I” they say “she” and now we don’t know who the narrator is anymore? This is really a very basic rule, but if you’re just starting out, know who your narrator is before you begin. Of course you can edit later if you want to switch the narration to first or third or whatever, but definitely avoid doing that throughout the story as you write one draft. Your writing will be weaker and less emotional if you aren’t inside the narrator’s head properly when you begin.
This same idea goes for past and present tense. It’s a little more common for writers to switch between tenses in their first draft than it is for them to switch between narrators, but I would still recommend knowing your tense before you begin and if you want to switch it later, do that. Many beginning authors have the habit of not even really recognizing when they switch between tenses and not editing properly, so if you start out with one tense your revision process will be smoother later.
Don't switch between tenses within scenes. The only time it’s usually acceptable to switch between tenses is if there’s a scene break and the story is being told in flashbacks/memories. For instance, in my first novel Crashing Waves, I wrote the core of the story in past tense, but there are scene breaks to the present, where my main character is being interviewed by a detective. Those scenes are written in present tense so that the reader is taken back into the narrator’s memories when she is. Definitely do not switch tenses within the same scene though otherwise your reader will be confused about when the story is happening. This is the same with point of view—if you have written a close third person account following one character, then the reader can’t suddenly know what other characters are thinking and feeling. This is referred to as “head hopping” and it’s basically considered sloppy writing. So, choose your tense and point of view and stick with it! Avoid past/present switches and avoid POV switches and head hopping. I recommend avoiding it from the very first draft if possible, but as long as you are aware of what you have to revise in terms of this, you are on your way to avoiding this mistake.
5. Purple prose. Purple prose is basically over-the-top flowery language that doesn’t contribute to the plot or characters in any way, and actually distracts the reader from what is going on by having to dissect this complicated language. Writers tend to use purple prose for the purpose of sounding smarter or basically more “literary,” but in actuality it has the opposite effect. Of course writers also don’t want to be too simplistic, and as mentioned before we always want to strive for showing vs. telling, so actually purple prose can sometimes be the effect of over-showing. Yes, you want to show your readers emotions in sensory detail, but only the relevant emotions. Purple prose is specifically overblown descriptions that DETRACT from the point of the text. Here’s an example of purple prose directly from Reedsy’s blog if you want to learn more about what it is and how to avoid it: “The mahogany-haired adolescent girl glanced fleetingly at her rugged paramour, a crystalline sparkle in her eyes as she gazed happily upon his countenance. It was filled with an expression as enigmatic as shadows in the night. She pondered thoughtfully whether it would behoove her to request that she continue to follow him on his noble mission…”
This writing draws attention to itself and away from the actual storyline, and it’s difficult to understand and disrupts the pacing. (I also spot adverbs, cliches, and telling language.) Purple prose may be something that writers who are past that “beginning stage” fall into, but it just goes to show how much there is to keep learning about good writing even as we gain more experience.
I would add many other mistakes to avoid in writing, but I’ll stick to these five avoidances for now. Maybe I’ll do a follow-up five in the future. What would you add?
