Seven Common Mistakes of Writing
By Vitora
Everyone makes mistakes.
Even characters makes mistakes (this, of course, is one thing that makes
a story interesting). But there are many
blunders of writing that authors can avoid, with practice and patience and this
article. I’ll list seven with detail and
solutions, and then perhaps a few more that you’ll have to figure out for
yourself. Here are seven common mistakes
of writing, in no apparent order…
~~~*~~~
1. “Hey, John!” – [Otherwise known as direct address.] Obviously, you need to have some direct address, or else there would
be no way to distinguish characters from one another during a long session of
dialogue (unless you’re one of those people who can give their characters such
distinct ways of talking that you just don’t need to use names). But in many pieces of writing I’ve seen,
everyone says everyone else’s name at least once per sentence—and I know few
people who do this in real life; it’s just weird, almost clingy. Although there is a man at Safeway who uses
your name five times or so once you’ve swiped your ClubCard, but…that’s
different. Anyway, here’s an example of
what you don’t do (Ripfang Story, 1997, by me).
“So, Kona, you return to my domain
once more,” Sabor growled.
The other tiger scoffed. “Do not think, brother Sabor, that you can
hurt me.”
“Kona, you murderous scum, we meet
again!” Quiro, the horticorn, burst out.
“Heh, heh, if it isn’t Quiro the
horticorn. And who are you two
again? Ah, yes, I remember…Jewel the
unicorn and Ripfang, son of Sabor the mighty.
Do you remember me, Ripfang?”
Kona played with a leaf in his claws as he spoke.
“I’m growing anxious with him
around, Sabor!” Quiro muttered in his leader’s ear, loud enough for all of them
to hear.
The tiger replied quietly, “Don’t
worry, Quiro, we’ll make it.”
Talk about all wrong.
Note how everyone says someone’s name in each sentence; in many of the
lines, it should be clear who’s talking, and to whom.
So how can you fix the problem? It’s simple, really, once you get the hang of
it, but here’s an exercise to help you get rid of that annoying direct address:
choose at least three of your characters and put them in a situation typical
for them (ie., dinner, cleaning the house, riding horses, etc.). Then write the conversation they would have without using any tags. That means no ‘said’s, ‘yelled’s, or anything
of the sort. You are allowed to have the
characters move around as they talk, which is similar to a tag but gives your
charrie an edge of realism. The other
thing you must eliminate from your writing piece is the use of any names; this
counts for the movements as well…if you have two young men, then pick different
traits (perhaps one has blonde hair and one has green eyes) to describe them
by. Especially look for names within the
dialogue itself, and strike those from the record. They’re gone.
Poof. Scram. Skeddadle.
The above example would look more like this after the
exercise (taking out the characters of Ripfang and Jewel, who have no purpose and
don’t speak anyway):
The
first tiger growled, fixing his blazing orange eyes on his enemy. “So you return to my domain once more.”
The other cat scoffed, blinking back
with eyes that were just as orange but did not hold the same sheen of life. “Do not think that you can hurt me; I have
just as much right to be here as you, and I have…backup.”
“Murderous scum—it seems we meet
again.” A horticorn came up behind the
first tiger, his horn lowered at the intruder.
“Heh, heh, if it isn’t the little
horticorn pal.” The dull-eyed tiger played
with a leaf in his claws as he spoke.
“I’m growing anxious with him
around!” The horticorn cuffed the earth
with one off while he muttered the words into his leader’s ear.
The tiger allowed the fire in his
gaze to die down ever so slightly. “Don’t
worry…we’ll make it out of this one.”
Granted, this is a bit forced, awkward, and over the top,
but it gets the point across. When you
edit your story—which hopefully you do before
you post it up for others to read—, you have to go over it with a fine-toothed
comb, searching for things like direct address with as much scrutiny as it took
to write this exercise.
There is another side to this mistake, and I’ll go ahead and
cover it here. I I call it “reiteration
of names”, or RON, and it gets on my nerves faster than fingernails down a
chalkboard. This is what RON looks like. (Karani’s
Quest, 2001, by me)
“Haunted,
my foot,” Amber muttered. Amber tugged
sharply on the purple leash she held in her hand, causing her golden retriever,
Marcus, to whine. “Oh…sorry, boy,” Amber
apologized quietly. Amber turned her
head to face the old deserted house that loomed above her and her pet. Its darkened windows seemed to have eyes that
stared out at Amber. Amber shivered a
little and pulled her blue sweatshirt from off her waist. As she slipped it over her head, Amber’s
fingers unwrapped from the leash and Marcus took off like a shot.
Doesn’t that just…gall you?!
It irritates me, at any rate, and I go to great lengths to keep it out
of my writing whenever possible. (The
sample above is a doctored-up piece that I actually liked before I murdered it
with RON.) When I introduce a character,
I actually stop and think about at least three labels they can be called
by. Usually this is 1) their name (like
Amber), 2) their species/gender (young girl), and 3) either a nickname or a
physical description (the tall young woman).
This keeps RON from invading my writing, and also adds interest and
realism to the character, because the reader can actually invision something
other than a name.
~~~*~~~
2.
Don’t They Waste Away? — [Otherwise known as no eating, drinking, sleeping,
etc. Performing necessary functions of
life, in other words.] I notice this
often enough in published novels to note it, because it makes a story so much
less realistic when your characters don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Now, if you have a special alien species that
can go without food for two hundred years, drink one drop of water a day and
thrive, and sleep two minutes per millenia, then at least go ahead and let the
reader know that this is the reason they’re not dying from lack of necessities.
But I frequently find that ordinary
human and animal characters don’t perform routine functions either; excluding the
Redwall series, I can’t recall a series or even single book in which food is
one of the focuses of the tale(s). (Go
ahead and count…there’s at least one feast per Redwall book.) Everybody else has their heroes and heroines
fighting despicable villains, sailing across the ocean, and, upon occasion,
taking a quick nap, but even this last thing is rare. Most authors tend to leave out “boring”
activities like eating and drinking, but how often do you go without food or water?
Granted, routine functions aren’t that exciting, but if you incorporate
a snack into a meaningful conversation, or have a character slip away to the
bathroom during an intimate dinner, you’ll end up with a much more realistic
story.
~~~*~~~
3.
If We Score More Points, We’ll Win the Game. — [Otherwise known as making
things extremely obvious.] The statement
used as the subtitle of this section is a general quote from many NBA
interviews. It’s not that the players
are stupid, they just don’t have time to stop and articulate exactly what they
mean. But writers have all the time in
the world—unless they’re on a deadline, and then it’s even more important (deadlines usually equal big money, if the job’s
well done)—, so that’s no excuse for things like these:
“Her
heart was beating in her chest…” — Uh, where else is it going to beat? Never mind, I didn’t ask.
She
turned the key and opened the door to reveal her father lying on the floor,
very sick… “Onna?” her father rasped weakly, lifting his head to stare into his
daughter’s eyes. He gave a cough, and
then laid his head back down. “He’s very
sick,” Tayro said slowly. — *gasp* Newsflash! The guy’s
coughing, he can barely talk, and…no, you think…he’s sick!
“She
fell down…” — Unless the character’s in a spaceship or something…they’ll
probably not be falling up.
As
Alia changed back, he nearly fainted in surprise… “A little surprised, huh?” she laughed
quietly. — Another newsflash…
Don’t assume that your reader is
stupid. When a book dumbs down to my
level, I usually put it down in disgust (unless, of course, it’s a history
assignment, in which case it’s not an option); even if I am stupid, I don’t
want some printed page to tell me so.
Some of the examples above make the characters look stupid—good if
you’re looking to create a “plonker”, but otherwise a bad thing—, some make the
reader feel stupid, and all are terrible examples of writing. Avoid the mistake of obviousness in your
works.
~~~*~~~
4.
“I Heard Your Dad Lost His Job,” Her Friend Laughed. — [Otherwise known as
messed-up emotions.] Now, if you’re
looking for humor in a twisted sort of way to saturate your tales, you can just
skip this part. But most of us are
either aiming for a more serious tone, or our pieces aren’t all for laughs.
If someone is sad, they’re most
likely not going to be laughing; they’ll be crying, or at least making a sour
face. If someone is overjoyed, they’re
not going to be moping around the house.
Sometimes, mixed-up emotions like these are mistakes, because the writer
hadn’t yet decided when she wrote the part if the character was going to be
happy or sad. These sorts of little
mess-ups should not be read by others, though, because the writer should have
edited them out. Here are a few humorous
illustrations of this point.
“But…but I don’t have any parents,” Carra anounced. — Hmm.
Something tells me she’s not too concerned about that fact.
Her father was about to die, so she said goodbye and then carried him on
her back to a secret room and layed him down on the floor. — Isn’t
that what you would do if your father
was dying?
Weeks
later he did pass away and Fria fell to the floor, sobbing. Then she had an idea: she could dress up in
her father’s clothes and go to war! — So what if my dad just died…I get to
go to war!
“Welcome! Going
to war are you?” he asked thoughtfully. — Thoughtfully is not exactly my
idea of a fitting word.
“He’s
not going to have enough water,” Tsarin told his wife with a chuckle, pointing
to the gasping boy on the bed. — Yeah, sure, dehydration is funny. Eh? o.O
In all of
these examples, a different emotion or modifying word could be used, with a
much better effect. This problem is
sometimes harder to catch than others, because emotions are tricky things;
perhaps Tsarin is evil, and that kid is his prisoner, or maybe Fria knew that
her father’s lifelong dream was for someone in the family to go to war. Still,
unless you want your story to be funny (like I said, it’s pretty twisted),
you’ll need to keep from playing the double emotion game.
~~~*~~~
5. Suddenly… — [Otherwise known as -ly
words.] Cairn has mentioned this on the
forums, and I totally agree; -ly adverbs are used far too frequently. (Yes, I did mean to put those two in there.
:D) The problem is, oftentimes the -ly
word makes for the perfect modificiation of a word, usually “said” or some such
common word that holds little meaning in itself. But all too repeatedly, -ly words are
employed waaaaay too much—take my writing, for instance; I have this thing for
the adverbs.
Cairn’s
idea was that you write a 100-word story segment without using a single -ly adverb.
My modification to this exercise is this: when you’re finished, go
back over it and see how many of the adverbs you truly need to put back
in. For example, my interesting attempt:
The scene at the window was calm; it
provided the female wildcat with a feeling of tranquility. She rested her chin on her paws and breathed
a blissful sigh.
Her peace was shattered by the bang
of the bedroom door as Prince Daren strode in, his arms folded in an imperious
manner. “You’re late again, Arika.”
Gritting her teeth, Arika stayed
where she was, but spat out, “There was no formal invitation.”
Daren snorted. “Formal or not, dear, you should not keep a
prince waiting. Nor a king.” The female wildcat could hear the note of
smugness in his voice, and she spun around.
“King? You?”
106 words
and not a single adverb. Now, that
wasn’t incredibly difficult, because there was dialogue and not really reason
to have adverbs (although I did have to stop myself a couple of times). Try it on your own, and keep in mind that
although they aid somewhat in description, adverbs are not always the icing on
the cake. They get annoying, and you
lose the flow of your words if you use them constantly. A good general guideline would be five or six
per page of writing; pare down the number of adverbs in your own work.
~~~*~~~
6. I Had A Dream… — [Otherwise known as
using dreams, visions, and memories far
too often. With convenient results, no
less.] Sure, we all dream at night. It figures, then, that characters, too, would
dream. But not in the convenient way
that Redwallers do—“Oh, hey, Martin, I have a problem.” *Martin bestows a
convenient riddle dream* “Thanks, Martin!”.
I’ve always found that really
stupid, and rather juvenile as well.
Don’t have
your characters “suddenly” have revealing flashbacks, either. If they were that important, they would have
been remembered earlier, not now in the midst of a crisis. Some examples of handy memories and dreams:
It was dawn, and Tana had no idea
how to begin. All of a sudden, her mind
raced back. “The old scribe. I learned about him from my father.”
“Whatcha want?” he asked in a gruff
voice. “If ya wanna cross, ya gotta have
Ipsador money.”
“That’s exactly what we don’t have,”
Jaren whispered. Tikva suddenly
remembered something.
“‘The coins to pay your passage
way’! That’s it! The coins are for paying for the voyage
across the river!”
Tikva gazed again at the
prison. Suddenly, a line of the rhyme
came to him.
“‘The horticorn to banish
fear’…hmmmmmm…”
“Tikva,
look out for the hengit swords!” he cried to the horticorn. “Remember what Urmo told us?” Tikva thought back, too. The scribe had described the dangerous
weapons.
It seems I had this problem with
the first draft of my fantasy novel. :P
At any rate, you don’t want to
do the above; it makes your writing a bit on the immature side, because it
indicates to the reader that you have no other way to solve the character’s
problem. At least make the character
work to remember the things… For
instance, in the last example, instead of having Tikva suddenly remember about
the hengit swords, have one graze his flank instead and then he recalls that they’re made of evil fire. Triggers, things that make the memory surface
(you know how it is…something someone says makes you suddenly remember the
dream last night—the dream you wouldn’t have remembered otherwise), are present
in real life; so make them present in your stories as well.
~~~*~~~
7. The Next Day… — [Otherwise known as
lack of good transitions.] When my
little sister was four years old, she wrote a series of stories that we dubbed
“the Luke and Cassies”; the storyline was the same in all six of them, and though
they were cute, they were the picture of a four-year-old’s writing. The dialogue sounded like a cheesy radio
commercial, the description was virtually non-existent, and the characters were
quite two-dimensional. But what has
always kept the entire family (and a couple of friends) laughing along with my
sister (she’s nine now, and a much
better writer, so she can see her own mistakes) are the transitions…or rather,
lack thereof. Some examples:
A long time ago, there lived a young
man named Luke, who was loved very much by a certain person. One day, he was forced to jump off a
cliff.. As he was falling, a skycat
named Nira caught him and swooped down to a safe place. One day, Nira and Luke were walking down a
secret passage way where Rix and Redrin were planning to attack.
Luke, Thena, and Suntar fought with their swords against Rix. Suddenly, Thena killed Rix.
“I am so excited for my wedding!” Carra said. She was in her room. When it was time for the wedding, Carra and
Curgan got up from their beds and went to the event. When they were married, they went home. A couple years later, Carra had her baby and
they named her Ruby!
See? Quite cute, and perhaps impressive for many
four-year-olds, but nasty as far as transitions go. Now, some slightly more sophisticated instances,
these being from my writing (old stuff, of course, or else I wouldn’t be
writing about this now).
She made her way into the nearby woods, found a stream, and settled down
for the night. The next morning,
Just then, the foes charged.
The three creatures laughed then
went back to poring over the information in the ancient scroll. Urmo summed up the night’s work a few hours
later.
These, too,
are clearly lacking transitions. “The
next day,” “later,” “years later,” and other similar three-word transitions
(TWT) don’t count; they give the reader next to no information, and are quite
boring. Several blank lines between
paragraphs can be substituted for one of the TWTs, as long as you give the
reader subtle information in the opening sentences of the new section.
Another way
of shifting over to a new scene or time is by describing the differences in the
surroundings from one period in time to another; night to day is an obvious
one, as is winter to spring, or summer to fall.
Perhaps a character can stare sadly at the new shopping mall where a
forest used to be, or see people younger than him playing football and wishing
he could still do the same. If you
absolutely have to use TWTs, use them tactfully; at least put the blank line in
between the paragraphs. Transitions, if
provided in a flowing manner, make the change from time to time a flawless
operation, keeping the reader locked in the story and not interrupting the
train of narration.
~~~*~~~
Several
other things I’ve noticed are:
Inappropriately-chosen
titles — ex.: A Life Alone, starring
Tana and Hunter the horticorns, who
fall in love near the beginning of the story.
(How does that work?)
Sentences
out of order — ex.: She found herself pinned to the wall, her dagger having
spun out of her grasp. He leaped
forward, twirling his sword, his eyes narrowed in hatred. He had gone to college, and had a good home
life. (Yeah, if someone were trying to
kill me, I’d sure be thinking about their education.)
Repetetiveness
— ex.: “You’re over-exaggerating!”
(Isn’t that what exaggerating means?)
There are
so many more that I can’t even name them here. Some may go unnoticed by all but
the sharpest of editors (not professional, though), and some may scream for
attention louder than a tye-dye t-shirt.
Since we’re all human, there’s no possible way our first drafts can be
without flaws, whether they’re only in your own mind or in the minds of your
readers. My general advice is simply,
“Edit, edit, edit…and then edit again.”
Good luck
hacking your story to bits and then reassembling it…