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…

 

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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.

 

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            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.

 

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            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.

 

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            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.

 

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            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.

 

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            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.

 

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            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, Willow woke up with a sense of freedom.

 

            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.

 

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            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…