by Anne R. Allen
Beginning novelists are like Tolstoy’s happy families. They tend to be remarkably alike. Certain mistakes are common to almost all beginners. These things aren’t necessarily wrong, but they are difficult to do well—and get in the way of smooth storytelling
They also make it easy for professionals—and a lot of readers—to spot the unseasoned newbie.
When I worked as an editor, I ran into the same problems in nearly every new novelist’s work—the very things I did when I was starting out.
I think some of the patterns come from imitating the classics. In the days of Dickens and Tolstoy, novels were written to be savored on long winter nights or languid summer days when there was a lot of time to be filled. Detailed descriptions took readers out of their mundane lives and off to exotic lands or into the homes of the very rich and very poor where they wouldn’t be invited otherwise.
Books were expensive, so people wanted them to last as long as possible. They didn’t mind flipping back and forth to find out if Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, and Vrazumihin were in fact, all the same person. They were okay with immersing themselves in long descriptions and philosophical digressions before they found out what happened to Little Nell. The alternative was probably staring at the fire or listening to Aunt Lavinia snore.
But in the electronic age…not so much. Your readers have the world’s libraries at their fingertips, and if you bore them or confuse them for even a minute, they’re already clicking away to buy the next shiny 99c book.
Whether you’re querying agents and editors or you’re planning to self-publish, you need to write for the contemporary reader. And that means “leaving out the parts that readers skip” as Elmore Leonard said.
Agents and readers aren’t going to want to wade through a practice novel. They want polished work. All beginners make mistakes. Falling down and making a mess is part of any learning process. But you don’t have to display the mess to the world. Unfortunately easy electronic self-publishing tempts us to do just that.
But don’t. As I said two weeks ago, it takes the same amount of time to learn to write as it did before the electronic age.
Here are some tell-tale signs that a writer is still in the learning phase of a career.
I’m not saying these things are “wrong”. They’re just overdone or tough for a beginner to do well.
1) Show-offy prose
Those long, gorgeous descriptions that got so much praise from your high school English teacher and your critique group can unfortunately be a turn-off for the paying customer who’s digging around for some kind of narrative thread or reason to care.
People read novels to be entertained, not to fulfill the needs of the novelist. If you’re writing because you crave admiration, you’re in the wrong business. The reader’s right to a story—not the novelist’s ego—has to come first.
If there’s no story, no amount of verbal curleques will keep the reader interested. Give us story first, and then add embellishments. But not too many.
Also, even though it may be really fun to start every chapter with a Latin epigraph from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, unless it’s really important to the plot, this will probably annoy rather than impress readers.
Ditto oblique references to Joyce’s Ulysses or anything by Marcel Proust. People want to be entertained, not take a World Lit quiz. (And yes, I went there myself. Originally, every chapter title of The Gatsby Game was a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Nobody cared.)
2) Head-hopping
Point of view is one of the toughest things for a new writer to master. Omniscient point of view is the hardest to do well, because it leads to confusion for the reader.
But a lot of beginners write in omniscient because they haven’t mastered the art of showing multiple characters’ actions through the eyes of the protagonist.
But be aware that third-person-limited narration (when you’re only privy to the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist) is the norm in modern fiction (with first person a close second in YA.) If you use anything else, your writing skills need to be superb or you’ll leave the reader confused and annoyed.
And you’ll red-flag yourself as a beginner.
3) Episodic storytelling
I think nearly every writer’s first novel has this problem. Mine sure did.
I could never end it, because it didn’t actually have a single plot. It was a series of related episodes, like a TV series—the old fashioned kind that didn’t have a season story arc.
Critique groups often don’t catch this problem, if each episode has a nice dramatic arc of its own.
Every piece of narrative has to start with an inciting incident that triggers ALL the action in the story, until it reaches a satisfying resolution at the end. It’s called a story arc.
If you don’t have a story arc, you don’t have a novel. You have a series of linked stories or vignettes. But novel readers want one big question to propel them through the story and keep them turning the pages.
The writer who blogs as Mooderino has a great post on why we want to avoid episodic narrative, even though it worked with some classics like Alice in Wonderland.
4) Info-dumps and “As you Know Bob” conversation
When the first five pages of a book are used for exposition—telling us the names of characters, what they look like, what they do for a living, and details of their backstories—before we get into a scene, you know you’re not dealing with a professional.
Exposition (background information) needs to be filtered in slowly while we’re immersed in scenes that have action and conflict. This takes skill. The kind that comes with lots of practice.
Another big clue is info-dumping in conversation, often called “as-you-know-Bob”:
“As you know, Bob, we’re here investigating the murder of Mrs. Gilhooley, the 60-year-old librarian at Springfield High School, who may have been poisoned by one Ambrose Wiley, an itinerant preacher who brought her a Diet Dr. Pepper on August third….”
Thing is, Bob knows why he’s there. He’s a forensics expert, not an Alzheimer’s patient. Putting this stuff in dialogue insults the reader’s intelligence, since nobody would say this stuff in real life. (In spite of the fact you hear an awful lot of it on those CSI TV shows.)
5) Mundane dialogue and transitional scenes that don’t further the action.
All that “hello-how-are-you-fine-and-you-nice-weather” dialogue may be realistic, but it’s also snoozifying.
Readers don’t care about “realism” if it doesn’t further the plot. As James Patterson, the bestselling author in the world says, “realism is overrated.” Readers want “just the good parts.”
That also means skipping the trip from the police station to the crime scene and the lunch breaks when nothing happens except the MC doing some heavy musing and doughnut chomping.
Ditto the endless meetings or arguments where people come to decisions after tedious deliberation. Those are an exception to the rule of “show don’t tell.” Let us know the outcome, not the snoozerific details.
Just make a break in the page and plunge us into the next scene.
6) Tom Swifties and too many dialogue tags
The writer who strains to avoid the word “said” can rapidly slide into bad pun territory, as in the archetypal example from the old “Tom Swift” boys’ books: “‘We must run,’ exclaimed Tom swiftly.”
They were turned into a silly game in the 1960s, promoted by Time Magazine, which invited the public to submit outrageous Tom Swifties like:
“Careful with that chainsaw,” Tom said offhandedly.
“I might as well be dead,” Tom croaked.
So we don’t want to go there by accident. Bad dialogue tags may have crept into your consciousness at an early age from those Tom Swift, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books. The books were great fun—I adored them myself—but they were written by a stable of underpaid hacks and although the characters are classic, the prose is not.
“Said” is invisible to the reader. Almost any other dialogue tag draws attention to itself.
Very often the tag can be eliminated entirely. This allows your characters to speak and THEN act, rather than doing the two simultaneously.
Not so swift:
“We must run,” exclaimed Tom swiftly.
Better, but awkward.”We must run!” said Tom, sprinting ahead.”Best:
“We must run!” Tom sprinted ahead.
7) Mary Sues
A Mary Sue is a character who’s a stand-in for the writer’s idealized self, which makes the story a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author, but a snooze for the reader.
Mary Sue is beautiful. Everybody loves her. She always saves the day. She has no faults. Except she’s boring and completely unbelievable. For more on this, check out the post on Mary Sue and her little friends I wrote last month.
8) Imprecise word usage and incorrect spelling and grammar
Unfortunately, agents and the buying public aren’t your third grade teacher; they won’t give you a gold star just to boost your self-esteem.
Spelling and grammar count. Words are your tools.
If you don’t know the difference between lie and lay or aesthetic and ascetic and you like to sprinkle apostrophes willy-nilly amongst the letters, make sure you find somebody who’s got that stuff under control before you self-publish or send off your ms. to an agent.
Nobody is going to “give you a break” because it’s your first novel. Practice novels belong in a drawer, not the marketplace. If people are spending their money and time on your book, they deserve to have a professional product.
Electronic grammar checks can only do so much. And they’re often wrong. Buy a grammar book. Take an online course. Not everybody was a good student in elementary school, but you’ll need to brush up on your skills if this is going to be your profession. Even a good editor can’t do everything.
9) Clichéd openings
People who read a lot (like agents and editors) have seen some things so often they immediately get turned off. Even if it’s a perfectly good idea. The problem comes when a whole bunch of people have had the same good idea before you.
The most common is the “alarm clock” opening—your protagonist waking up—the favorite cliché of all beginning storytellers, whether short story, novel, or script. There’s a hilarious video on this from the comedians at Script Cops They say, “78 % of all student films start with an alarm clock going off.”
Here are some other openers too many writers have done already:
- Weather reports: it’s fine to give us a sketch of the setting, but not more than a sentence or two.
- Trains, planes and automobiles: if your character is en route and musing about where he’s been and where he’s going, you’re not into your story yet. Jump ahead to where the story really starts.
- Funerals: a huge number of manuscripts—especially memoirs—start with the protagonist in a state of bereavement. If you use this opening, make sure you’ve got a fresh take.
- Dreams: we’re plunged into the middle of a rip-roaring scene, only to find out on page five that it’s only a dream. Readers feel cheated.
- “If only I’d known…” or “If I hadn’t been…” starting with the conditional perfect seems so clever—I used to love this one—but unfortunately a lot of other writers do too.
- Personal introductions: starting with “my name is…” has been overdone, especially in YA.
- Group activities: don’t overwhelm your reader with too many characters right off the bat.
- Internal monologue: don’t muse. Bring in backstory later.
- The protagonist looking in the mirror describing herself: In fact, you don’t need as much physical description of the characters as you think. Just give us one or two strong characteristics that set them apart. Let the reader’s imagination fill in the blanks.
- Too much action: Yes, the experts keep telling us to start with a bang. But if too much banging is going on before we get to know the characters, readers won’t care.
If you use one of these openers in an especially clever and original way, you may get away with it. But be aware they are red flags, and many people won’t go on to find out what a great story you have to tell.
For more on this, Jami Gold has a great post this week on how to avoid cliches in your opener.
10) Wordiness
There’s a reason agents and publishers are wary of long books. New writers tend to take 100 words to say what seasoned writers can say in 10. If your prose is weighty with adjectives and adverbs or clogged with details and repetitive scenes, you’ll turn off readers as well.
Remember a novel is a kind of contract between writer and reader. If you are writing to fulfill your own needs, not those of the reader, you’re breaking that contract. They’ll feel cheated. And they will probably let you know.
If you’re still doing any of these things, RELAX! Enjoy writing for its own sake a while longer. Read more books on craft. Build inventory. You really do need at least two manuscripts in the hopper before you launch your career.And hey, you don’t have to become a marketer just yet. Isn’t that good news?
For more on this, Sarah Allen has a great post this week on Top 7 Mistakes that Make Your Writing Look Unprofessional.
How about you, scriveners? What mistakes did you make when you were starting out? As a reader, what amateurish red flags make you start to feel nervous about buying a book?
posted by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) September 21, 2014
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The Boomer Women Trilogy
The Leaders of the Twenty-First Century was the original title for the manuscript that branched into three and became Food of Love, The Lady of the Lakewood Diner and The Gatsby Game. It would be a terrible title, of course, because it sounds too dry and pretentious for a bunch of comedies.
But the phrase has excellent comic credentials. It comes from Mickey Mouse himself. The original Mickey Mouse Club TV program always signed off with the inspiring proclamation that the show was “dedicated to you, the leaders of the twenty-first century!”
I know it’s still something of a taboo to write novels—especially romantic comedies—about women “of a certain age,” but Boomer women have been breaking rules since the Mickey Mouse Club proclaimed our destiny. I hope you’ll enjoy their stories.
Ahoy Anne,
Excellent list. Thanks. I'd add the problem of the Vast & Sprawling Front Porch. So many of us in our newbie stage seem to need to extend that exposition for dozens of pages before introducing an inciting incident. I don't know whether it's a matter of early impressions (it's around page 40 that the 1st kid in children's classic, The Lion,, Witch & the Wardrobe actually finds the wardrobe), or the need to flop about in our novel's world before getting cracking. But it's not just the newbies & tales from another time — I just finished the 2nd book of a recent phenom in the YA writer world. It took 130 pages to get off the porch. Her first book started with a bang (& won countless well-deserved awards), but the second simply didn't start for a very long time.
Thanks again for a fine post.
CS–Thanks for the great comment! "Get off the Front Porch!" might make a great blogpost all on its own. Openers are so tough for newbies–and obviously, for some professionals too. Thanks for those examples. Many editors say that the first thing they have to do with a newbie novel is lop off the first three chapters.
This is a dynamite blog, Anne! Sending my students to it, at class this week.
Yes, they need to hear this from someone other than me.
As usual, it is always worth the time to read your blog.
Melodie–Happy to help out your students! I wonder if anybody's done a study on how many times a student has to hear something before it finally settles in the brain. At least ten, I'd say.
Even now, sometimes a light bulb will go on in my brain and I'll say, "Oh, that's what they mean by 'avoid Robinson Crusoe openings'" or whatever. It can be something I've heard hundreds of times, but somehow it never "clicked in."
Fabulous, hilarious, too close to home. I may have escaped the alarm clock opening, but only because I never thought of it. Thank you Anne!
Molly–Thanks! I actually called one of my first stories "Snooze Alarm". Guess what? It never got published. 🙂 Thanks for the tweet, too.
Excellent list of examples. Dialogue tags were a struggle for me. Flowery, descriptive prose and epic storytelling – not so much!
Alex–I think it depends entirely on what you read. If you read classic Sci-Fi, especially the old pulp fiction titles, you're going to see a lot of bad dialogue tags. If you read lots of Victorian lit, you're going to think flowery prose is quite the thing. And if you read contemporary literary fiction, you may think a novel with the structure of a piece of Ikea furniture in the box is just fine. It may be–but you have to be on staff at the New Yorker to get it published. 🙂
This is a great list and a truly helpful post. Totally Tweeting. 🙂
Raquel–Thanks much! I really appreciate the tweet, too!
Anne, a super post! Glad you pointed out the problems with e-grammar checkers. Ditto spell checks. They disagree as do dictionaries. There is no one perfect solution to the essential nuts and bolts of language. That is where the writer's taste and judgment come in.
Love the cover of your boxed set. Yummy-licious!
Ruth–Thanks. I agree that relying on spell checks and other tech can only do so much. And they can make awful mistakes. I'm so glad you like my cover. I thought the exploding cupcake was so fun. And so many covers are dark, I though the light and bright one would stand out.
Excellent post, thank you. It's pretty much exactly what I see in the work of newer authors. I've done it myself. We learn, we learn…
Laurie–We were all newbies once. And we all made these mistakes. The problem comes when people stay stuck on square one of the writing game and don't learn to move forward from newbie-hood.
What Melodie said. In spades. If I were teaching writing, this is the first resource, your writing blog, I'd direct my students to. (Yikes what a sentence!) Great as usual, Anne. So many good things to watch out for and NOT OVERDO or DO at all. Loved it. My downfall was never wordiness since I write so short but internal monologue openings? Yep, guilty as charged. I do this in my new WIP so will have to be sure it serves the story before it keep it. Thanks again for the excellent advice.
Paul–I remember reading the opener of a novel to my first workshop at at big writers conference. Five pages of internal monologue. But it was full of jokes! I thought they'd love it!! Um, nope. 🙂
I agree with everything you say here except your comments regarding third person omniscient. There is no way, using third-person-limited, than an author can describe the inner thoughts and feelings of any character but that of the narrator, and in any novel in which character development is important, thoughts are as critical as actions.
David–Omniscient POV is considered very old fashioned in anything but epic fantasy or space opera in this century.
One of the skills a contemporary writer needs to learn is how to show character through a limited POV. Almost all the great literary writers of the last 100 years learned this. You can change the POV character from chapter to chapter, but not within a scene. It's not easy, but it can be done.
The only contemporary literary (character-driven) novel I know of that isn't written in third or first person limited is Joshua Ferris's And Then We Came to the End. That's a tour de force written in first person plural. He gets in everybody's heads by writing as "we". It's wonderfully clever, but it would be very hard to duplicate.
Anne – not disagreeing with your post, but epic fantasy tends to be written in third-person limited as well nowadays. Third omniscient is still around in some genres (John Grisham still used it as of Sycamore Row) but I agree, I think I saw the figure of 80% of fiction is written in third limited, or at least in a limited viewpoint.
Louise–Thanks for the update. I have to admit I haven’t read epic fantasy for decades, so I only know what I hear from epic fantasy readers and writers. And some of them won’t give up their omniscient POV until it’s pried from their cold, dead hands. 🙂
My biggest blunder (of many!) in my first two unpublished middle grade novels was the I-must-get-the-character-from-point-A-to-point-B-to-point-C thing. Mistakenly thinking the more detail the better, I had the phone ringing, the character picking it up, the conversation (in detail, of course), the character hanging up, frowning, walking to the bedroom door to open it (okay, maybe I am slightly exaggerating here, but, man, is the reader asleep yet?). We learn so much writing those first few bombs. 🙂
Judy-Oh I had so much trouble with that. I wrote so many unnecessary, plodding scenes. It was such a revelation when I finally realized I could just jump to the next interesting part!
Great post. I was definitely a part of the "info dump" world in my early drafts of this novel. XD
Couple of comments.
On Show-Offy Prose… Showy prose comes in more than just extended descriptions. I picked up a self published book recently. The main character shows off by giving us a steady stream of her immense, thirteen year old wit, scattered through close (but occasionally broken) third person POV… we even get crazy witisms while she’s falling down a 40 foot cliff and landing in a river when she can’t swim. That gets extremely distracting. I may end up putting the book down because of those distractions.
And on Weather Report Openings… A friend of mine recently had someone tell her that her book’s “weather reporting” opening was horrible and cliché. Except that it wasn’t. She mentioned that it was dark, but she called it “forbidden darkness” hinting at the character’s possible rule breaking. Pretty much everything she mentioned led back to the main character and the world he lived in. It wasn’t just scenery reporting. It was an insight into the world she was in. Careful not to immediately throw away “weather reports” just because the weather happens to be mentioned.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't mention "Character wakes up and wanders around lazily" opening in the bad openings section. I see that all the time in newbie novels.
RA–I know sometimes comic novels can get too caught up in the jokes and forget about the plot. I know I've done that on occasion.
As I said, a weather report is okay if it's only a couple of sentences. I'm opening my new book with a comment about the weather. It's very important to the story, so I relate.
I include "Character Wakes Up" in the warning against the "alarm clock" opener. It doesn't have to be an actual physical alarm clock. 78% of newbie fiction starts with the character waking up. As I say, we don't want to do this. Check out the link to the Script Police video on the subject. It's hilarious.
A good list, Anne. Btw, I've grabbed my copy of your boxed set. It looks wonderful (was about to use an exclamation mark, but could almost feel Elmore Leonard's disapproval). I'm looking forward to reading your work.
Jan–Oh, I hope you enjoy it! These books have a lot of mystery, but they're not classic whodunnits, so my publisher and I haven't worked out exactly how to market them. The one thing they all have is comedy and strong women, so I hope this new format will reach the right readers.
This is so helpful as a tick-off list for my writing. I did most of these when I started writing and wish I had this "list" back then.
Thank you.
Patti
Patricia–I'm glad it works as a check list. Yeah, we all do them. Most of us had to find out by trial and error. And humiliation. 🙁
Fabulous Anne- painful but admirable at once, like watching a Miss USA pageant from the gutter.
Now I should buckle down and create a heat-map, showing which of these are red-hot dangerous for which genre, which more a casualty of what-must-be. For example, the "well Bob" sometimes has to happen in the forensic thriller where stuff is just way beyond the reader. And Purple Prose… :: hand raised :: yeah, epic fantasy has to go there.
Having said that, just two more things. Having NO idea what openings were already considered cliche, I thought it was simply splendid that Judgement's Tale opened… with a funeral. And I must say this- if gold stars were a feature of your third grade year you went to school NOWHERE near me!
Thanks again Anne.
Wm–Welcome Back! I hope you had a great trip to Africa.
Actually, you don't need to put that "as you know Bob" stuff in dialogue unless you're writing a screenplay. You put it in your protagonist's head. Or another POV character's Or have somebody read it. Easy peasy.
Epic fantasy has rules of its own. As I said to David above, omniscient POV is pretty standard in the genre, and people are going to talk with lots of purplish archaisms. And they will think forsoothly. So I'm sure your prose works great for your genre.
Funerals aren't a no-no. They just have to be especially interesting to be compelling, since readers see so many. But if you have a GoT type funeral, where half the attendees get murdered, readers probably won't be bored. 🙂 Different genres have different expectations.
I was talking about people who grew up more recently than some of the rest of us. 🙂 The "self-esteem" movement of the 80s and 90s really messed with the expectations of a lot of kids growing up then.
All things writers need to remember! Just shared on Google+ and Twitter! 🙂
Kristina–Thanks a bunch for the shares. We really appreciate them!
Anne: In my current WIP I did actually lop off the first three chapters. And that's after I'd had fourteen books published. My first scene established the conflict and moved the characters to action, but when I got to chapter four I knew the book had found its true beginning – the previous was really backstory. So, we can always keep learning. Thanks for the good reminders.
Phyllis–Great point. You don't have to be a newbie to run into trouble with openings. This is why we have editors. My novel Ghostwriters in the Sky started too late in the story. It took a good editor to say, "Write an opening chapter. This needs to start earlier." It totally changed the novel.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the imitation of the classics. English teachers idolize the classics, so people grow up being told that Dickens/Hawthorne/Joyce/etc. wrote better than anybody else. It's only natural that young writers think that "good writing" means "reams of convoluted, hard-to-follow purple prose."
But it's not just the classics. Yesterday I finished reading my first (and probably last) Nora Roberts book. This novel was published in the late '80s, so she might have changed her style since, but good gravy–she was in a different person's head in every paragraph! Now we're the police captain, now we're the hot detective, now we're the hot detective's partner observing the sexy psychiatrist, now we're the sexy psychiatrist, now we're the dispatcher observing the hot detective observing the sexy psychiatrist…and now we're the janitor. But just for one sentence. Don't ask me why.
Tamara–Very interesting observation! Lots of bestselling contemporary writers seem to get away with the head-hopping thing. But I can't read them. If there's head hopping, I don't buy. Unless there's a really powerful omniscient storyteller voice, the way Carl Hiaasen does it.
I think editors are demanding more coherent storytelling these days, even from the big names.
80s writing is as old fashioned now as the Victorians were to Hemingway. Things have changed a lot in the electronic age.
"Ohhhhhhhhhh!" she groaned, sobbing madly. "Will I ever get it write?"
Great post, great list; will refer to it frequently as I attempt to crawl out of newbiehood 😉
Meg–LOL. We all relate. We've all been newbies!
Cringing as I read some of those. Guilty of several in my first novel. Ugh!
Colette–Join the club. The only writers who have never done any of this are the ones who never actually write anything.
Send…send…send…send…send…off goes your wonderful post to every new author I'm editing. Hip-boots aside for over-writing, what I see most often in recent edits are 40+ word sentences. I'm mentally gasping for air while spinning through three or four different thought processes by the MC.
btw-this isn't the first multi-send of your blogs and I'm certain it won't be the last. Keep'em comin'!
Maria–You're not the first editor I've heard from today. I guess this one is hitting all the big points you have to make with all your clients.
Of course I've also had a flurry of unsubscribes. Some people don't want to know that they're still newbies. But you can't be a pro if you haven't been a newbie first.
Maybe I'll have to add a few more points to the list. Long sentences are so annoying. But I tend to write them myself. I love those em dashes and parentheticals.
Thanks for sharing the posts!
I'm not a newbie anymore but I just got wrist smacked by an editor for too many dialogue tags in a new manuscript. I pick a new bad habit for each one and this one's curse was a whole ton of "he said she said." I have had funerals in several of my books as moments of conflict between survivors that worked pretty well. Thanks again as usual for your insight Anne and for sharing your success with the rest of us!
Liz–I know that feeling when an editor catches us overdoing something. We feel like naughty children. But aren't we lucky to have editors? We all pick up bad habits.
Funerals are like weddings–major milestones that are always powerful in fiction. Nothing wrong with using them.
But the funeral opener can be problematic if we don't do something new and different with it. Thanks for the tweets and shares!
Fabulous post! I've read these things in manuscripts so many times…
Lexa–Thanks. I've done them many times too. 🙂
I bookmarked this one for reference. Kudos for making it funny, too – might hurt a little less.
Head-hopping is my #1 turnoff – and I know a new writer I'm trying out hasn't made it to 'readable' by the end of a page or two. When I've gently (VERY gently) mentioned this to said writer, the only acceptable reaction should be 'OMG! I messed up on that one! Thanks for pointing it out.'
POV control is extremely important for readability. Given that, I am willing to follow for a while to see if you have an interesting story to go along with it. Some people sneak past mastery by writing in first person, or single third, but it shows the minute they allow more pov characters into their writing.
The first step is to realize you're doing the bad thing; the next step is to acquire the craft to stop doing it. That's where those 10,000 hours go.
Unfortunately, many writers never accomplish the first step: they cannot see their own writing dispassionately, and never master the craft. They post on the forums, wondering why, since they have 18 novels out for sale, their daily intake is in the single digits.
Alicia (who hopes she's taken a successful stab at these)
Alicia–I'm with you on the head hopping. It's a huge turnoff for me. I feel as if the author is being lazy and making me to all the work because she doesn't want to bother to learn the basics. I like your phrase "POV control". That's what it is: keeping your writing under control, so you don't present chaos to the reader.
I agree that it's really sad when people write multiple novels with all these mistakes and actually put them out in the marketplace. They often hire very professional cover designers, so you have to hit the "look inside" to find out this is just newbie practice writing.
It's why so many reviewers won't touch indie books, which is a shame.
This is such a great list!! The Tom Swifties made me laugh 🙂 And I didn't think about cliche openings for my post, but that's a good one! Thanks again so, so much for the shout out!
Sarah Allen
(Writing Blog)
Sarah–Thanks! Your post makes a great "book-end" for mine!
Hey Anne, how's it going? Thanks for this weeks blog. I am currently doing a massive re-edit, rewriting of my story/book because of pretty much every reason you have listed. I have named it first book syndrome, I found that I was to wordy and believed that my writing was really clever, when in fact it was over complicated, repetitive and I hate to admit this, but pretty drab. I wish I had read this about 18 months ago. LOL. I do have one question regarding 'Cliché Openings', would it be acceptable to have the first chapter as a suicide note? No more than two pages, then in chapter 2 move straight to the antagonist and then for chapter 3, that's when you meet the writer (protagonist) of the note. Also would I get away with hand writing the note and then scanning the note itself into the first couple of pages of chapter 1, or would it be better to type the note? Sorry to bother you with this, but you're my go to person on all things for new writers. I hope you don't mind. I will be blogging about this at some point this week hoping to gain some kind of insight. I know you're very busy, and apologise for asking. Again thanks for this weeks post, I look forward to next weeks. Take care, but above all, stay cool. Pip
Pip–Welcome to the club. As I say, new writers tend to make all the same mistakes. I've made them all myself.
As far as opening with a suicide note–it has been done–I think 13 Reasons Why opens that way–but I don't think it's been done to death. At least I haven't seen any agents complaining they've read 50 suicide-note openers in a row.
But don't use a photo of handwriting as your opener. HUGE formatting problems there. Very expensive to reproduce and impossible to send electronically so it will read well. Just type it. Otherwise any agent would delete it. Don't make them jump through hoops.
Hey Anne, thanks for the advice, I really am grateful. Look after yourself. Pip
It's a pleasure to have found you blog; wonderfully informative.
J.M.–Welcome! Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself.
Excellent post, and thankfully the points you mentioned were ones that I'm now familiar with.Phew! That Creative Writing Certificate didn't go to waste after all:-) I particularly liked your take on POV. I've always though omniscient would be real hard to do well, which is why I haven't tried. But getting that word count down was I think the best point. It used to break my heart when I had to cut treasured sentences, but now I love to cut out chunks of writing. It's so satisfying to know "I don't need that part"
A.K.–One of the things that most helped my writing was a contest our local writing club had every year: 500-word limit flash fiction. I'd always write a 1200 word story and have to cut it down. It really taught me how to identify unnecessary words.
As far as POV, omniscient has its place. It's the storyteller's voice. And it works when you want to sound archaic, as in epic fantasy. When a strong voice is telling a "tale" as storytellers did for millennia, you have the feeling of sitting around a campfire listening to the storyteller–who is very much part of the experience.
It also works for comedy–as if you're listening to a stand-up comic telling the story of the duck that walked into the bar. Again, the teller is part of the story.
But in modern fiction, the 'teller" is supposed to be invisible. We are more involved with the story and closer to it because we are "with" the main character. Most modern readers prefer that. Unless they want that epic fantasy or stand-up comic feel.
I've cmd a little too close for comfort on at least three of those, but I am at least aware of these now to know they're no-go! 🙂
shahwharton.com
Shah–As I said, we all do them. It helps to be aware of them.
Anne, thanks to my "filter" this just came in the mail (Monday) … Okay, yes, yes, yes … I think we all do it, have done it,and need to be wary of it in the future.
The schools of thought on the dialogue tags is the one issue I want to address. For all others I can only say … did that, been there.
I have been told so many times, I want to weep, DO NOT put simply "said,"
Why do you put "said" when you can come up with a clever tag?
Gees to please !! I actually started reading my favorite and well known writers to search for the damn things. And you know what? Most of them just say … said 🙂
Florence–I've heard it too: there is an odd meme going around the writing blogosphere telling people to avoid "said.". DO NOT LISTEN TO IT. These people are ignorami.
"Said" is invisible. Anything else draws attention to itself and takes you out of the story. You can used the occasional "hissed" or "shouted", but "wept" will not work. Most people do not speak while they are weeping. (Unless they're Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias) They speak before or after.
So don't say say, " 'I'm dying, Mortimer,' Leticia wept." Say: "'I'm dying, Mortimer.' Leticia dabbed at her tears with a threadbare handkerchief."
I found myself laughing out loud at some of the reminders of the "problems" I had with my first novels. Nonexistent POV, rambling, lovely descriptions that took the reader nowhere but on a romp through my oh so creative mind, the perfect, flawless protagonist, based on my 20 something self, of course. So much ego, so little story. Yikes! I have learned. I have, really. I have. Thanks for a great post.
Christine–We've all been there, haven't we? I think taking English lit classes may distort things for us. We think authors are so special. We're taught to admire quirky things in the classics, so we figure if we're quirky, we'll be admired, too. We forget the part about how you have to learn to be a storyteller first.
Ahhhhh, where do I begin?
1} Early on I would write artsy-fartsy prose to show off my grasp of the English Language. Now, since most literary fiction has artsy-fartsy prose and I despise literary fiction, I save that kind of stuff for my blog.
2} Never did head hopping, although I'm experimenting with it in my novellas.
3} Had problems ending stuff (still do to a certain degree) but never as bad as some people have it.
4} Info dumps were the bane of my early writing trials and tribulations. Now, the info dumps are spread further apart and no "As you know, Bob" touch any of my stories.
5} I used to have the problem, although it revolved around pointless sex (yes, sex can be pointless). Now, not so much.
6} Guilty as charged early on. Now, when we blog.
7} Sort of, only polar opposite, in that my Mary Sue gets a can of whoop-ass inflicted on her instead.
8} Guilty as charged, although now I use a dictionary and other knowledgeable people for help.
9} I've come close to using a clichéd opening, in which my MC is talking on the telephone. However, in that very short conversation, the basic plot of the story is told.
10} Used to, but since wordiness drives me slug nutty as a reader, I don't do it as writer. Only as a blogger.
Father Nature's Corner
10}
G.B.–I love it! LOL. Do all this stuff on your blog and you can totally get away with it!! Hey I even quoted Tolstoy in the opener and nobody's called me on it.
I forgot about the telephone opener. I think it might be a cliche, but not a dreaded cliche. Just a 'this better be good if you're going to go there again' kind of cliche. Great comment!
Embarrassing true story: first novel, new critique group. A guy read through my first ten pages and said, "This is all exposition." I went home and looked up "exposition" in the dictionary. Yes, I've come a long way and still have a looooong way to go!
Julie–I think we've all done that too. I sure did.
I learned about exposition in an episode of Moonlighting back in the 80s. They did a hilarious send-up of Taming of the Shrew and the guy who played Lucentio, who opens the play, stopped in the middle his monologue and said something like "Why do I get stuck with all the exposition?" Laughter is the best teacher!
Thank you, Anne, for helping us newbies in a humble and humorous way. I've pinned this post to read again and again.
Today I finished reading your e-book, How to Be a Writer in the E-Age, for the second time. I love how you admit your own struggles and hard lessons as well as the victories. It gives me hope.
Did you really have a bunch of unsubscribes because of this post? If so, someone needs to remind newbies that writers need thick skin to survive. It hurts to have a critique done on your first WIP. But it's worth it if you want to improve your writing.
Now I'm going to read the links to find out more bad (good) news about newbies.
Blessings ~ Wendy ❀
greenlightlady–Thanks so much for letting me know our book has been helpful for you. I'll let Catherine know. It's important to both of us.
We've all gone through the same struggles. Some of us are just a little further down the road.
Yes, we had 16 unsubscribes on Sunday, but we got 23 new subscribers on Monday and Tuesday, so we lost the people who didn't need to be here and got some who are in it for the long haul. We welcome them warmly.
Remember every superstar was a newbie once and keep on keeping on!
Lots of great advice. However–always a however, eh?–I seem to read columns like this several times a week, with almost identical points of advice. And while I do think that decent spelling and punctuation should be more common, some of the criticisms, like multiple POV and even opening with long disquisitions on the weather and other warnings seem to me to boil down to the notion that readers are stupid and so writers should be, too. Now, most of us are not very good. And writing styles change, like models of cars. But just because some things are more difficult to do well doesn't mean that they should never be attempted. If you look at TV, you don't see cooking shows about people serving hot dogs from a cart. Nor do you see sports shows about people walking down stairs. Readers didn't care about your Gatsby quotes? Maybe you didn't use them correctly or maybe you chose the wrong quotes or maybe your readers weren't too smart. Doesn't mean they were right or that your idea was wrong. Great writers (a category that doesn't include me; really, hackwork would be a lofty goal) don't write for their readers. They might write for one imaginary reader, but they write the books they need to write, and if they do it well, or well enough and with a passion, then readers will find the work. Now, having bloviated about that, how do I explain the fact that best-selling authors who obviously connect with zillions of readers have a writing style that I find unreadable? (I put down "The Da Vinci Code" halfway through the first sentence.) Why is bad writing–writing that is bad the standards of your column–successful? I don't know.and I wish I did. Might make for a good blog or something.
James–I don't think readers are stupider than they used to be. But we do have less reading time.
This is a post about what makes you look like a newbie. It doesn't say you can't look like a newbie. If you don't mind taking that risk, go for it!
Thanks, Anne. 'scues me . I gotta go reread my MS.
Roger–Hi neighbor! So great to see you here. People are telling me this is a helpful checklist. Remember it's stuff we all do when we're starting out.
Heh, great list!
Funny how many of those things I still see occasionally in mainstream, big-six published books. But I can certainly see why joe-public-just-starting-out-author can't get away with it.
*le sigh*
Ileandra–Oh, yeah. You'll see this stuff all over the place, especially in the classics. That's how we learned it in the first place. But those writers got in before the styles changed. Or they're so famous they can hit the bestseller list with their 3rd grade homework. I ditto your sigh.
The Great Gatsby killed me in High School. I ended up buying Cliff Notes just because it was so long and drawn out. By the time it ended, I wanted to shoot Daisy and the whole cast of characters. Lol. Being a newish author I can say I have committed a few of these and it is a learning curve. Great blog and I will be referencing this one often as I write.
Nicole–Welcome! LOL. Actually, The Great Gatsby is a novella, only 50,000 words long. But it's very complex in its storytelling. English teachers used it for high school students because it's short, but it's not easy. They used to choose George Elliott's Silas Marner for the same reason, but Silas Marner was about an old man, with no appeal to teens. I hope they don't teach either of them to kids any more. You need to be older to get into them. Absolutely: writing, like reading, is a long learning curve!
I love this post so much. If every writer read these simple things we would never be offended with excerpts on social media again. Some of the things I see sometimes. I know everyone starts somewhere, and I would never discourage anyone, but there comes a time when people either "get" it or they don't 🙂
Ryan–Thanks a bunch! Everybody makes these mistakes when they start out. But as you say, they need to learn to leave them behind if they want to be accepted as professional writers.
Thanks for all this very useful information. I am in the process of editing my second novel and reading through these useful tips has inspired me to make changes to quite a few chapters especially the first two where I introduced my characters.
phoenix–I'm so glad this post helped you with your editing! That's what we do it for. Introducing characters is one of the toughest parts of writing a novel.
I wish everyone writing novels, not just newbies, read this. Great post. Thank you. When I was starting out, I was perfect in every way. Yeah. Not so much.
Maureen–Oh, yes! Me too. The first time I got a call from an agent and she offered suggestions, I said "No. Absolutely not. That book is finished. I don't want to change a thing!" I was soooo clueless.
I see a lot of newbie and self-published novelists (more on this in a moment) who use their first novel to take a stand on something. That's fine, if you're trying to attract an audience that cares about the same things you do – and sees the world through the same filter. It's not-so-good if you're writing in a genre like romance where your reader could care less about "issues". For example, I write 18th C Colonial/PreRevolutionary historical romance. I could make all my characters fervent patriots, but I have more fun creating characters that are a bit ambivalent/uncertain at times. I suspect my readers enjoy them more, too, since they are more realistic.
The ONLY reason I said self-published earlier is because I see it more often in self-published novels – including some very good ones. I suspect it's hard to find a publisher/agent if you insist on using your writing as your personal soap box.
Mary Jean–VERY good point. Soap-box novels need to be written by highly trained professionals if they're going to work. So a first novel that's got an agenda is usually going to scream "amateur" at the reader. And yes, most agents and publishers won't touch a novel that's going to alienate half the potential readership with partisan or crusading rhetoric.
Aren’t all of us still on the road, making new mistakes after having learned not to make the old ones? 🙂
Sadly, the contemporary reader will change next week, next month, next year. If we try to grab hold of the reader and not let her go (while not to be encouraged in person, mind you!) seems the best way to go. Never bore, always entertain.
Great list, Anne.
Roland–You’re so right. Every time I think I have collected a full set of mistakes, I find I’m just starting to collect a whole new kind. I think you’ve got the best advice there: don’t be boring. Always think of your reader!
Thank you for such an in depth post. I’m sharing with my friends.
Nancy
Nancy–I’m glad it helps. Thanks for sharing!
Written stories before but currently writing my first ‘proper’ novel (gawd, could I sound any more green?!) Another author shared this on a facebook group and just, yes!
1) Show-offy prose? Hell my Facebook weather statuses used to be all ‘dark, foreboding, menacing heaps of smoky grey hanging low in the steely sky’. That has, thankfully, gone!
4), 5), 6) and 10) Oh god. I sense revisions tonight. Many, many revisions.
That scene where one of my MC’s wakes up, checks his phone, doesn’t get a message and heads to the bathroom? That might not progress the storyline as much as I thought.
Having him stumble across a dark room, head through the doorway, walk up each step and trip over the cat at the top? Might not be key to the plot.
13,500 before he even meets the other MC? It ain’t You’ve Got Mail, there’s probably some cutting to be done.
All I can say is thank you, definitely a much needed reality check from this end of the experience scale!
Catriona–I decided to retweet this post from the archives last night and it looks as if it was a good decision. I’m hearing from lots of new writers who say the same things you’re saying here. And that’s not surprising. We ALL do this stuff when we’re starting out. But it’s so much nicer when you figure out what not to do before you send out that ms. to dozens of agents. Keep working at it. Now you’re ahead of the game!
At the risk of having something thrown at me for even mentioning it — you didn’t discuss “Telling, not showing.” There always has to be a balance between the two — but so many beginners tell, tell, and tell…. As IO work with beginners, I find so many — even those who have heard it repeatedly — who don’t know the difference between showing and telling, or when to use one and not the other.
Ardien–“Show don’t tell” needs its own blogpost. 🙂 Yes, newbies do a lot of telling, but they can also do way too much showing. 10 paragraphs describing a police officer’s uniform, facial expression and weaponry are often a very tedious way of saying. “The guy’s a cop.” So there has to be a balance. And yes, the problem is people don’t know what the phrase really means. Too complex to attack here, but I’ll be blogging about it sometime in the future.
Good information, well presented and a good post, but when you talk about proofreading and all, I cringe, because there really really are too many places in here where you clearly didn’t. I was very distracted while trying to read this by the lack of a space between the period at the end of a sentence and the first word of the next sentence. Now mind you, I’m not slamming you. I know you can edit your post, so you might want to go in and correct those and then delete this comment of mine. You are, after all, dispensing wisdom on looking smart, and in the process, you are looking… not-smart. I’m just pulling a friend aside and whispering “Just so you know, dear, there’s a bit of toilet paper on your shoe.” Just trying to help. Because your message is great! Good blog post! And feel free to delete this comment of mine, that’s fine.
Josie–This post is over two years old and it has been moved from a Blogger blog to WordPress, so all the formatting has been discombobulated. I’m in the process of reformatting over 300 posts. Each one takes a minimum of two hours to cut from WP, paste into Word, strip of formatting, reformat, then pray everything goes through. Often it doesn’t, so then I have to cut again, put it in Notepad, which strips all the links and often takes 8+ hours to redo. This has nothing to do with proofreading. It’s tech, which is making my life a living hell. I have to give up my new book, all my writing and everything else in my life to spend 10 + hour days redoing all this stuff. Which pays nothing. Sorry you were offended.
Prologues, which are kind of a subset of 4), particularly in fantasy where they are used to set-up the world. But again, readers don’t care. By and large, they want to meet the protagonist and get to the real conflict. A number of readers don’t even read prologues. But new fantasy writers cling to them because they exist in so many of the fantasy books they grew up on.
Ciara–I have written many, many posts on the pesky prologue. 🙂 Agents hate them. And I did a poll where about 70% of readers admitted to skipping them. But they are still very popular in some genres, especially epic fantasy. I think that is, as you say, because they have been a part of the genre for so long. It seems to be what a lot of those readers expect.
Dialog, and dialog tags, are where I always spot the newbie writer. I go back and look at some of what I wrote early on and oh boy was it bad. Said may be invisible to readers but not if, like I did, you use it on 15 consecutive lines of uninterrupted dialog. At that point, it’s just kind of silly.
Frank–Yup. #6 is a biggie. Dialog tags are tough. You really have to read your stuff out loud to realize when you’ve got too many ‘”he said, she said” tags.
Learning to write action instead of “said” takes time. It sure did with me. It seems clearer to say, “‘Who are you’, she said, sinking into the bubble bath” instead of just “‘Who are you?’ She sank into the bubble bath” with no tag. That’s because we’ve never noticed it in good writing. That’s what’s actually “invisible.”
Oh, yes, learning how to tag dialog with action rather than “said” took me a while. I had another piece, after I realized how awful using said so many times was, where I replaced “said’ with other words. He replied, he stated, he asked, he questioned, he moaned. It was more ridiculous than the said version.
Grasping good dialog action was probably the hardest lesson for me to learn, one I still catch myself messing up on.
Frank–Those creative “said” words are what I call “Tom Swiftlys”. They can be pretty hilarious. And always take us out of the story. Unfortunately, some authors never learn. I’ve read some trad pubbed books with some awful dialogue tags.
Refreshing and funny article, thanks. I agree with most everything, except the steering of new writers away from the omni POV, as though it’s the preserve of the Classics and the “experts”.
Writing is an art form and you don’t tell painters to stick with the crayons or the pencils when there are other media available to use, you try the full spectrum. I think there is a tendency to dumb down a new writer’s expectation of their own abilities to do better than writers that have gone before them. It’s as easy to write a boring book in Third or First as it is in Omni. People are led to think that by playing it safe they are writing a better book, but that won’t ever be true.
Kevin–The problem with omniscient POV isn’t that it’s boring. It’s that it’s usually confusing and tough to write without making an unreadable mess of your scenes. Most beginning writers use omniscient because they haven’t learned how. to show what’s going on through the eyes of one narrator.They hop in and out of heads around the room and leave readers scratching their heads. (And hitting the delete button.)
If something is very hard to do well, it’s advisable for beginners to stay away from it. A beginning skater shouldn’t attempt a triple rotation axle and beginning golfers don’t join the pro tour. There is a learning curve in everything. I suppose you could call it discrimination, but I think it’s just common sense.
There’s nothing *wrong* with head-hopping and murky writing. You just won’t get many readers. But some writers are hobbyists writing just for themselves. They can write their books in Wingdings if they want. Nothing wrong with writing for your own amusement as long as you don’t expect anybody to read it.
Hi Anne,
Omni POV and Head hopping are not the same thing. No more than ice skating and falling down are the same thing. Though inevitably if you go ice skating there is a constant likelihood that you will fall down, so I take your point on a practical level. But assuming that great writers are trained like great ice skaters is a mistake. Writing is more like dancing than ice skating. Some people are born to dance, while others have the ability to learn how to do it well. Assuming all new writers belong to the second cohort is the problem where I see a certain dumbing-down of the writer’s expectation of their ability to surpass those who have gone before. The rewards for writing good Omni are greater for the writer and the reader than in close third and first, which limit the scope of insight and experience that can be infused with the words. The fact that it was once the accepted norm indicates that it is the default / natural storytelling narration mode, and yes, while it takes ability and clear vision to make it work well, that should not deter the ambitious writer from attempting it.
From a literary point of view, a gifted “hobby writer” with vision is worth ten “serious writers” playing it safe. And let’s face it, not many writers these days are going to make a living wage from the craft, so it’s all subjective when it comes to labels.
I need someone to invent an app wherein my computer will refuse to type ‘very’ and ‘just’—I just need this very much. I don’t want some program to tell me I did it—I want some program to refuse me doing it! 😉 Great blog, Anne!
T. T–If you hear about that app, let me know! I have a terrible “just” habit. Did a FB wordcloud that showed your most used words recently. Mine was “just”. *hangs head in shame*. 🙂
I’ve been trying to help my son get his first novel published and it contains many of these red flags, but he is convinced that even though I have four published novels under my belt, two volumes of poetry published by a well respected press and thirty years of teaching college writing I don’t know get fiction. So I finally decided to let him publish as is and see what happens (trying to push through as many minor editorial suggestions as I can).
I’ve learned since I have to write six or seven drafts myself before I see some obvious mistakes, it’s hard to convince writers bent on publishing in two drafts that their babies are flawed.
Philip–Sometimes people need to fall on their own faces in the mud to find out that mud is slippery. It’s the curse of being older and wiser that we can see them about to fall and not be able to help. The book will join the “tsunami of crap” that self-publishing has created, and then sink under a few bad reviews and no sales. Then one day your son will come to you after a Eureka moment. “Dad! I just figure out something! Books need EDITING!! Wow!” And, being a nice dad, you will hold your “I told you so’s” until later. Sigh.
This is an awesome post packed with info. thanks.
Welcome!
Just because my vocabulary is poor, and I barely speak English, and I cannot always find the right word, doesn’t mean that being wordy is a bad thing. Same with word choice and grammar mistakes. Of course, I will straightforwardly tell the agent I send my manuscript to that English is not my strong point.
Tora–You are very brave to be writing in a language that isn’t the one you grew up with! Most Americans can’t even speak a second language. But do be aware that agents aren’t teachers. They only get paid if they can sell your book, and if the work isn’t polished and ready to go, they won’t take it on. You may find you get better results if you write in your own language and hire a translator, or employ an editor before you start querying agents.
Guilty as charged for cliched opener (funeral) – although I was heartened to see a funeral opening scene in a trad pub bestseller recently – guess that author didn’t get the memo, either. I have not had a chance to peruse all 119 comments here so I am probably not the first to add another big boo-boo that I have since rectified: using a cheesy DIY book cover. Also – thanks for mentioning Mooderino. He’s a good curator of writing-related info. I follow him on Twitter but have better luck plucking his posts out of the torrent by following him on Scoop.it.
Lissa–There’s a reason we have cliches–they work so well. The trouble is they’ve worked for a lot of writers before you. I’ll never forget the guy I took to see Hamlet for the first time and he stomped out saying “I don’t know why Shakespeare is considered such a great writer. That thing was just one cliche after another!’ 🙂
I didn’t mention anything about self-publishing because my advice to newbies about self-publishing is: don’t. Get several books under your belt and edit the heck out of them before you choose a publishing path.
Mooderino is great!
Thanks Anne! I especially appreciated your comments on internal monologues. My characters tend to be introspective but I’m learning to get them out in the world doing something!
Your section on episodic writing was also helpful as my background was in screenwriting and I’ve written a ton of fan fiction based on my favorite soap opera so I need to make sure I have one integrated story.
Jack–Internal monologue was my biggest problem when I began writing novels, because I started out writing plays. No internal monologue. So I kept doing way too much showing and not enough telling. (Yes, I had the opposite problem from many beginners.)
Episodic storytelling is usually a problem for all newbies, because we start with shorter pieces. One big story arc is hard to maintain. But even TV shows are doing it now, with one arc per season. I think fanfic is a good way to start out and get your feet wet as a writer. Imitating something that works is a great way to learn.
A great list, made especially great by the fact that I don’t appear to be doing any of them (any more). I think the biggest mistake I made when writing my first novel was to write it without a plan. I literally did not know what was going to happen from one page to the next, and it was a roller coaster ride of nine drafts (or re-writes, if I’m honest). Every writer has their own way of working of course, but I think it should be obvious that the author, as master or mistress of the characters’ destinies, should have a fairly good idea of how how the story is to play out before detailed work commences.
David–Isn’t it nice to see a list like this and realize you’re doing things right? There will be arguments between outliners and “pantsers” as long as there are writers. Some authors like to be surprised by their characters every day and others need to have a detailed plan. But I think most of us do something in between. I do a rough outline when I start out and then usually throw it out entirely by the time I’m halfway through. 🙂
Almost navigated this list without tripping! I do have a question, though.
In beginning with setting, if the setting is almost another character itself, does that change the rule? If oppressive heat and humidity hover over the other characters, cause delays, irritate antagonists, etc. is it okay to introduce at least some of it and its effects early on? Also, with a MC who naturally stops and notices weather, because he is slightly balmy, himself, is it not important to mention that a lot, even in the beginning?
Katharine–As I said in today’s post, these are guidelines, not rules. If you break a “rule” do it for a reason. And you’ve given some great ones. I started my latest novel with a sentence about the weather, because it was important to the plot. Setting IS important, and we want to feel it as well as see it. Just make sure the story is in there too. 🙂
Thanks! I just knew it! I love your open, vigorous advice style. It inspires trust.
Fabulous post, Anne, and completely true. I can’t tell you the number of acquaintances who self-pub and beg for reviews, and when I read, I just wish they’d spent more time learning a few rules and getting good crits from experienced writers instead of flying out of the gate, sure they’re going to be the next big thing.
Lexa–So true. The biggest problem with the Ebook Revolution is that so very many newbies rushed out to publish novels that never should have seen the light of day. Most successful novelists have some early attempts locked away in file drawers, but that’s where they have always stayed. Now new writers inflict them on the public and that will keep them from ever becoming successful.
I’d like to speak up for episodic storytelling. It’s only recently that people have become insistent on a single overriding plot arc. This fad may be the result of imitating the plots of feature movies. Often the Wizard of OZ is cited as an example of the perfect plot, but the movie is meant not Frank Baum’s episodic series. Personally I find the Oz series overly episodic. As Anne Allen says here in this article, It’s important to recognize that episodic plots aren’t wrong, but they should be done with awareness. It helps to read books with episodic plots. I generally prefer episodic because in single arc, the climax is often too predictable. And If the story is truly single arc, why must the reader slog through 100,000 words? A book can have an episodic plot and still count as a novel: Winesburg Ohio, I Robot, and Asimov’s Foundation. Modern epic fantasy remains episodic: RR Martin, Kate Elliot, and Robin Hobbs.
Lizzie–The kind of episodic storytelling I’m talking about is the kind that doesn’t have a story arc at all. Epics are always “episodic” in a sense because there’s a long series of obstacles to be overcome, whether you’re talking about the Odyssey or The Wizard of Oz. But the characters have an overall goal. Odysseus wants to get home to Penelope and Dorothy wants to get home to Auntie Em.
Beginning writers often don’t have an overall goal for their characters. They’re really writing a series of interconnected short stories. That can be done–as Sherwood Anderson did with Winesburg Ohio–but this is something a beginner can’t usually carry off. .
I dunno. What I personally find distracting is the UNDERuse of dialogue tags nowadays. Everyone’s picking up and putting down their coffee cups and wandering around the room and stroking their chin constantly, when they could just have “said” and been done with it. And the ping-pong for multiple paragraphs where you have to go back and count to figure out who’s talking now. Dialogue tags, like adverbs, aren’t evil.
Also, first-person POV (multiple first-persons) is very popular in romance, as is deep third-person multiple POV. I guess I’d say, check your genre.
I published my first-ever fiction, and it did pretty well. Something like 100K sold of that book so far in English, German, and audio, and it even got nominated for an Audie. Not to say I didn’t get better. Let’s hope so, anyway. Not every first ms has to live in a drawer, although you’d better be prepared to edit the heck out of it. Improving is the name of the game, for sure. Never-ending journey!
Rosalind–You’re right that first person POV is more and more popular in romance (especially YA romance) and pretty much required in chick lit. I use it myself. This post is a couple of years old and I should update. “Deep” third person is a newish term, although it’s always been around as a form of third person limited.
I agree about the tagless dialogue where you lose track of the speaker. Very annoying. Fads always go a little too far and then need to be reined in.
Congrats on having such success with a first novel! It does happen. Did with Harper Lee, too. 🙂
I really liked this post! Thanks a lot! 🙂
Fairy–Thanks for stopping by!
Interesting post that makes me sigh in relief I’m only guilty of #3 which I actually do to my books on purpose. I do try to make the dialogue understandable and the hopping is usually between already established and/or recurring minor characters. I’m fully conscious doing so is a newbie trap but trying to force the plot of an epic fantasy to be 100% in 1st person gives me bad memories of when I read the 5th Harry Potter novel several years ago. I really love Harry Potter and I cried at least once when I read the 7th novel but the 5th book should have been axed by 1/3rd and removed the tireless mental diatribe of Harry whining about Voldemort sending bogus mental messages into his head when he was fully unconscious of being mentally connected to him until the finale.
If the book had removed the repetitive whining and added more scenes from the viewpoint of some members of the Order of the Phoenix I would have liked the book a lot more. I think the only thing that encouraged me to get to the finale was because Dolores was such a great villain.
When I wrote the first draft of the 1st book of my series I wrote a lot of tiring diatribe of supporting character’s POV with info dumping. The text bored me to write and after writing 7 pages I just turned the computer off that night and went on with my life for a few days to blow the steam. I read just one page of the text and didn’t shed a tear after deleting the entire chapter in one go. I cut to the chase in chapter one with an argument instead.
Actually taking a look at all of the opening clichés none of my books ever begin that way. A funeral can be an interesting plot opener if done correctly but I would feel bored writing any of the other clichés on the list. In most of the books from my series they always start with two characters arguing with each other.
I can’t stand poetic prose. I believe there is a place for it in literary fiction or poetry books but I try to avoid it. I heavily enjoy reading British 18th century fiction but dislike excessively colorful prose for contemporary fiction books. I think Fahrenheit 491 has a great dystopian premise but I wanted to smash my face on a desk when it depicted shoving a plastic tube into the stomach of the main character’s wife who popped some sleeping pills like a magical serpent that sucked the venom from the mouth of sleeping beauty. Blegh! The book is otherwise great albeit a short read but I hated that scene. To top it off the book wastes almost 5 pages with that art fest when I would have preferred if they chopped it short and expanded the protagonist’s mental anguish that his marriage was falling apart.
I’m glad I finished 6 books; I tended to info dump at first along with writing hectic grammar. As I gained more experience spotting problem sentences faster than before I feel like it’s easier to write. I still have a tendency to repeat words in nearby paragraphs but now that I am conscious of the problem it’s easier to find clever ways to making the same idea across with different words or chopping off unnecessary sentences altogether.
I really enjoyed this post and read a few other posts from your blog.
Nancy–Epic fantasy has a set of rules all its own. The omniscient “storyteller” voice is generally considered standard. It gives an archaic feel and allows you to span many generations. First person works best in more limited personal stories and romances. We learn more with each book we write. Thanks for stopping by!
Well I am glad I have read this post as I am a newbie for sure in writing the cozy mystery. I think I have way too much backstory in it, and I have it way too long and too many fancy words in it. It even makes me cringe to read it so how would a reader actually buy it and read it if I can’t myself. am going back in to fix it so it is marketable and readable to a buyer as I am on a series and this is the first book in the series, so thank you for the helpful tips. it is appreciated very much. any help is valuable to me.
Michelle–Best of luck! We all start with a sh***y first draft, as Anne Lamott said. Learning to write strong, lean, compelling prose is a long journey. The important thing is that you’re on the road. You can do it!
I’m guilty of several of these, especially in my earlier work. I’ve always liked those darn dream sequences. At the moment I’m trying to figure out a better way to open my current WIP. Even though I know better than to use it, the dream is still better (in my mind) than anything else I have come up with.
Mandy–Oh, those dream sequences! I can’t tell you how many I wrote. But if you start with them, the reader feels cheated. You can find another way that’s more honest. I’m sure you can. But don’t do it until you finish the book. That first chapter should be the final thing you polish when you edit.
Very, VERY, happy to have found this site (actually this morning) but with all the inter-linking and outer to great content, I basically spent the day reading. Thank you so much. I love this post. And with Number 2, ‘But be aware that third-person-limited narration (when you’re only privy to the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist) is the norm in modern fiction’ I see that most writer bloggers are pushing this too, yet, any top book I read, from New York’s bestsellers etc to new books by say, Colum McCann etc, hardly any use deep pov, some use it a little, but most are omniscient storytelling to a point. I love deep pov, or limited, but find it rare with highly promoted books. Is this a publisher thing?
Stephen–Good question. I was amazed that Where the Crawdads Sing had a sloppy sort of omniscient narration that wobbled back and forth between third person limited and “God’s Eye” omniscient viewpoints. One bestselling novelist I know phoned me after she’d finished reading Crawdads, saying “Where was this poor woman’s editor?” But hey, the book became a massive mega-seller. That style of Victorian narrative voice has not returned to the contemporary mysteries or women’s literary fiction I read. Colum McCann can get away with anything because he’s Colum McCann, but I’m not sure a beginner would have a warm reception to an omniscient voice. I don’t know about publishers, but I can tell you that most agents still look on third person limited as standard.
And I do prefer reading it too (I read and re-read George RR Martins ASOIAF so often due to this form of writing.) But I have about 10 novels by my bed, all published 2020 and not one is third limited. Some, like the brilliant Old Drift, do have it, the rest are omniscient. So, as a first time novel writer following the bloggers and other writers’ advice to go very deep, it makes me wonder how the majority of books on top 10 lists, avoid this all together. Is this the reader, contemporary reader, letting us know what they want on the page? And actually yes, I agree about Crawdads, there are about 9 out of the 10 similar books beside my bedside that I wish I’d bowered from the library.
I don’t know what genre you read, and this hasn’t been my experience at all, so I can’t speak to your experience. But traditionally some genres use the omniscient voice. One is fantasy, especially epic fantasy like Tolkien and Martin. That uses the “chronicler” voice in order to sound old fashioned and of another era. Another is comic fiction or satire, like Carl Hiaasen or Douglas Adams. They use a kind of “stand-up comedian” voice.
Otherwise, the advice is always don’t copy the outlier quirks of bestsellers. A famous novelist can get away with things a beginner can’t. If you try to write books as long as George R.R. Martin’s the reader will only ask “Who R. R. You?” 🙂
Here’s a great piece on POV from former agent Nathan Bransford. He shows how tough it is to write omniscient POV well. Which is the #1 reason why new novelists shouldn’t try it. https://bit.ly/2ZcuCDl
Thanks for sharing such effective insight. You’ve given me food for thought, not only in terms of avoidance but also for continuous improvement. For example, my story might not take dozens of pages to dangle the hook, but can I sharpen it and present it earlier?
Personally, I’ve found it’s tempting to douse crisp narration with ethereally inspired prose, but too much of even the best spice ruins the meal. I have to work on this.
A tribute to As I Lay Dying is probably not a good model for beginners. So, dialogue capable of revealing desire and design becomes critical.
Episodic storytelling is a simple issue with complex ramifications. Sometimes what initially may seem disconnected is part of the protagonist’s conflict against the self, especially in literary novels. However, for beginning writers, it’s more likely what seems connected is actually not attached to the arc—at least from the typical reader’s point of view. Bottom line, as writers we must ask ourselves how events and conversations contribute to the story. If they don’t, they probably belong somewhere else.
Some writers’ comments in various forums regarding word counts seem to reflect a deleterious preoccupation that can lead to bad habits like dumping info. Dumping all the background info in early is like pulling back the hook before anything (or anyone) bites. While word counts are important, they shouldn’t dictate key elements of stories. On the other hand, flash fiction is a great tool for overcoming bad habits because it forces us to create with tight constraints. It hones the blade.
Maybe that “silly game in the 1960s” is why Stephen King hates adverbs so much: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Of course, he probably hates characters without flaws even more.
Poor grammar, clichés, and wordiness can definitely make an otherwise brilliant piece look unprofessional. They underscore the need for multiple sets of eyes. Although I have editing experience, I know I miss things—especially things I’ve written. I can read my own writing ten times and still not see what should be an obvious error. Unfortunately, that same part of our brain that so effectively deducts and extrapolates also tricks us into seeing things that aren’t there. Thanks again!
Jeff–Adverb-hating didn’t start in the 1960s. Mark Twain said “If you see an adverb, kill it.” 🙂
Literary writing can have more of what you call “ethereally inspired prose” so rules do vary by genre. You don’t have to kill all your darlings. But modern readers expect less of the poetic stuff in fiction. Who knows if Faulkner would be published or read if he were beginning now? Not all progress is good.
I agree 100% about the current obsession with writing tens of thousands of words a day. I think it’s the real “road to hell” Mr. King talked about. I write slowly, but don’t have so much for my editor to delete, for which I’m sure he’s grateful.
Plots do need to take detours. Otherwise we’d never have those nice “red herrings” we need in mystery novels. But when the red herring turns into a red spaceship and takes us off into another galaxy, that’s when we need to reconnect with our initial story arc. Or if we don’t have an arc, get one.
Anne, thanks for the feedback. Twain is one of my favorites. The most important factor in my development as a writer is the reading I’ve done and the related journals and other documents I’ve maintained regarding that reading. I started with a list of award winners and those that should’ve won. I’ve also read works of criticism and chosen some books simply because I knew they would challenge my perspectives and provoke thought, regardless of genre. Sites like Goodreads have made it easier. Thanks again!
“It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”
– Mark Twain