Five More Rookie Writing Mistakes
Back in March, I wrote an article about writing mistakes. I started that article talking about bowling, and the strangeness of trying to improve at an activity that has a metric for “perfect.”
In some ways, it can be comforting to embark on a journey with a clear destination (and terrifying to embark otherwise). In writing, your destination is entirely up to you. Are you writing a journal that no one will see? Are you trying to land a copywriter job? Are you hoping to finish your #NaNoWriMo draft before December? Are you finally posting a new article—after a month of unexplained silence—on a blog that was supposed to have weekly updates? You get to decide what success as a writer means to you.
As long as your idea of success isn’t perfection, at least. Perfect writing doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. Writing is an artform, art is always subjective, and nothing subjective can be perfected.
But you, as a writer, can adapt and improve. Every mistake you make is a chance to learn and sharpen your skill.
So let’s do that together. Here are five more rookie writing mistakes that we can avoid together.
Abusing adverbs
This single entry probably warrants its own full length post (which, if I ever write it, will be linked here). Adverbs are tricky, and I’m not of the opinion that they are always bad. But I do think they can be a crutch if you aren’t careful about when and how you use them.
In writing, every rule has an exception, but you have to know the rules really well before you can bend them. My rules for adverbs can be distilled to three main ideas.
Don’t modify a weak verb with an adverb; choose a strong verb instead.
E.g. Write “sneaked” instead of “walked quietly.”Don’t contradict a strong verb with an adverb that means the opposite.*
E.g. Don’t write “mauled gently.”Don’t make a strong verb redundant with an adverb that means the same.
E.g. Don’t write “mauled violently.”
*Some writers will suggest the few occasions it may be appropriate to use an adverb are when you are modifying a strong verb in an unexpected way. This is a topic I’ll further explain when I write my full post about adverbs.
Exposition dumping
This happens a lot in speculative fiction, where the world and setting are drastically different from reality, but I’ve edited realistic fiction that started right off with a long, monotonous explanation of the protagonist's entire biography. And I get it. You’ve spent so much time and energy crafting this world and these characters and you want the reader to see that effort and understand that your story wasn’t just thrown together in a few days. But don’t fall into the trap of unloading all the backstory all at once.
I’ve mentioned before how important it is to trust your readers. Exposition dumps are boring, which is bad, but they also suggest to your readers that you don’t trust them to make sense of your world or figure things out for themselves. It’s ok if what’s happening doesn’t make a ton of sense to your reader without a broader understanding of the world and the character. In many cases, that’s a good thing! You want your reader to have questions that drive them to keep reading.
Instead of giving the reader all the answers you think they need upfront, weave the information into the narrative. Feed your reader a steady drip of clues that come from the characters’ choices, their assumptions, their reactions to the world—and the world’s assumptions and reactions to your characters.
Relying on clichés
I want to start by clarifying that tropes and clichés aren’t the same thing. A trope can be used badly, sure, but using a trope isn’t bad, especially if you can use it in a new or unexpected way.
Clichés however, are pretty much always a bad idea. Clichés can be small, like an overused phrase, (for example “their lips met” to describe a kiss); Or maybe your protagonist is going to stare into a mirror after waking up on page 1, and you’ll use that opportunity to describe what they look like; Or maybe your chosen one protagonist doesn’t have much in the way of original character traits, and is nothing but a mash-up of other popular characters from successful franchises.
That last example is a good way to help you think about tropes vs. clichés. A chosen one protagonist isn’t a cliché, it’s a trope. How you execute that trope is what determines whether or not it’s cliché.
Another way to think about it: Tropes are famous landmarks in a destination city. Clichés are when you visit that landmark to take the same picture with the same pose as everyone else.
“Snowflake” writing
Perhaps the exact opposite of relying on clichés, snowflake writing is when you try so hard to ensure your writing is completely unique that it comes across as awkward or nonsensical.
Imagine writing a scene in which a character is preparing to step outdoors on a chilly autumn day. If I write: “his jacket sleeves gave birth to hands as he slid his arms through the corridors of insulating warmth,” you can bet it’s unlike anyone else’s work. It’s entirely unique. But it’s also awful and awkward. It’s adequate to say “he slipped into his jacket.”
Another way this can happen (especially in speculative fiction) is when a writer insists on inventing a new word to denote an object or idea that already exists. For example, if you’re writing a steampunk crime thriller, it’s fine to call a pistol a pistol. You don’t need to call them “prill launchers.” If your story features corpses coming back to life, the name “zombie” is preferable to something like “shamblers” or “grave dodgers.”
That’s not to say you can’t add some depth and dimension to your world by adding in some fun new slang terms, but don’t make those terms the primary terms you use to identify key information to your readers.
Calling it quits
Yes, in the most literal and obvious sense, if you quit writing completely, that means you won’t have new work to submit or publish. But that’s not quite what I’m referring to here.
Here’s a challenge: Find a YouTube channel that showcases an artistic endeavor, like a musician producing songs, an engineer making a silly invention, or a carpenter building a desk. The one thing they will all have in common is a process of revision and correction. Even if they don’t show that process (though many will) they all have one.
Inventors prototype. Filmmakers storyboard. Visual artists sketch. And writers draft.
If you call it quits after a first draft, your writing will never excel. That probably sounds pretty harsh, but the publishing world is a harsh place—or at least it can be. You need to mentally prepare yourself for many rounds of revision. The first draft you triumphantly finished may bear only a passing resemblance to the work you eventually publish. Take a large bite of humble pie and realize that you can’t call it quits until you’ve really put in the work to polish the piece.
No writer is perfect. The closest we can get is to keep pushing forward, and allow others to speak into our work to help us find and fix mistakes. My hope is that you, by reading this post, are helped to find and fix these rookie mistakes (that I still sometimes make).
