Common Writing Mistakes - Are These Holding You Back
From Writing Success?
By
Marg McAlister
During the years that I’ve been teaching writing and participating in
writers’ critique sessions, I’ve seen some real talent. There are writers who
produce such sparkling prose that you know publication is only a matter of time.
There are others who have wonderful ideas, terrific plots and lively
characters—but who may never see their work in print. The reason? They are
making one or more writing mistakes that will cause an editor to toss their
writing aside. Often, when these mistakes are brought to the writer’s attention,
she makes comments like ‘I can’t believe I didn’t pick that up!’ or ‘Oh no, I
feel so stupid’.
It’s so easy to see those mistakes when they’re pointed out to us—but it’s
also far too easy to go on for years doing the same thing if we’re not alerted
to the problem.
Here are some of the most common writing mistakes. Read through them to see
if there’s a clue here about what might be stopping you from getting a ‘yes’!
Technical Mistakes—Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation
1. Changes in tense.
The writer starts in the present tense then slips into past tense or vice
versa. Sometimes this happens only once during the scene or story; sometimes the
tenses switch back and forth all the way through. Tip: Quite often this happens
after the writer has moved into the present tense to show the character’s
thoughts. For example:
Laura ran down the steps. She shaded her eyes and stared down the road.
There was a plume of dust at the bend. Is that Robin? Will he remember me?
She races off to meet the car, her heart leaping.
2. Changes in person.
The writer starts off in third person then slips into first person:
Laura was incredibly happy. She had never expected to see Robin again. Now
he was here, looking taller and more handsome than ever.
I flew into his arms. “Robin! You’re here!”
“Laura,’ he acknowledged stiffly. He didn’t return my hug.
Often this occurs at dramatic or emotional moments, when the writer tends to
identify more strongly with the viewpoint character. Sometimes, as with changes
in tense, it follows the use of the character’s thoughts.
3. Misuse of the apostrophe
This is an incredibly common mistake. If your manuscript is peppered with
apostrophes in the wrong place (or you leave them out altogether) you won’t
create a good impression. Some people seem to think that every word ending in
‘s’ should have an apostrophe in it—so you get odd constructions like this:
Laura recognized the suitcase. It was her’s all right, with it’s broken
clasp. She’d used it to store all of Robin’s letter’s to her.
In particular, learn to differentiate between the possessive pronoun its and
the contraction it’s. The possessive pronoun never has an apostrophe. (She
recognized its broken clasp.) The contraction it’s (which is short for it is or
it has) always has an apostrophe. It’s quite easy to work out which is which —
if you can substitute the longer form ‘it is’ or ‘it has’, then use it’s. If you
cannot substitute these expressions, then you are using the possessive pronoun
which does not require an apostrophe.
4. Spelling.
Your first resource is the spell check on your computer. However, this won’t
pick up everything—if you’ve made a typo that is also a real word (such as
typing ‘met’ instead of ‘meet’) the spell check won’t pick it up. Nor will it
pick up the use of ‘beach’ instead of ‘beech’, since both are real words. If you
know that spelling is a weakness, try to get a friend who is a strong speller to
check your work.
Mistakes in Style
1. Head-hopping.
The writer decides it would be nice if the reader could be privy to what was
going on in everyone’s mind, so hops blithely from one head to another. (I’ve
seen stories with half a dozen viewpoints in one page.) Sometimes it works to
let the reader know what is going on in the minds of two characters in a scene,
but use this very carefully or you can lose your reader. You’ll get much more
emotional punch into your work if you let the reader ‘become’ your viewpoint
character, seeing everything (and feeling everything) from one person’s point of
view.
2. Overuse of ‘As…’, ‘...as…’ and ‘...ing’
Check your work to make sure it is not sprinkled with sentences that begin
with ‘As…’ or ‘...ing’ words, or that have ‘as’ joining two actions. Usually
this has the effect of slowing the pace and setting the reader at a distance.
The participle construction (‘...ing’ words) has a particularly amateurish
flavour when placed at the beginning of a sentence. When you can, use
alternatives.
3. Overuse of qualifiers
Some writers like to use liberal doses of words like ‘very’, ‘extremely’,
‘fairly’, ‘somewhat’ and so on. This weakens your writing. Use strong verbs
instead. Rather than ‘he was extremely happy’, say ‘he was delighted’; instead
of ‘somewhat annoyed’ say ‘irritated’ or ‘irked’ or ‘furious’, depending on the
degree of annoyance!
4. Dull or stilted narrative.
There are lots of reasons for this one—some of them fit into pacing problems
(see following section) as well. However, if your writing seems flat, look at
these things:
Mistakes in Plotting and Pacing
1. Starting too early or having too much description in the early
pages.
Don’t feel you have to explain everything to the reader in the first two
pages—or even the first chapter. Yes, you should make it easy for the reader to
identify with the main character, and that means giving some pertinent
details—but don’t feel that you have to give a detailed description of what the
character looks like and long-winded descriptions of everything that led up to
the present situation. Weave details in at pertinent spots—and never dump in too
much information at once.
2. Pace too slow
Pace should be controlled through scenes. Create scenes with plenty of action
and conflict, then slow things down to let the character (and the reader) catch
his breath by using a ‘sequel’ - the aftermath of a scene, where the character
decides what to do next. If you need to speed things up, keep the sequel short.
If you want to slow things down, expand the length of the sequel.
If your story still seems to drag, look at these other things:
3. Lack of believable motivation.
It’s painfully obvious when the writer is forcing the characters to take
action simply because that’s what the plot dictates. Treat your characters like
real people. Allow them to behave and react in a way that suits their
personalities. (For example: don’t let your heroine fail to take action just so
you can place her in jeopardy, when any sensible human being would yell for help
or run like hell.) Don’t ever risk having your reader say in disgust ‘As if she
would really do that!’
4. Writing from an adult’s point of view in a children’s story
Many adults think they’d like to write for children. However, they forget
that kids identify with other kids. Your young readers don’t want to be looking
on from an adult’s point of view when the main character is involved in the
action. (Ask: whose story is this? The adult’s or the child’s?) Learn to look
through the eyes of a child. Plot your entire story from a child’s viewpoint.
5. Plots that go nowhere.
Beware ‘slice of life’ stories that are essentially scenes rather than
stories. Your story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. There should
be conflict and character growth. Make sure there’s a story question (your
reader keeps turning pages to find out whether the heroine does get her man (or
how she gets him) or if young Jack succeeds in finding out what was causing the
mysterious noises in the night….)
Mistakes in Editing and Polishing
1. Not leaving enough time to edit.
This is the number one problem with the work not only of beginners but
writers at all levels. The temptation to go quickly through that draft ‘one last
time’ so you can get it in the mail is almost overwhelming.
DON’T. Leave your short stories for a week. Leave your novels for at least a
month—the longer the better. You need to see your work with fresh eyes. If
you’ve just finished your story, you’re far too close to it to be objective.
You’d be doing yourself a favour to send it out to a few carefully selected
readers when you finish, before you even look at it again.
2. Glossing over plotting problems.
It’s easier to fix errors in style than to fix plotting problems. If you
strike problems with the plot, it can mean rewriting large chunks of the book.
This is painful, so writers avoid it whenever possible. They become ‘blind’ to
their own mistakes more because they don’t want to face the pain of a structural
edit than because they don’t recognize the problems.
The best remedy for this is to ask yourself: ‘Would I rather get a rejection
from an editor because of the problems I can see myself, or fix them now and
have a better chance of getting an acceptance?’ Even more pertinent: ‘Do I want
reviewers to point out the problems with the plot after the book is published,
or fix them myself now?’
These are just a few of the common mistakes that writers make. If you belong
to a critique group, or you exchange work with another writer, try identifying
these and other mistakes in each other’s work.
(c) Copyright Marg McAlister
Marg McAlister has published magazine articles, short stories,
books for children, ezines, promotional material, sales letters and web content.
She has written 5 distance education courses on writing, and her online help for
writers is popular all over the world. Sign up for her regular writers'
tipsheet at
http://www.writing4success.com/
