Common New Writer Mistakes: 13 Writing Mistakes to Avoid! | iWriterly

new writers often make the same mistakes in this video we will talk about the 13 and newbie writer mistakes and how you can avoid them hey you book nerds I'm Meg Latour I'm a writer and a formerly worked out of 8 literary agency in this I read early video we're going to be talking about the top of 13 new be a writer mistakes before we get in today's content hit that subscribe button and ring the bell if you haven't already here on a riley we create videos about how to be a successful modern-day author this is not an exhaustive list of every single mistake a newbie writer can make but these are some of the most common things that you will come across number one writing a story idea or trope that stale or has been done many times before when I think of trope I think of like scenarios that are often done in certain genres so fantasy genre the chosen one and adult romance it's the billionaire romance where the woman falls in love with the billionaire man usually and fantasy elemental magic was big for a while they were big for a while vampires had their heyday a bunch of years ago rumor has it they're coming back but at the time maybe mid 2000s a vampire trope was a vampire falling in love with a high school student magical boarding schools are very popular courtesy of Harry Potter newbie writers often write stories with troops that are overdone because they usually are reading older books they're not actively reading usually the books are coming out this year two years ago five years ago you know they might be reading the books that came out in the 2000s or maybe the 90s and so these tropes that are stale they've been done many times before and agents and editors and readers don't really want to see these new writers are still interested in them because again maybe they're reading a lot of older books and you're like hey I'll do a unique spin on that when maybe it really wasn't all that unique which leads nicely to number two writing or trope but not in a unique way so again this is the chosen one going in a heist a love triangle a quest these are tropes that have been done before but if you do them in a way that's exactly identical to books that are on the market or more likely popular books that are on the market you are going to earn a swift rejection number three is including too many line level cliches okay so let's clarify what tropes vs. cliches are and it might do a whole video on this topic in the future so tropes are things like the chosen one it's a scenario and a story that you can play out in a unique way a cliche is more like line level stuff so right knuckles on the steering wheel as a description to show that the Raider is anxious or scared another writer the character is anxious or your heart fluttering it's really overdone descriptions line level stuff that have been done to death and they really don't evoke imagery in the minds of the reader anymore again because they've been done so many times number four is telling versus showing and I swear I talked about this so much in my channel but it is an issue that 80% of writers I talk to they struggle with here are a few ways you can be accidently telling versus showing you could be telling how the character is feeling relationships between characters the weather setting all these things can be done through showing a lot of times within the scene itself you don't need to stop the dialogue or the seem to be like very close no you can just describe it characters wearing cloaks and therefore isn't fantasy so therefore the reader knows it's cold outside or maybe they kick off snow from their boots as they walk inside the inn you know what the weather is like because you're seeing the character kicking off the boots meanwhile we see how the characters acting are they respectful of their surroundings we're learning a lot about the setting and the characters through showing number five flowery writing this is a really big newbie writer mistake and guys I've done it myself now I don't know if it's like all writers we are flexing our writer Lee muscles and we kind of want to be like literary fiction but we're writing genre fiction I don't really know why it is but so many writers especially when I was a numerator and I was critiquing my fellow writers works because again it's so important to have critique partners in exchange and constantly improving their craft but we all dump the sources into our writing and pretend like we're using these words properly or that maybe readers would even know understand what these words are if you're writing middle grade fiction you can't be using crazy vocabulary you have to write to that audience so and this is nothing against literary fiction and if you write literary fiction you want to learn more about it we are not the place to learn we talk about genre fiction on right early so if you're shoving chewing adjectives and adverbs into your writing or using too many big vocabulary words you might be having an issue with flowery writing don't be dumping a thesaurus onto your manuscript and definitely check out our video about filler words to remove from your novel number six is wordy writing this kind of goes with the whole filler words things so maybe used to me filler words like very that just a lot of times you remove those words from your writing and the meaning of the sentence is exactly the same those are filler words because they don't really change the meaning of the sentence filler words often also encompasses things like adjectives and adverbs so words that end in ly a lot of times those words aren't really necessary if you have wordy writing maybe you don't struggle with filler words maybe you just are very economical in the way that you write maybe takes you three sentences to convey something that can be told in one sentence or maybe you're just a long-winded person and your book is too long and I'm looking at myself because my first completed manuscript was two hundred thousand words for a young adult fantasy most young adult fantasy novels should be somewhere around was 75 80 thousand to like a hundred thousand is kind of top range so I was like a hundred thousand words outside of the range for that age category in John rabe so if you have wordy writing you might just be an over writer in which case you got to get some critique partners in there and edit back those words or maybe you're not very economical and again a critique partner could be like as our example before where you can just say that in one sentence or you just may need to do a search through your word document or whatever word processor you use and search for things like very just that number seven assuming your book is the next bestseller so many newbie writers especially when they're querying claim to be the next JK Rowling first of all humility people we want to be humble and professional when we're querying literary agents because we want to be conveying ourselves as professionals people that are good to work with and I would say just focus less on what other writers are doing and focus more on your own writing and how it can be improved what I have seen I mean like 99% of the time the writers would make these bold claims of being like the next Jake rowling or the next Stephen King usually needed the most help with their writing I think there's a level of blindness to the flaws in our own work when you first start writing when you first start writing maybe you have parents that say I think I should bring it on and maybe you don't have supportive parents maybe at school and your English class you were the best writer but that doesn't mean that your essay writing is going to convey to book writing you need it's a skill that you need to practice and book writing you really can't be taught you have to figure out how you as a writer write books number 8 the POVs aren't handled well pov usually first two point of view of the person narrating a given chapter so if you write adult fantasy a lot of times there's a bunch of POVs so maybe you have six different characters in the each narrate a different chapter I'm thinking like Game of Thrones they have a zillion POVs most of the time literary agents and industry pros recommend that newbie writers do not write multipy ovie or if you do write multi POV most recommend less than six and ideally even fewer than that I would say like no more than two to three and so what I mean by POVs weren't handled very well well maybe there isn't a clear distinction of when one person POV starts and stops versus the next one begins and a lot of writers start POVs at the sort of a chapter so chapter two is this character chapter three is this character but maybe even mid chapter swaps and there isn't a clear scene break or maybe you head hop and that's very confusing gives me whiplash and personally as a reader I strongly just like head hopping I like the clear distinct break between chapters personally but again that's just my personal preference another way that you might be botching up the POVs is there's not a distinct voice between the two so if you're writing a third person limited POV for example which is the most popular I would say for multi POV books you have to have distinct voices between your characters Sally in Chapter one and Jim on chapter two and or on chapter three they all have to have different distinct voices because they're three different people if they don't have to sync voices and they all sound the same that's an issue number nine is writing a story that lacks stakes or conflict stories are made of conflict without conflict there is no story this is especially true for plot driven stories conflict supplies the stakes and odds which leads to the rising and falling action which is a critical part of structure of most books and the three-act plot structure is probably the most popular example of a structure for books but there's many different ways you can structure novel the three o'clock structure is just one of those in addition without conflict characters can't grow and change throughout the story which is really crucial in character-driven stories number 10 too little or too much description on one end of the spectrum is the too little description which are things like the floating hats so you have all these characters talking back and forth to each other but the reader doesn't necessarily know where the story is taking place who the characters are what the conflict is and why they should care so you need to ground the reader and the scene they need to know where things are happening and they need to know who the characters are on the opposite side of that is when you have info dumps info dumps is where we don't even know where the story is taking place but you are just plopping on all the background information for your characters or for the world at large there needs to be books we need to have dialogue and action on scene and character building and setting all those things need to happen but you need to kind of collaboratively include through things in your writing you can't do just a setting and then just the dialogue and then just the description you need to blend those things smoothly together number 11 is mimicking of writing style from a different time this kind of goes along with point number one so writers are often readers we should be reading a lot to learn how the greats are creating novels and how we can improve our own writing just kind of a foundation level now if a writer is reading something like Lord of the Rings which is published in what the 30s versus something like never night a book I praise all the time on this channel they're very different writing styles so one was written again for the 30s and one was written for you know now I think never I was published in 2016 either way even reading something like Robert Jordans The Wheel of Time series one of my all-time favorite series that was written in the 90s the writing style is very different from today's writing style so be very mindful that you are reading books that are published recently because the modern-day reader is different than the reader of five years ago ten years ago twenty years ago they're not the singing and you want to write for an audience that would enjoy your book number twelve is a story that lacks a hook basically what makes your story unique think about your elevator pitch can you summarize your book in one sentence I'll see if I can do this for like never night because again I praise this book all the time on my channel let me pull it out this is never Nate basically it falls as character Mia who goes to an assassin school and it's kind of like Harry Potter and that they're learning and they're taking classes but if you don't do well in class you die that's luck in my opinion that's how I would describe the hook of this book so what a soak of your book what makes it unique or your character just ambling about in the forest going on a random quest it really doesn't have any connections to anything or the end of the book that's a problem I feel like a distinct hook often indicates the writer knows the plot of their story think about if you can summarize your book in a single sentence if you can't that might indicate you have some editing to do number thirteen the book has no plot this again I'm coming goes with our previous point in number twelve but what is the story about what if you're going in a quest if you like quest stories are kind of a trope they're fun Lord of the Rings the rights of quest so what is bringing them from point A to point B where do the characters need to go who's the antagonist what are the stakes so the character the protagonists usually want something and they try for it they don't get it they try again they fail again and then there's like this gradual building of stakes the end where they may or may not get that thing in the end depending on if there's a happy ending and so on but what does the character want who is the antagonist who are they up against every scene should move the characters closer to the resolution of your story so you don't want just kind of scenes in the middle of the book that are just for funsies there should be a purpose to the scene and I think the bass Raiders have multiple purposes to every single scene so maybe it will go with the quest scenario the first class they are searching for the treasure map I don't know I feel like pirates let's detergent my up so maybe I'm looking for a treasure map and while they're searching for a treasure map two characters have a dialogue and they're starting to fall in love in the dialogue the one character has a realization aha that was the clue and thus that's where we need to go to get the map and so and that scene had a multi-purpose you saw these two characters bonding potentially falling in love forming a romance for later on in the book and then aha we know where to find this treasure map really weird example but hopefully guys get the idea but no scene should just be because you like the scene you want it in there every single scene should have a purpose that leads to the resolution of your story and that's it for today so thank you for tuning in to this episode of I write early all about newbie writer mistakes if you liked what you saw give this video a thumbs up it lets me know you liked this type of content and want more and if you guys want to hear more about newbie writer mistakes these are just kind of the top 13 that I thought of when I was write my notes through this video but if you guys want me to dive more deeply into this topic do let me know in the comments below if you're new here welcome please consider subscribing I post one or two writing related videos per week be sure to connect with me and my other social media platforms I'm on Twitter and Instagram I also have a monthly newsletter book nerd buzz which includes exclusive insiders and giveaways for subscribers when you subscribe to the newsletter you'll receive free copies of how to format your manuscript for submission which is a Word document template and a crane checklist all the links are in the description below that's it for today as always keep writing [Music]

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Keywords: writing tips, best writing advice, writing advice, writing mistakes, mistakes writers make, common writing mistakes to avoid, most common writing mistakes, common new writer mistakes, common mistakes new writers make, writing mistakes to avoid, creative writing tips, newbie writing mistakes, newbie writer, book writing, biggest mistakes first time writers make, biggest mistakes new writers make, how to write a novel, iwriterly, meg latorre, authortube

Id: hGExAtlHdCU

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 09 2019