The 25 writing mistakes that scream amateur writer

hi there Oh Jericho Rogers we see a lot of manuscripts by first-time writers and too many of those manuscripts make mistakes that just scream amateur writers these are things that are easy for you to eradicate from your writing and your manuscript will 100% get better if you do eliminate those mistakes I'm Harry Bingham Jericho writers and it's dropped straighting okay mistake number one run-on sentences run-on sentences are two or more sentences joined by commas they are hard to read they scream amateur writer you can see even by the way that I've read that sentence that it's confusing to the eye it's confusing to the reader what you wanted there was periods or full stops that's a general sentence drawing by commas full stop they are hard to read full stop they scream as a writer or you could have is that hard treat and they scream as writer but what you don't want is joining sentences together with commas almost always that's the wrong thing to do almost always it's hard for the reader to read to just elevate them periods are free make use of them just take number two messing up your possessive pronouns I don't want to get all kind of grammar freak on you possessive pronouns it's just things like his hers it's all theirs here's an example of how it can go wrong the boy is urged their mounts on the horses gallops ever faster over the sand until their cloaks blew horizontally behind them I hope you heard it that as I was reading so whose cloaks are we talking about they're actually refers back to the last plural noun which is the horses and the horses presumably hunt wearing cloaks presumably the boys are but you know you as the writer know who you mean but the reader only has the words on the page to go on to make sure that you're referring back in a totally unambiguous way you have to rewrite your text then rewrite the text you can't allow that ambiguity to spoil the readers enjoyment of your story okay mistake number three eject eyeball overgrowth supposing that law sentence had looked like this the horses galloped ever fast over the hard flat unyielding golden endless sand it's just like too many adjectives and you don't it's like you're sort of pointing in part directions at once and the reader doesn't know what they need to take away from them so really it's up so you find using under tip but you know one or maximum two adjectives is almost always the way to go if in doubt prudent back you you'll always almost always strengthen the image you're trying to build mistake number four it's what I call flappy hand syndrome and this is where you know you've got a couple of people talking let's say and they're always rigea ting they're always scratching their face or picking their nose or shuffling their feet or nervously sipping their team or and it's like you're writing this as a writer because you've got this in your head and you're kind of imagining the dialogue um like minute by minute on the page and you think what they do scratch their heads I've got to write that down you don't have to write it down it could just be too much so you take this for example she looked nervous dabbing at her face with her clammy palms then wringing her hands in a circular movement and shifting her feet on the floor it just feels like why are you doing this why couldn't just say she looked nervous and move on in general less is more and if you read back your text and see what I call flappy hands syndrome taking place just prune it right back you'll almost never UM go too far you just don't need that song one exception maybe children's books where you need a bit of a bit more of that but really in general less is more that brings us to mistake number five forgetting really obvious words okay he raised his chin and brought it down again in a mark of ascent what do you mean what you mean is ignored it okay don't use these complex phrases where there's a simple obvious usable word in general if you can replace eight words by one you should always do so don't forget obvious words mistake number six a little bit more complicated is on there very important the VuPoint switcheroo so here's an example she felt nervous she could feel her palms starting to sweat and she could hear herself talking fast he wondered whether now is the right time to put his proposal and you can see that what I've done name the first paragraph is I mean her she's feelings she can hear herself talking fast we as the reader are in that character's head and all of a sudden next paragraph he's wondering and we're in his head and there's no sort of announcement of that and it's just too abrupt and it jolts the reader not just out of the character's head but out of the book itself and you don't want to do that so yes you can switch few points um but what you've got to do is you've got to do that great for you but sort of zoom out or the first cap is head and then zoom back into the second one's head you can't just do those a proper certain switches it's a real classic mistake of the sort of newer writer mistake number seven too much too fast so personal acquaintance great science fiction writer famously wrote a book called the left hand of darkness which is all about the world where is human life people um were neither male nor female they were basically a my friend and they came into season you know in different periods and there could be either male or female doing during that period but supposing that instead of personhood when one of the greatest kind of science fiction writers of all time I've written that supposes that her twin half-sister would convey a twin Huff's that's game how hop sister a metallic win had written that book she might written something like this so on this planet humans am Aphrodite and can be either male or female in season and you know if you put that up on page one chapter one kind of drain all the interesting mystery of the novel instead of having a wonderful unfolding mystery you've just selected that on the first page of the second page you've killed the mystery in the book so if you've got a great mystery tease it out let it go so opening joy is a very very slow revelation this take number eight bed on page one basically loads of books by by newer writers start with a character in bed if your book starts with a character in bed just be aware that like a huge number of books by new writers are doing the same thing and it's just it just feels like a cliche just avoid it try making setting for your book avoid the bed that's my simple one mistake number nine is nice and simple as well it's and it's okay it's easy to get this right for the manuscript was doomed an amateur writer had ruined its chances now you know that that was wrong don't you it's with an apostrophe stands for it is so it's easy to be it strophic pass it is easy it's easy and it's without an apostrophe means the thing belonging to it so an amateur writer head ruin its chances no apostrophe there because we're talking about the chance of the master of the thing belonging to it get that right especially don't make those sort of mistakes in the first few pages of a manuscript because any alert reader it's kind of thing this writer doesn't really know what they're doing without sort of mistake so it's a simple one it's easy to creep in no certainly don't let that problem appear anywhere in the first few pages mistake number 10 it's a main character Christ's emotion this is a kind of web on one of my books yeah it's some set over 50 years and hit two world wars and you know a lot of stuff happens in the book and I think each of my two main protagonists cried two or three times in my book and my editor just said to me Harry the character is quite right it's been 50 years you know it's been a long time and a lot of bad stuff has happened and just said it feels like too much crime and from a respawn of it it feels like too much crime so basically how much is going on in the pages of your book I really limits it The Crying male or female um one maybe twice in the whole book and how much stuff happens you can have lots of emotion but just just don't have the tears the waterworks can kill readers engagements read a please a cruel cruel bunch okay mistake 11 exclamation points you often find them and you shouldn't make you look like an idiot it's like laughing at your own joke and basically the rule here is just avoid exclamation marks maybe you can have one maybe two in every hundred thousand words you write but if you eliminate them completely that's absolutely fine two exclamation points no longer really feel like part of fiction the way it's written today just eliminate them from your prose mistake number twelve no this is a kind of weird one we do do encounter this is I'm strutting noun overload so predominant the pride that swelling within him in an infinitude of heavy optimism moved him to consider the merits of quite alternative possibilities explanations and modalities and you know you as a reader don't really know what I've just said I is a writer don't really you know what I have to say it doesn't feel like a novel at all okay novels are about actual people in the fictional world that you crave but it needs to feel like an actual real world making diseases performing actually speaking with people and all that is happening at the concrete level so nearly everything in your book needs to happen in that concrete level and then you know you can lift back and reflect a little bit but basically you need to stay concrete stay focused on the specific and and the big sort of cinematic stuff will grow out of that you don't want to overload your work with abstract nouns you'll kill your both very very quickly if you do that this like 13 is a little bit similar it's the white room as I caught you actually takes place in a blank space or your descriptions are there but they're extremely bland and what the sighs just said is is that your characters really need to exist in a physical real world it's got a really feel rail that means you can't under wipe those descriptions so you've got to see fairly early on in that scene you need one paragraph that just sets the scene where are these people you know what's the scene without much fear and just a paragraph of a setting like that I think just keep on nudging through the scene it doesn't have to be big not just you just got to keep reminding the reader where you are and what's happening um thought it's a brilliant way of making all your scenes seem really real really present really alive it's like 14 gambling inventively he spluttered indignantly she spat contemptuously he thundered furiously anything like this it just feels wrong doesn't it you can use he said he answered she replied the words said can future you know if that is what you're using 95% of the time and you know a lot of your dialogue doesn't even have a he-said she-said that's absolute you're fine you don't need all that spluttering in and yodeling and you know spitting and all that kind of stuff it's just excessive let the dialogue do the work and then use he-said she-said um that is absolutely fine mistake number 15 unintended repetitions now repetitions can be fine but not like this repetitions are inevitable you get repetition when you repetitively use the same word in the text to produce excess repetition in the text which can conjure up and you can already see that that is kind of doing your head in with with repetition and basically you're no longer the root is no longer thinking about the actual words on the page just hearing that horrible buzzing noise in their head and you've popped them out of the book announcer your texts completely so avoid repetitions avoid unintended repetitions this isn't something where you can be too robotic about it so TS Eliot famously wrote time passed in time president are both perhaps present in time future I'm fairly obviously there the repetitions are totally deliberate and they're part of a future restructured sentence so if the repetitions feel right to you and you've thought about them and you want them that's absolutely fine but eliminate the unintended sort basically completely mistake number 16 to short to long you know if you're on another level and it's complete at 40,000 words frankly that's hardly a market for that book there might be some published online but even that would be difficult um I'd certainly know this reagent is going to touch that book um you might get some of the true novels of under 65,000 words but really commercial fiction if it's traditionally published you know it's at 75,000 words almost seventy seventy five thousand words or more equally if your book is super long yeah there are some regions like epic fantasy or you know women's fiction in a sort of saga world where very very long text couldn't can work well but you know no your honor know what the limits are in terms of word count and live within those limits but for most of you you know seventy thousand words join from twenty thousand one hundred and forty thousand words would be about those limits but do check out the rules for your specific genres don't get that wrong mistake seventeen weird paragraph spacing okay your manuscript should look like a book which means that paragraphs owned dented like this one for example look at the first one is it's not freely left justified it's just invented that little bit and no gap between paragraphs please that's for business and letters not normal maybe your your book on the page should look like a book should look like a novel not like a business letter that means no blank lines between paragraphs in that first paragraph you're in doubt how to format it um take a look natural book and of course um you get to know the paragraph format menu we're processing software that paragraph formatting menu is your friend mistake number 18 hey buddy we've only just met and this is where the first 3,000 words of the book introduces multiple timelines loads of characters a ton of names multiple different story starts the readers thinking hold on I just entered the front door of your novel essentially and all of a sudden I'm being thrown this ton of information all of these bewildering variety of characters and tons and stuff and I haven't even so taken my coat in my hats off so don't overwhelm the reader at the start of the book you've got to let them settle in get get them get them to understand that the world they're in and make sure that you're yes you're feeding them new information which of course they need that but you're feeding them that stuff at a pace that they can absorb too much overload at the start of the book will just crush that front axle of your story and then a reader will never read on okay mistake number nine is random capitalizations some people write to capital L literary capital a agents literary agents instead of Justin industry agents and agents don't count capitals they're just nouns basically you know you don't capitalize something because it's important you capitalize something because either it's at the start of the sentence or it's a name of personally John or Jane or her place like New York if it's not obviously fitting in those categories it probably doesn't need capitalizations in general you should avoid it just certainly avoid capitalizations in it you know exactly why that particular word or phrases being is been capitalized because - mistake number 20 what did you just say did you say fiction novel because if so you're not my friend anymore and you know why look fiction is stories that have just has just been made of novels is longer versions of long pieces of fiction and so all novels are fiction so you don't need to say fiction novel you just say no if you start talking about here's my fiction or you're just saying I don't really know my own craft and screams I might write it you're not going to do that so that's absolute find it it's still better anymore mistake number 21 too much text now Stephen King famously said that trough 2 equals draft 1 - 10 % you know what he's wrong it's much more like draft 2 equals draft 1 minus 20 or 30 person we got to remember is that Stephen King was a journalist before he was a novelist and journalists have trained to to write tanks for very lean and so he brought that discipline with him it's novel writing so his trimming of the text from draft one draft 2 was pretty was pretty lightweight most of the novels we see first are novels that we see but you know by some very gifted and talented writers a lot of them can easily lose train some talk about taking a well of content we just took taking back the content that exists and finding ways to deliver that because that content in fewer words than we did before you can always cut more than you think in my experience mistake number 22 I don't care about your planet so let's say that the opening page of your book this Lazarev uranium mines what almost works out tunnels were left in a state of collapse often with the original mind bots left with feebly clanking inside and bla bla bla bla four or five more paragraphs and we actually meet somebody and the fact is readers don't care about worlds they care about characters and you've always got to introduce the world via the character so what you want is on somebody I'm sitting at the front of the mine cleaning their boots and you engage with nice person I'm engaging that act of cleaning their boots and then you can slowly filter the information you've got baby well which make really interesting really wonderful do you filter in that world building type information via the character and although I've given uh sort of science fiction type example here know the same thing with absolutely um happen with historical fiction it could even happen with kind of contemporary fiction setting in a place that you know people know well so you know if you're in a kind of tech startup world in New York you still have to explain what that setting is because not everybody knows that so you're gonna do that kind of world building exercise but do it via character don't just do it upfront mistake 23 Open bracket close bracket delete bracket look basic if you use brackets in motion Eurasian you know it's one thing if you're quoting a little newspaper article in your fictional newspaper article you've got brackets enough but really brackets don't belong in you should pretty much eliminate them from your text nice piece of advice there mistake number 24 mirror in the hall so here's an example she ran out of the house late as usual passing the full mirror she just had touched it oh very conveniently deliver a full detailed report on her appearance to the reader so that the writer is satisfied that the reader has an idea of who this character is and you know the trouble with that kind of thing is it really breaks the current occurs this current should be rushing out of the house um it breaks the story because again you know they've got urgent business to attend to so you're delivering a description at the cost of the character and destroying the character in the story should always come first so just delay that character description until it arises in a natural moment in the story little ways well you'll find a place to deliver it but don't force it in there okay I'm mistake number 25 knocking great help for free look there are so many tools and techniques that you can use put into practice absolutely today for making your work better and we've got tons of them and we love to give them keeps a very sick um you know is your idea for a book good enough how can you tell how can you make it better how can you start to take the ideas in your head and really generate powerful ideas that will produce potentially best-selling books well you know there are actual answers that we've got an idea generator tool that will walk you through that process and they're really it's pretty much guaranteed to work I mean totally suggest you get it you can get it from the link just underneath this video you can also get all of the slides from this video via that link so just you know um go something do the signup process and we'll send you everything um I hope this has been really useful for you it's been a real pleasure for me I'm Harry Bingham from Jericho writers and it's been a pleasure thank you for watching

Channel: Jericho Writers

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Keywords: Writing mistakes, Mistakes writers make, Writing advice, how to write, how to write a book, writing, books, Writing tips, book writing

Id: HrSIuoVHT38

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 24 2018