Sharon ReneWriting is not a science. Writing is creative, but that doesn’t mean that anything goes. If we want people to read and enjoy our work we need to follow certain rules and avoid certain mistakes.
I have been reading The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes by Jack M. Bickham and thought I’d share a few with you. Not all 38, I promise!
Number One: Don’t warm up your engines.
Start the story with the first sentence. When you stop to describe something, the story has stopped. Description is vital to fiction but not at the beginning of the story.
Fiction looks forward not backward.
Fiction starts with and deals with someone’s response to a threat. It doesn’t have to be an immense threat. Any change to the main character’s life is considered a threat.
Number Two: Don’t write about wimps.
Interesting characters are active, they are risk-takers, and highly motivated. Story people don’t sit around passively. They don’t wait for fate to settle the issue. The story people determine the outcome.
To sum up: Something has changed.
Your character is threatened.
He vows to struggle.
He selects a goal and starts acting.
Number Three: Don’t duck trouble
For writers and readers, the best times are when the main character is in the worst trouble. The writer must seek ways to add trouble to the character’s life.
Conflict. Active give and take – a struggle between story people with opposing goals is necessary to any story.
Number Four: Don’t have things happen for no reason
Make sure your characters have the right background, upbringing, experience, information to motivate them in the direction of the action you want them to take. Excessive luck or coincidence is deadly for your story.
First drafts tend to be full of coincidence. To correct this, you must find a way for your character to set out seeking the desired event person or information.
Number Five: Don’t forget stimulus and response
Each character must have an immediate physical cause for what he or she does.
Stimulus then response.
The stimulus must come from outside the character so if this were played out on stage the audience could see or hear it.
Number Six: Don’t forget whose story it is
Stay in one viewpoint at a time. No head hopping.
Every scene must be told from a POV within the action. It must have a clearly dominant viewpoint character.
The viewpoint character must be the one with the most at stake. Every viewpoint character will be actively involved in the plot.
Number Seven: Don’t lecture the reader
Lectures in fiction are chunks of information that you (the writer) stuck in there because of what you wanted in the story – rather than what the viewpoint character would be thinking about and dealing with. Devise a different way to get this information in the story if it’s necessary.
Make something happen in the story so the viewpoint character remembers this info or have another character come in and tell this information. You can also use a newspaper or TV news.
And there you have 7 of the 38 most common misakes.
I must admit that I’ve made all of these mistakes at one time or the other. It’s okay to make the mistakes in the first draft. That’s why first drafts are so much fun!!!
Just make sure you correct these mistakes before the story is done.
Julia N. White
Michelle Kaderly Welsh
Kristen Gwen
One of my most common mistakes is telling the reader what to feel. I tend not to trust the reader to understand what’s going on in the story and beat them over the head with what I think they should feel or how they should react. I’m learning from Donald Maas book on The Emotional Craft of Fiction, that if we, the authors, present readers with the characters in an emotional situation, they will bring their own experiences into the scene and react, perhaps not exactly as the author reacted, but in an emotionally-gratifying way that will be right for each reader. By allowing readers to react in ways that make sense to them, the story will resonate with more diverse readers and, in the end, have a greater impact. Thanks for the post. It has excellent reminders of what to avoid!
Glad you liked the post and thanks for the comment. The Emotional Craft of Fiction is a great book.
I recommend writers use the active tense to make sentences stronger. If I had a dollar for each time the author used “was” in the last book I read, I’d be a rich girl. 🙂
Exactly. Was is so easy and sometimes necessary but too much goes a long way.
Sounds like a helpful book!
It really is.
Regarding stimulus and response, there’s another element I’ve been chewing on. There are reasons behind why a character reacts as he/she does. This thought challenges me to show the heart of the character in their actions.
Very good point. We don’t want our character doing something that is completely “out of character” and it does help reveal their heart.
I have made lots of these mistakes- especially number 2!