How to Write a Book: Common Mistakes and Pitfalls of Beginning Writers
Editor's Note: The following article, while written over a year ago, is timeless for beginning writers. If you want to learn how to write a book well, then you'll want to avoid some (or all) of these common pitfalls. Most of what you'll learn about writing comes from experience. If, like many visitors to this web site, you're young and relatively inexperienced as a writer, you are likely going to make one or more of these mistakes.
But don't worry... Keep at it, and you'll definitely improve!
Advice on How to Write Better
Because I well remember my own wanderings through a slough of despond made of rejection slips, I find myself unable to resist fan letters which come to me asking for help and advice. I give what I can for what it's worth with the result that I'm frequently sent manuscripts to criticize.
After I get over marveling that writers will send their work to a total stranger who, for all they know, may not be above converting plots (if any) to her own use, or snitching a good phrase here and there, I usually, if I have the time, go over the manuscript and say my say, for better or worse.
It has been my unhappy experience to find eight invariables which require criticism. I have yet to see a slick story from the hand of a beginner which didn't contain at least half of the eight mistakes, often more. Since these appear with such persistent frequency, an analysis of them here ought to help other beginners score their own blunders.
Writing Pitfall #1: Constant use of fancy forms of the verb 'to say.'
For slick paper writing this won't do at all; it belongs in the Confessions and love pulps where lush, exaggerated wordage is the order of the day. Last week I waded through a manuscript so overburdened with this trouble that I decided to draw up a few telling statistics: On four typewritten pages by the beginner I found twenty such words, and not one of them was 'said' How that writer must have labored to find them all, each different, each bogging down the story with artificiality.
If the diverse expressions had only been simple, there would be no cause for quarrel, but here they are: asserted, declared, affirmed, stated, professed, alleged, vowed, etc., etc. My next statistical step was to comb the first page of a story by J. P. Marquand in Collier's. Therein I found 29 words meaning 'to say' and 24 of them were 'said!' Master of slick fiction that Mr. Marquand is, surely the point is proved.
But let me add that of the five other forms used, three were derivatives of 'to tell,' and two were forms of 'to ask.' In short, Mr. Marquand stuck to simple expressions. Let's take another example at random in case there's any doubt. In the October Redbook is a short short by Parke Cummings; 28 speaking words are employed; 27 are 'said,' and one is 'grumbled' Q.E.D.
Writing Pitfall #2: By the same token, my beginner friends go in heavily for adverbs-almost every verb has a qualifying word trailing.
Again I say look to the masters. With them adverbs are infrequent; they are avoided by being converted into adjectives. That is, instead of, "He said sadly," one of the big names is likely to substitute, "His voice was sad."
Writing Pitfall #3. As for narrative hooks, it would appear that there has been so much fanfare about them that no beginner is going to be caught without one.
The only trouble is that in their zeal, they overdo the matter. The hook is a claw, so that at the start the reader has a sense of unreality. Subtlety has given way to gross overwriting. Sometimes I even find hooks which turn out to have little or no relation to the actual plot of the story. You're hooked all right, but you soon discover you're rooked too.
Writing Pitfall #4. Beginners are also disposed to say one thing three different ways with the painful result that out of three paragraphs, two could be cut most happily.
The same with sentences. I am more and more convinced that when a writer reaches the stage when he can ruthlessly eliminate whole phrases and paragraphs without feeling he's cutting off chunks of his heart, he's passed one of the most important milestones in the business. Falling in love with your own words is an untenable luxury, fatal as well as foolish.
Writing Pitfall #5. Beginners are prone to clutter up their stories with unnecessary characters.
Again and again I see manuscripts where two characters could be combined, or one of them eliminated altogether. The old saw of not being able to see the woods for the trees is true again. It's like a store window: the shop which displays two or three well placed objects advertises its wares better than one which burdens the jaundiced eye with samples of everything in the store. Thus in a story with unnecessary characters, the important people cannot stand out dearly. With a pitiless hand, kill them off.
Writing Pitfall #6. More and more am I convinced that there is still much to be said for the old unities of time and place.
My beginners delight in covering years and decades in point of time, sometimes without reason. No rigid law can be laid down in this matter, but the fact remains that the less time covered, the tighter your story. The same is true as to space. If your action can possibly stay put in one spot, keep it there; don't roam about like a radio script; ease your reader's mind by giving a picture and holding it. Yes, readers are notoriously lazy; humor them.
Writing Pitfall #7.This criticism is comparatively minor, but deserves mention: don't give characters similar sounding names so that confusion between them is not only possible but probable.
I read a story yesterday, where the two leading people were called Babs and Bob. For no purpose, you understand. They weren't twins (if that's a reason) - they were a young married couple, and before three pages were consumed, I was in a swivet to find out who said what. No reader should be forced to slow down in his reading to find out such things. A safe rule is to start all names with different letters and to avoid sounds which are similar. I caught one with the names Houston, Denton, and Carlton.
Note that these titles not only scan the same with precisely the same number of syllables, but all end with on. Your ear should tell you variation is required; if it doesn't, then go the dramatis personae with the above rule mind.
Writing Pitfall #8. And so we come to the commonest errors-changing, viewpoints midstream.
I know, I know, the big names get away with it sometimes, but when they do it ( which really isn't often), it's a clean-cut job, in itself to accomplish. But the fact remains that thw best short stories, the integrated ones, get one character only and stay there. It is frequently pointed out that only in novels can a writer enjoy a field day of skipping about from one mind to another, but I hold the brief that if the novelist forgoes this pleasure, he's a better novel. In "Gone With the Wind" Margaret Mitchell never once releases the doing and reader from Scarlet O'Hara's doing and thinking, and I'm inclined to believe that the cumulative effect of the book lies just there.
So those are my eight carping complaints You beginners look over one of your stories with those points in mind, and I'd like to bet a check against a rejection slip, that guilty on at least four counts!
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