In today’s Journal
* Misplaced Modifier of the Day
* A Foreword
* The Top 7 Mistakes Writers Make, Part 1
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Misplaced Modifier of the Day
“[Name withheld] dies at age 31 while biking after being struck by a suspected drunken driver.” news tidbit, 1440 DailyDigest
What’s wrong with that statement? (Try moving “while biking” to the end of the sentence.)
A Foreword
This is an update on an article I originally posted over on my author site way back in 2013. I brought it forward again in 2022, and now here it is again.
This post negates nothing I’ve said about allowing the characters to tell the story that they, not you, are living.
This was originally a very long post, so I’ve broken it into two parts. After you’ve read this post and the next one, you (your characters) will take care of most of the following problems during cycling sessions.
You’ll see a brief mention of agents and traditional publishers in one paragraph below. Just in case you’re still pursuing traditional publication, I left that in because it makes a valid point. But I do NOT recommend using literary agents or traditional publishing.
Finally, this post is updated. A lot. So even if you believe you’ve seen it before, please read it again. Enjoy.
The Top 7 Mistakes Writers Make
These are the most common mistakes I’ve seen in manuscripts from writers over the past thirty-plus years.
So what, right? Nothing’s perfect.
Right. But second only to telling a good story in the first place, your job as a writer is to not interrupt the reading of your own work with silly mistakes. And why would you want to? It’s self-defeating.
If you overcome these few problems, and if you’ve written a good story in the first place, your work will more readily pull the reader into your story.
Yes, even if the reader is a literary agent or traditional publisher (ugh) because more than likely these problems will still plague all the other manuscripts in their inbox that day.
I numbered these problems, but they’re all really tied for first place:
1. Using the Physical and Emotional Sense Verbs
Try not to use the physical and emotional sense verbs.
That means try not to provide your opinion on what the character saw, could see; smelled, could smell; heard, could hear; felt, could feel; and so on.
Instead, Just Describe The Scene and let the reader see, hear, smell, etc. right along with the character.
This is a big part of what writing instructors mean when they say “Show, don’t tell.”
Instead of writing “She heard the doorknob turn and the door squeal open” just write “The doorknob turned and the door squealed open.”
2. Using Past Tense When Past Progressive Is Necessary to Indicate Ongoing Action
This one causes action to seem to start abruptly and unnaturally:
“When the sheriff walked into the saloon, several men stood at the bar and others sat at tables. Still others walked up or down the stairs.”
Do the men actually suddenly stand, sit, and walk as the sheriff comes in?
What you want here is to create a sense of ongoing action:
“When the sheriff walked into the saloon, several men were standing at the bar and others were sitting at tables. Still others were walking up or down the stairs.”
And no, this does not create passive voice or a passive construction. Gerunds (“ing” words) have nothing to do with passive construction.
3. Using Throw-Away Verbs
Gave—Use “gave” as the verb of a sentence only if something physically changes hands.
If you routinely say of a character that he “gave” a smile or a nod or a shrug or a wave or a kiss or a hug or a sneer or any of the b’jillion other things you might force good characters to give each other—
Stop It. The character didn’t “give” her a nod or a smile or a wave. He nodded or smiled or waved.
Sat or Stood—Believe it or not, some writers use these as throw-away verbs even more often than they use “gave.”
Don’t say the character stood unless she was lying down or sitting (or maybe crouching or kneeling, though I recommend “straightened” in that case), or that she sat unless she was standing.
If the character’s already standing, don’t write that she “stood and looked” (or “stood looking”) out the window.
If she’s already sitting at her desk, don’t write that she “sat tapping” her pen on her desk.
The first character was already standing, so she “looked” out the window. The second character was already sitting so she “tapped” her pen on her desk.
When I receive a manuscript for editing, one of the first things I do is a Find and Replace for bad-use instances of “gave,” “sat,” and “stood.” Unfortunately they’re almost always there.
4. Giving Possession to Inanimate Objects
Don’t give possession to inanimate objects.
Don’t write “she pushed her glasses up her nose’s bridge” or “she leaned on the chair’s back” or “she slid up to the couch’s edge” or even “she leaned on the ship’s rail” or “she crossed the town’s main street.”
You can hear how awkward and clunky those examples are, and I’ve seen all of them in manuscripts or finished stories or novels.
It’s much less awkward to write “she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose (or just ‘farther up her nose’)” or “she leaned on the back of the chair” or “she slid up to the edge of the couch” or “she leaned on the rail” or “she crossed Main Street.”
Those last two are a little different from the original because we should already know she’s on a ship, right? And of course she’s crossing the main street “of the town”; what other main street would it be?
This actually brings to mind a close cousin of the possession problem:
Don’t write “She shuffled the dominoes in front of her” or “She sipped wine from her glass.” Really?
Think about it: What other dominoes would she possibly shuffle? From what other container is she going to sip wine?
“She shuffled the dominoes” and “She sipped her wine” will suffice, and you won’t be bogging down your story with unnecessary nonsense.
Also popular—and to be avoided in every case—she “nodded her head” and he “shrugged his shoulders.” Again, what else is s/he going to nod or shrug?
Okay, that’s enough for today. Back tomorrow with the last three mistakes in Part 2 of The Top 7 Mistakes Writers Make.
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Using your book’s genre category to boost sales success
The Numbers
The Journal………………………………1110
Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos
Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583
Day 2…… 1339 words. To date…… 3922
Day 3…… 1526 words. To date…… 5448
Day 4…… 3941 words. To date…… 9389
Day 5…… 2734 words. To date…… 12123
Fiction for September……………………. 6675
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 585226
Fiction since October 1………………… 790463
Nonfiction for September……………… 3600
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 278440
2024 consumable words………………… 765846
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.
On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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