{"id":7138,"date":"2018-03-21T06:37:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T10:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7138"},"modified":"2018-07-23T16:51:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T20:51:56","slug":"mistakes-happen-to-the-best-of-us-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7138","title":{"rendered":"Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us (Writers)!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"scissors,

(photo: Guzm\u00e1n Lozano, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

Ricardo Fayet, one of the founders of Reedsy<\/a> (the service that links authors with top-quality expertise in many areas of manuscript development and publication) recently wrote a BookBub post<\/a> with the enticing title, \u201c12 Common Writing Errors Even Bestselling Authors Make.\u201d Since I\u2019m sure I make them all, I read it carefully.<\/p>\n

Fayet based his list on feedback from the developmental editors, copy editors, and proofreaders Reedsy employs, and the items on it fall into three broad categories: narrative problems, creating confusion, and grammar\/punctuation. The grammar\/punctuation problems are the ones we\u2019d expect, and the sources of confusion can be boiled down to point-of-view problems (sound of gnashing teeth\u2014mine!) and when writers omit relevant information, or more likely, when they include it in draft #1, but lose it somehow in draft #12.<\/p>\n

\u201cShow, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d Again<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If only someone would show me how to do that and quit telling me! Sure, we know that creating scenes and dialog makes the action of a story more meaningful for readers. Yet this SDT issue keeps coming up. In my writer\u2019s group, \u201cI want to see this in a scene\u201d is practically a mantra.<\/p>\n

At the same time, dialog that goes nowhere is deadly; scenes that don\u2019t contribute much are a waste of energy. A pithy summary can move a story forward quickly\u2014say, when we need to close a gap of years or introduce a new setting or character. That\u2019s information that changes the chessboard. It has to be just as relevant and interesting as a scene. A crime novel I read recently gave a two-page information dump, on cue, each time a new character was introduced. Bad enough, but these \u201cback stories\u201d were hackneyed, full of predictable details. Cardboard descriptions of cardboard characters. Better to skip it.<\/p>\n

Overdescribing and Overexplaining<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Can we show too much? Yes, if we fall prey to overdescribing. No point in having a character \u201cnod her head\u201d; she can just nod. No point in having a character get out of his chair, walk to the window, look out, then turn and say . . . . Let him just \u201clook out the window and say.\u201d Labored locutions are common in first drafts, because we\u2019re visualizing the action of a story and setting it on the page. We need to be attuned to them, though, so we delete them later. We need to trust that readers understand people don’t leave the room without getting out of their chair first (though I can imagine situations where that extra information would be needed). More about overexplaining<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

Strong Openers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Showing, not telling and avoiding over-explaining help give a story a strong opening. Elmore Leonard<\/a> famously advises never to start a story with the weather. Yet a surprising number of books begin with something like \u201cIt was a bright, sunny day. Hot for May.\u201d I yawn,\u00a0 unless May is one of the characters. It isn\u2019t weather per se, it\u2019s the banal we need to avoid.<\/p>\n

I tend to write a couple of opening paragraphs\u2014like I\u2019m warming up\u2014before getting to the story\u2019s action. My critique group advises me to delete them, and I do. They must have read Chekhov, who said: \u201cMy own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.\u201d My flaw isn\u2019t exactly lying, it\u2019s more forecasting the direction of a story before even I know what that will be.<\/p>\n

Check out this opener from Mick Herron\u2019s MI5 thriller, Slow Horses<\/em>: \u201cThis is how River Cartwright slipped off the fast track and joined the slow horses\u201d; and Deon Meyer\u2019s post-apocalyptic adventure tale, Fever<\/em>: \u201cI want to tell you about my father\u2019s murder. I want to tell you who killed him and why.\u201d Starters like those make readers keep going.<\/p>\n

Regarding Chekhov\u2019s point about endings, we should leave it to \u201cyou, dear reader\u201d to form a conclusion. Although I liked Donna Tartt\u2019s novel The Goldfinch<\/em>, the last twenty pages were a sort of rambling essay on the book\u2019s meaning, as best I could figure them out.\u00a0 To me, they were a turn-off and unnecessary. If I didn\u2019t get it after reading 750 pages, I wasn\u2019t going to.<\/p>\n

Unbelievable! Please, no<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Fayet says Reedsy editors find frequent examples of \u201cunbelievable conflicts.\u201d I wonder sometimes why a protagonist doesn\u2019t just pick up the phone and clear up the whole matter. Though keeping secrets is a common source of story conflict and tension, we need to show (not tell) why doing so is important to this character in this situation. Clich\u00e9d actions are as unsatisfactory as clich\u00e9d dialog.<\/p>\n

Thrillers and family dramas are equally prey to preposterous situations. I suspect this holds true for the romance genre, as well, judging these books by their covers. We can show all we want, but if what we\u2019re showing is unconvincing, our millions of readers are lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ricardo Fayet, one of the founders of Reedsy (the service that links authors with top-quality expertise in many areas of manuscript development and publication) recently wrote a BookBub post with the enticing title, \u201c12 Common Writing Errors Even Bestselling Authors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Mistakes Happen to the Best of Us (Writers)! Helpful reminders from the folks at Reedsy","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,29],"tags":[1275,28,414],"class_list":["post-7138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-editing","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1R8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7377,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138\/revisions\/7377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}