5 Writing Mistakes You ALWAYS Want To Avoid

Often when writing, aspiring and novice authors concern themselves more with the structure of the story than the way it is told. Craftsmanship, however, is just as important as structure. Here are five craftsmanship errors you want to avoid (click the linked title for the full article):

• Passive voice
Verbs give sentences and books vibrancy. When too many of them in a story are passive (when the subject of a sentence receives the action rather than performing it, such as “The man was bitten by the dog”), the writing sounds drab.

• Telling not showing
Perhaps the most common mistake among novice writers is that tell rather show. To “tell” what happens is to state it directly, as might occur in a newspaper article. To “show” what happens, however, is to present the events without being told directly how one feels or reacts.

• Weak verbs
Even when using active verbs, sentences still may sound flat. More than likely, those active verbs are also overused.

• Starting sentences with “it”
Avoid starting sentences – and especially paragraphs – with “it.” By starting a sentence with “it,” you can confuse the reader. After all, what exactly does “it” refer to?

• Adverbs everywhere
If you’ve got a lot of adverbs in a passage, you’re probably relying too much on that part of speech to do the hard work in your sentence. Adverbs aren’t the muscle that an exact verb provides. 

______________________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks: