Common Mistakes
First-Time Novelists
Make
1. The Slow Start
- Many novices start out with too much background information
and then slog along before they pick up speed. You want to grab
the reader with a compelling scene and then add the back story
later. Today's impatient reader won't wait till page fifty for
things to start moving.
2.
The Sagging Midsection - Some writers work hard on their beginnings
and endings but their "middles" are too heavy. When you have told your
story, go back and see if you can cinch in the belt around its
midsection. Prune every unnecessary scene; if a scene doesn't add
something new about your main characters or advance the plot, get rid of
it!
3. Uneven Pacing - Perhaps the biggest challenge for the
fiction writer is to create enough tension to keep readers turning pages,
while supplying enough breathing space for them to relax a little now and
then. Too much tension makes readers anxious and they close the book. Not
enough tension and they fall asleep. How tightly do you string the
invisible line between a conflict and its resolution to create just the
right amount of tension? There's no formula; ultimately, writers have to
depend on honest feedback from a caring critique group or professional
editor—or both—to strike that magical balance.
4. The "Too Nice"
Protagonist - Some writers create good guys who're so good no one can
relate to them. For your hero or heroine to be believable, he or she will
have to have some character flaws. No one is perfect, so give your
protagonist a bad habit or two.This is especially true in the
character-driven novel; readers will expect your central character to grow
or change in some way.
5. The Loathsome Antagonist - I
often see novels in which the villain is so malevolent he comes across as
a caricature. If you aren't writing black comedy, and intentionally
exaggerating your bad guy, give him a sympathetic trait or two. Maybe he
takes in stray animals, or always remembers his grandmother's birthday.
6. Stilted Dialogue - First-time novelists who've never had
practice writing dialogue sometimes have trouble making their characters
sound natural. I suggest to clients that they read their dialogue out
loud, preferably into a tape recorder. When they hear it played back they
know immediately if it doesn't sound believable; that means going back to
the drawing board and reworking it so that it does.
7. All
Characters Speak Alike - Make sure your characters don't sound the
same. Often an inexperienced writer's characters all speak the way he (the
writer) speaks. As your characters come alive in your imagination, try to
"hear" them talking. Each will have unique phrases and ways of expressing
himself or herself. Here's a trick: When your novel is written, sit down
and go through the entire manuscript reading the dialogue of one character
at a time, all the way through. If there are inconsistencies, they will
pop out at you.
8. Too Much Detail - Readers' tastes differ
in this regard, but judging from what's popular on the market now my guess
is that most readers want less detail than more. Have you pulled out a
Dickens' novel lately and tried to read it? You probably felt bogged down
in detail. Here's what I see frequently: pointless details, things the
reader could fill in on his own. So when you have a scene in which a
character is preparing soup, avoid "She opened the drawer, took out a
spoon, walked over to the stove, turned on the burner. . . " You get the
picture!
9. Too Much Research - This problem piggybacks on
#8 above, but its origin is different. In this case the writer has done
lots of research and wants to use it. For example, let's say the novel is
set during the French Revolution. We are reading along, getting caught up
in the colorful characters, when suddenly we get a history lecture on the
number of serfs in a certain province in 1789, the number who were
landowners, on and on. After two or three pages of this, we have either
forgotten about the characters, or we are yawning and flipping ahead to
get back to them. If you do intensive research to background your fiction,
don't feel as though you have to use all of it; pepper it in for flavor
and save the leftovers for other projects. (This same principle applies
with scenery and local color. If you travel to Brazil to soak up the
atmosphere for your action-adventure, make sure your story doesn't end up
sounding like Fodor's Brazil!)
10. Too Many Viewpoints (a.k.a.
"Whose head are we in anyway?") - Not too long ago writers' handbooks
said, "Stick to the same point of view throughout your novel." That is no
longer the case. Today, respected authors change point of view, and
readers have no problem with it. The literary critics don't squawk either.
But beginners sometimes change viewpoints willy-nilly, often within the
same scene, which can be confusing—even jarring—to the reader. It's best
to remain with the same point of view throughout a scene. (One expert
recommends changing POV only between chapters.)
Snowden
Editorial Services
©2006
