I love this:
"The day was like any other, except that this was a Wednesday so it was really only like 1/7th of the other days."
...and this:
"Her eyelashes fluttered like the windshield wipers of an eighteen-wheeler on the Ohio Turnpike when the weary-eyed driver is trying to have at least some vision in a heavy August rainstorm that is like an Appaloosa urinating on solid asphalt."
Now that's good writing, I don't care what you say..
..ok, you're right. I expected there to be a punch-line at the end of all that, but there wasn't. I came across these as I was doing some research online. Apparently, they are just a few of the bad opening paragraphs new writers have used for their (doubtfully) soon to be published novel. Still, I think they work well for opening a post..
Many new writers have a fantasy that writing is easy; that all there is to it is just sitting down at a typewriter (or computer) and pounding away until they have a story. Sure, that's a great start, that's where the whole creative process really flows, but that's not the end of the writing process.
I've wrote out 8 big "mistakes" that new writers make, plus some advice on how to avoid them. I'd like to hear what everyone thinks: What are some of the other big "mistakes" that writers make? How did you learn to overcome those "mistakes"?
So, in random order, here they are:
1.) The "Hook"; Opening Without Excitement: One of the hardest things to do when writing is to find exactly the right opening for the story. Many new writers tend to start at the beginning, which is sometimes alright, but must of the time turns into a long and tedious history lesson about the backgrounds of characters that haven't even been introduced yet. There's a lot of techniques for giving the reader that information, but the first paragraph should always help the reader get into the story. Remember the 4 W's and 1 H. Readers want to know Who the story is about, What it's about, Where is the story taking place, When is the story taking place, and How is the protagonist/antagonist going to get from point A to point B. A key factor is knowing exactly Where to start the story. That is largely a matter of personal opinion, but the general idea is to start the story with some kind of conflict or action. Make the reader ask, "What happens next?" You want to draw the reader into the story, to help motivate them to read further.
2.) Show, Don't Tell: I'm sure that you've heard this line before, but what does it mean? Well, it's both one of the most complicated things to do in writing and at the same time one of the easiest. You want to make the reader feel as if they are truly part of the story, not just sitting on the sidelines watching things happen. Example: Telling - "The window shattered after he heard the blast. He dove for his gun and returned fire." -- There's a couple problems with those two sentences. First, the motivation and reaction are mixed up; the window shatters before the reader even knows that there's been a gunshot. Second, the reader really isn't moved by the whole scene, there's nothing there to get the reader excited. Example: Showing - "The blast echoed through the abandoned warehouse like a cannon, and an instant later Mark felt tiny shards of glass pierce his face and arms. He dove to the floor and scrambled to reach his gun, ignoring the stabbing pain he felt coarse through his body." In the second example, while not the greatest writing ever produced, the reader gets a more vivid image of the action that's taking place. Instead of being told about the gunshot, they can hear it and through the use of the word cannon, can actually feel the blast. Instead of being told that he simply dove for the gun, we can actually imagine him crawling across the floor, reaching for his gun; we can almost feel the pain he's going through.
3.) Voice; Active vs. Passive: I think that everyone learned this at some point in their grammar school classes, but it's a point that's critical for new writers to understand. My suggestion, always use active voice when telling a story. Passive voice implies that something did happen somewhere in the shady past but whatever that was isn't important now. Active voice says action; it shows people doing things, it implies forward movement. If you don't understand how to write in active voice, I strongly suggest that you do some research and then practice what you've learned. If your word processor has a checker for passive voice, turn it on, it'll catch all those little things that can be missed so easily.
4.) Avoid "Purple Prose": When I first started writing, I kept hearing that phrase all the time. Of course, I didn't understand what it meant at all, so I would just smile and nod. In essence, "Purple Prose" is really all about using too much description in your writing; using too many "flowery" words. Example: "A crimson sun hung low over an azure sea as the relentless tide slowly reached in and kissed the golden strand." Sure, it may be pretty, but... What did I just say? Basically, all I said was this: There was a sunset on a beach, somewhere. Sometimes the flowery words work, but for the most part they just take away from the story. Readers are impatient, they want to get to the action, they want to answer that constant question, "What happens next?" Imagine reading a paragraph that's wrote entirely like the sunset scene above. The reader would quickly turn aside the book since it really doesn't contain any substance. The key is this: make every word count. Every word that you use should move the story along, not stall it like a broken locomotive.
5.) Developing Characters: On this, I'll be brief. Without characters, there is no story. -- I'll amend that: without Believable characters, there is no story. It's an art to really bring your characters to life. One of the most common mistakes new writers make is in not completely fleshing out their characters. Readers don't want "talking heads", they want to read about people that they can connect with in some emotional way. I could go on for hours about character development, but I'll stop here. I highly recommend that every new writer do their homework and really learn how to make their characters come to life.
6.) Point of View: This is another one of those things that can't really be explained in a short paragraph. I've read stories where POV changes 20-30 times within the first chapter. Before you even begin writing, pick a POV and stay with it. If you plan on using multiple POV's, then again, do your homework and learn some of the techniques of doing so. When you change POV multiple times, it confuses the reader; they have to back-track to figure out who's talking to who. As writers, we want the readers to be immersed in our work, to feel as if they are part of the story. Keeping the correct POV is critical to keeping the readers attention. (If you don't know what Point of View(POV) is, check out this article on Wikipedia, I think it pretty well describes it:
Narrative mode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
7.) Grammar Counts: when i am critiquing someones work i absolutly hate it when they dont take the tme to use correct grammer it just gets plane irritating and its hard to read. Ok, so maybe it's not as bad as what I just wrote, but sometimes it is. Use periods, commas, capitals, etc. Before you even think of submitting your work, make sure that you've spelled every word right, and that every sentence makes sense. Use your word processor and run the grammar and spell check applications. The quickest way to lose a reader is to confuse them. We laugh at the mistakes people make...
A laundry room in Rome: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time. ...but as professional writers, we can't afford those simple mistakes.
8.) Edit, edit, edit: Last, and I believe, most important, is to edit. I don't mean just glancing over what you've wrote, I mean going back and reading the story aloud, sentence by sentence, picking out and rewriting all those parts that don't make sense. In an earlier post, I gave a little bit of a book that I'm working on - I believe that the part that I posted was written almost a year ago, and I'm still editing it. The version I have now is 100% different than what I posted. The writing was alright, but looking back, there was so many errors in it that it would have been rejected before the first sentence was finished. I've had to rewrite whole chapters, just because they didn't flow with the rest of the story. The point is, before you ever think of submitting your work, make sure that it is as perfect as you can possibly make it. Make sure that the characters are believable, that the imagery is believable.. Check and recheck your POV and Passive Voice... Make sure that there's nothing in the story that doesn't move the story along.. Editing is a tedious process, but it's what turns a rejection slip into a published work of art. A tip: I bought a copy of TextAloudMP3, along with AT&T's natural voices, and have that program read the story back to me. I find that it's a lot easier to catch things when I hear the story in someone else's voice read aloud.
That's all I have for now.. Have fun and Keep Writing!
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