How to Learn from Your Old Writing (Pt. 2)

I have completed four books so far in my writing journey, and the first one (which I refer to as A Series of Unfortunate Paragraphs) is by far the one with the most problems. The other three aren't as great as I would like them to be, but they can (hopefully!) be made great or almost great.

In my last post I talked about a few problems I found with Unfortunate Paragraphs, and today I want to mention a few more common problems for new writers.

How many times have you read or heard someone say, "Show, don't tell"? If you have read any books or blog posts about the art of writing, probably a lot. I had heard it quite a bit myself, but never really thought it pertained to me and my writing.

 I tended to think things like, "I do show! That's not a problem for me."

I should probably be a little more modest next time, because Unfortunate Paragraphs had a whole lot of telling. When you have a lot of telling folllowed by more telling, this can result in what's called an info dump. If you've never heard of an info dump before, it's basically a bunch of boring facts, usually about your character or someone or something your character knows, and wants you to know about.

There's nothing wrong with having a specific list of things that you want your reader to know about a character, but there is a problem with telling them everything in that list at one time. You can remedy this fairly easily, but it might take a little more effort than sticking in a sentence like, "My best friend is named Madison. Her mom died when she was three and her dad has a lot of meetings in Texas because he has a lot of land and stock there. She lives in a three floor apartment with Mary, (the cook), Martin, (the butler....." 

All you have to do to fix an info dump is tell a story. In the case of Unfortunate Paragraphs, it was really easy for me to stick a list-like description of a character in because I was writing as if this was the MC's journal. If this were in a more traditional novel, it would come off as a whole lot cheesier (not that Unfortunate  Paragraphs wasn't cheesy enough). 

But, it would have been just as easy for me to insert a story insted of a list. Maybe about how the first time the MC went over to Madison's house, she mistook the butler and maid for Madison's parents. This gives a reason to tell that her mom is dead and her dad is away, and also gets in that Madison is probably more than a little rich. Plus, how much more fun is an embarrassing story to read than a list of facts about someone? 

You could also, instead of telling this story as a flashback, have the MC actually visit Madison's house, give a few details about the butler and the missing father, and let the reader guess the rest. Either is fine. Just make sure, if you're introducing a ton of characters, and the reader has to know a lot about every single one, that you don't pick the same way to give information on all of them. Switch it up.


Another problem with Unfortunate Paragraphs was that a lot of my sentences just didn't make sense. This is something that should be fairly easy to clear up in a micro edit, but that stick out like a black ink spot when they're left untouched.

I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this, just because, obviously, you should be able to tell if a sentence does or doesn't make sense. Some of the common problems I came across though, are: 

Transposing one word for another (i.e., there for their, scoop for snoop). This is easy to do when two words are pronounced the same, but have different spellings. Sometimes, your hand just doesn't perform the way your mind tells it to. Or, if there is another word that's one letter different from the one you're trying to write. 

Using the wrong word. This can be really easy to do. When you're just trying to get the words on the page, it's easy to misuse a word. Most of the time I realize when I do this, but just don't want to take the time to look up the word to make sure it's wrong and then find another word to replace it. Sometimes if I can't think of the right word to use, I just leave a blank space, and fill it in when I'm editing. Just make sure you'll remember what word was supposed to go there! 

Wrong spellings, grammar mistakes. This is another easy one, and something that can be fixed in a micro edit. When you're writing a first draft, you don't want to spend time looking up exact spellings or correct punctuation rules. If you're using a word processing document, sometimes the computer will fix it for you, but if you're writing on paper, you're on your own. 

I talked about the beginning of Unfortunate Paragraphs in the last post, but I want to touch on it again. I'm not going to go so far as to say that the beginning is the most important part of the book, but it is very important. If the first few sentences aren't appealing to the reader, they most likely won't keep reading. This is why it is so important that those first few pages be really interesting. You can't have a  great first chapter and mediocre last 200 pages, but just make sure that your beginning isn't overlooked in the editing process.

Make sure your book starts in the right place. Most times, there is an incident that starts the whole journey of the book. You don't want to start a week before this incident. All your readers would get bored waiting for the actual story to start.  But, you don't want to start too close on that incident either. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe didn't start with Lucy opening the wardrobe, it showed the Pevensies in their normal home, before they moved to Professor Kirk's house. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone started with Harry living with his aunt and uncle, not with him recieving his Hogwarts letter. 

So, start close to your inciting incident, but let us see a little bit of your character in his normal world before you thrust him on his journey. 

This was another long post, hope you enjoyed! 

Would you like to see more posts on Learning from Old Writing? Have you come across any of these problems in your writing? Does your book start in the right place, or are you too close to your inciting incident?