Editor Ekta Garg has been editing novels and stories for years, and during that time, she’s noticed some common mistakes writers make. She shares those here to give you a leg up when submitting to contests and publishers.
by editor Ekta Garg
The first mistake writers make is easily that younger writers (by writing experience, not age) don’t trust their readers as much as they should.
They feel the need to explain everything. That’s where info dumps and too much narration comes in, mixed in with a lot of omniscient voice.
I think this happens for a couple of reasons.
Mistakes Writers Make: They Get Too Excited
First, writers get excited about their characters and plots—I know I do!—and we want to share everything all at once. But you don’t eat a gourmet meal in a single gulp; you savor it one bite at a time. Writing should be the same way.
Also, writers forget that readers are okay waiting for information. They don’t mind letting things come to them in pieces, as long as the scene at hand makes sense and connects to what came before and what comes next.
Several writing experts like Stephen King, Lisa Cron, and others, have given the following advice: When you’re in a scene, give the reader only what s/he needs to know for that scene. Don’t start a scene with characters and then go on a drawn-out explanation of what happened months or years ago. Readers don’t care about the months or years before the moment. They care about that moment.
Here’s a quick example: if two characters are fighting, readers want to see and hear that fight. They don’t want you to stop and explain what the characters had for breakfast or how one of their coworkers got a flat tire on the way to work. Those things don’t matter. What matters in that moment is the fight.
Writers might argue that the reason for the fight matters; yes, it definitely does. But that’s where the craft part of writing comes in. You build the reason into the spoken and internal dialogue. You share small bread crumbs in the narration, and use those bread crumbs to lead readers through the rest of the story. You don’t knock them over the head with the entire loaf.
Mistakes Writers Make: Stilted Dialogue
It surprises me how many times I see dialogue that doesn’t sound like real people talking. It sounds overly formal or tries to explain everything (see above.) But that isn’t true to real life, and readers are coming to your story for real-life experiences whether you’re writing science fiction or mystery or even erotica.
In each scene, in each moment, it should feel authentic. That starts with your characters and the conversations they have with one another. If your protagonist is hopping from one planet to another or chasing down a murderer or pursuing a steamy relationship, that protagonist is still a person.
We’re all humans; there are things we can all relate to. When someone compliments us, we smile. When we get in trouble, we want to hide. When someone breaks our heart, we feel like everything is over.
Use those basic human emotions and tendencies to build your characters, your scenes, and your plots. Then, no matter your genre, readers will have no trouble suspending their disbelief.
Make Your Conversations Sound like Real-Life Conversations
A key to this is the dialogue. Your conversations have to sound like real-life conversations. I think, though, that writers learn they can use dialogue to convey information and decide to do just that. What results is a bunch of conversations that follow the “Well, you know, Bob…” thought process. “Well, you know, Bob, this building used to belong to the military, and they used to hide weapons in it, so there’s a good chance there are guns and ammunition in there, and it’s possible the bad guys will find it, so we have to make sure no one does.”
No one talks like this in real life! Unless you’re meeting someone new, the minute you start interacting with someone it’s on the basis of a set of shared facts. If it’s a romantic relationship, then the two people have a history of being around one another for a long time. If it’s a working relationship, the characters will already know the basics about the organization/company that employs them. Readers don’t need all the minute details.
Again, I think this happens because writers don’t trust their readers. Or maybe they don’t trust themselves to be able to convey what needs to be said. Don’t be afraid to do both.
Listen to a TV Show to Absorb Good Dialogue
Here’s a tip: turn on a favorite TV show or movie, and close your eyes for a few scenes. Just listen to how people are talking to one another. They don’t share all the necessary information, and that lack of sharing is proportional to how well two people know one another. The more comfortable or intimate the relationship between two people, the less they’ll explain to each other. They have their own kind of shorthand.
This might seem frustrating, but it’s also incredibly freeing to write dialogue that doesn’t include everything. Think of that fight between two characters we talked about earlier. Imagine it’s between two people who have known each other for years. There are a lot of things they’re not going to say to one another, including the things that hurt them the most. They’re each going to assume, because of all those years together, that the other person should know exactly what they mean.
Yet we all know that’s not how real life plays out. Think of all the misunderstandings and conflict you can generate from a conversation where assumptions work against two people. Now write that. Don’t include every little cough and “um.”
Mistakes Writers Make: Issues with Grammar
I know, it seems like a small thing, but it really isn’t. Here’s an example that’s on a poster on the wall in my writing studio:
Let’s eat kids.
Let’s eat, kids.
Use a comma.
Save lives.
It makes sense when someone spells it out like this, but I’m amazed at the number of times people submit writing to me that is full of errors like these. And, no, you can’t just dump words on the page and expect the editor to “fix” it. Editors are here to help, yes, and we want to make sure your words and sentences and paragraphs convey the meaning you need them to convey.
But when editors are editing, they’re not writing. They’re coming in after the fact. That means if your sentences don’t make sense because of where you’ve chosen to put the punctuation, editors can only do so much before they send the manuscript back with lots of questions (which can end up costing you way more money in the process.)
Mistakes Writers Make: Leaving the Arranging of the Furniture to the Editor
Think of it this way. Let’s say you buy a house and a bunch of furniture to go inside it. As the homeowner, it makes sense that you would be the one to choose where the furniture goes. Too many writers, though, act like buying the house and the furniture is enough. They leave the “arranging” of the “furniture” to the editor.
This isn’t how it should work. After you decide where you want to put the furniture, a good editor will stand in the house with you and help you figure out whether that really is the best placement.
Sometimes an editor has way more experience arranging than you do. Sometimes you’ll decide you like a chair in a particular spot and you stand your ground on its placement, and your editor acquiesces to your decision because, after all, it is your house. But it’s an equal partnership with the writer taking the lead every single time.
If you leave everything up to the editor, though, depending on your skill level and the editor’s skill level, you might end up with a dining table in your master bedroom and a bookshelf next to your stove. The editor isn’t just here to do the “menial” task of correcting grammar, because using grammar correctly isn’t a menial task at all. It makes all the difference in the world in whether you eat with the kids or…well, you get the idea.
Mistakes Writers Make: Not Brushing Up on Grammar
Fortunately, it’s easy to check grammar online these days, and I think it’s great to have that resource at your fingertips, but you’ll end up wasting a lot of time if you have to hop online to check something every single time you sat down to write. Think of the internet as a backup and not your main resource.
If you know your grammar skills are weak, the main resource (as painful as this is going to sound) is a refresher grammar course, the kind they made us take in school. That way, when you’re writing, you don’t spend hours over the course of several revisions checking and re-checking grammar issues.
You’re doing the actual work of writing itself.
* * *
Since her start in niche publishing in 2005, Ekta Garg has written and edited about everything from healthcare to home improvement to Hindi films. She became a freelance editor in 2011 to cement her belief that words have the power to change people and the world.
A moderator for two online writing groups and a writing contest judge, Ekta also hosts Biblio Breakdown, a podcast where she examines book themes to offer writing exercises. Ekta reads and reviews at least one book a week (and plans to increase that when the kids go off to college.) She also manages The Write Edge and its extension blogs of original fiction, book reviews, and parenting adventures.
Outside of writing and editing Ekta spends time with friends (the ones other people can see) and counts her many blessings, which include a loving husband and two beautiful daughters who astound her on a regular basis.
For more information about Ekta and her work, please see her website or connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
Featured photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels.