#17 — Characters with similar names A lot of writers—myself included—have characters with similar names. For one novel, I found about seven names that all started with the letter j. While we get these names right because we know the characters well, readers, who are learning them, might mix them up. Changing character names is … More Common writer mistakes #17
#15 — No sentence variation Sometimes, sentences start to stack up. When that happens, they can feel as if they’re too similar to each other. In those spots, it’s good to check how those sentences differ. Because if you’re not careful, they can all sound the same and feel bland. See what I mean? I’ve … More Common writer mistakes #15
#14 — Misusing commas I’ve done one of these on commas before. I had talked about using commas to continuously add information to a sentence. But I haven’t talked about when to use a comma and when not to. Commas are complicated. What tends to get overlooked with them though is independent clauses and dependent … More Common writer mistakes #14
#13 — Dialogue tags vs action beats Dialogue tags can be tricky. But they’re easy to understand after knowing the difference between them and action beats. Dialogue tags show who’s speaking and how they’re speaking. These can include but are not limited to: Begged Exclaimed Grumbled Muttered Mumbled Said Screamed Shrieked Snapped Whispered Yelled Dialogue … More Common writer mistakes #13
#10 — Adding too many details with commas I’ve had a few authors use commas to add detail after detail onto a sentence. But they don’t realize how jam-packed the sentence becomes. Here are two fictional examples: Laurence came through the door, looking for answers, looking for something to turn his path around, and looking … More Common writer mistakes #10
#9 — Overusing character names Lately, I’ve seen a few writers overuse character names. They would use a name almost every chance they could. Here’s a fictional example: John walked over to Laurencia with the biggest smile on his face. He turned with his back away from Laurencia, careful not to let Laurencia see the … More Common writer mistakes #9
#7 — Not developing characters I’m sure we’ve all come across a character in a book who we didn’t feel anything toward much. We weren’t worried for the character’s well-being. Which doesn’t help us want to continue reading. It can take many drafts to get into a character’s head and develop them on the page. Some characters … More Common Writer Mistakes #7
Years ago at my internship, I got to see what was in the bottom drawer: rejected queries. For over an hour, I read query after query. The rejected queries all had repeated mistakes. Here are some of the most common ones: Misspellings One writer wrote aknolegments instead of acknowledgements. Spelling, especially in the writing career, … More 6 common query mistakes
#5 — Misusing hyphens Besides the gray with an a vs grey with an e battle, there’s one common spelling error I’ve often noticed while editing: hyphenated words. Sometimes we believe a word needs a hyphen when it doesn’t. Or we forget the hyphen when we actually need one. It could also depend on how … More Common Writer Mistakes #5
#4 — Common misused words We type a word. It’s spelled correctly. Microsoft Word isn’t flagging it either. It sounds right too! But I love that Disney fairy tail doesn’t quite look right. It can get more complicated than that. There are long lists of words we think we know, but we don’t. Or we … More Common Writer Mistakes #4
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