Biggest mistakes when writing?

[Reisinling]

I'm rewriting my snake novel, to finally send it to the editor. And while I'm on the subject, to avoid making a mistake I would cringe about for the rest of eternity, I'm curious what are the big mistakes one should avoid when writing.

Also, if you tried reading my novel and want to say bad things about it: here is the space to do so. Like, I recognise it had many problems, That's why I want to fix it up.

 

[Jemini]

Just do what I did, look up some literary agents on Youtube and see what they say are the biggest and most frequent mistakes people make which will cause them to drop a novel.

 

[DarkGodEM]

I'm rewriting my snake novel, to finally send it to the editor. And while I'm on the subject, to avoid making a mistake I would cringe about for the rest of eternity, I'm curious what are the big mistakes one should avoid when writing.

Also, if you tried reading my novel and want to say bad things about it: here is the space to do so. Like, I recognise it had many problems, That's why I want to fix it up.

awww, I'm not the editor for sneiky snake ;-;

Biggest mistake is sentence length and commas.

I've edited novels where I could barely understand what was happening because the author changed 3 periods for commas and never put the ones that were supposed to be there. That's AWFUL! And would make me drop a novel way harder than small plotholes or inconsistencies.

 

[Daitengu]

Dating your story with time sensitive humor. Lucky Star didn't age well mainly because of the referencial humor requiring a lot of anime knowledge of it's time period.

Having the MC with a specific moral value, then suddenly railroading them to do the opposite.

Being so impatient in writing that you skip characterization, pass off important events as an afterthought, and even motivations for doing things.

Losing the premise or main story to give a backstory to everything the MC meets to the reader. It's needed for the author, but it really doesn't matter to the reader until it does. Like I don't know about my neighbor's life, and it will stay that way until he goes on a murderous rampage or something. And even then I don't care about his life, I just care about what set him off.

 

[Reisinling]

Just do what I did, look up some literary agents on Youtube and see what they say are the biggest and most frequent mistakes people make which will cause them to drop a novel.

It was a good suggestion, so that's what I did. Here are my notes, maybe useful to others, with my comments in ():

1. Genre out of favor (welp, isekai it is)
2. Broken promise - the story promised inquiry is not fulfilled
3. The story starts in the wrong place (I’ve been wondering about doing in-media-res of my story, connected with 2- it takes shit ton of time for the story promise to be fulfilled. Maybe I should just skip the early parts, and fill them up like a puzzle, present day- beginnings- past?- but then other agent said that starting too close to action is bad, you should learn what your characters want and who they are in first pages, not sure how this relates to most webnovels/isekais)
4. Telling vs showing (mentioned multiple times)
5. To much backstory or info dumps (should one just drop the pre-isekai info about MC?)
6. Floating heads (too much dialogue vs setting)
7. Too much adjectives and adverbs
8. Lack of stakes
9. Weak voice for protagonist (no idea what that means, seems to be basically if readers like character)
10. Too much problems at the craft level (basically improve writing skills)
11. Doesn’t feel unique to the genre
12. Voice
13. Cliched opening (waking up, receiving a letter… they didn’t mention truck-kun so I’m safe aren’t I? I’m really wondering about this, I included itb because to me it has become a meme opening, so I’m not completely sold on the idea it has to be original.. But maybe there is something to be said about this)
14. Lack of character arc (I wanted to counter this with Overlord and dungeon defence, but in overlord there is an arc of other characters)
15. Too many timeskips (damn my note at point 3)
16. Pacing is off
17. Info dumps
18. Vision is off (they don’t like resolutions, or where the story goes)
19. Plot holes
20. Bad middle (you have ideas for start and end, but not enough work on the middle parts)
21. Repetitive sentence structures (I go, I say, I feel, I walk)
22. Redundant writing
23. All plot A , no plot B
24. Filler sentences (excessive descriptions)
25. Head hopping (switching
26. Lack of social worldbuilding (your MC needs more relations, things happening need to have social consequences, yeah your MC has 2 friends, but he also needs enemies, people he is like meh with, others reacitons)
27. Purple prose (too fancy sentence structure and words)
28. Too many characters
29. Perfect, passive characters (eh, but is it really? It’s literally webnovel MC, I suspect there might be a bit of bias towards what we want people to want, vs what people read)

awww, I'm not the editor for sneiky snake ;-;

Sorry :P Decided to first try supposedly great editors from fiver with fancy creditentials, to be sure that I get "best editor experience", to then be able to judge other editors I might find by comparison

 

[DubstheDuke]

I mean from my own experience the biggest mistake would be taking too long to get to the real story. People don't really like sticking around unless they see promise, so make sure to show them right from the start something interesting, but also make sure to control the pacing. Don't hit them with 10 bombshells in 1 chapter. Build up to stuff, but make sure to really hit them with those points of impact and progress things.

 

[DarkGodEM]

Sorry :P Decided to first try supposedly great editors from fiver with fancy creditentials, to be sure that I get "best editor experience", to then be able to judge other editors I might find by comparison

XD Np, I actually, don't have enough free time to take a large project at once right now so... Yeah, xD.

I'm really considering bumping my price up around 10-fold when I get my certifications on English all set and done since I'm not a native...
I only have the fancy credentials in Spanish ;-; so... yeah...

 

[namio]

While going to agent videos is actually a good idea, I'm not sure how applicable it is to your story. For one, Isekai is a specific genre that western agent videos would rarely touch upon, and it has quirks to it that the traditional western agents would consider trash but are the precise reason why its audience like it that much. You can definitely apply the things you bullet-pointed in that earlier post, though. They're all useful, but the ratio is probably what you should look out for when it comes to "fixing" story structure.

Unfortunately your novel isn't really a genre I read, but from what I've read of the first chapter, I would say it might be too heavy on just character narration. I can't really say anything about structure, but if the fact that the MC started out as an egg isn't that important, I'd rather have these things explained bit by bit over an introduction arc, say about 5-10 chapters. You can probably try imagining the pacing of a JRPG proper; first fight, you'd hope the devs are just getting you used to controls, before then adding in 1-3 more mechanics into the next battle, and maybe the more detailed stuff showcased at the first/tutorial boss. It'll be easier for the information to be absorbed when it's got real application and impact on the story at that very moment. Also, probably can help with the issue of things being kinda too "I'm in an egg there's only darkness" feel of the first chapter that makes it read like a tell-but-with-a-character-voice.

 

[Jemini]

Sorry :P Decided to first try supposedly great editors from fiver with fancy creditentials, to be sure that I get "best editor experience", to then be able to judge other editors I might find by comparison

Those guys usually charge per 1,000 words. That can get pretty expensive.

 

[LostLibrarian]

Weak voice for protagonist (no idea what that means, seems to be basically if readers like character)

The "voice" of a character is about how your character is displayed on the pages. Both through dialog and thoughts, but also through specific vocabulary or description.

As a simple example: when you write the POV of a soldier entering a room you should use different focus and vocabulary compared to a six years old girl.

The first might focus on the layout of the room and go in a more objective way (where people might hide, whether the lock of the door can keep intruders outside, etc.). A young girl might focus on the color of the walls or the different smell, how it feels scary or exciting, etc.
If you have a merchant character, he might always describe everything through its value in money. So he might focus on the price of the chairs more than whether it's nice to sit in them.

etc, etc...

 

[HappyVainGlory]

I disagree with the people saying that your MC has no voice. He clearly has one. It's just extremely dorky and not the typical go-get'em MC that's in a traditional story. However, it is the sort typical in an isekai story like this.

Also, monologue heavy is fine for stories of this type.

I guess the major things to keep in mind for your rewrite are whether you want to be closer to what people would read in a translated isekai light novel, or if you want it closer to traditional fiction.

Right now, I'd say your story is a pretty decent isekai novel. It's better than most things that I've found on novelupdates in the past when digging through the pile for more isekais to read.

The primary thing that I would change in your story is probably just some grammar and tense parsing as well as reworking the intro chapter into first person to keep it like that all the way through. After that, I'd probably do some reparagraphing to have information strictly about the MC in one paragraph and splitting up external information in other ones to help with the flow.

As for things to work on, you've mentioned it already, but you could improve on your descriptions. It's kind of hard for me to put my finger on what exactly's off with it... but I think it's something like you're emphasizing the wrong parts and not emphasizing enough the main parts?

In short, I don't think the story needs a rewrite. It just needs some TLC to get rid of awkward sentence structuring and tenses, as well as a bit more fleshing out of descriptions.

After all, the premise of your story is a guy being reincarnated as a snake, and not an OP one. What we got is a discovery channel-esque adventure of a snake in his daily life, slowly getting stronger and growing up. I'd say that's a decent selling point there.

It's definitely not a grandspanning action adventure isekai novel though. If that's what you had in mind, you definitely failed on that part. But as the story stands, an easy-going story about a snake and his snake family living their lives, I think it's pretty good.

This has been your local happy and vain writer.

 

[KiraMinoru]

The biggest mistake is to think what you wrote even if you edit it like crazy is not going to be absolutely demolished when you show it to an editor. They will pick you apart word by word and destroy whatever blind naive little confidence you have in your work. Thinking that you can possibly prevent yourself from cringing and wanting to die when an editor reads your work is naive.

Just accept your fate of a cringe induced death and offer your life up to the gods of editing.

 

[Aoi_Sora]

Listening to music with lyrics then sing along with it, after that forgot what to write. Lastly, gives up on writing and just play a game.