Mistakes Made By A New Writer

credit:writer's write

Remember my post on Rules of writing by Elmore Leonard. After learning what not to do, I found I have done almost all of them. When I spoke to my fellow writers I found out that most of us are on the same page. So, are we all wrong ?

I have no clue. That is what you guys have to tell me. Here I can just discuss the mistakes I have been making in my novel writing. For the sake of discussion I will create a novel "He met She- A Love Story" ( I rather like the title :) )

1. Well I started this novel with the weather.

" It was thundering outside as she parked her car in the driveway......" and then I described how the weather was in the next two paragraph. Now as I read it back I feel like a weather reporter.

2. Another mistake which I presume I made was the usage of exclaimed, told, said meaningfully, gruffly, whispered,...... you get the gist?  Too many action verbs for a simple 'said'.

3. I used 5 exclamation marks in the first chapter. (Don't snicker). My theory was how will my readers understand my excitement or my joy if I don't use it often. It was created for this purpose  wasn't it?

Well, God bless you Elmore Leonard. You opened my eyes! ( Oops....)

That was in theory part. Now the in action problems :-

1. The story was there in my head. I quickly wrote it down in a small note book. And that was it! The story was ready. No, silly you, not to be published but to be rewritten. This is where the problem started. I know where the characters were going. But I needed fillers. There are other characters also in the story.  How much should I describe them and how long they should remain in my page? The extra characters are the ones which keep the story moving also. Without them one would feel that the protagonists are living in a void. 

2. Then came the appearance of the characters. Should I describe then in detail?  What dress they are wearing, are they looking glamorous, sexy? What about the atmosphere surrounding them? Do we describe the room in detail? Well, that has its downhill. The readers get bored. Basically, you have to write only what the readers want to read. In a Romance - the love story, in a murder mystery - the plot and following the clues till the mystery is solved.In a Romantic novel, we have to keep the characters in a grip. Though the hero might really love his mom but in every scene he cannot go on speaking to her or about her.( Though in real life it happens :))

3. Give personalities and voice to the characters. That really took a lot of thought. But once you get the grip of it, you can almost hear those voices in your head. Here we have to keep in mind the language used. We write the way we speak. In a dialogue we use haven't, didn't etc. as opposed to have not, did not. We have to remember the characters are alive in the pages. They are living in our world. Unless it is a periodic story, the characters have to be contemporary. 

4.Editing (groan). I suppose editing is like killing your novel and Resurrecting it.(How morbid!) And most of us hate it. How many times can you read the same thing and  then feel this could have done better?It is never ending and frustrating But if a writer overcomes and fall in love with this part of the job.... he/she is on the way to publication house. :)

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About Rubina Ramesh