10 Avoidable Mistakes When Writing Your First Book 

I have completed five books now (four have been published, the other should be out next year) and every single time I have made avoidable mistakes. Each time I start a new book, I remember the mistakes of the previous book and vow not to make those. Then I make other ones instead. 

One of the greatest joys of recording the Honest Authors podcast with Gillian McAllister, and running the writers community for Jericho Writers (https://community.jerichowriters.com) is openly sharing those mistakes so new authors can learn from them. Those new authors will still make their own mistakes, of course, but hopefully theirs are smaller!

• Lack of plan 

It’s so easy, and understandable, to just jump straight into writing your first draft. It’s intoxicating to find a great book idea, and you can picture it in your head, in all its perfection. And then you start writing and slowly, agonisingly, you run aground.

For me, 35,000 is my bogey word count. If I don’t have a handle on what’s going to happen throughout the book, that’s when it’ll trip me up. The initial excitement has faded, I’m down in the weeds, and I’m out of my depth. Without at least a loose idea of the shape of this thing, it’s easy to paint yourself (and your characters) into a corner, to realise you have no idea how to move from the set up into the meat of the book, or what to do to bring it all together at the end.  

It doesn’t have to be in fine detail, and it may (it probably will!) change, but planning out a basic structure really pays off. Think about your novel as a play in three acts – set up, action, conclusion, then within those acts think about the main plot points that will happen. Think about your main character as having a driving force. It could be a question they need to answer a mystery they need to solve, a problem they need to fix or maybe they need to save someone. Whatever it is, that is their propulsion. It’s what you come back to any time you think, ‘wait, what are they doing?’ 

And if you’ve already started, planless, and you’ve run aground, it’s never too late to sit down and sketch out how the rest of the book looks. 

• Telling not showing 

Everyone has probably heard this expression, but what does it mean in practise? 

Telling: Margaret was incredibly nervous. Her whole life had been building up to this dance competition, and if she didn’t win it, her dad wouldn’t let her try another time. 

Showing: From her position centre stage, the audience seemed to loom monstrous. Margaret could see her father fidgeting in his seat and staring at his phone. She could still picture the torn up program from the last dance competition, discarded on the floor of his car. “Just one more time,” he’d sighed, when he dropped her off to rehearsals earlier. 

Let us see what you want to tell us about your character, let us feel what they feel. It’s simply more immersive and exciting that way. 

• Heavy handed world building 

This is particularly true if you’re setting your story in a world that doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist yet or no longer exists. So, fantasy and speculative novels obviously, but historical too. And anything set in a closed community or profession that only a few people can access. World-building is essential, readers need to understand the new landscape they’re navigating, but they don’t have to know it all, straight from the off. It’s much more satisfying to start the story on the very first page, and let the details of the world emerge as the story unfolds. 

Take a look at the unrivalled opening to 1984 by George Orwell:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

We know immediately that this is not set in our existing world, that here the very rules of time are different. We know that there has likely been a war, because of the name Victory Mansions, but not who fought, or who won. We don’t know what country we’re in, or who Winston Smith is. We find out all these things as we read on, but they are not provided for us immediately, because that would stultify the story. 

• Characters serving the plot rather than following their paths 

“But why would she say that?!” 

“He wouldn’t go into that room, it makes no sense!” 

If you’ve ever shouted things like that at the screen while watching TV, you understand very well what I mean by having characters do out of character things because it aids the plot. If you know your characters well, you probably know (deep down) when you’re doing this. See also, too many coincidences. 

If you are making a character do something against their own best interests, you need that to be plausible. Give them a reason or rethink that plot point so you can reach it in a way that doesn’t undo the character building you have done. 

• Hammering the message 

If you’re wrapping a message in a story, the story needs to be damned good. No one likes being lectured. Back to 1984, and while we all know the themes, the warnings about totalitarianism, we read the novel to find out what happens to Winston Smith. We learn the lesson through the story. That’s why 1984 remains a huge bestseller, and dry political texts on the horrors of totalitarianism, while true and valid, do not. 

• Racing to the finish 

Every single one of my endings (in the first draft) have been rushed. I think it’s the sheer relief of reaching them and the exhilaration of wrapping it all up, bringing the characters to their rightful conclusion and tying it all in a bow. 

But readers don’t want a mad rush at the end, they want to be toyed with a bit. They want to experience a shock, say, and then let that sink in a bit before the next shock lands. 

Lee Child always says to, “write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.” He means action scenes versus boring stuff like Jack Reacher driving on a long stretch of road, but I think it’s good advice for endings too. There is often a lot of ‘fast stuff’ at the end of the book. A character wins the day, he finds the missing letter, she shoots the baddie etc but your readers have given you hours of their time reading up to this point, don’t gip them with a rushed finale.

• Giving up 

How many of us have half written, abandoned manuscripts lying around? I have several. I’ve run aground and given up. Sometimes, it’s the right thing. The idea wasn’t strong enough in the first place, it couldn’t carry a whole book. If I’d tested it out by planning (see point 1) I would have realised that sooner, which is a big reason I plan now. But if the idea is sound, then it’s the execution. Try to find out what’s wrong. Are you telling it in the wrong tense? From the wrong point of view? Should you split it into more perspectives or perhaps ditch a few and keep it simple? Do you know what drives your character? 

Sometimes, a first draft is dumped because it’s too… first drafty. You only realise when you’ve written a first draft and then edited it, just how much of the writing is actually editing. You have to finish before you have something to improve upon. 

• Not building in a breather

And when you have finished, possibly hitting a self-imposed deadline, it’s tempting to immediately start polishing it. But if you edit too soon, you won’t see what is really there. The challenge of writing is trying to recreate what’s in your head on the page. And if you edit too soon, you run the risk of seeing what’s in your head – seeing what you intended with the book – rather than what’s actually in front of you. 

To effectively edit, you need distance.

Some people suggest putting it away and not looking at it for a month. Which is probably great advice that I’ve never managed to follow. But try to take some time, and also to clear your mind a bit. I spend a week not looking, and in that time I go swimming a lot. I find that it helps me flush my brain out, it stops me writing down every thought that pops up (paper gets wet, phones stop working) and instead lets me explore the idea as I pootle along in the slow lane. I often get a lot of my best editing ideas during this non-editing time. 

• Not getting feedback (or getting the wrong feedback)

Unless they’re a publishing professional or an accomplished author, asking someone who loves you to look at your book is a bad idea. They love you, so they will likely think it’s wonderful because they think you’re wonderful, or they’ll tell you it’s wonderful even if it isn’t. Worst of all, they might tell you it’s rubbish, because they don’t have the expertise to critique it effectively, and suddenly you have a divorce on your hands or you’re writing your brother out of your will.

Some people opt to get an editorial report done, which can be very helpful, but there are multiple ways to get insightful feedback that don’t cost money. 

A writing group can be helpful, though in-person writing groups are probably on pause at the moment. Connecting with other writers of similar genres and stages online can help. On the Jericho Writers community [https://community.jerichowriters.com] there are nearly 3,000 writers of every stage and a huge part of the activity on the site is people sharing their work and receiving thoughtful, kind but genuinely useful feedback. You can share small samples of a work in progress, or larger pieces, and you can also read other people’s work and offer your own opinions. 

• Sending it to agents too soon 

The worst form of this is sending out three chapters and a synopsis when you’ve not finished the whole manuscript. It’s tempting to think, ‘they’ll take ages to reply and it will spur me on to finish knowing it’s out there’. 

This is a terrible idea. 

When I first sent my book out, by a quirk of timing and luck, it landed in an inbox just as the agent sat down to have lunch. Forty-six minutes later, she asked to see the rest. This is astonishingly fast, but it happens. If I hadn’t got the rest of the book finished, I would have sunk my chance and wasted her valuable time. 

But sending out a manuscript that isn’t as good as you can make it is just as bad. You often know in your gut that something isn’t quite working. You think, hope, maybe you’re wrong. But these feelings are rarely wrong. No matter how keen you are, no matter what deadline you’ve given yourself, it’s way better to take another month, another draft, another read… your future self will thank you. 

—

Holly Seddon is the bestselling author of Try Not to Breathe, Don’t Close Your Eyes, Love Will Tear Us Apart and The Hit List. She is also an editor and mentor for Jericho Writers [https://jerichowriters.com/freelance-professional-editors/] and runs the FREE community at https://community.jerichowriters.com where you can get feedback, ideas and connect with nearly 3,000 other writers at all stages of the writing journey. 

THE HIT LIST, Holly Seddon

‘A compelling and original story with clever and unexpected twists to the very end.’ Rachel Abbott

What would you do if you found your name on a hitlist? And your late husband put it there?

When Marianne’s husband Greg is knocked off his bike and killed on the way to work, she must unpick the life he left behind. Numb with grief, Marianne consoles herself by scouring Greg’s laptop, finding comfort in reading his old emails and tracing his footsteps across the web. Until one day, she discovers that he had been accessing the dark web. Why was Greg, a principled charity worker and dedicated husband, logging on to a website that showcases the worst of humanity’s cruel impulses and where anything is available for a price? Marianne steels herself and logs on. After tentative searching, she discovers her name on a hit list.

In this fast-paced, powerful and exceptionally plotted novel, Marianne must figure out whether Greg was trying to protect her or whether he was complicit in the conspiracy for her murder. As she is pulled deeper into the depths of the underworld that Greg was seemingly hostage to, she gets closer and closer to coming face to face with Sam – the assassin hired to kill her. The dark truths that Marianne uncovers speak volumes about the dark underbelly of our society and forces us to question how far we would go to protect those we care most about.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips