Writing Tips: 10 Mistakes to avoid
Joanne Harris, @Joannechocolat, is one of our favorite authors on twitter. If you do not follow her yet, you should!
We collected ten of her writing tips from last week:
Today’s #TenTweets continue my series of tips for writers. Today, it’s Ten Mistakes To Avoid. And yes, I’ve made them all at one time…
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
1: “He /she said” is all you need in dialogue. Best to avoid; “she exclaimed,” “he bellowed”, or (gods forbid) “he ejaculated”. #TenTips
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 2: Plus you really don’t need to describe exactly which muscles twisted, crinkled, furrowed or gurned when your character smiles. — Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
Example: “Her lips twisted puckishly in a smile”. (She smiled) “His brow crinkled quizzically in a frown.” (He frowned.) #TenTips
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 3; Even “he/she” said can be dispensed with much of the time, as long as you know who’s talking. Try reading it aloud; you’ll see. — Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 4: Thesaurusitis is a killer. Protect yourself by NOT using every possible word for the same idea. Use different ideas instead…
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 5. If your writing needs padding, it means you didn’t have much there to start with. Don’t try to disguise lack of content… — Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 6: Word count and content are not the same thing. It’s what you convey that matters, not how many words it took to do it.
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 7: Not all nouns need an adjective to buddy them along. If your nouns look weak on their own, try using a stronger noun. — Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 8: Don’t state the obvious. Look for the unexpected in a scene, and try describing that instead.
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 9. Keep your hero’s backstory for when we’ve come to know him. We need to care about him first before hearing the details… — Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
#TenTips 10. Identifying with your hero is great. But don’t assume your reader knows him as well as you do. Remember, they’ve only just met.
— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) July 12, 2014
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Comments (7)
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed
Sites That Link to this Post
- 10 Ways To Kick Start Your Writing : Women Writers, Women's Books | December 5, 2015
- Friday Finds: Week 59 | Avid Reader | November 14, 2015
Sound advice.I’m struggling with making second draft more cohesive and exciting.
Really useful and practical – just what you’d expect from such an experienced writer.
Your list of writing tips has been so useful. Many thanks. I only wish I had read and taken on board number 2 before I began work on my first novel. A lot of deletion took place afterwards, as I’d ‘over described’ facial expressions to death. So much to learn . . .
I agree that there can be too much metaphor, or at very least there should be some caution in its use. I’ve always felt that the most crucial element is to engage the reader in what’s happening rather than trying to “impress” them with your clever use of imagery.
I Keep a notebook of “free radical” clever phrases that I can flip through from time to time if I get stuck. It serves a few purposes: on the one hand I’ve recorded them so my terror of forgetting something so “brilliant” won’t tempt me to force that bit into some poor unrelated character’s mouth, on the other those bits of random inspiration can help trigger other ideas. Then again sometimes it is just funny to sit and read them and wonder “What on earth was I thinking!?”
This is a brilliant list of writing tips. I love number 4. I once read a book, well the first couple of chapters actually, where the author pointlessly replaced body parts with the strangest choices. For example, fingers were digits and hand sausages and legs were pillars! Perhaps he needed a Thesaurus!