Hello, If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to know some of the most common mistakes you've noticed writers make. These could be newbies or even established, popular authors. And while I acknowledge their subjective nature, I'd also like to hear your pet peeves. Maybe we all improve as a result. Or maybe we just get some stuff off our chest ...
I guess I better start. Personally - totally subjective - I'm not a fan of Stephen King's tendency to ramble in his novels. I get that he starts with ideas and kind of feels his way through in order to develop them into a story. Still, I find it annoying.
Not something I imagine a published author would make, but surfing fanfics and similar amateur online writing, the amount of people who can't get the right 'breath' or 'breathe' or words similar to that. I can't remember what the similar words are, but I have to sigh every time I come across it.
Overdescribing a scene physically. WoT does it every time Rand changes clothes. To be honest, I don't think I could read those books again, even though I love fantasy and I'm quite forgiving most of the time.
Over use of slang, technical or unfamiliar terms. A couple of examples. There are a series of books called Soldier A, Soldier B, Soldier C etc, all written by different authors. I've only read one and it was terrible. The biggest issue I had was them taking military slang and using it over and over again. The one that stands out is the use of 'Scran' to refer to food. In all my time with the military I think I heard 'scran' no more than a handful of times but in the book it was constant usagem to th epoint where the word food, or another variation or description, was possibly never used. Its now I word I hate. Using it constantly simply wasn't natural. No one I ever encountered spoke like that, and it wasn't the only phrase but its the one I can remember most. Another example is by an author called Gav Thorpe, who loves the term Rockcrete, to the point where he uses it so often its like a physical blow to the head. Even though its in a universe set so far apart from our own, it doesnt feel normal to constantly use that phrase in place of other more faniliar terms like, ground, road etc... One final example, and this one is a bit of an anomoly. In Lee Childs book Persuader he has the mani character use muliple metaphors or alternate phrasus to describe the same thing. So an action will take place and there willl be five, exactly and always, five, metaphors to describe it. He does something similar in most of his books but never to this extreme of 5 times, every time. It makes me want to kill, that is, Murder, Massacre, Slaughter, Slot, Slay. It gets really irritating really fast. Thing is, with a book, you scan speed read past this, but I listen to audio books - so if you ever seen someone smashing the FK out of his steering wheel or dashboard whilst driveing along the motorway, its me having just listened to someone say Rockcrete, AGAIN.
One thing I've been noticing is related I think to people who don't read very much, and they don't know the right versions of words. For example Breathe and Breath as already mentioned above. But also things like passed when it should be past. I once tried to straighten this one out and the person told me no, past means something happened some time ago, passed is used when a person walks passed a door for instance. I also think this next one is related to not having read much—using colloquialisms and slang etc in the narration. It's fine in certain circumstances—for instance if it's written in 1st person and the narrator is the main character, as in Hucklberry Finn or True Grit. There it's the person telling you about something that happened to them, so the entire thing should be in character voice complete with their quirks and phrasing. But if it's in third person or if the narrator isn't a character in the story, then narration should be neutral and not colloquial. Then there are the phrases intended to sound fancy but they're not used properly, like of which when it should just be which. Example—"She put down the pencil, of which she had hardly used." Or to whom when it should just be who. Example—"It was John, of whom had parked in the driveway." Good idea for a thread. This should allow us to get some things off our chests that have been bugging us. It's sort of a blend of Things that annoy you but shouldn't and Do you enjoy Eggcorns.
I actually sympathize with folks who produce works filled with my pet peeve because it is so common among new adult writers. They want to write something impressive, so they produce long strands of multisyllabic words to describe the simplest scenes and actions. Results are sometimes hysterically funny; a long-time favorite is the phrase, "the humongous ravenous omnivorous omnivore." I loved everyone of my students and would not have hurt them for the world by laughing at something they wrote, but I was hard pressed to explain with a straight face why that particular phrase didn't quite work. And oh, yes, I have produced my own strings of head-smacking-worthy phrases, so please don't think I'm feeling superior.
Hopefully, you weren't in the process of drinking when you came across that one. Might be tricky to explain the droplets all over the page.
Of course one of the classics is egregious abuse of adjectives and adverbs. Also unclear pronouns, where you can't tell what noun they're linking back to.
I had a problem with this when I was acting as editor for a friend's on-line magazine. One of his contributing editors was a chap from North Carolina. At first, the lad was so happy to see his name in print that he cheerfully accepted pretty much all editorial suggestions. However, that didn't last very long before he started pushing back against suggestions that backwoods North Carolina colloquialisms weren't appropriate for a publication with international circulation. (The magazine is in English, but it comes out of Greece.) The stand-off became more and more acrimonious, until it finally ended with the guy quitting and starting his own web site (using as fodder for his early issues all the material that my friend had paid him to write -- with no attribution.
^^ That reminds me of this little story. There's an artist named Frank Frazetta, out of Brooklyn, and as a youth he was a street tough. But he was becoming an excellent artist and, unlike all his friends, he realized he was going to have to enter the world stage, where Brooklyn street slang and attitude would make him a buffoon. So he hired a vocal coach and rapidly transformed the way he spoke and wrote. Most of his friends made fun of him and excommunicated him from their group in hostility, as if he were personally insulting them. Most of those friends are completely unknown today. The funniest thing is, I heard the story originally from Frank's friend and fellow Brooklynite, the animator Ralph Bakshi, who told it all in his intensely strong Brooklyn accent. I'm also reminded of the movie My Fair Lady, where a professor on a bet tried to educate a lowly street urchin to become a lady of refined morals and linguistic expression.
Slipping out of close 3rd POV only because there are multiple persons on scene and the author is afraid he/she confuses the reader. If the author uses close 3rd, it jars me everytime I read the name of the protag when I'm supposed to be in this guy's head .
Ha! Never thought of it that way, but yeah, it's like a form of classism. "Oh, you're too good for us now huh?"
Assuming because they care about a character we also automatically do. Likely the biggest writing mistake I've seen made over and over.
You misunderstand. The classism is in the fact that he had to adopt a new way of speaking in order to pretend he wasn't born poor and urban (god forbid).
I see it more as an inspiring story. He proves you can be born poor and in a crap neighborhood and rise out of it by shedding the ways of speaking and behaving that mark you as ignorant and arrogant. Those are 2 of the main traits that define the worldwide redneck/ghetto/hick/trailer trash attitude that prevents people from becoming successful.
By and large what prevents people who speak non-standard Englishes from becoming successful are entrenched systems of privilege which mark them as being inherently subpar simply for having been born into a community that speaks a dia-, socio-, or etholect that differs from the prestige variety. The solution to which is, of course, breaking down the prejudice that leads to them being "marked as ignorant and arrogant" for how they speak, rather than what they say. In much the same way we don't tell women to simply dress up as men to get ahead in business.
Well, I don't drink the woke kool-aid and I don't buy into those excuses. But that's getting into debate room territory anyway.
Accents? It begins with the way certain subcultures define themselves by their differentness from the larger culture and reject education and anything else that would make them seem similar to that larger culture. This is where the anti-education mindset comes in that gets a lot of kids beat up in poor neighborhoods if they actually study and do homework. Along with this comes a fierce attitude and a chip on the shoulder. And yes, a big part of group identification in the subculture is a certain way of talking and behaving. @Friedrich Kugelschreiber I'm surprised you're not aware of this, you're a fan of Thomas Sowell, right? I learned this from his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, but of course there are many soundbytes on YouTube where he elaborates on it. There's a quote from a 1960's movie called Look Who's Coming to Dinner where Sidney Poitier says to a fierce radical "The difference between you and me is you see yourself as a black man, and I see myself as a man."
If by "certain subcultures" you mean poor black people then I think we'd all rather you just say it and get this over with. And for what it's worth, AAVE is by many metrics more morphologically complex than "standard" English. Your accent isn't something that you should raise yourself above any more than any other inherent part of your identity. Gayness isn't something to be hidden and risen above, nor are mental illness, or queer gender identities. In the same vein, the language varieties we grow up speaking are themselves expressions of the beautiful diversity of humanity, and anyone who hears a thick Bronx accent, a broad Scottish brogue, or my own stoccato East Mids speech and would rather think less of the speaker than celebrate that diversity can, frankly, get in the bin.
If I meant that I would have said it. But this started with talking about Brooklyn, remember? What I'm talking about is, as I already said, common to all the subcultures that define themselves by their differentness from the larger culture and show that difference through the way they talk. I'm really done talking about this here, especially if all you've got is ridiculous comments like that. If you want to learn more about it look up the terms 'black rednecks thomas sowell' on youtube and watch some of the videos. And yes, before you point it out, he's talking specifically about black culture, because he's black, and it was the subject of his specific studies at the time. But he does relate it to all the other subcultures that operate similarly.
I don't know how common it is, but writers inserting new characters just because the can. Robert Jordan, I'm looking at you.
That was the nail in the coffin for The Walking Dead (the TV show) for me. It got to a point where they were just inserting cardboard cutout characters to make sure different races/religions had representation. It was so obvious and on the nose. At least try - pretend to put in some effort, even - and have these caricatures serve the story in a significant, meaningful way.
