I'm new here and writing my first novel. It's a rough sci-fi WIP story that I'm stumbling around, learning as I go. Hopefully I can learn a few new tricks from the community. It's a constant war of fixing errors for me so far but I'm hanging in there.
Hi there, @TripleBackstab . Welcome to the forum. What kind of errors do your find yourself making? (We all make 'em, but we don't all make the same ones! ) What kind of sci-fi story is it going to be?
Hey TripleBackstab, Welcome to the forum. Yes, editing and revision, fixing errors, is a major part of the writing process. Looking forward to crossing paths with you here. Terry
Like adding too much dialogue where there should be more action, or not keeping the story in the same tense throughout. (Shifting between the present and the past a few times.) It's probably better just to keep everything the same, but I wanted to make things more interesting by sharing some of my characters background without showing it directly. (I wanted to make a prequel later if it had interest.) My story is about a character forced to fight in a tournament for their life, but there is some adventure and technical stuff in it. Some exploration and humor as well.
Shifting tenses is easy to sort, and it can be sorted during the editing phase, after you've finished writing the whole story. That's one of those errors it's easy to make, but also easy to correct with your proofreading eye on. I wouldn't worry about it too much at the moment! There are a lot of 'errors' that can be corrected easily during the editing phases. I wouldn't get too hung up on them now. What you want to be doing now is getting the first draft of your story finished, so you have something concrete to work with. The too-much-dialogue thing, though. That CAN be a problem—and a problem you might want to tackle now, as you write, rather than waiting till you've finished. Trying to do everything with dialogue seems to be a writing fad at the moment, I think—judging from the number of people on the forum here who seem quite taken with the idea. Yes, it's lively, if the dialogue is good. However, it also has its problems. The main problem is that dialogue—if there is too much of it—shoots the reader through the story WAY too fast. Nothing much will sink in, if it's just talking heads. It's like rocketing through the script for a play, without any stage directions. A reader needs time to mull over what is being said. In a play or film, there is stuff going on as well as dialogue. Or you watch the character doing things, or things happening to that character. You get a feel for the setting, get a chance to worry about what's coming up, etc. This all slows the story down to where the audience can keep up. The notion that slow is bad and fast is good, when it comes to storytelling, needs to be heartily re-examined. If you go too fast, you not only miss things, but you end up exhausted. If you go slowly you experience a lot more, and end up satisfied. There is more than 'action' to contrast with dialogue as well. The non-dialogue portions of the story are usually referred to as 'narrative.' Narrative can contain all sorts of things that aren't action. Description. Inner thoughts and feelings. Fears and hopes. Linking different portions of the story. (Letting the reader know what's going on elsewhere, or what happened in the period between the last incident of dialogue and the one we're in now.) Foreshadowing events. Building suspense. And, of course, action. Think of your own life. I presume you don't spend the whole of it only talking and listening to other people talk. There are probably lots of other things you do as well. See if you can work those kinds of things into your story. Put yourself in your character's shoes. What are they DOING? See if you can bring that portion of their lives into the story in as much 'real time' as you give your dialogue. Obviously you're not going to show us everything they do ...only the stuff that's important for the readers to know. But try not to do all that with dialogue. What you say yourself, in real life, is only a small portion of what you think and feel, isn't it?—so work with that idea, and it will help break up the dialogue a bit. Good to have you on board! Explore around, see what others are writing by visiting the Workshop, maybe vote in the contests (short story, flash fiction and poetry.) And good luck with your own writing.
Welcome to the forums. Writer's who don't fix their errors aren't effective writers, so you seem to be on the right track.
