5 Serious Writing Errors (You Might Not Realize You're Making)

Writing, like many things, can be filled with rights and wrongs, and while the wrongs aren't serious enough offenses to cause bodily or irreparable harm, they can affect the quality of your writing. 

The good news is that once you are aware of these errors, they're relatively easy to fix - the bad news is that it may take a good amount of practice before you stop making these errors even if you are aware of them while you're writing instead of having to go and fix them after the fact. 

Overusing Adverbs 

There have been many reviews and writers that will tell you that to include an adverb in your writing "quickly," "loudly," and many other -ly words is a sign of a lazy writer and cluttered writing. 

While I don't believe you have to go through your manuscript and replace all these words, it will strengthen your writing to eliminate most (almost all) of them with verbs and descriptive adjectives. 

Ignoring Show, Don't Tell

Never in your writing should you be telling your reader something when you can be showing them.

Emotions, images, and the overall scene atmosphere should be shown to the reader through the use of their actions, dialogue, and sensory details. 

Replacing statements such as "Jake was angry at Sarah's betrayal," with "Jake clenched his fist, his face turning as blazing red as the lights on the tree as his eyes hardened at Sarah, who avoided his gaze, her eyes fixed on the skaters behind him blissfully unaware of Jake's heart breaking with every beat." 

Not Editing for Clarity 

Not everything you write in that first draft should make it through to the polished version of it. It's possible things were left out or you began taking the story in one direction only to change it a few chapters later. 

Your characters stated that they needed to go and get the key from the Goblin King, well why did they end up going to the Mountain Troll instead?

 This is where taking a break between writing the story and editing the story comes in handy. It allows you a fresh look at the story so details you might have missed can be seen and cleaned up. 

 Failing to Proofread

We've all been in situations where we've typed something out on our phones only to read it back and realize we sent something were didn't mean to because our spellchecker changed it to something else. 

Spellcheck and Grammarly will not catch every mistake, it's crucial to go through each sentence in your work as an editor does, line by line making sure what you meant to say is what is actually being said. 

Writing in Passive Voice 

My Creative Writing Professor used to write the words PASSIVE VOICE on the top of my assignments so often that he contemplated having a stamp made just for me however 4 years later, thanks to all his wonderful teaching - I'm still making the same errors, but that's what editing is for. 

Passive voice is when the subject of a sentence is having something done to them instead of performing it. 

Passive: "The note was written by Sarah."

Active: "Sarah wrote the note." 

While passive voice is needed when the person performing the action is unknown, generally using active voice is preferred and will enhance the clarity of your writing.

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These errors, while serious are not life or death, but can mean the difference in how your work is perceived not only by agents and editors but most importantly by readers as well.

Take the time to polish your manuscript whether you are taking the traditional publishing path or sending your story straight to readers yourself. 

Now go get to writing. 

With love, 

B. King xo xo

Want to write with me live? I'm now on Twitch! Come join me in some writing sprints every Wed-Thurs-Fri-Sat at 10:30 pm EST

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