5 Writing Pitfalls To Avoid by Erika Raskin

Yellow and black stripes going in different directions
Photo by Pop & Zebra Unsplash.

1. Losing The Plot

Think of being unable to tell someone what your work-in-progress is about as a seriously suspicious mole; a flashing warning sign. The ability to succinctly explain the main thrust is important—mostly for yourself, to keep you on track as you scribe away. Whether your style is Southern—with tons of Spanish moss draped over every curvy line (à la Faulkner), or bare bones, tersely measured sentences (like Hemingway’s), having a concise destination in mind limits a lot of tragic meandering. For everyone involved.

2. Boring Your Audience

Minutia is draining. And minutia off-topic borders on the unforgiveable. If you’re penning a romance, you better have a very good reason for including a three-page description of a car engine.

(Given your genre just saying the thing purred is probably enough.)

Likewise, sentences built on synonyms are seriously annoying: The house on the hill was dark, foreboding, and threatening.’

Got it.

3. Writing Like You Are Being Paid By The Word

There is a difference between using a recurring motif and the obnoxious chanting of identical details. If there’s no reason to keep saying the same thing throughout your pages (‘Her blonde hair glimmered/ The highlights shone like gold in the sun/’ /He was mesmerized by the light dancing in her locks’): stop.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the use of poetic refrains. Adrian McKinty’s lyrical repetition of his Irish protagonist’s under-chassis bomb checks whenever climbing into the car to go anywhere reverberates as a sad reminder of the novel’s setting during The Troubles. Likewise, Robert Galbraith’s main character in the Strike series copes with chronic physical agony caused by an IED. The throbbing amputated limb waxes and wanes, occasionally taking center stage before fading into the background with proper treatment. A part of who the man is, but not all that he is, the phantom pain serves as an identifier of the unique detective.

Think of your prose like the art in your house. You wouldn’t put up an identical print every few feet. (I suppose an argument could be made that scenic wall paper is the exception to this rule. But a repeating colonial backdrop above the settee, LazyBoy, and coffee table is, in my humble opinion, also questionable.)

While showing different manifestations of a trait helps the reader maintain a full understanding of a character, don’t over-do. If the guy’s a slob, casually mention suspect smudges on the bathroom light switch; include his boss’s complaints about rumpled attire, describe how his SUV still smells like the long-gone family dog (who was able to nose open the kitchen door because of all the junk that got in the way of it latching): once.

4. Playing Footsie With Adjectives, Similes And Metaphors

‘He ran fast as a speeding puma into the room.’

VS.

‘He catapulted into the room.’

Enough said. Use. Your. Verbs.

5. Writing Interminable Elementary School Plays

Dialogue serves to advance the story and provide details about the characters. Stiff, superfluous, poorly directed or wrongly originated chatter can ruin a piece. The underlying connection between the participants needs to be taken into account. Unless taking place in the day-room of an assisted living facility, one wouldn’t exchange get-to-know-you info with siblings or best friends. Convos generally pick up where left off. And your peep’s words have to reflect who they are. A self-absorbed, center of the universe next door neighbor shouldn’t be featured asking the protagonist how’s he’s doing, what his thoughts are about the road being repaved, and what’s up with his individual kids, by name. (Imagine someone like Trump doing that!) Just not happening. Remember who is speaking. There has to be consistency–or an explanation for the seismic shift.


Erika Raskin
Erika Raskin is Streetlight‘s fiction editor. Her latest novel, Allegiance, is about the slow creep of a fascist takeover in America—and its impact on one family. More of her words can be found at erikaraskin.com.

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