The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (14 page)

Face feelings. Then take the risk! Walk on the very edge of some situation or scene that will be
horrible
if you write one word too much... carry it one step too far. For it's only on the brink of the abyss where great fiction is written. And nobody ever really had too much fun playing it safe all the time, did they?

Usually it's a mistake
to seek advice from other amateurs at writers' clubs. I don't think it's a good idea to ask family or friends to read and "criticize" your manuscript, either.

If you want to share your work with your spouse or a close friend, that's fine. But to ask a club member, relative or friend for criticism is mostly a waste of time for at least two reasons: they won't be honest; they usually don't know what they're doing anyway.

Of course your writer's club may have a much-published professional as a member. If you can get advice from that person, it might be a fine thing. But most writers' clubs are filled almost entirely with unpublished writers, or those whose minor newspaper credits don't qualify them to judge your copy.

I have nothing against clubs of writers. I belong to a couple myself and sometimes attend meetings. They provide companionship, a place to meet others involved in the same kind of fascinating work, sometimes sources of market and other information, and new friends.

Far too many of them, however, encourage members to read their copy aloud for group dissection and discussion. This is
always
a waste of time. Reading your copy aloud is not the normal "delivery system" for a story. It's written to be read in print, not read aloud by the author.

Also, whether you read your copy aloud to club members or circulate copies to them, your club audience is in no way a normal audience of the kind you want to please. There are people here who have failed and are bitter. There are others here to show off. There are others who are here for a chance to pontificate. There are know-it-alls and know-nothings. If your work is good, many of them will be jealous. If your work is bad, few, if any, of them will know how to point out your mistakes in a constructive manner.

There are not likely to be any honest critical responses to your work. Club members generally try to be as gentle and positive as family members. A few, perhaps in reaction, crucify every member. In neither case do you get anything like an objective reaction.

Further, to be blunt about it, most writing club members have no idea what makes a good story. There's no conceivable way they can give you more than a groping, subjective reaction.

Remember, too, that many such club members get competitive and want to "shine" during the discussion period. They may say
anything
just so they can get on their feet and have their moment in the spotlight.

Finally, it has been my observation that no two writer's club "experts"—i. e., regular critics who seldom if ever publish anything of their own—ever agree on anything about writing. So if more than one advises you, you're going to get conflicting advice that's only more confusing than none at all.

The following is an amalgam of reports I've heard from students who took work to a writer's club. I can't say that any single person had all of these things happen to them, but I've known a couple of writers who took work to several meetings in succession and
almost
went through the full list that follows:

At the first meeting, somebody sniggered while she read her copy.

At the second, someone else cried while she read other pages.

At the third, the vice president said the ending of the story reminded her of Chekov; she pronounced it "great."

At the fourth meeting, after studying the revised story, someone suggested sharply trimming the dialogue; someone else stood up and said the story needed
more
dialogue.

At the fifth meeting—well, perhaps you get the idea.

And so it goes. Writers' clubs are fine organizations for many reasons, and sometimes they bring in professionals for lectures, which can be helpful. But as dearly as I love these clubs, and as many needs as I can see they fill for members, my advice remains the same: don't read for them; you'll get nothing out of it, and you might end up more confused.

The writing competitions often sponsored by writing clubs or coalitions, often in conjunction with annual conferences, are also dangerous for the serious writer, in my jaundiced opinion.

You know how these work. Three judges are (secretly) recruited for various contest categories such as short story, novel, chapter and so on. You prepare your entry pages with no hint of your identity, and an official removes your identifying entry form, codes it and your manuscript with a matching ID number, and then passes your entry along to the judges, who read, rank, and comment in turn. After the smoke clears, you may win a first, second or third prize, or honorable mention, in your category. There may be a small cash prize involved. Even if you don't win, you at least get back the written comments of the judges.

Presumably these comments help you improve your work.

Maybe sometimes they do. But in my experience, which is not narrow, the comments and advice from judges can vary as widely—and wildly—as comments from the club meeting floor after a reading. One judge will tell you to build up your scenes, and the next will tell you to cut them. One will praise your descriptive passages, and the next will suggest cutting them. One will wax poetic about how wonderful your plot is, and the next may say she couldn't find a plot at all.

In earlier and more innocent years I helped judge a number of fiction contests myself. Like all judges, I put an incredible amount of time into the job, and tried my level best to be both critical and helpful. But there is a nasty little secret about writing anonymous comments and suggestions to an anonymous writer out there somewhere:
In most cases, the advice cannot possibly fix the problem
.

Why should that be so? Because problems in writing fiction—tactics, planning, plotting, characterization, structure and the like—all tie together in the finished product. For example, a harrowing scene simply cannot be written about a dull and unrealized character. Sparkling dialogue may be written, but it means nothing if it does not somehow advance the plot. Plot cannot be discussed without some discussion of building backstory, and probably hidden story as well. Everything relates to everything else. Style is a subject requiring a course by itself for its proper examination.

Now consider the judge. Most novels he will look at during the average contest have quite a lot wrong with them. The problems interrelate. As much as he may like some fragments of the manuscript, chances are it would take him 25,000 words to begin to outline everything he sees wrong.

There are two major problems with this. First, he doesn't have time to write 25,000 words. Second, if he did, the resulting critique would probably seem so cruel and destructive to the writer that harm would be done to her.

Therefore, the judge scrawls a few paragraphs that he
hopes
may be in the critical ballpark, and even help. But it's a weak, limping attempt, and always falls short. And without face-to-face discussion, even the best advice may be misunderstood.

Strangely, however, some writers desperate for
any
recognition can sometimes get hooked on contests. Tragically, they start substituting contest recognition for real-world commercial sales. Contests and readings are nice amateur activities. For some writers they represent the ultimate, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I assume your goals are more ambitious—the national, paid markets. In that case, any satisfaction you might get from a club contest showing would only threaten to lower the fire in your belly—your resolve to show your work in the only place it really matters, the professional marketplace.

Join and attend meetings of a writer's club if you wish, by all means. But leave your story home
.

Believe me. At some point, when you have broken into the professional ranks, you will start getting advice of a far different sort: the advice of an editor who knows what she is doing—and who has a checkbook in her hand. That's when you listen most attentively.

In the previous chapter
we warned against taking too much advice from fellow amateurs, and noted that one day you may get lucky enough to have an editor fall in love with your work and give you sound guidance. There is also another possible source of good, face-to-face advice on your own work, and that's study with a published author who also knows how to teach his craft.

If you can find a professional who knows how to teach the craft of fiction, you should, therefore, go out of your way to work with her. And if that teaching pro gives you advice, you should not ignore it; you should at least consider it most seriously, and even try it, even if only for a short, experimental period.

Having said this, I hasten to add a number of provisos.

First, it is possible to learn how to write by writing, studying models, and reading books and articles about the craft. At least as far back as the early part of this century, seasoned professional writers were producing books containing technical advice that are just as solid today as when they were written. Only a few weeks before writing these words, I read a magazine article that repeated some of that old material and saw that it was still sound. And in the same issue of the same magazine I came upon a brief piece that said something about the introduction of characters that I had never before seen stated so clearly or meaningfully.

So it's possible.

There are, however, some problems with trying to learn only from books, with no professional coaching.

One obvious problem is that no book can give you a specific drill or test to make absolutely certain you understand a point; it can't read your copy, discuss it with you, hammer away at the same point until it is sure you understand and are applying a given technique. Books and articles, to say it another way, can't give you the individual feedback and coaching of a real teacher.

Another problem is that books on the techniques of writing usually cover many aspects of the craft, just as this one does. If you are struggling
to
learn,
it may be that you don't know what you most need to work on
. You might read right past a passage or section that might make all the difference for you if it were stressed for you and emphasized by someone who could see the flaw in your copy. In other words, the single vital point for
your
work might get lost in the panoply of suggestions you read through.

(That, incidentally, is one reason why this book is set up in a series of short "don't" episodes; the hope is that you have some idea of where your problems may lie, and will, after reading through everything, return to specific sections that you consider problem areas for
you
, giving them additional consideration and study.)

In addition, books and articles can't set deadlines for you. Now, I know you are highly motivated, or you wouldn't be reading
this
book. But all of us tend to procrastinate. And no matter how much I might try in these pages, I simply can't put the kind of work pressure on you that I could if you were one of my class students, scheduled to bring in pages each week ... or face both my wrath and a failing grade.

Finally, no book or article can encourage you when you feel low, beat up on you when you're being lazy, pick out a good passage and praise it, or point out the error in another page of your copy. A good writing coach is not just a teacher; he is advisor, handholder, slave driver, critic, friend, psychologist, editor, even inspirational guru.

So by all means study books on writing. Sift the advice, compare what different authors may say, and work to find your own way. But in addition, if you can, find a professional writing teacher,
listen to what she says
, and then
try to do it
.

Having said this with such certainty, however, I must add that there are all sorts of perils inherent in this seemingly harmless advice. We should consider a few of them.

First, a great number of fine fiction writers have no idea—or
say
they have no idea—of how they get the job done. Personally I believe that some may actually work by unconscious imitation, trial and error, and a genius-imagination, and truly not have any clear idea of how they are writing good stories. Unfortunately—again personal opinion—I think a far greater number of professional writers who profess to be mystified by the creative process are putting on an act for the public. "It makes me look more mysterious and wonderful if I act like it's all inspiration," they seem to be thinking. Or, "If people realized that I'm practicing a craft, they would think less of me."

(Such attitudes don't come only from writers who want to be mysterious and mystical to the general public; such attitudes are, unfortunately, endemic in college English departments, where instructors of literature seldom understand anything about the way writers really work, and so stress the mystery angle in order to allow the existence of little journals and magazines where abstruse theories of the most outrageous kind can be published... and shown to other faculty members who vote on matters of tenure and promotion. For this reason, English literature teachers seldom make good writing coaches, for the same reason that football fans seldom make good players or coaches; you can't learn the game from the bleachers, and you can't learn what writing is really all about from the theoretical ivory tower, either.)

But back to real writers who say they don't know what they're doing when they do it—or can't talk about their craft in a way that's meaningful for others: a few, neither ignorant of their craft nor wanting to look mysterious, are simply too lazy to think their way logically through the patterns of their own work. Or maybe they're scared that if they think about it, it will go away.

By this time, not so incidentally, I imagine you must be wondering why I've gone to such lengths talking about writers and teachers who
can't do it
, when in fact the subject of this chapter is advice that you should find a pro and listen to her. It's precisely because of the existence out there of so many teachers who can't teach, for whatever reason. I've talked about the bad ones to emphasize to you that I'm saying you should get help from a pro, and do what's advised,
only when you locate a good teacher-professional
.