4 Frequent Writing Mistakes Authors Make (and How to Avoid Them)
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If you want to improve your writing, an editor can provide valuable advice. Is your manuscript ready to take the editing plunge?
Our team of professional editors has more than 50 years of combined experience with helping authors publish the best books possible. There’s no better group of people to ask to identify the mistakes authors (across all genres and experience levels) make most often. So, we asked them – and they provided a resounding consensus.
Today, we’re going to outline what these common mistakes look like and explain how you, dear reader, can avoid making them yourself.
1. Telling instead of Showing
You’ve probably heard the writing adage “Show, Don’t Tell”. But what does it actually mean?
The truth is most books will use a combination of both techniques, “showing” events live on the page such as through action or dialogue, and “telling” the reader what has happened through exposition or recap.
For example, let’s deliver the same information in both formats.
Telling
Angela packed her sweater into a bag and put it over her shoulder. She told her mother that she was going to the party whether her parents wanted her to go or not, and stormed out of the room. A family photo fell off the wall and smashed.
Showing
“I’m going to the party,” Angela said, stuffing her sweater into her bag.
“Your father and I forbid it.” Her mother crossed her arms in stubborn refusal.
“I don’t care what you and dad say!” Angela swung the bag over her shoulder and pushed past her mother and into the hall. The door slammed behind her, knocking down a framed photo of the family with a smash.
As you can see, the “telling” version is factual, but doesn’t invite the reader in. How does Angela feel about this event? What is the dynamic between the two women? What is the cause and effect between the different elements in the scene: the objects, people, and their actions?
By “showing” the scene like a film director might, the reader is pulled directly into the action. We watch the conversation unfold in real time (even though this passage is written in past tense) and so the sequence has more weight. We can see how Angela is acting — hasty, agitated — and we can hear the delivery of the words between the two characters — both stubborn to a fault. When Angela abruptly leaves, we feel the resounding finality of the scene. Rather than just breaking a framed picture, this detail gains deeper meaning: a symbolic shattering of the family.
There are times when you should give a brief account: daily routines, minutiae of research, a long passage of time. But look for places where you want the action to hook your reader. Moments of emotion, drama, or delivery of information will resonate better if shown. Seeing the movement or hearing the conversation is more effective than just being told that it happens. Show us, don’t tell us.
2. Overuse of font styling
When we “use” too many types of font styling, the text becomes hard to follow. Where is the emphasis supposed to go? What is the most important piece for the reader to remember? When it comes to styling your text, less truly is more.
Many authors want their cadence (how they might read that text aloud) to come through on the page, so they emphasize all the words they would stress verbally. But print is a different medium, and you don’t need to litter your passages with all these bells and whistles. Otherwise, you’ll fatigue your reader and they won’t take you seriously … or they’ll give up on your message entirely.
Use font styling to:
build the hierarchy for your book — like this article has with its different topic headings.
(occasionally) provide emphasis — “She said to buy the red one, Erik!”
clarify something for your reader — When we say “font styling,” we’re referring to the use of italics, bold, and underline, as well as different typefaces.
properly format the titles of books, ship names, movie titles, etc. — The Titanic was a trans-Atlantic ocean liner and also a James Cameron film by the same name.
Avoid font styling when:
using multiple forms for emphasis. Instead, stick with one type (usually italics is best, but some projects may use bold); don’t stack them like this.
making body text more exciting by frequently switching fonts. Body text should be one consistent typeface. If your book requires a second typeface (such as for sound effects in children’s books, or to offset letters or documents), you can indicate this for your designer [[[in triple square brackets]]]
using underline for emphasis. Underline has come to mean a clickable URL, so it should only be used for eBooks or (in some designs) for headers.
an arbitrary visual difference, including highlighting, font colour changes, and !!%strange symbols#^*.
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When you need to style something for hierarchy, emphasis, or other appropriate means, please use the proper Styles in your word processor. You can either learn the hot keys, or you can select the text and use the buttons included in your program. This will prevent strange combinations that your designer may not be able to isolate and correct.
If something else comes up, like a project-specific styling goal, discuss it with your publishing services provider, and they can advise you on how best to prepare your manuscript so that your designer can translate your instructions into something dynamic but still legible for your readers.
3. Misuse of dialogue punctuation
There’s a lot of confusion around dialogue punctuation — perhaps understandably, since there are various ways to format dialogue. However, this issue usually comes up when the writer hasn’t implemented any one style consistently. This can make it difficult to follow who is speaking. So here are a few rules to format your dialogue like a pro.
North American standard style
Most commercial books in North American use the standard paragraph style, which looks something like this:
“Vic said he’d be here at three,” Shannon said.
“I know,” answered Jack.
“It’s already quarter to four! Does he not know what ‘show up early’ means?”
“I know you’re mad.” Jack wrapped an arm around Shannon’s shoulders, trying to placate her. “But he can’t control his kids.”
As you can see, each new speaker starts on a new paragraph.
Their spoken works are surrounded in “double quotation marks” with a final comma where there is a speech tag (like Shannon said).
If there’s an action tag (like Jack wrapping an arm around Shannon), this acts as a new sentence, and so the dialogue ends in a period.
All finishing commas, exclamation points, question marks, and periods go inside the quotation marks. Your word processor may try to change the next word to a capital letter but, if it’s a speech tag, it should remain lower case (said Shannon, not Said Shannon).
You’ll also notice that the second line spoken by Shannon has no dialogue or speech tag. This omission can prevent the dialogue from sounding too repetitive, especially in cases where there is a back-and-forth, and we know which characters are involved in the conversation.
When there’s a quote within a quote (in this case, sarcasm), this is put in ‘single quotation marks’ inside the larger double quotation marks.
There are mixed feelings among editors and readers about dialogue tags. Some writers try to use them as sparingly as possible, ensuring that each character’s voice is so distinct that the words they speak could not be said by anyone else in the book. This also goes with whether it’s “Shannon said” or “said Shannon.” Both can be used, but the order may depend on your genre, your regional dialect, the context of the scene, and cadence of the sentence. Write what sounds more natural, and if you’re still not sure, default to “said” and then the name.
Others like to add adverbial qualifiers (Shannon said angrily) or to use stronger synonyms (Shannon grumbled). Generally speaking, how a character speaks should be conveyed in their words and in their action tags. Stronger synonyms can be part of a writer’s style, but try not to get too crazy with those alternatives, as many editors will point out that whimpering, gasping, laughing, etc., are actually difficult to do while enunciating words. If you want to use these kinds of signifiers, you’re probably better off putting them into an action tag.
Other dialogue styles
Some literary styles don’t use dialogue tags or quotation marks at all. Instead they format dialogue like this:
Jack waved to Shannon with a grin.
—Good thing you showed up.
—You doubted I would?
—Well, you know. These days, no one’s on time.
This style works best if there’s a consistent narrator or point of view throughout the work, if the dialogue is infrequent and/or brief, and if the book’s style is more slice-of-life, fast-paced, or experimental. Because it can be harder to tell when the conversation is spoken aloud rather than thought, or who is saying what (especially if the conversation goes on for any length), this style is not as common.
Finally, many readers who grew up on British books may notice that many of the things we just discussed don’t hold true. That’s because the British use their quotation marks opposite to us. So they would format that line of Shannon’s dialogue like this:
‘It’s already quarter to four. Does he not know what “show up early” means?’
Now you’re ready to handle your dialogue scenes effectively and consistently.
4. Missing details
The author (usually) knows what they mean when they’re writing, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that readers may not be privy to all the same information. When reviewing your work, try to think of how an audience would respond. If your intended audience are industry experts like you (or die-hard fans of the genre), you may not need to stop and explain certain terminology or sources. But if you are writing for a general audience, younger readers, or newcomers to your field, it helps to stop and think about where you might have left gaps in your writing.
Some things to keep an eye out for:
Jargon. These are terms that are only known by insiders (like ROI or taxiing). It’s always best to define these on their first utterance, just to make sure you and your readers are on the same page. This is especially important for acronyms that may have multiple meanings.
Names. You might know who Jim Smith is, but does your reader? Make sure to use their full name on the first mention (there are many folks named Smith!), but also indicate why you’re mentioning this person. Are they a relation, an inspiration, the source of a quote? What is their importance to the current discussion?
References. Be sure you have all of the information needed for your sources. For quick reference, this is how the Chicago Manual of Style formats a reference:
The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information. 3rd ed. Edited by Anne M. Coghill and Lorrin R. Garson. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 2006.Logical segues. Brains jump around topics, going from what you had for breakfast this morning, to the fact that you’re running low on eggs, to the sale the store is running, to what time they close, to how quickly you can drive there after work. But if you just write about the nutritional value of eggs, and then jump to regional supermarkets, the path you took to get to the new topic is invisible to your readers. So be sure that as you move from one idea to the next, you are providing connecting segues that show their relation to each other.
Incomplete sections. It’s easy to put a placeholder in so you don’t interrupt your writing flow. ([[[check dates]]] is one I use often.) The challenge is, sometimes these never get filled out, so look for unfinished sentences or paragraphs, references that are missing (in whole or in part), or sections of your outline that might have been missed. This will ensure that when you submit to a reader or editor, they have the full picture to assess.
Have you made any of these writerly faux pas? You might be able to save yourself some time and money by cleaning up your manuscript before submitting it for editing. Take a look through your work for places you can convert from telling to showing, prune any excess text styling, properly format dialogue, and fill in any remaining gaps. You’ll ensure your manuscript is polished and consistent — and ready to be read!
