The WORST Amateur Writing Mistakes | 22 Novice Writer Issues

I like how I could watch a bunch of your videos,in opposed to actually writing!

Info dumping? looks pointedly at George RR Martin

I bet I make none of them 😎

Maybe it’s just me, but I guess I like fanfic writing

False grammar: I once read a story in which the author mixed the following wildly: there, their, and they're.... which was quite confusing.

I tried to read "in the first circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but the huge amount of characters with long Russian and similar looking names ( about 50 people or so) made it really hard for me.

what if you make your charachter likable but then do bad things and you feel like the audience is hating the character, but you dont want the character to be hated. is is maybe just ok for them to hate the character? Or what do we do with that? thanks :)

I am an academic editor. Still, I enjoyed your explanations.👌👌

I think the three biggest amateur mistakes are no knowledge of English grammar (purpose and usage, not rules), wrong words used (maybe taken from thesaurus or incorrectly heard form verbal sources), unoriginal copies of other stories they have read. However, the only "mistake" that matters is not knowing how to tell a story. A good storyteller can shine despite any mistakes--spelling and grammar errors, et al.

I am not a fan of his, but was James Michener an amateur? Hint: He sold 75 million copies.

You should also drop the that - My mother always said gardening was the root of happiness.

I think there are two types of mistakes, some that can make you a lousy writer and some that should make you question whether you're fit to be a writer... info dumping is a trick one, so many great classics are filled with info dumping as soon as they begin, all right the authors get away with it because they're classics but still that don't make the dumping any less intrusive in the story... but in all fairness I don't mind it when it's done in a smooth and pertinent way... now if someone really use excessive dialog tags the way you described it, it's a whole other level of mistake, let's be honest...

I guiltily confess that I am a tense-shifter....... or I was....maybe it's will be?

I've been watching videos for two months to improve my writing and this is one of the very best. Thank you so much for all your help. God bless you.

Homegirl said, your writing is very pedestrian, basic. Damn, that’s cold blooded.

I cringe intrinsically; fully vulnerable and aware of all my flawed attempts of expression and my ability to command the keyboard!

Excuse me Ma’am but what about insufficient dialogue tags? When the reader gets lost who is speaking? A good writer will make that clear through character and plot, but if not, you need to put in those tags every so often.

Don’t try to establish character by writing psychology. And, Americans, go easy on those tree species.

What about authors who use flowery and long descriptive passages successfully like Tad Williams (or another example you might know)? When is it successful and how do you follow them for inspiration when it’s against the “rules”?😊

Stuffy, formal writing is the issue I have! I couldn't believe how much I had to edit my writing to include contractions. Not the issue I thought I'd have. LOL

I started writing and wrote 15 pages... Waiting to complete the writing and then editing... I actually have lot of ideas but don't know how to put them in pages like perfectly... :)

I once wrote a fanfic starting with an outline. When I got around to fleshing it out, I realized that one of my charaters went downtown, then back uptown, and then downtown again. I changed the story so that the character went downtown once and made everything he had to do fit into that one trip. This required re-thinking the chapter, but the pacing became far more economical.

William Gibson (the playwright, not the cyberpunk sci-fi writer) said that the best way to write exposition is to combine it with a conflict. Not only is someone telling the protagonist about something that the reader or audience needs to know, but the characters are arguing about what to do about the information. The more conflict there is in the argument between the characters, the less the reader or audience will notice or care that they have received an info dump.

Unless you have a character who uses words like "albeit," you should never use such a word in a work of fiction. It vioates several of the rules cited by Alexa: It's too formal, too flowery, and probably introduces a lot of "telling."

Having just completed my SFF novel, which I'm currently pitching to agents, I watched your video as a useful reminder of things to be avoided. For starters, I like the way you give concrete examples - makes all the difference between good advice and empty theorising. Well, generally, your list is very good. Personally, I don't have a problem with number 4, but it has to be done right, and, yes, it can get out of hand in some bad ways. But, generally speaking, I don't see a problem with using action verbs in dialogue tags, because the alternative is not great at all ( i.e. always using said or answered). In my opinion, problems arise when the verbs chosen and the actions described attract undue attention or sound out of place. Still, there is a way to get this right, as a feature of one's writing style, I believe. Any opinions on this, anyone? 🙂

Watching this video made me realize i'm a better fanfic author than i thought

Okay so first off, hi 😅 i won't blabber on too long as you know not everyone looks at comments but:
I am currently doing a lot of research on novel writing and publishing types, so any advice from you my dear love would do greatly. ❤ Thankies.

“Well bob we just had an election and I think there was some cheating”

squints in 2024 this is an interesting time for me to be rewatching this

Infodumping can be perfectly fine. Tolkien mastered putting the story on hold just to remind the reader there's a world far beyond our main characters, to help you understand why it's worth saving and frankly just to indulge in his world-building a bit. There's nothing inherently wrong with taking a little break from a story every now and then, might even help with pacing if things are moving too fast.

Word counts are also a terrible, terrible way to assess issues with a story. If 50k words is all a writer has to say about his sci-fi world and story, that's fine. Might not be for you, maybe you prefer meaty sci-fi, but there's someone out there who would love to read a shorter story. Same thing for the example of extraordinarily long fantasy. Don't tell me you skipped Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time because it's too long and fantasy is only supposed to be 120k words. If that's how much a writer has to say, then that's how long the story will be. That section made you sound like a publisher, all market research and "that's how you're supposed to do it" and no respect for the artistry.

Also disagree on needing a B plot. It can add good complexity, but if complexity isn't what you're looking to write, then why bother? I can't stand when it's obvious someone just jams in a romance sub-plot because stories need one, it slows down stories that didn't have to take long and frankly often add more problems with the pacing than solutions if you ask me. It can be done well, but not when it's done to fill arbitrary genre criteria. I'd much rather people just wrote the story as they have it in their head, if that contains 12 different plots all moving in and out of one another, great, if there's just a single plot where a single character moves to achieve a single goal, that's great too.

Another disagree on all characters needing to be living breathing fully fleshed out human beings. I personally love my archetypes. I don't need to know if Aragorn liked painting as a child, I just know he's the king of Gondor and a hero. Can he be easily replaced? Yea, but so what? The obsession with making everything "human" and morally gray these days is extremely tiresome, real life has enough complexity, I don't need my escapism to have it too. It's more fun to write than read moral complexity than to read it, especially with how overplayed it is.

Ultimately the worst mistake you can make as a writer is to get too hung up in not making mistakes to ever actually start just writing. It's ok to break the rules and invent your own best practices, writing is an artform, it's not a science.

In Harry Potter 1, jk Rowling hops from Harry’s perspective mid quidditch to Hermione, Ron, and Hagrid in the crowd, and then right back to Harry. Tis allowed!

I’m currently doing 9/22…barely passing, but I’m only to the midpoint of my first draft 😂

Good morning Alexa. Mike from Montclair New Jersey just checking to see if you got my text message? Alexa, I need help with Google Docs combined with iPad. Are you familiar with iPad in Google Docs for manuscript editing. I appreciate a little help thank you.

I think there is another problem with the “Precious Character” issue that is the opposite. The “Nothing ever good happens to me” character, that never has a chance to breathe or overcome their hardships.

Absolutely love your honesty! I definitely found myself here at fillers and info dumping 😂

Take notes Vivziepop.

Great list. A couple additional on my list are leading subordinate clauses and illogical participle phrases. 1. When reading good fiction, John rarely ever finds leading subordiante clauses. 2. John, thanking Alexa, wrote examples to make his point. <- particple phrases happen concurrently with the main subject and verb. I cannot write thank you and an example concurrently. I have been told by an agent that such constructs, especially in a submission, are killers.

These are all good criticisms of the terrible mistakes writers can and do make.

Sometimes extremely well- written novels can also be extremely boring.

Great video, learnt so much, luckily most i already knew, but the first i literally remember noticinh in my own work earlier today 😂

all I can say to this woman is thank you so much thanks to you i'm really writing instead of procasinating vividly for 4 hours straight. You're the best and if my book ever does get published, I really wish to send you a signed copy

This might be a stupid question, but would telling be ok if it's told to the reader through a character? So they are experiencing it through the character instead of experiencing the character through the story? I don't know if that makes sense.

Really good constructive criticism here, coffin? No, just stuff to work on.

Alexa, great vid. Thx.

I'm so terrible with tense shifting. I'll go back and check a single paragraph to see if there are any mistakes and suddenly the character is in the past, present, and the future at the same time. 😭

Pov you’re 10 chapters deep and you realize you embody the 4th point to a biblical scale

Looks at the half complete draft with absolute disappointment... whelp guess this is fanfiction now

Thanks, I'll quit while I'm ahead

Hi my good one. Thanks for these great tips