It is worth bearing in mind - for authenticity - that characters can actually say stupid things, use the wrong words, and miss-hear others etc., and make misjudgments. Because that is what _real_ people do :)
@@sassyblondewriter8239 But the question is, did you require aloe for the burns you received, or the burns you have received? lol. Editing out those "had"s right now on my manuscript like she suggested here lol
It's ok if you mess up the first draft, you'll have to edit and rewrite it anyway, the only thing that your first draft has to do is exist so you actually have something tangible to work on, as bad as it is
I love them. I wish more non fanfic writers used them. They make the characters seem just that little bit "more" because you are feeling what they feel as they respond. I think they are great, so that is a rule I intend to keep breaking because I write for me, and those who are like me. ^_^
Turn it around. Everything she says is too fanficcy means you alright to do it in fanficcy. Also shes being way to critical. There are exceptions to all of these
I love me some fancy dialogue tags. I think there is a time and a place for them, too. I read somewhere that the only acceptable tag is "said". Excuse me, how boring is that? I get that you are supposed to show not tell, but one can overdo it with that, too.
You shouldn’t go too overboard though 😅 but if you do decide to give them any serious struggles/trauma, you shouldn’t have them whine and mope through out the duration of the story, it gets real old after a while.
Every time I see writers talking about putting their main characters through hell, I always think about Sidney Prescott (from the Scream franchise) and instantly get protective! 🤣 Even though that is a screen play and not a novel.
While I'm watching this my boyfriend is listening in the background Bf: oh you do that. Bf: and that... Bf: that too. Like ouch I know hun that's why I'm watching this in the first place 😅
Pro tip for dialogue tags. If taking it out doesn't convey the feeling then rewrite the dialogue to convey the tag feeling. "Sit down," she demanded. "Staple your a$$ to that chair," she said.
@@simplyanisa5010 yes absolutely! The second one is much better and puts you right in the action. It really forces you to write better dialogue if your tags are taken away.
Can I add one more to the list? Every rule can and should be broken if it makes the story better. Usually you dont want the protagonist to be entirely passive, but there are books such as A Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy where the main protagonist is almost entirely passive and is simply dragged along through out the story. An other wise engaging story is not automatically rendered bad because it breaks any one of these rules, and following them does not guarantee any story will be engaging.
I know this is SOOO late but another passive character I feel is also a pass to the rule because of how exceptionally they are written is Charlie Kelmeckis from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Spoilers ahead, but the entire story is about him getting picked up by two seniors and getting dragged into their friend group and spiraling when they have a falling out because they're his entire drive and motivation. He spends the story just going along with everyone, even dating someone he's not that interested in because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. Even then, all of this still makes him a valid character because in the context of the narrative, his passivity stems from the driving force of the story, that being his sexual assault experience. It's all he has grown to know, to just let people dictate and take advantage of his way of life, keep their secrets and be as the title says, a wallflower. He doesn't offer much to the table in terms of being an intriguing person, he's just shy and timid and can be a pushover, but his story and background is so well written that I still think it is one of the best coming of age, high school stories ever told.
Also Song of Ice and Fire has like hundreds of characters I dunno how Martin can possibly keep track of all of them + all their houses + all their lore + all their families lore. Its overwhelming at first but it really does make it seem like a real, living, breathing world
My mother always wanted to get into writing, and she never did because she wanted to write in a pristine booklet, where every word would be chosen perfectly. She will receive euthanasia in a few weeks, and never wrote a story. So, biggest writing mistake? Perfectionism.
so true!! when thinking over my own writing, I have struggled with perfectionism myself having spent 7+ years on crafting one novel! The only reason I have words on the page is to ignore that part of my habit and write words no matter how cringe-worthy or horrible they may seem to me (your writing is usually better than you think it is... truly even if you're just starting out!)
Yes, I struggle with this too! Perfectionism stresses me out because it starts giving me self doubts where I think "oh this not good. I am making an amateur mistake." And then I just end up not writing. So lately I've been working on writing no matter how bad it may be. We can always edit later
@@shakhzosh The thing is.... it doesn't matter if it's bad, especially if it's your first draft: You can fix it later on! (But, also, even a final draft doesn't necessarily have to be perfect - sometimes imperfections can even become the most beloved things for/to readers, too. And if all else fails you can[ theoretically] always improve on some aspect of your writing or another in the next thing you write too. Authors are only human, same as anyone else, after all!!!) 🙂 The most important thing, at first, is just to try and get the whole idea out-THEN think about perfecting that idea and/or whether or not it's worth sharing with anyone else after that. _((Unfortunately for me, I can only follow my own advice to a certain point as I have a very edit-as-you-go kind of style since I am a very detail-oriented writer and a part of getting the whole idea out even just to start with for me is making sure{or at least as sure as I can} that what I wrote is saying the very particular thing or things that I actually wanted or intended it to say. But, even so, I still try to come back later on to reassess whether or not that particular thing was as good or clear or necessary[ or whatever] like I thought it was originally too.))_
I always save a backup of my draft in case I changed something and want to go back to what I wrote originally. Funny thing, I've never once gone back to a previous draft. Lesson learned, writing is always lousy on the first draft and always gets better with each additional pass. If you read Stephen King's first draft of something, you might jump to the conclusion that he's a pretty lousy writer.
I am a huge offender of tense shifts! In college, my professor wrote a note on one of my essays saying, “your tense shifts are making me tense.” Needless to say, I’ve been more mindful of my tenses... 😅
same, i'll be writing in present and then suddenly switch into past - or worse, i'll try and combine the two without realising it and end up confusing myself
It took me half my rough draft of my book to stay in past tense since I was so used to writing present tense in songs and stuff. Currently editing, but the first half is still really bad.
for those who want it: 1-Tense Shifting 2-Info Dumping 3-Excessive Dialogue Tags 4-Over the Top Dialogue Tags 5-Repetitive Sentence Structure 6-Melodrama 7-Convoluted, Redundant Writing 8-Persistent Grammar Mistakes 9-Poor Scene Setting/Filter 10-Poor Pacing 11-Exposition Via Clunky Dialogue 12-Work That is Way Too Short or Way Too Long 13-All A Plot, No B Plot 14-Flat Characters/Poor World Building 15-Capitalizing Lots of Words 16-Head Hopping (shifting point of view with no scene break) 17-Telling 18-Poor Characters/Story Logic 19-Purple, Pretentious, Overwriting 20-Stiff, Hyper-Formal Writing 21-Character Soup 22-Perfect, Passive Characters
I actually love descriptive (or "fanfic") dialogue tags. I find them immersive, and they help me build the image in my mind more fully. I feel like they also more clearly define the character themselves and how they are responding to a situation. They just work for me, and I won't ever regret writing with them.
@@goddessnocturnas same tbh. I think most of these is just opinions. Without stating the speaker, that is a sentence syntax. Syntaxes are VERY bad for your book and is a quick way to confuse tf out of your reader
@@goddessnocturnas exactly! I don’t understand what she’s saying? “Don’t go to the mall today.” If there’s no dialogue tag then I just read it monotone in my mind. Lol I don’t get it
The info dumping is so real. That is solved entirely by the “show, don’t tell” rule. If your character has a rocky relationship with someone, show us. And do it throughout the story, so you’re being consistent about it rather than implying it then just… forgetting you’d set up this concept. I guess that’s a continuity issue that tends to go hand in hand with info dumping pretty often lol
I think a good way to do set basic info about the world is they way how Tolkien did it - add a prefix about the hobbits and their ways which is not directly related to the story. People can then decide when to read it or how much. So I read it all and loved it (I always love world info) but my best friend just skipped over it to get the basics. I've also seen this done with characters where the whole family connections were in a prefix and you could go back there in the middle of the main story and check up.
It's not always necessarily better, while it's a great feeling having the reader pick up on the meaning of something without having to tell them, there are some concepts that are just too important or too hard to "show without telling" that it's okay to explain it directly. And this, contrary to some intuitions, is very good to build a solid bedrock that the reader can use to parse those "show don't tell moments", because many times a lot of things that are obvious as a writer who has stared their work for hundreds of hours are not so apperent as someone who has just picked up the story
Character voice! You should be able to tell them apart by their voice. Everyone has a slightly different vocabulary, speaking style, most used phrases or expressions, etc. Some people talk formally and some talk very informally. I need to be able to tell who is talking. Also if everyone speaks exactly the same way it reads as fanfic-y
This is a really good point. I've found my self comparing this video to the Harry Potter series and J.K. Rowling did really well with this step. You could know when a character like hagrid was talking. Or Ron and Hermione. Hermione talks more intelligently, where ron is more laid back and lazy with his speech. This is something I'm gonna try looking out for in my writing
@@luannesbestfriend7 I'm still very iffy on her dialogue but, I will say this, that's pretty much the only thing of her writing I could say someone could learn from. Hagrid. Find a way to show your character's accent, while not confusing your reader.
Ironic, since fanfic should be the perfect medium to practice character voices. You just have to mimic the way they talk in the source material, which, if it's any good, should already have given them unique voices.
@@ethanlivemere1162 Yeah, it's definitely that way where I write. I run in several circles - overall, I'd say I know about 200, and have talked to more, some of them "The Greats" in my fandom and yes i did have a panic attack after - and that was actually a topic in one of them. I call it "Canonicl Characterisation" because it's catchy and I'm bad with remembering words but w/e. Sometimes, we'll purposefully change them because of what we're writing - we don't _always_ want to stick to canon. (ps, i really fucking hate people using the term 'fanfic-y' to describe something not good in writing)
Not the people being mad about my use of “fanfic-y” 😂 I never said all fan fiction is bad. Some fan fiction is good but y’all are taking it far too seriously. -sincerely a moderately famous fan fiction writer from 2016-2018
The thing I hate is when authors just stick arbitrary trauma in a character's past just to "flesh them out" but doesnt address said trauma in any real or consequential way. Looking at you, Kelley Armstrong. Or conversely, when writers give characters a Big Trauma and that is literally the only driving force behind their actions. It just feels like the author has no idea what PTSD is actually like and has failed to ground the character in any other real way. Real people are not their traumas! And I say that having been through serious shit! Characters should grow as should their relationship with their trauma.
I hope this doesn't offend you or anything, but what exactly is a growing relationship with trauma? I'm writing atm and I want to get this stuff right because I've heard about it getting misrepresented a lot.
@JillRayEmma 7, doesnt offend me at all! Dealing with trauma is not a one-size-fits-all, and my own relationship with my trauma varies from day to day. My trauma relationship charges depending on things like current stress-levels, triggers, my own mental state. Sometimes it is a good thing that I use to help others. Other times, it is just a big pile of self-destruction, and some days I just push it down. The main thing with trauma, or anything specialized is the same thing with writing anything you arent familiar with first-hand: research, research, research! Talk to trauma patients if they are willing. Talk to mental health professionals. Look for articles. And even if you have unfortunately experienced trauma (which I hope you havent) then realize your relationship with your trauma wont be the same as other peoples'. Oh, and trauma isnt something you deal with in a couple of therapy sessions and move on, and although people in your life (especially significant others) definitely help (or can hurt if they are abusive, but I digress) but the work to get past it has to be done by the victim. You cant just cuddle it away. Therapy is often a tense and re-traumatizing experience because in order for the patient to heal, they have to recount the experience so that new feelings are associated with it. I am glad to see you want to get it right, because so many writers just use it as a plot device, and although that can be interesting for some, it makes my eyes roll.
@@Neurospicyalchemist Thank you :) I'm not sure if I suffer with anything myself, but I'm sure if I did that I would be pretty pissed about seeing it simply used to drive a story rather than show its consequences. Like when people write depression, and their character has perfect hair and makeup every day. People just seem to use it to add a "layer" (and I use that word loosely) to their character. Then only to dump it in the trash whenever the plot moves along. I'd be pretty angry if they just used what I struggled with.
@@jillreyerma7592 yeah, having bipolar as well, I can ABSOLUTELY relate. When I see bipolar portrayed badly, or turned into a joke, it makes me angry. When it is done well though, I just feel so SEEN, ya know?
i got one, i like to call it the "Conga Line Of Suffering" where a writher either cant or wont move the story along with out inflicting some sort of pain or sufferings on the characters. you see it alot in fanfiction.
On similar lines I have read stories where the was a pattern of the characters having moments of triumph immediately undercut in their next chapter, the narrative constantly oscillating between victories and defeats without any breathing space in between. One chapter they have had a positive character moment and triumphed against their foes, then you get to the next chapter and all their triumphs from their previous chapter have been completely undermined by some background change that we are not privy to, turning their victory into a defeat. It got tiresome once I spotted the pattern.
@@intergalactic92 I think a good way of doing this, that I remember from Harry Potter (though I don’t remember what book it was) is, when the trio snuck out at night to accomplish some thing, and once they snuck back into the castle, they were found out and got detention. The detention cost them a lot of house points but what they set out to accomplish was still satisfied. It allows for your characters to still complete their missions and objectives, while still keeping in place that there are consequences to one’s actions.
I think it's not a very good category for criticism, because a lot of philosophy is about dealing with suffering. Stories with suffering for plot drivers are everything between very deep and very shallow, it's not enough of a signifier. Especially given what someone thinks of as excessive suffering is deeply subjective: am I going to read that into something written by an ex child soldier from the middle east? What's the point, the problem is probably something surrounding it.
Ngl when she said that I recalled my book and how I made sure to never use the word "said" and now I am just prepping myself for a shit ton of rewriting
To be honest I wouldn’t consider the tagging rule a hard and fast rule. I mean yes, there are "rules" for writing; the same way there's "rules" for painting or sculpting etc. Art is art. Personally I think it's stupid and repetitive to limit yourself to *one* dialogue tag for your entire career. When *I* read books that only ever use the word "said" I get bored very quickly. Overusing words causes the brain to outright ignore or forget what they mean, so this has always seemed like a bizarre guideline in the writing community. Use the words you want, my friends. For once, school has the right idea.
I agree. How boring is just using “said” for every dialogue tag? I (personally) like it when authors use tags like “hissed” or “demanded” or something. It adds variety, and can even convey the needed emotion or tone that wasn’t expressed in the dialogue itself. I don’t care what’s “proper”, if being proper is painfully boring and repetitive.
I understand this, but what sounds better? “I love your shirt!” He said. “Thank you! I got it at Old Navy,” She said. “Oh, I love shopping there. They have great blue jeans as well,” He said. “Really? I usually shop at American Eagle for blue jeans,” She said. “I’ll have to buy some from Old Navy he next time I’m there.” Or: “I love your shirt!” He said. “Thank you! I got it at Old Navy,” She replied. “Oh, I love shopping there. They have great blue jeans as well.” “Really? I usually shop at American Eagle for blue jeans,” She commented. “I’ll have to buy some from Old Navy he next time I’m there.” Personally, I think the overuse of “said” just sounds really bad. In my opinion, switching them up often sounds way better and so much less tedious to read. So if I’m not supposed to switch up dialogue tags very often my reader just has to suffer through my boring dialogue tags? I’d much rather have a couple readers eye-rolling over fanfic-esque dialogue tags than having the word “said” burned into their retinas.
I personally disagree with the fanfic-y dialogue tag thing. I think writing "He smirked" Is a lot more streamlined than saying "He replied, slyly, with a smirk on his face". Just writing, "He smirked," Already conveys that he was giving off a sly tone, meaning that the point is conveyed quicker, and doesn't interrupt the pace of your story. Correct me if I'm wrong though, I'm open to criticism
A little late (like... a year late) but there's a difference between action and dialogue tags. They can be switched around but there's a bit of a change you have to make. "I've missed you," he whispered. "I've missed you." He smirked. The punctuation is the difference. Verbs unrelated to the way you speak are a separate "sentence" (period, capital). Verbs describing your speech are part of the same thought (comma, lowercase). To elaborate on Flower's statement, they're both overused. Tags should be used sparingly to reinforce meaning or denote who's talking. Most of the time, if you rewrite the dialogue, you can show that emotion or tone instead of just stating it.
Y’all need to learn what a dialogue tag actually means. You can use “He smirked” if you want but you have to change the punctuation correctly so it’s not a tag.
To be honest, I can sometimes find it very difficult to write a villain or a victim - a murder mystery - since every character I write has a piece of myself in them. Usually on accident.
@@thisisme4074 • That’s one of the best parts of writing! You can discover so much about yourself through creating villains & victims; parts you love and parts that could lead you down bad paths in life.
Filler scenes are my biggest pet peeve when critiquing other people's work. I can take most of the other things, but there's something about making me waste my time reading a play-by-play of your character brushing their teeth then driving to go get coffee that really makes me want to put the manuscript down. A lot of the time, it's the writer not knowing how or when to end the scene, but a lot of writers seem to forget that they don't need to tell us the story in real time - cut to the action and the important bits. I've also seen the argument that these scenes help the reader "get to know the character" but you should be able to do that while also writing a scene that contributes directly to the plot.
I think it depends on what kind of story you are writing, honestly. But, of course, there will be different readers for different kinds of stories. Some people like stories about the day-to-day grind or monotony or whatever of characters and/or life, or whatever; Some people do not. 🙂
When I read scenes like that they actually create tension for me, lol. I'm expecting something horrible to happen any second now, otherwise why is there such a lengthy description of a pointless mundane activity?
Unless you're describing a painfully ordinary life to set up the coming disruption, yeah, just gloss over the morning routine. Even then, the routine can be briefly described before the character steps out to find a Vogon Constructor Fleet overhead or a SWAT team coming up the driveway. Or the morning routine shows that there's something 'off' about a character.
3:32 tbh I blame schools for this one. I remember when I read books in school I noticed the authors didnt use dialogue tags after every line of dialogue so I experimented with not using dialogue tags every time but my teacher's would always tell me it was wrong to do that so I got into a mindset that I had to use dialogue tags even when I know they're not necessary but I have to force something in anyway
I don't even remember what my teachers taught us about writing. There's only one thing that sticks in my mind, which is the "sizzling start." You begin your narrative with a paragraph of tension to pull your reader in before you get to the introduction, but that has a lot of flaws in it.
I found that, in junior school, teachers would rewards kids for writing really over-detailed pieces of writing, where paragraphs would be used to describe a single tree. As a very prolific reader, that frustrated me; I knew that no decent author would do that, so couldn’t see why the teachers were making it out to be a good thing. I still can’t.
My teacher had the opposite reaction, daring me to go to the logical extreme and not use any tags for that assignment. I tried to solve this by connecting characters by their actions, but this resulted in fidgety characters. Then I tried delving into their thoughts before they say something, but this slowed things way down and put me to sleep upon review. I still avoid tags when possible, but that exercise made me appreciate placing the occasional "She said".
I put down a book because of a dialog info dump. It wasn't a random character, but the characters sat down and one of them literally said, "Let's go over what we know," and proceeded to info dump the back story. Just, no. It was over a page, too. I don't know how long it was, in all. I stopped reading after a couple paragraphs. Ugh.
Sounds like the writer started their story 'too late' or had no idea how to incorporate the information. A brief discussion to ensure the characters are up to speed is okay. Whets the reader's curiosity or piques their interest. Explaining the cheese-spread, clown shoes, mob enforcers, and wombat can come out over time.
"Lets go over what we know" can work _very_ well. Just don't spend an entire page on it, and I'll definitely give you extra points if something they know - preferably not the most important thing, but I also think that could work very interesting if handled well - is incorrect somehow.
On the too many characters point, I read somewhere that you can combine some of these characters, which I thought was a really good point! You know, you have a salesperson and a brother and a conman and run in with a childhood friend, and you could easily combine some of those! It serves the same purpose, adds more depth to the plotline, maybe instigates some complexity, and doesn't get rid of any of those essential plotlines that require secondary characters
This and pacing were my biggest obstacles in my first novel. I have a huge urban fantasy world but realized some of these characters will never resurface and others I just end up killing off bc damn I wrote too many redundant characters. But it’s dark fantasy… nothing some paranormal murder can’t solve 😮💨
I had to narrow down my list of characters and this helps a lot, it creates more 3D characters if you combine characters you wouldn't have initially thought go together. Also asking yourself what would happen if the character disappeared/what changes they make to make them crucial to the story is important.
I don't know, when I read stories where the protagonist knows someone, or gets to know them, then this person turns out to be related to a friend of yours. This particular character later on turns out to be the guy that attacked you that specific horrible night, and he's also the one that orchestrated the entire accidental meeting where you started knowing eachother. But that character, ironically, also turns out to be unaware of your friendship with his/her sister/brother/cousin/whatever. When I encounter these kind of characters in stories, I'm like "what a coincidence!" as I roll my eye. To me, it feels like artificial depth and not real characters, as what are the chances of THAT happening in any kind of fiction or nonfiction. I don't know, I could be wrong, I am just a humble reader after all.
I both like and dislike the idea of combining characters. On one hand, you try to push too many characters into something, and you're just going to confuse people. On the other, how your main(s) react to a conman and to a salesman isn't going to be the same as the reaction they get to a salesman who _is also_ a conman. Reduced characters might not make as much sense as reduced detail, and reduced detail can always be fixed later. We're allowed to not know everything about a character that shows up, a character can be a tertiary, a character can be set dressing, a character can be an extra in your scene every time they show up and still have meaning and continuity within the story. The salesman who accidentally passes the MC(s) off to the conman doesn't need a name, or any deeper drive than trying to do his job, or an interesting quirk worth much more than a single sentence of initial introduction, even if he shows up more than once. In real life, we do this all the time. Even if the cashier has a name tag, even if the cashier has an NPC level chat with you, you're just there for groceries sometimes. Might as well be talking to a chatbot? Yeah, that happens sometimes. The chatbot still serves a specific function though, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to toss it out if it's getting use. I guess the better thing to say is write useful characters, write characters with purpose, not every person on the block. Passing recognition for the neighborhood hooligan should only be elevated to a conversation with a reason that drives the plot forward, deeper characterization should only be looked into with a reason to drive the plot forward, but letting them exist around the main character at all is not always going to be detrimental.
When it comes to self-inserting characters, I especially enjoy the ones who's character is based off of someone's experience rather than one's ego. It makes their character a lot more realistic and understandable because it's based off of real life experience, meaning that relating or understanding this character is a lot easier. As human beings, we have flaws. If we based our self-insert character on our flaws, then our self-insert character becomes interesting. But writers like to make their characters overpowered. I especially can't stand it when they do this in roleplays.
Thank you for adding the roleplay thing. Don't self-insert there or make your character an ideal, because you should not take it personally what happens to your character. Best is to start off with a picture, that already has flaws...
I have a kind of self insert character that started out as a fanfic oc (yes it’s cringy, but I’m glad I didn’t fall into a lot of the typical trope like being a special or a Mary Sue because…gotta love that mental instability in a character). But as she has been put into my story with my new characters and with her being based on many other characters, I don’t know if she is one now. I mean, she probably still is because she’s basically got half of her mental problems from me😅 I think my point was adding onto yours. I meant it that way. ＾＾
@@HiBuddyyyyyy Well to be fair, self insert stories always start off as cringey rip offs. But as you work on your character, it gets better and better in due time
My characters only just kissed in chapter 45 and my chapters are all two thousand words long so- *im sorry for making you wait 90 thousand words, readers*
my recommendations of things that really helped me out so far (writing a fantasy novel) 1. make different documents. one for your main writing ("the book"), one thats more like a keynote/summary or roadmap style of just important things / events, and multiple folders for: characters, items, monsters, landscapes /areas, magic, etc. with their own documents for each entity (a perosn, a town, a continent, a mgical staff, etc. all with their own attributes. i always keep a blank one ready to copy that already has (for characters for example): name, age, looks, motivation, magic, job, items, characteristics, likes, dislikes, other, and a list of the noteworthy dialoges the person says (or could say) to get a feel for them. ^^this is super important for me since a) i can build a complex world and even if some info (like the parents or background story of a sidecharacter) arent in the book itself, its important for me to make the world flawless and get a feel for everything and how it fits together ; and b) i always have to make bigger breaks in my writing, (months sometimes, for studying) which leads to me forgetting stuff, so i can always look it up again when i forget it, or add some fast info, if i have a good idea but am not at that point in the story yet. 2. think your whole story through. even if you wanna just randomly start with a scene you have in mind and see where it leads to, have a general goal and think about how you can make it more complex / more interesting whenever you go to sleep and have a couple min of silence :D. otherwise you will become frustrated when you have a good idea later but would have to rewrite earlier stages to make it fit in. same with characters. its good to have general ideas for each character, to make them compliment each other and come up with a good synergy. dont double them. for example if your prota is good in fire magic, dont put in another fire mage. at the same time, dont make him to op, leave the other chars some spotlight as well (smth they exceed in) 3. i like to mark the first sentence (as well in my book as in my summary/timeline thingy) of a new story section in blue and the VERY FIRST time, a character says smth (is introduced) in green. makes it super fast when you try to find smth or wanna check timeline things (aka "could he have known that already? did he know character x already ?or was that after....") i also mark anything related to time/currency or such numbers (prices, age increases /statings, season changes, time skips ("after 4 weeks of traveling"), etc.) in yellow. super important if you wanna have an overview on how old people are by now, how far distances are, how prices relate, what season should be by now, etc. even more so if you made a break from writing and come back into the story again. knowing "i can always look that up super fast again" really helps against burning yourself out and keeping everything causal and logical. 4. as said in the video ^^ give the antagonist a reasonable goal, smth you might not agree with but can understand. just plain out "bad" people are super fucking boring. like hitler for example is someone we all dont agree with, but his idea of keeping the gene pool clean is logically speaking not a bad thing. (if we could snip with our fingers and magically eradicate all genetic diseases, etc., we would do it. just killing all that dont fit that description is a BIT to extreme :D) 5. i personally hate it when there are forced problems. drugged MC, loss of powers or smiliar artifical restrictions that make characters either useless or dumb or do stupid things/ make stupid decisions. come up with some real problems and dont have that one stupid guy thats an asshole and has to poke the bear till it fights you. 6. i personally made the mistake of progressing character affection to fast. people (readers) love progress. if you start your MC op, its most often boring, if they have sex in the first page, its boring, etc. there are exceptions where its cool for the character to stay true to himself (with little to no development) but at least for the very main protagonist its prob better to go with slow but steady development ( or you will run out of interesting things to fast). as i said, i had a romance going on in mine, but the 2 chars fell in love way to fast and had sex in the first third of my story, which- so i noticed - took away a lot of tension. you want to tease the reader (dont overdo it though :D (dont go back and forth, steady development into one direction). at some point teasing becomes annoying instead of provoking). PS im still at my frist book and just an amateur writer (also, im german so excuse my english) so take the tipps with some bias.
As you're German - have you ever heard about the program "Papyrus Author"? It's designed for exactly the purpose you describe in your first point. There are youtoube Videos where you can take a look. (I'm not using it, as I work differently. Just thought, it might be up your alley).
I cannot agree more with 5. People for some reason love that trope, because they are incredibly in love with themselves more than anything and want to believe that "what's special about that character is his humanity, not, well, what's special about that character", but it's almost always annoying to read.
I would like to insert the other side of the excessive tags is the missing tag. A conversation is going on, not every comment is tagged, and it is fine, then there is that one comment that was not tagged and could have been said by any of the characters and the reader is left wondering. If the "voice" of the character is not clear, you need to tag it in some way.
I completely agree. In a lot of the books I’ve read, I would have to go back and reread dialogue to understand which character the lines belonged to. It’s really confusing and definitely something I try to avoid in my own writing (which sometimes then leads to over tagging…)
I learned to write by reading a lot and mimicking what I read. It‘s interesting to watch this video because I barely recognize any of those mistakes in my writing. I think the biggest mistake people make is not read enough cuz if you read it you‘ll instinctively pick up on a lot of things without being aware that you’re doing them. I do struggle with some of those mistakes still, I think mostly describing too much instead of showing it in what‘s happening but I‘m aware of it, I just lack creativity in this particular case 😅 but you can always go back and edit which is like 80% of my writing process anyway.
I transitioned to fanfics/worlds built off books I like with original characters for a bit and am starting to transition back to published work and honestly, reading unpublished work has helped me develop a sense of "great, good and could be better" writing examples. I have been able to critically think more about the things turning me away from a story and what will push me to keep reading even if something makes me want to drop it. Now reading published work again, I feel more picky about what I read because I can see where it could have been better. Reading helps 100% because you know what you don't want and what you love so you can write what you want to read.
Will following your advice (to read and mimic the writing of others) leave me misspelling the word “because “ as “cuz” (like you) if I read and mimic your writing?
Excessive descriptions/dragging things out was definitely my main mistake when I started out. My first "serious" story that I wrote when I was 14 or 15 was about a girl who runs away from home, and I spent 30+ pages on childhood flashbacks and "oh she feels SO SAD you guys!" while she was riding this horse into the night. I thought it was genius and super emotional.
I used to be like that, too. I'd spend a whole paragraph basically rewording the same exact thing like five different ways, because I couldn't figure out how to organically add length to a story.
@@LordofFullmetal I DID EXACTLY THIS! it was something like : "i feel so hurt - she said, crying. her boyfriend had cheated on her. - why did, he cheated on me?" SO MESSY AND ANNOYING
It seems like people often forget to mention...being too brutal &/or harsh with your characters is or can be just as bad and amateurish as being too precious.! Yes, don't be afraid to have bad things happen to your characters; BUT it is also okay to have good things happen to or for them sometimes too, that doesn't always only have to be saved up just for the big finale conclusion or whatever at the end of the book. (And that can actually help with developing subplots or worldbuilding sometimes too.)
Jaginaia Electrizs agree, otherwise the misery becomer overwhealming and the story too depressive. too much of a good thing is same as bad as too much of a bad thing is a... bad thing. wow, who would have thougt. unless youre into torture porn and the misery is the whole point. characters need to breathe and how they express happines says a lot about them, same as what they do when they are in danger
Looking at you, Mr. Martin. I feel like Game of Thrones is a huge offender in this. Some people really dig the Grim and the Dark, though, so it's another one of those subjective things we'll all never agree on.
@@Railstar1976 I mean.. grim-dark is pretty much a whole genre now, kinda like horror is, so .. I'm not entirely sure if that counts? BUT it is absolutely true - it certainly IS one of those totally subjective things that is going to differ from person-to-person, and that's okay. 👍🏻🙂 Lol
The best advice I read about this was "give your protagonists small wisps of hope within their whole dilemma - make sure they are motivated to overcome their problems." This has served me well ever since.
Note to everyone: these aren't hard rules. As with all things, these are guidelines. She makes several great points but if you want your book to have very flowery writing, you can! It is a writing STYLE, meaning you can make it your own.
Idea for a video/series: read excerpts from Wattpad stories that we request through Insta twitter wattpad and yt comments and you give them critiques/feedback based on what you have read.
@@ooo_111_ooo That's a fair point... buut, at the same time, if it's posted publicly? They have also (whether this was what they consciously intended to do or not) kind of already given license out to the public people in general to read and/or review and/or react and/or critique their writing just about however ppl see fit. ? 🤔🤷♀️
In a nutshell, tense is how you use the verbs in your writing. For example, I walked to the store (past), I am walking to the store (present), I plan to walk to the store (future).
@@LesandaMooreAuthor yeah, but there are multiple future tenses, multiple past tenses and some weird mixtures (at least in german) Its hard to separate those xD
After working on my first story/book for awhile I stepped back and realized that all of the characters were basically the same person, because I didn't know how to make them friends without them agreeing all the time and that ended up meaning they all thought and talked the same. I struggled to create characters, they always seemed hollow and the same. I focused on worldbuilding for a time because that came easier to me. I finally came back to characters and have actually figured out how to do a decent job with them. I create their backstories and motivations (doesn't need to ever be included in the actual story but I need to know) and from there I ask myself How do they think differently? How do they speak differently? One thing that helps differentiate them for me and the reader really well is the speaking style. What words or phrases do they use alot and what are some they never use? Do they speak casually, have an accent or are they more formal?
This is great thinking. A group of people that come to mind is Team RWBY. Though they’re all generally around the same age, they all act completely different from one another, based on their back stories and upbringing. Weiss speaks affirmatively and militant while Blake speaks mysteriously and guarded. What I like about groups like that is that sometimes it’s OK to not be friends at first who only have to get along with each other for the sake of teamwork and camaraderie .
One that makes me crazy is a specific form of info-dumping / pacing. It's when characters are mid-conversation, and suddenly the story diverts into a bunch of narration - typically some back-story that sheds light on why the conversation is playing out the way it is, or a drawn-out exposition about the MC's current thoughts or feelings. It is very jarring, and unrealistic, to have a character mentally relive a prior event or wax poetic on their internal state during the minuscule time span between one character's line and the next character's response. Sometimes there is so much narration interjected into a conversation that by the time the dialogue picks back up, you've forgotten what the characters were even talking about. It's a really lazy way of abusing dialogue to sneak in an info-dump.
Some people actually do that, mid-conversation, in reality though. Because some people can multitask the conversation AND the internal poetic-waxing...OR because the flashback takes far less time to actually recall a past thing than it would take to describe it being recollected in words on a page. _(But, still, I do agree that writers should generally still be careful with using this too.)_
The truth is, not just people new to writing do this. I see a lot of these mistakes and I shake my head. I realized that a lot of problems I have with books are universally hated as well
I'd say if you want to do that, at least acknowledge in the story that your character is zoning out, thinking about something else other than the dialogue, otherwise it's extremely unrealistic
Language that isn’t regionally appropriate always takes me out of a story. If the story is set in the US, it doesn’t take long to clock a native English speaker from another country if they haven’t researched and/or gotten someone from the US to weed out the things that don’t fit. Some basic examples that come up a lot in what I read: “flat” rather than “apartment” “car park” rather than “parking lot” “uni,” or “university” in the context where “college” would be more common (eg “I’ll be starting college this fall,” even if you’re going somewhere where “university” is in the name) “washroom” rather than “bathroom” The really sneaky ones, especially in dialogue, are small grammatical things: “meant to” rather than “supposed to” “smelled of” rather than “smelled like” “I’ve not” rather than “I haven’t” “in hospital” rather than “in the hospital” Obviously this isn’t specific to amateurs, but it might be something that an amateur writer is less cognizant of. It at least tells me that they didn’t completely do their due diligence in finding someone who’s from the place their work is set to give it a read. I know I wouldn’t be able to pull off a story set in England or Australia without a helping hand! Mayyyybe Canada. But elsewhere, no dice. 😂
B. Gordon this is true! So long as I had a native speaker of the dialect I’m trying to mimic on board, I would feel capable of writing something set in another country. I wanted to put my own blind spots out there in part to avoid coming across as a smug, US-centric American, and in part to make it clear that as an individual I’m not above making these mistakes. Even if I made a concerted effort to learn the ins and outs of another dialect, I would still want someone to check it over to catch those weird, tiny-but-telling nuances that can throw off characterization completely.
Here's the thing though... Americans are actually incredibly diverse, and the standards of language used sometimes varies from region to region or from generation to generation or even just from family to family or from person to person. Especially in this day and age. (And some Americans are also well-traveled, or well-read, and/or have many online friends from around the globe.) I, for one, am 100% American born and raised{and never yet been anywhere outside of this country} and I use "meant to" and "I've not" all of the time. Just for one tiny example. A lot of the times, wording choices are entirely subjective and personal-preference based not exclusively country/cultural. I think one of the biggest mistakes that anyone can make is assuming that there are no exceptions to any "rule". 🙂
Jaginaia Electrizs very true, there aren’t hard and fast rules, and there are always exceptions. The examples I offered are generalizations, and some are more of an indicator when they appear in casual dialogue rather than narration/prose. In the case of “meant to,” Merriam-Webster’s site highlights the distinction between “intended to” vs “supposed to,” the latter of which they flag as British. In my experience, that’s broadly accurate, but that doesn’t make it an absolute.
@@mrsb50 Which is all I was saying, really. If you were to read something written by me{or by any number of my immediate family members}, you would likely often find characters saying "meant to" even in casual dialogue, among other things in the example you gave - I{/we} often use it in casual conversations myself{/ourselves}, and have not even personally found it all that uncommon to run into other fellow Americans who do too. ((But I am definitely American myself, with no British that I know of in my family at all, let alone recently enough that you'd think it should have any sway on family speech patterns. Although I have been told that apparently I do sometimes come off sounding a little like I'm a Canadian or something when I type, and actual Canadians have from time to time concurred; I have no idea why that is, except maybe if my being located in a state that's kind of nearer to the Canadian border somehow has anything to do with that...despite the fact I've never been at all to or across that border myself.)) 🤣🤣 So, I find that kind of interesting and amusing.🤔🙂 Lol
This is something I see a lot in manga, I hate it when authors spend chapters and chapters on backstory. Especially when they interrupt the main storyline at an important moment to give us the full backstory of the character. Like "X just managed to escape from his kidnappers, gets injured" - now you wanna know what happens to X next, you don't wanna spend 5 chapters reading about his high school days and how he got to know the kidnapper in his youth. In my opinion it's faaaar better to drop hints and short glimpses into the past, showing how they knew each other and why they ended up like this, so by the time the intense scene happens, you just need a final piece of the puzzle to understand the whole thing, and that piece can quickly be added without slowing down the pace too much. That's my biggest pet peeve when reading a manga at least :P
Let's keep a tally: ✔ Tense shifting: only in draft 1. ❌Info dumping: working on it ✔ Dialogue tags: not anymore! ❌Repetitive sentence: shoot, guilty ✔ melodrama: nope ❌ redundancy: yeah guilty, too long of trying to get high word counts ✔grammar: not after draft 1 ❌filler: once again an issue with having wanted high word counts ⭕story pacing: getting significantly better ✔ Dialogue cheat: not in my past few stories ✔ word counts: always very aware of this ✔ missing B plot: thank you save the cat ⭕worldbuilding: I think it's good but not confident enough to give myself a check without beta readers ✔ capitalization: rarely ✔ headhopping: separate scene pov ⭕telling: in my first draft it is common, working on cleaning it up in revisions ✔ internal logic: lots of character building before writing ✔ fancy prose: maybe with characters bu not general ✔ formal writing: same as fancy prose ✔ character soup: I keep it limited or I'll loose ability to keep track ⭕ character problems: they're flawed and I cause horrible things to happen to them, but I'm working on agency Well... Not as bad as I thought.... But definitely lots of work to be done
I passed English class high school with a flying grade of 70... 10 years ago. This is my first attempt at writing anything creative and it's been a journey so far. Thanks for these great videos! it's really helping me procrastinate while learning more at the same time! You best believe my book has an astronomical amount of grammar mistakes in it that I have to go through and fix later.
What does it say about me that my self insert character is the single most flawed person in the book? I think as long as you can recognize and accurately portray your self insert as a flawed human, they’re okay. But I definitely agree that those perfect self inserts drive me crazy
There is a difference between a self-insert and a Mary Sue, after all. 🙂 _(However, people often forget to account for human individuality as well: What may _*_seem_*_ "too perfect" or "not flawed enough" or whatever to some may actually be genuinely true and accurate for others, not all people are always exactly alike in any way.)_
sometimes, if an mc is too bad in comparison to others, i don't read it, because it feels like the side charcters have no real reason to deal with mc since mc is so flawed. so as long as mc isn't significantly more flawed than the rest in an obvious way, it's fine.
@@fkdjdjcmckdjdjf3728 That's very valid, but for that, I usually counter with a power role given to the MC. Example: a lot of people don't like my pirate MC but because she's the first mate to the captain, who is this hella charming and very nice guy, they grudgingly deal with her
Just as long as the self insert isn't too much like you, and if you write multiple different books then dont include a self insert at all. Whenever I read a Stephen king book and theres those characters based off him (Bill from IT, the guy that goes crazy in the shining, theres more too, but I dont want to name them all) And it sometimes ruins the book or movie, I cant watch IT without seeing steven king as Bill. Just my advice.
In first drafts I ALWAYS start too early in the book. This always leads to a very boring beginning with no action and no reason for the reader to keep reading. I fixed this by diving right into the action. Instead of starting the book with the character in school I began with the character sneaking out with his friends during the night. It was more interesting and it gives the reader a reason to keep reading (To see what happens and if he gets caught).
On the Writing Excuses podcast, they mentioned that an editor reading a first-timer’s manuscript will often skip about forty pages in because “it takes new authors forty pages to start telling their story.” It sounds like you’ve already shaved off that novice habit. But sometimes I wonder if the “normal day” pseudo-chapter is a helpful exercise for you as a writer.
Andreas Eschbach (a German writer) gives the advice to check, whether you can entirely delete: - the fist chapter of your book - the first scene of every chapter - the first paragraph of every scene - the first sentence of every paragraph. Helped me a lot ...
My style of writing as I am told is very flowery and descriptive, but wayyyyyyyyy too many details. My goal is to get every aspect of the story, but it can become overwhelming and confusing for the reader. So, I find myself stuck, but reading other people's works help me narrow it down so it makes sense.
So a thought that I've had about info-dumping. It can be helpful to write that part out, but only for yourself. I was going through the book "the Black Prism" by Brent Weeks; and it occurred to me that something he did well was establishing the entire world as a going concern (the magic system, the history, the current situation, and so on) and then he had his characters act like people already familiar with all those things. So the protagonist talks about color wights, and doesn't explain what those are. He encounters a color wight, and you can tell *he* knows what a color wight is, but he doesn't tell you what they are. You figure it all out gradually, as the information emerges. It feels a lot more like the world existed already, and this protagonist went out into it, and we are figuring things out through their experiences. I want to try that at some point.
That's actually how I'm trying to write my book🥳. I as an author knows things that maybe my readers will never know. The big question for me is: what SHOULD the reader get to know about this world. How much should I explain (at some point) about the magic system, and how? We'll see what happens if I ever actually finish.
This is super hard to do, especially, if you're a novice writer. You go with "The reader will gradually discover things & piece it together later". The outcome: reader doesn't understand what's what, because it's 100 times easier _for you_ to piece it together, since it's all in your head to begin with, and it's difficult to go completely into beholder perspective. You go with over-explaining (said info-dump) - it comes off unnatural & reader feels like he's being handheld. The happy medium, as it often is, somewhere in the middle, and it takes time to master the skill of finding it. Hard stuff, honestly.
Giving the characters agency to make their own mistakes is a double-edged weapon. Some authors hear about agency everywhere, and misunderstand it slightly. Then, they end up with characters that seem "actively stupid" instead of "stupidly active" :) (Often while telling the reader what a genius the character is...)
In my case it's: Character: I'm a moron. Other character: You speak of things I have never heard of and still do not comprehend. Trust me, you're a genius.
Stupid characters can say smart things. "She says we are like two halves of the same soul" "Yeah, I can see that. Not the same stuff in each half, obviously. More sort of sieved."
@@artofthepossible7329 How about the reader makes that conclusion rather than the other characters? Unless it’s off the typical logic and the main character’s ideas somehow coincidentally worked.
@@Laura-Yu I forget the actual name but you know "ignorant of their own ignorance"? Well it's based on that combined with someone who prefers to actually know what he's talking about. Recall Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. Not unsimilar all things considered honestly. I mean the reader can reach their own conclusion but honestly the entire point with that character is that there isn't a singular answer But at any rate besides the entire thing being a dialogue I'm not sure what kind of epic to use an basis. *laugh* So how effective "ideas" are may not be important to how a character is viewed.
I am proud to say I’ve literally never struggled with tense shifting since I started writing actual novels. But I also am humble enough to get ready to be roasted with these other mistakes that I’m sure I’ve made. Love these videos lol
I really really struggle with rushed pacing. My stories are basically skeletons of stories and should have way more worldbuilding and charachter development. I think it's mainly a fault of my ADHD, I'm so impatient and want to get through the story quickly :( Basically I end up writing extremely condensed scifi "novels" that are around 10K words long...
i always get too excited for a story i get an idea for, and i just start writing it without knowing where its going and then it crashes and burns in a dumpster fire that will stain the internet forever
A good way to fix it would be to write the novel how u want it and once it’s finished u can edit it and add all the worlbuilding and minors facts and stuff
Some helpful advice I heard in regards to telling: use telling when you want to speed up the pacing and use showing when you want to slow the pacing down. I would get very anxious trying to decide whether to show or tell something; this advice made it much easier for me.
I'm learning to write by creating my own fanfiction story, and thanks to your advice, I've found that I need to rewrite all seventeen chapters. Including minor plot holes that I missed. It's not a big deal, but it would add more realism to the story. Thanks!
15:40 to be honest, i'll personally take that method over info dumping. it can be fixed to be more plausible, but it's flowing better and more naturally than paragraphs of exposition explaining the situation, suddenly coming out of nowhere
More! More knowledge 🥺 Alexa, would you mind talking of the genres that a becoming increasingly popular for Adult and Young Adult? Not only genre, but also elements that are increasingly popular (I feel like heists are one of them), and also the opposite of what's not so marketable with regards to both elements and genre? (I heard Aliens are doing poorly)? I know you made the dead genre video, and I'd love an update on that + some insider knowledge on what's becoming attractive! I'd be forever grateful!
I’m an amateur, so I’ve heard all these criticisms at least once, but your explanations are practical and actually helpful. Imperative and not just declarative. Please make future videos that go deeper into each of these novice mistakes if you have time.
I have to say, I LOVE that you're breaking your videos into sub-sections with individual titles so it's easy to find the specific issue you're talking about at each moment. I watch/listen to a lot of your videos at work, so I often have to pause and restart mid video to handle work issues. That makes it SO easy to go back to the beginning of a topic to make sure i didn't miss anything. Thanks for doing this (and the videos in general)! It's super helpful to have content I can listen to that helps keep my mind on improving my writing while I'm stuck at the dreaded day job. :)
It's a great new UA-cam function! I just had to figure out how to use it--the trick was creating a timestamp for 00:00. I'll be going back to edit older videos where I can so they have Chapters too.
I think using it excessively would create an unwanted sense of repetition, regardless of how many varieties you could come up with. Some writers I've seen manage to use them sparingly, then add it back once in every couple of dialog sentences.
This is one of my favorite quotes about this matter: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading." You keep doing you Alexa. You're awesome :)
I’m close to turning 20 and I’ve been writing since i was 12 years old. I’ve been writing the exactly same story. A planned series of four books. The past years I’ve been rewriting the same first draft of the first book and i can’t seem to find an end because every time i finish something i get anxious and stressed that it’s wrong or not good enough. I’ve told myself to stick through it and just finish a draft and so in 2021 i did, indeed, finish my first draft. Currently I’m rewriting the parts that felt bad or wrongly paced or messy and I’ve cut out 18 side characters since. So needless to say, i had to cut out a lot of stuff that was surrounding said characters and now i need new stuff to fill up these spaces. I’ve been having such a hard time with it all, currently over-plotting and planning every detail, every chapter but i still feel like I’m doing it wrong or like it’s not enough or just not good. I don’t know where to start or where to end or what to keep in and what to keep out, how to properly share details without info dumping, how to make things make sense without confusing a reader, how to portray emotions and connections And all that despite being a writer for almost 8 years and always working on the same project. I know my characters and my world building and their stories and every detail like the back of my hand and yet.. i seem to be rather blocked and it’s demotivating, stressful. My only ever goal in life was to write this story but i can’t seem to do it. I’m afraid of doing it badly. I’m afraid of writing something that it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve been watching videos like this up and down, internalizing every tip i get but I’m just at a loss these days.
I wrote my first book at age 23. I’ve been editing it for 4 years now. I have changed so much over those years. I’ve read more, learned more, written more. I’ve finished a trilogy since writing that book. 27 year old me is so much more mature and different. At 20 you’re a baby. You have sooooo much more growth to go through until you’re a full fledged adult. Your brain isn’t even finished cooking yet. I didn’t publish my book because I felt off about it. And I was right to. Trust your gut and don’t panic. Put the book away for a while. And I mean A WHILE. I stopped editing mine for a year and came back with way better edits.
Dood, that is already in itself an impressive feat! You've been writing the same story since age twelve! It's an incredible show of perseverance, hard work, vision! Recognize that what you did is already great, and don't lose hope in your teenage dream! However, keep in mind that you have learned a lot in that journey, which is already an accomplishment in itself.
Right?! Fellow purple prose lover here! Sometimes writers just write so pretty it’s genuinely fun to read it, even when it doesn’t advance the plot or whatever.
Agree, purple prose sometimes cannot be that bad it just depends on an author of how they write it. just take the example of the novel "Lolita"-it had such a unique writing style and beautifully written purple prose and I absolutely got immersed to the story right at its introduction. since the flow of the words in it are so smooth it's one example of purple prose novel that done right. and despite the controversial main character in it, I sometimes cannot help but sympathize with him cause he's quite likeable since his internal dialogue is written in a quite "hypnotizing way" (as I described) and added more to it his charismatic humor. and to be honest I'm quite surprised that there are people who aren't fond of purple prose since I thought it's common in fiction. but oh well I'm wrong.
Flowery writing that's enjoyable to read isn't purple prose. Purple prose is when the style is so needlessly wordy that it distracts the reader. What counts as purple prose is somewhat a matter of opinion.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. Take each improvement at a time: I've been writing for about 12 years on and off and I'm still refining my craft - keep it up!
Something I have noticed lately while reading, is when multiple characters in a book have the same language, and vocabulary. It gets confusing when the characters are exchanging words. Sometimes it can read like the main is talking to a mirror. Lol
the funny thing is, I try to just slowly get my readers into the world, by just dropping info that is relevant, but my writing instructor told me once that I shouldn't because humans didn't come up until like chapter 3, and she didn't know there were humans and so I should have stated that earlier, and I'm like, in the first two chapters, the humans don't even matter
I disagree about the dialogue tags one, as I have actually read a few books where I often get frustrated that there wasn't any dialogue tags and it's hard to keep oversight of when one quotation ends and begins, as well as who said what. I would rather have one dialog tags too many when reading a book than have to deal with that. At least when you are spelling out what they said, rather than stating they explained something (that the reader is already aware what is), or its a point you cant hear what someone is saying or something like that. What would you suggest instead if you want to keep it easy to keep track on who said what, but not change what the characters are saying?
I agree. I was reading Lee Child a while ago and I found myself having to count backwards through the lines to figure out who said what. It really was a bummer on an otherwise very good book.
The more I watch, the more I realize how guilty I am of amateur writing. I am working on my first story, so it's shouldn't be surprising. Thanks so much for this. I'll be watching more to help myself out. Writing is a mid-life career change for me and I am realizing how much I've forgotten about the basic writing structure I was taught back in primary/middle school.
@@ramonarobot Yeah, I too got to that point. Now, I still subscribe to this and a few other channels but seldom watch a video, instead spending my time writing more than ever to practice what I've learned.
@@FionaA17 Similarly, I count these videos as education, in this case a checkup. I passed with flying colors, but I admit Alexa mentioned a few things I hadn't heard before, things that were not a problem in my writing -- at least not yet, and now thanks to Alexa they should never be.
I internalize these more lengthy writing tips. I immediately subscribed. Writing to me is just a way to exercise my creativity- the more I educate my subconscious, the more I enjoy the exercise. As someone said, these identified pitfalls only make the next one better.
I would greatly appreciate a video on style and tone. Sometimes run-on sentences and redundancy are helpful in creating tone if the POV/narrator is close to the characters. And some writers use writing “flaws” very carefully to form a writing style. Like putting commas in unnecessary places to help with pacing.
Currently writing my first novel on Inkitt, still afraid to publish it. I’m not a native English speaker and I’m constantly rewriting chapters to make them perfect in my eyes. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I feel like this is what breaks my neck as a writer. As a amateur it’s nice to hear tips from a published writer. I’m glad I found you and this video was very helpful! Thank you 🙏🏼
A couple of these: tense shifting and head hopping, are actually a-okay if you do them intentionally and artfully, rather than sloppily and unintentionally. In classic fiction (Jane Eyre, for instance) the narrative will sometimes slip into a different tense from what the majority of the book is written in, or into the head of another character in scene, or offer some backstory about them that the main character has no way of knowing, and it works brilliantly. You just have to know what you're doing. In some ways I feel prose conventions have become more restricted over time, not less. Remember, tense and POV and so on are just labels we use to describe particular kinds of writing, not rigid categories which we must conform to at all costs. They should serve your story, not the other way around.
Thank you!!! I’m currently writing a book with a few different main characters and almost every chapter is shown from a different character’s first-person perspective to help the reader understand them and show the different perspectives on the events in the story, such as in the beginning when one group of characters in in one place and the other group of characters is in a different place. I fully agree with what you’re saying and as long as it is right for the story, you should do it!
Right!? The assumption that fanfiction in general by nature has to be badly written or amateurish or anything is super annoying. I have read a lot of fanfiction in the past that was better written than some published novels were. But, also...I mean, HEY: if you actually intentionally want to write a melodramatic type story = you should absolutely be free to go for it too! Just like there are all different types of audience-viewers for different fentes of tv series or movies, there are all different types of audience-readers for books or fanfiction alike too. Some people actually enjoy melodrama, they have fun with it, they don't like taking stories too seriously and the over-the-top and/or sometimes almost-misplaced ridiculousness or whatever actually makes them smile. You really just need to think about WHY you are writing it the way you are, and whether or not it's stylistically consistent throughout your whole story. People sometimes forget how entirely subjective and/or personal-style oriented things really can be. 🙂🙂 I absolutely applaud and commend you for actually caring to hone and/or improve your craft like this even just as a fanfiction writer though - that is always an admirable endeavor for a writer of any kind to partake! ^-^ 💜💜💜
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 thank you so much! your comment really encourages me because I really do like some "cliche tropes" and I have fun writing them.. I like reading and writing them but sometimes I feel insecure because of all the people that criticizes it. But as you say, I should have fun and keep in mind that there are different types of people when it comes to story preferences. Thank you so much again! 💖
@@nazarenamaximo7376 aw~You're very welcome! 🙂 I'm always happy if my comments happen to do something positive for someone and don't always end up just being me running my fingers &/or getting things outta my own head or whatever.💖💖 I honestly wish more readers would remember that, these days, as well-and more readily accept when sometimes it's just a stylistic difference and if a particular writer's style wasn't to their reading preference .. it doesn't necessarily mean it was badly written...sometimes it just wasn't the right reading-"fit" for them personally. It's a distinction that I believe all writers and readers alike should try to always be aware of, even if the line between the two things is or can be sometimes very fine and at times falls differently for different people too. ^.^
Would love to see another video like this specific to memoir/non-fiction. Really helpful! You’re describing all of the things I heard at my local “writing” group, which turned me off and no one spoke up about. I was new so didn’t say anything, and thought I was the crazy one cause I didn’t like most of the stories being shared. Thank you for the validation.
You're not the only one that thinks that way about writers groups. Writers groups are full of wannabes and parrots often with little or nothing substantial to offer. If you're going to be in a writers group...vet it's members. And, remember, just because they've self-published their own book, it doesn't make them an authority on writing. Anyone can publish a book...few have learned the writing craft and are able to put it to good use. If you want expert advice...read some of the greatest modern day writers that have ever put a pen to paper.
I recently read “Saturn Run” by John Sandford. It was very good but had some sections with paragraphs of technobabble. I eventually scanned past parts of it and as I suspected none of that info was needed to enjoy the book. The other problem was there were 15-20 characters which is OK, but the writer had them using their first names, then last names, some nicknames! (Then mixed it up) Ouch!
A big mistake of mine in the past was excessive description and purplish prose because I was somehow convinced I *had* to do that to make the atmosphere and action more impactful. NOPE. I've found out thanks to videos like these and from feedback in my writer's group that it's okay to let things breathe and not choke every single paragraph with unnecessary description.
One of my favourite mistakes (that I'm certainly guilty of) is not wanting to cut something just because you've fallen in love with the imagery in those few paragraphs, even though it adds nothing to the plot or is irrelevant.
No matter how many videos you watch, you can only get good if you write and start to have experiences, when you write, and get responses of your reader over what they like or not. You started to bent your story towards the viewers expectations and learn your mistakes. ❤
I love purple prose and florid writing! I like to call it poetic prose because purple prose is derogatory to many great authors. Writing simply with a sense of economy is a very American thing to do.
It really is unfortunate that there's so many people who seem to think that ALL descriptive, poetic prose is just "bad writing". Everything seems geared toward fast moving plots to catch and keep the attention of readers with ever shorter attention spans. The problem with that is that I WANT to luxuriate in the story, not be hurtled along until it's over. I love a strong sense of setting and atmosphere, which makes me feel like I'm actually there. Too many books these days skimp on descriptive language in fear of "purple prose" which gives only a vague sense of the setting and makes it seem generic.
You just opened my eyes to see the real beauty of writing! As a senior high school student, we have to write a lot of essays and stories so this was really helpful for me. Since English isn't my first language, it's kind of a challenge to me to be exposed in writing, expressing my thoughts into writing. Also, I like how you explain how such structures in writing is needed to be fixed or either be more creative and fun with it and not just sounding fancy and telling the reader the entire plot. It just made me realize a lot of things when it comes to it. Great job on explaining things. Thank you.
Love this! I would only disagree on the character soup thing - I actually love when novels have a lot of characters and they all have their own backstories and arcs. It makes the re-read so much more enjoyable because a character that might be only be mentioned once in the beginning of a book can turn out to have a huge role by the end of book 3, for example. As long as they have a role and it isn’t just “oh hi Rebecca, random girl from school” of course... Great video though, didn’t even realise I watched a 37 minute video so easily!
These videos are so helpful to watch when approaching editing. I'm so grateful for all the lessons, but for awhile the information made writing so overwhelming. Then I stepped back and realized that so much if this is better to do in editing, and to not worry so much about avoiding all of these on the first draft. This will definitely be a video I will rewatch time and again!
When I first stumbled across your channel, I was taken aback by your bluntness. A few weeks later, my writing is better and I appreciate the honesty. Thanks Alexa.
What a great video. I've come a long way with my writing and I'm happy to say I've gotten past most of these issues, but it was a long and rough road. Ugh. The biggest issue for me is the telling vs showing. There are sooooo many facets to it, and so many ways to fall victim, and I'm constantly learning about new ones and trying to root them out.
I know you made this a couple of years ago, but I'm just now seeing it. Thank you so much, Alexa, for this golden advice. I've always made up stories since I can remember. Ten years ago, I tried putting one down on paper. Three years and multiple rejections later, I was about to toss in the towel. I just enjoyed writing so much that I couldn't quit. I shelved the book for four years and recently have been really working it over again. I've been getting a lot of tips and advice from UA-cam channels, but I have to say that yours has been the most helpful and eye-opening. I'm definitely a newbie to all of this. I'm not expecting to be the next Hemingway, I just discovered I love to write. Thank you again so much. God's blessings to you.
I find *telling* - rather than implying or inferring - one of the most useful things to do in a narrative. It makes for great clarity, and it really helps the reader. It has never spoiled a good story, for me. Many writers can be too 'clever' for their own good, and simply confuse the reader by trying (often desperately) to be too 'subtle'. Writing for show.
i have to disagree with you on the telling verbs during dialogue tags. I think they're really helpful and create a clearer narrative/picture in the mind, whereas only ever using "said" makes it sound like everyone's speaking with a monotonous voice and absolutely no urgency. This may be because I'm German and am used to it from German books, but I've been reading almost exclusively in English for 10 years and I really miss descriptive dialogue tags
No one's saying "only" use said, but said should be the default. Said is invisible to the reader, which is why it's preferred over other dialogue tags. If you want to show the voice and urgency of a speaker, you can do so with an action tag instead of a dialogue tag. i.e. [Joe checked his watch for the third time. "He's late."] or [Joe punched the brick wall. "He's late."]
Agree, even if I'm slovak, I too think that if it's not in every dialogue tag, it can be helpful to better visualize character's behavior in situation. But it really should be rarely, for example; when character changes more drastically, it's not necessary to describe every eyebrow or nose movement. What do you think? 🤔
Same here, but I'm Portuguese. We are taught not to use "said" when writing and our dialogue tags are quite different from the English ones. It's one of those things where my native language creates cognitive dissonance when reading in English, though my brain has learned to shift reading modes in between languages.
I’m a native English speaker and I actually agree with this. While I don’t think it’s okay for every dialogue tag to be “whispered” or “hissed” I think it definitely creates a more vivid picture when used correctly. If two people are hiding from someone tell us that they whispered. Then after that stick with said for the rest of the conversation.
Fascinating how some of these things are actually needed in screenwriting, like head hopping (since we're dealing with camera angles) and all A plot no B plot (I mean, there are exceptions in big productions and feature films but if you're making a short film, definitely all A plot). Filtering is another bad habit I have, probably since I learned to leave the dramatisation up to the actors lol These are all things I'll keep in mind and avoid when attempting a novel now :)
It is worth bearing in mind - for authenticity - that characters can actually say stupid things, use the wrong words, and miss-hear others etc., and make misjudgments. Because that is what _real_ people do :)
True, but this is a very fine line
@@JayBenjamin9214 --- I would hope so :)
Or think a word is spelled one way, even if it’s not
That sounds like a cheesy life quite " everybody makes mistakes it's what makes you human " XD you are right tho
As long as the character's shortcomings do not spill over into the author's writing technique. ;)
I’m prepared to apply some cold water to the burns I will receive.
I require aloe for the burns I have received
I think even burn heal i got from Goldenroad Dept. Store won't help me, I'm scared...
@@sassyblondewriter8239 But the question is, did you require aloe for the burns you received, or the burns you have received? lol. Editing out those "had"s right now on my manuscript like she suggested here lol
There, there. We are with you.
I have already applied my 2000 SPF Sunscreen
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” ― Tom Clancy
That coming from Tom Clancy is so ironic it would stop bullets. 😃
Reality is Ralph!
It's almost ridiculous the extent to which this is the absolute truth ..
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx
Tom Clancy is such a bad writer that he's a running joke. you people have zero talent or taste
pov: you're meticulously taking notes because you're scared of messing up the first draft you haven't written
ua-cam.com/video/2OGEdp0FvBY/v-deo.html
You too huh XD
Yup
It's ok if you mess up the first draft, you'll have to edit and rewrite it anyway, the only thing that your first draft has to do is exist so you actually have something tangible to work on, as bad as it is
you didnt have to do this to me
"fanfic-y dialogue tags"
*me watching this to write better fanfics*
I love them. I wish more non fanfic writers used them. They make the characters seem just that little bit "more" because you are feeling what they feel as they respond. I think they are great, so that is a rule I intend to keep breaking because I write for me, and those who are like me. ^_^
Turn it around. Everything she says is too fanficcy means you alright to do it in fanficcy. Also shes being way to critical. There are exceptions to all of these
same
EXACTLY JFJREHHEHHW
I love me some fancy dialogue tags. I think there is a time and a place for them, too. I read somewhere that the only acceptable tag is "said". Excuse me, how boring is that? I get that you are supposed to show not tell, but one can overdo it with that, too.
"Perfect, flawless main characters to whom nothing bad ever happens"
Meanwhile, me, creating my main characters: How can I cause this person P A I N?
You shouldn’t go too overboard though 😅 but if you do decide to give them any serious struggles/trauma, you shouldn’t have them whine and mope through out the duration of the story, it gets real old after a while.
Same but with readers
Me: what is this characters absolute worst nightmare?
Also me: do it. Do the thing. >D
I wanna make my readers and my mc feel painnnnnnnnn
Every time I see writers talking about putting their main characters through hell, I always think about Sidney Prescott (from the Scream franchise) and instantly get protective! 🤣 Even though that is a screen play and not a novel.
While I'm watching this my boyfriend is listening in the background
Bf: oh you do that.
Bf: and that...
Bf: that too.
Like ouch I know hun that's why I'm watching this in the first place 😅
Bf.... too many dialogue tags lol
that's so cute oml 🥺
At least your bf reads your work.
@@Mayaspiral when my bf read one of my books he shat on it for as long as i could remember
@@stuckinoblivion is he really your bf if he doesn't thooo 😂
Pro tip for dialogue tags. If taking it out doesn't convey the feeling then rewrite the dialogue to convey the tag feeling.
"Sit down," she demanded.
"Staple your a$$ to that chair," she said.
Now I have to use:
"Staple your ass to that chair!"
As a reoccuring in joke. 😂
so if the emotion is conveyed in the words, you dont have to say it?
example: "Leave", she said coldly OR
"Get the fuck out of my house!" she said
@@simplyanisa5010 yes absolutely! The second one is much better and puts you right in the action. It really forces you to write better dialogue if your tags are taken away.
That’s good!
amazing!
Can I add one more to the list? Every rule can and should be broken if it makes the story better. Usually you dont want the protagonist to be entirely passive, but there are books such as A Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy where the main protagonist is almost entirely passive and is simply dragged along through out the story. An other wise engaging story is not automatically rendered bad because it breaks any one of these rules, and following them does not guarantee any story will be engaging.
YES!!!!!!! writing rules exist and you need to learn them so you know how and when to break them!!!!!!!
'Every rule can and should be broken if it makes the story better.'
This is brilliant. You can't and shouldn't contain creativity.
I know this is SOOO late but another passive character I feel is also a pass to the rule because of how exceptionally they are written is Charlie Kelmeckis from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Spoilers ahead, but the entire story is about him getting picked up by two seniors and getting dragged into their friend group and spiraling when they have a falling out because they're his entire drive and motivation. He spends the story just going along with everyone, even dating someone he's not that interested in because he doesn't want to hurt her feelings. Even then, all of this still makes him a valid character because in the context of the narrative, his passivity stems from the driving force of the story, that being his sexual assault experience. It's all he has grown to know, to just let people dictate and take advantage of his way of life, keep their secrets and be as the title says, a wallflower. He doesn't offer much to the table in terms of being an intriguing person, he's just shy and timid and can be a pushover, but his story and background is so well written that I still think it is one of the best coming of age, high school stories ever told.
Also Song of Ice and Fire has like hundreds of characters I dunno how Martin can possibly keep track of all of them + all their houses + all their lore + all their families lore. Its overwhelming at first but it really does make it seem like a real, living, breathing world
I understand what you thought you were saying, slight 3rd grade substitute teacher enthusiasm. Glad to see youre published
My mother always wanted to get into writing, and she never did because she wanted to write in a pristine booklet, where every word would be chosen perfectly. She will receive euthanasia in a few weeks, and never wrote a story.
So, biggest writing mistake? Perfectionism.
so true!! when thinking over my own writing, I have struggled with perfectionism myself having spent 7+ years on crafting one novel! The only reason I have words on the page is to ignore that part of my habit and write words no matter how cringe-worthy or horrible they may seem to me (your writing is usually better than you think it is... truly even if you're just starting out!)
Yes, I struggle with this too! Perfectionism stresses me out because it starts giving me self doubts where I think "oh this not good. I am making an amateur mistake." And then I just end up not writing. So lately I've been working on writing no matter how bad it may be. We can always edit later
@@shakhzosh The thing is.... it doesn't matter if it's bad, especially if it's your first draft: You can fix it later on! (But, also, even a final draft doesn't necessarily have to be perfect - sometimes imperfections can even become the most beloved things for/to readers, too. And if all else fails you can[ theoretically] always improve on some aspect of your writing or another in the next thing you write too. Authors are only human, same as anyone else, after all!!!) 🙂 The most important thing, at first, is just to try and get the whole idea out-THEN think about perfecting that idea and/or whether or not it's worth sharing with anyone else after that.
_((Unfortunately for me, I can only follow my own advice to a certain point as I have a very edit-as-you-go kind of style since I am a very detail-oriented writer and a part of getting the whole idea out even just to start with for me is making sure{or at least as sure as I can} that what I wrote is saying the very particular thing or things that I actually wanted or intended it to say. But, even so, I still try to come back later on to reassess whether or not that particular thing was as good or clear or necessary[ or whatever] like I thought it was originally too.))_
yes! thank you!!!!
I always save a backup of my draft in case I changed something and want to go back to what I wrote originally. Funny thing, I've never once gone back to a previous draft. Lesson learned, writing is always lousy on the first draft and always gets better with each additional pass. If you read Stephen King's first draft of something, you might jump to the conclusion that he's a pretty lousy writer.
I am a huge offender of tense shifts! In college, my professor wrote a note on one of my essays saying, “your tense shifts are making me tense.” Needless to say, I’ve been more mindful of my tenses... 😅
I'm terrified of having to figure out this line item edit....mine probably looks like a ping pong match...
Same! I always have to go back after a writing session JUST to fix it. Every time 😅
same, i'll be writing in present and then suddenly switch into past - or worse, i'll try and combine the two without realising it and end up confusing myself
It took me half my rough draft of my book to stay in past tense since I was so used to writing present tense in songs and stuff. Currently editing, but the first half is still really bad.
😂😂😂👌 I swear, it’s always the college professors with the best puns
for those who want it:
1-Tense Shifting
2-Info Dumping
3-Excessive Dialogue Tags
4-Over the Top Dialogue Tags
5-Repetitive Sentence Structure
6-Melodrama
7-Convoluted, Redundant Writing
8-Persistent Grammar Mistakes
9-Poor Scene Setting/Filter
10-Poor Pacing
11-Exposition Via Clunky Dialogue
12-Work That is Way Too Short or Way Too Long
13-All A Plot, No B Plot
14-Flat Characters/Poor World Building
15-Capitalizing Lots of Words
16-Head Hopping (shifting point of view with no scene break)
17-Telling
18-Poor Characters/Story Logic
19-Purple, Pretentious, Overwriting
20-Stiff, Hyper-Formal Writing
21-Character Soup
22-Perfect, Passive Characters
ty!
Thanks !!!!! I screenshot this
MVP
Good I can’t stand listening to it for some reason thanks
@@isoinic4575 thank you very much 😂
pov: you're procrastinating writing your book by watching this video
I came to youtube for tips on writing while I was writing but I ended up here...
Counterpoint: I am not procrastinating, **I'M DOING RESEARCH**
Yes...
@@Kasiarzynka sureeeee
Pfft nO oF cOuRsE nOt
“Fan-fic-cy dialogue tag”
My middle school self: *abort, ABORT*
HAHAHHAHAHA
I actually love descriptive (or "fanfic") dialogue tags. I find them immersive, and they help me build the image in my mind more fully. I feel like they also more clearly define the character themselves and how they are responding to a situation. They just work for me, and I won't ever regret writing with them.
@@goddessnocturnas same tbh. I think most of these is just opinions. Without stating the speaker, that is a sentence syntax. Syntaxes are VERY bad for your book and is a quick way to confuse tf out of your reader
@@goddessnocturnas exactly! I don’t understand what she’s saying?
“Don’t go to the mall today.”
If there’s no dialogue tag then I just read it monotone in my mind. Lol I don’t get it
LOL FR
The info dumping is so real. That is solved entirely by the “show, don’t tell” rule. If your character has a rocky relationship with someone, show us. And do it throughout the story, so you’re being consistent about it rather than implying it then just… forgetting you’d set up this concept. I guess that’s a continuity issue that tends to go hand in hand with info dumping pretty often lol
I think a good way to do set basic info about the world is they way how Tolkien did it - add a prefix about the hobbits and their ways which is not directly related to the story. People can then decide when to read it or how much. So I read it all and loved it (I always love world info) but my best friend just skipped over it to get the basics. I've also seen this done with characters where the whole family connections were in a prefix and you could go back there in the middle of the main story and check up.
It's not always necessarily better, while it's a great feeling having the reader pick up on the meaning of something without having to tell them, there are some concepts that are just too important or too hard to "show without telling" that it's okay to explain it directly.
And this, contrary to some intuitions, is very good to build a solid bedrock that the reader can use to parse those "show don't tell moments", because many times a lot of things that are obvious as a writer who has stared their work for hundreds of hours are not so apperent as someone who has just picked up the story
Just watch "Rebel Moon" and do the opposite of that movie, problem solved!
Character voice! You should be able to tell them apart by their voice. Everyone has a slightly different vocabulary, speaking style, most used phrases or expressions, etc. Some people talk formally and some talk very informally. I need to be able to tell who is talking. Also if everyone speaks exactly the same way it reads as fanfic-y
This is a really good point. I've found my self comparing this video to the Harry Potter series and J.K. Rowling did really well with this step. You could know when a character like hagrid was talking. Or Ron and Hermione. Hermione talks more intelligently, where ron is more laid back and lazy with his speech. This is something I'm gonna try looking out for in my writing
@@luannesbestfriend7 I'm still very iffy on her dialogue but, I will say this, that's pretty much the only thing of her writing I could say someone could learn from. Hagrid. Find a way to show your character's accent, while not confusing your reader.
Ironic, since fanfic should be the perfect medium to practice character voices. You just have to mimic the way they talk in the source material, which, if it's any good, should already have given them unique voices.
@@ethanlivemere1162 Yeah, it's definitely that way where I write.
I run in several circles - overall, I'd say I know about 200, and have talked to more, some of them "The Greats" in my fandom and yes i did have a panic attack after - and that was actually a topic in one of them.
I call it "Canonicl Characterisation" because it's catchy and I'm bad with remembering words but w/e.
Sometimes, we'll purposefully change them because of what we're writing - we don't _always_ want to stick to canon.
(ps, i really fucking hate people using the term 'fanfic-y' to describe something not good in writing)
Not the people being mad about my use of “fanfic-y” 😂 I never said all fan fiction is bad. Some fan fiction is good but y’all are taking it far too seriously.
-sincerely a moderately famous fan fiction writer from 2016-2018
The thing I hate is when authors just stick arbitrary trauma in a character's past just to "flesh them out" but doesnt address said trauma in any real or consequential way. Looking at you, Kelley Armstrong. Or conversely, when writers give characters a Big Trauma and that is literally the only driving force behind their actions. It just feels like the author has no idea what PTSD is actually like and has failed to ground the character in any other real way. Real people are not their traumas! And I say that having been through serious shit! Characters should grow as should their relationship with their trauma.
⬆️ this, so true
I hope this doesn't offend you or anything, but what exactly is a growing relationship with trauma? I'm writing atm and I want to get this stuff right because I've heard about it getting misrepresented a lot.
@JillRayEmma 7, doesnt offend me at all! Dealing with trauma is not a one-size-fits-all, and my own relationship with my trauma varies from day to day. My trauma relationship charges depending on things like current stress-levels, triggers, my own mental state. Sometimes it is a good thing that I use to help others. Other times, it is just a big pile of self-destruction, and some days I just push it down. The main thing with trauma, or anything specialized is the same thing with writing anything you arent familiar with first-hand: research, research, research! Talk to trauma patients if they are willing. Talk to mental health professionals. Look for articles. And even if you have unfortunately experienced trauma (which I hope you havent) then realize your relationship with your trauma wont be the same as other peoples'. Oh, and trauma isnt something you deal with in a couple of therapy sessions and move on, and although people in your life (especially significant others) definitely help (or can hurt if they are abusive, but I digress) but the work to get past it has to be done by the victim. You cant just cuddle it away. Therapy is often a tense and re-traumatizing experience because in order for the patient to heal, they have to recount the experience so that new feelings are associated with it. I am glad to see you want to get it right, because so many writers just use it as a plot device, and although that can be interesting for some, it makes my eyes roll.
@@Neurospicyalchemist
Thank you :) I'm not sure if I suffer with anything myself, but I'm sure if I did that I would be pretty pissed about seeing it simply used to drive a story rather than show its consequences. Like when people write depression, and their character has perfect hair and makeup every day. People just seem to use it to add a "layer" (and I use that word loosely) to their character. Then only to dump it in the trash whenever the plot moves along. I'd be pretty angry if they just used what I struggled with.
@@jillreyerma7592 yeah, having bipolar as well, I can ABSOLUTELY relate. When I see bipolar portrayed badly, or turned into a joke, it makes me angry. When it is done well though, I just feel so SEEN, ya know?
i got one, i like to call it the "Conga Line Of Suffering" where a writher either cant or wont move the story along with out inflicting some sort of pain or sufferings on the characters. you see it alot in fanfiction.
rp too, its like the fear of the staleness of a happy ending
The Needs-Therapy authors 😅
On similar lines I have read stories where the was a pattern of the characters having moments of triumph immediately undercut in their next chapter, the narrative constantly oscillating between victories and defeats without any breathing space in between. One chapter they have had a positive character moment and triumphed against their foes, then you get to the next chapter and all their triumphs from their previous chapter have been completely undermined by some background change that we are not privy to, turning their victory into a defeat. It got tiresome once I spotted the pattern.
@@intergalactic92 I think a good way of doing this, that I remember from Harry Potter (though I don’t remember what book it was) is, when the trio snuck out at night to accomplish some thing, and once they snuck back into the castle, they were found out and got detention. The detention cost them a lot of house points but what they set out to accomplish was still satisfied.
It allows for your characters to still complete their missions and objectives, while still keeping in place that there are consequences to one’s actions.
I think it's not a very good category for criticism, because a lot of philosophy is about dealing with suffering. Stories with suffering for plot drivers are everything between very deep and very shallow, it's not enough of a signifier. Especially given what someone thinks of as excessive suffering is deeply subjective: am I going to read that into something written by an ex child soldier from the middle east? What's the point, the problem is probably something surrounding it.
* deletes entire manuscript * - * deletes word * - * tosses computer out of window * let’s find a new career path 😂🙈
This is actually part of every writer's daily routine. In fact, I did it three times before finishing this post.
@@n0tthemessiah I burned mine before deciding I was being stupid. I was in fact, being stupid
some people achieve wisdom, others have it thrust upon them.
You can't throw yourself in the trash in favour of Alexa Donne, that's ignorance.
Nearly worse than suicide.
She did suck all the enjoyment out of writing. Just write what's on your mind until you reach the right word count and then worry about mistakes.
I love how in school you’re taught to switch up dialogue tags as much as possible meanwhile that’s like the complete opposite of what you need to do😂
Facts
Ngl when she said that I recalled my book and how I made sure to never use the word "said" and now I am just prepping myself for a shit ton of rewriting
To be honest I wouldn’t consider the tagging rule a hard and fast rule. I mean yes, there are "rules" for writing; the same way there's "rules" for painting or sculpting etc. Art is art. Personally I think it's stupid and repetitive to limit yourself to *one* dialogue tag for your entire career. When *I* read books that only ever use the word "said" I get bored very quickly. Overusing words causes the brain to outright ignore or forget what they mean, so this has always seemed like a bizarre guideline in the writing community. Use the words you want, my friends. For once, school has the right idea.
I agree. How boring is just using “said” for every dialogue tag? I (personally) like it when authors use tags like “hissed” or “demanded” or something. It adds variety, and can even convey the needed emotion or tone that wasn’t expressed in the dialogue itself. I don’t care what’s “proper”, if being proper is painfully boring and repetitive.
I understand this, but what sounds better?
“I love your shirt!” He said.
“Thank you! I got it at Old Navy,” She said.
“Oh, I love shopping there. They have great blue jeans as well,” He said.
“Really? I usually shop at American Eagle for blue jeans,” She said. “I’ll have to buy some from Old Navy he next time I’m there.”
Or:
“I love your shirt!” He said.
“Thank you! I got it at Old Navy,” She replied.
“Oh, I love shopping there. They have great blue jeans as well.”
“Really? I usually shop at American Eagle for blue jeans,” She commented. “I’ll have to buy some from Old Navy he next time I’m there.”
Personally, I think the overuse of “said” just sounds really bad. In my opinion, switching them up often sounds way better and so much less tedious to read. So if I’m not supposed to switch up dialogue tags very often my reader just has to suffer through my boring dialogue tags? I’d much rather have a couple readers eye-rolling over fanfic-esque dialogue tags than having the word “said” burned into their retinas.
I personally disagree with the fanfic-y dialogue tag thing. I think writing "He smirked" Is a lot more streamlined than saying "He replied, slyly, with a smirk on his face". Just writing, "He smirked," Already conveys that he was giving off a sly tone, meaning that the point is conveyed quicker, and doesn't interrupt the pace of your story. Correct me if I'm wrong though, I'm open to criticism
I agree, it only has a bad view to it because of fan fictions, they overuse it
A little late (like... a year late) but there's a difference between action and dialogue tags. They can be switched around but there's a bit of a change you have to make.
"I've missed you," he whispered.
"I've missed you." He smirked.
The punctuation is the difference. Verbs unrelated to the way you speak are a separate "sentence" (period, capital). Verbs describing your speech are part of the same thought (comma, lowercase).
To elaborate on Flower's statement, they're both overused. Tags should be used sparingly to reinforce meaning or denote who's talking. Most of the time, if you rewrite the dialogue, you can show that emotion or tone instead of just stating it.
You can use it elsewhere, just not as a dialogue tag, because "smirking" is not a way of speaking.
@@Diana72910 i completely agree and it’s annoying how it is now marked as a “mistake” when it is actually must easier to convey the tone
Y’all need to learn what a dialogue tag actually means. You can use “He smirked” if you want but you have to change the punctuation correctly so it’s not a tag.
You covered this already, but I just want to really stress: YOUR VILLAIN IS A PERSON TOO - CREATE & WRITE THEM AS SUCH, PLEASE!
Yes
What if my villian is a malicious earth worm
@@luannesbestfriend7 • Are they a metacognitive malicious earthworm?
To be honest, I can sometimes find it very difficult to write a villain or a victim - a murder mystery - since every character I write has a piece of myself in them. Usually on accident.
@@thisisme4074 • That’s one of the best parts of writing! You can discover so much about yourself through creating villains & victims; parts you love and parts that could lead you down bad paths in life.
Filler scenes are my biggest pet peeve when critiquing other people's work. I can take most of the other things, but there's something about making me waste my time reading a play-by-play of your character brushing their teeth then driving to go get coffee that really makes me want to put the manuscript down. A lot of the time, it's the writer not knowing how or when to end the scene, but a lot of writers seem to forget that they don't need to tell us the story in real time - cut to the action and the important bits. I've also seen the argument that these scenes help the reader "get to know the character" but you should be able to do that while also writing a scene that contributes directly to the plot.
I think it depends on what kind of story you are writing, honestly. But, of course, there will be different readers for different kinds of stories. Some people like stories about the day-to-day grind or monotony or whatever of characters and/or life, or whatever; Some people do not. 🙂
When I read scenes like that they actually create tension for me, lol. I'm expecting something horrible to happen any second now, otherwise why is there such a lengthy description of a pointless mundane activity?
I am learning so much today.. Cutting to the action..I'll try that
Yes and it makes me laugh everytime they start with an alarm clock💀🚶♀️
Unless you're describing a painfully ordinary life to set up the coming disruption, yeah, just gloss over the morning routine. Even then, the routine can be briefly described before the character steps out to find a Vogon Constructor Fleet overhead or a SWAT team coming up the driveway. Or the morning routine shows that there's something 'off' about a character.
3:32 tbh I blame schools for this one. I remember when I read books in school I noticed the authors didnt use dialogue tags after every line of dialogue so I experimented with not using dialogue tags every time but my teacher's would always tell me it was wrong to do that so I got into a mindset that I had to use dialogue tags even when I know they're not necessary but I have to force something in anyway
Found myself doing this too!
I don't even remember what my teachers taught us about writing. There's only one thing that sticks in my mind, which is the "sizzling start." You begin your narrative with a paragraph of tension to pull your reader in before you get to the introduction, but that has a lot of flaws in it.
I found that, in junior school, teachers would rewards kids for writing really over-detailed pieces of writing, where paragraphs would be used to describe a single tree. As a very prolific reader, that frustrated me; I knew that no decent author would do that, so couldn’t see why the teachers were making it out to be a good thing. I still can’t.
My teacher had the opposite reaction, daring me to go to the logical extreme and not use any tags for that assignment. I tried to solve this by connecting characters by their actions, but this resulted in fidgety characters. Then I tried delving into their thoughts before they say something, but this slowed things way down and put me to sleep upon review. I still avoid tags when possible, but that exercise made me appreciate placing the occasional "She said".
I put down a book because of a dialog info dump. It wasn't a random character, but the characters sat down and one of them literally said, "Let's go over what we know," and proceeded to info dump the back story. Just, no. It was over a page, too. I don't know how long it was, in all. I stopped reading after a couple paragraphs. Ugh.
Sounds like the writer started their story 'too late' or had no idea how to incorporate the information. A brief discussion to ensure the characters are up to speed is okay. Whets the reader's curiosity or piques their interest. Explaining the cheese-spread, clown shoes, mob enforcers, and wombat can come out over time.
Over a page? Goddamn, that's unholy
"Lets go over what we know" can work _very_ well. Just don't spend an entire page on it, and I'll definitely give you extra points if something they know - preferably not the most important thing, but I also think that could work very interesting if handled well - is incorrect somehow.
Why is that so cringe
I'm settling in to watch this and I just KNOW I'm in for a reckoning. Oh god.
On the too many characters point, I read somewhere that you can combine some of these characters, which I thought was a really good point! You know, you have a salesperson and a brother and a conman and run in with a childhood friend, and you could easily combine some of those! It serves the same purpose, adds more depth to the plotline, maybe instigates some complexity, and doesn't get rid of any of those essential plotlines that require secondary characters
This and pacing were my biggest obstacles in my first novel. I have a huge urban fantasy world but realized some of these characters will never resurface and others I just end up killing off bc damn I wrote too many redundant characters. But it’s dark fantasy… nothing some paranormal murder can’t solve 😮💨
I had to narrow down my list of characters and this helps a lot, it creates more 3D characters if you combine characters you wouldn't have initially thought go together. Also asking yourself what would happen if the character disappeared/what changes they make to make them crucial to the story is important.
God damn!! I hv had enough!! 1 or 2 means fine but hw can I keep on correcting all these mstakes. 1st lemme finish my book lmao
I don't know, when I read stories where the protagonist knows someone, or gets to know them, then this person turns out to be related to a friend of yours. This particular character later on turns out to be the guy that attacked you that specific horrible night, and he's also the one that orchestrated the entire accidental meeting where you started knowing eachother. But that character, ironically, also turns out to be unaware of your friendship with his/her sister/brother/cousin/whatever.
When I encounter these kind of characters in stories, I'm like "what a coincidence!" as I roll my eye. To me, it feels like artificial depth and not real characters, as what are the chances of THAT happening in any kind of fiction or nonfiction. I don't know, I could be wrong, I am just a humble reader after all.
I both like and dislike the idea of combining characters. On one hand, you try to push too many characters into something, and you're just going to confuse people. On the other, how your main(s) react to a conman and to a salesman isn't going to be the same as the reaction they get to a salesman who _is also_ a conman. Reduced characters might not make as much sense as reduced detail, and reduced detail can always be fixed later. We're allowed to not know everything about a character that shows up, a character can be a tertiary, a character can be set dressing, a character can be an extra in your scene every time they show up and still have meaning and continuity within the story. The salesman who accidentally passes the MC(s) off to the conman doesn't need a name, or any deeper drive than trying to do his job, or an interesting quirk worth much more than a single sentence of initial introduction, even if he shows up more than once.
In real life, we do this all the time. Even if the cashier has a name tag, even if the cashier has an NPC level chat with you, you're just there for groceries sometimes. Might as well be talking to a chatbot? Yeah, that happens sometimes. The chatbot still serves a specific function though, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to toss it out if it's getting use.
I guess the better thing to say is write useful characters, write characters with purpose, not every person on the block. Passing recognition for the neighborhood hooligan should only be elevated to a conversation with a reason that drives the plot forward, deeper characterization should only be looked into with a reason to drive the plot forward, but letting them exist around the main character at all is not always going to be detrimental.
When it comes to self-inserting characters, I especially enjoy the ones who's character is based off of someone's experience rather than one's ego. It makes their character a lot more realistic and understandable because it's based off of real life experience, meaning that relating or understanding this character is a lot easier. As human beings, we have flaws. If we based our self-insert character on our flaws, then our self-insert character becomes interesting. But writers like to make their characters overpowered. I especially can't stand it when they do this in roleplays.
Really underappreciated comment!
Ooh. I really want to keep this in mind. A self insert based on experience rather than ego. Good idea.
Thank you for adding the roleplay thing. Don't self-insert there or make your character an ideal, because you should not take it personally what happens to your character.
Best is to start off with a picture, that already has flaws...
I have a kind of self insert character that started out as a fanfic oc (yes it’s cringy, but I’m glad I didn’t fall into a lot of the typical trope like being a special or a Mary Sue because…gotta love that mental instability in a character). But as she has been put into my story with my new characters and with her being based on many other characters, I don’t know if she is one now. I mean, she probably still is because she’s basically got half of her mental problems from me😅
I think my point was adding onto yours. I meant it that way. ＾＾
@@HiBuddyyyyyy
Well to be fair, self insert stories always start off as cringey rip offs. But as you work on your character, it gets better and better in due time
Me, on page 45, the plot *just beginning*, quietly slipping into the corner while she mentions pacing:
Me on page 50 already explained half of the story. I don't know what's worse hahah
That's not bad pacing at all. A lot of books are still just beginning at page 45.
@@Mayaspiral yeah, but you have to be sure that those 45 pages rly adds to the story in some way, and not just filler scenes e wordbuilding
My characters only just kissed in chapter 45 and my chapters are all two thousand words long so-
*im sorry for making you wait 90 thousand words, readers*
OMG SIS I WAS 40,000 WORDS INTO MY BOOK AND I HADNT EVEN REACHED MY MAJOR PLOT POINTS 😭
my recommendations of things that really helped me out so far (writing a fantasy novel)
1. make different documents. one for your main writing ("the book"), one thats more like a keynote/summary or roadmap style of just important things / events, and multiple folders for: characters, items, monsters, landscapes /areas, magic, etc. with their own documents for each entity (a perosn, a town, a continent, a mgical staff, etc. all with their own attributes. i always keep a blank one ready to copy that already has (for characters for example): name, age, looks, motivation, magic, job, items, characteristics, likes, dislikes, other, and a list of the noteworthy dialoges the person says (or could say) to get a feel for them.
^^this is super important for me since a) i can build a complex world and even if some info (like the parents or background story of a sidecharacter) arent in the book itself, its important for me to make the world flawless and get a feel for everything and how it fits together ; and b) i always have to make bigger breaks in my writing, (months sometimes, for studying) which leads to me forgetting stuff, so i can always look it up again when i forget it, or add some fast info, if i have a good idea but am not at that point in the story yet.
2. think your whole story through. even if you wanna just randomly start with a scene you have in mind and see where it leads to, have a general goal and think about how you can make it more complex / more interesting whenever you go to sleep and have a couple min of silence :D. otherwise you will become frustrated when you have a good idea later but would have to rewrite earlier stages to make it fit in. same with characters. its good to have general ideas for each character, to make them compliment each other and come up with a good synergy. dont double them. for example if your prota is good in fire magic, dont put in another fire mage. at the same time, dont make him to op, leave the other chars some spotlight as well (smth they exceed in)
3. i like to mark the first sentence (as well in my book as in my summary/timeline thingy) of a new story section in blue and the VERY FIRST time, a character says smth (is introduced) in green. makes it super fast when you try to find smth or wanna check timeline things (aka "could he have known that already? did he know character x already ?or was that after....")
i also mark anything related to time/currency or such numbers (prices, age increases /statings, season changes, time skips ("after 4 weeks of traveling"), etc.) in yellow. super important if you wanna have an overview on how old people are by now, how far distances are, how prices relate, what season should be by now, etc. even more so if you made a break from writing and come back into the story again. knowing "i can always look that up super fast again" really helps against burning yourself out and keeping everything causal and logical.
4. as said in the video ^^ give the antagonist a reasonable goal, smth you might not agree with but can understand. just plain out "bad" people are super fucking boring. like hitler for example is someone we all dont agree with, but his idea of keeping the gene pool clean is logically speaking not a bad thing. (if we could snip with our fingers and magically eradicate all genetic diseases, etc., we would do it. just killing all that dont fit that description is a BIT to extreme :D)
5. i personally hate it when there are forced problems. drugged MC, loss of powers or smiliar artifical restrictions that make characters either useless or dumb or do stupid things/ make stupid decisions. come up with some real problems and dont have that one stupid guy thats an asshole and has to poke the bear till it fights you.
6. i personally made the mistake of progressing character affection to fast. people (readers) love progress. if you start your MC op, its most often boring, if they have sex in the first page, its boring, etc. there are exceptions where its cool for the character to stay true to himself (with little to no development) but at least for the very main protagonist its prob better to go with slow but steady development ( or you will run out of interesting things to fast). as i said, i had a romance going on in mine, but the 2 chars fell in love way to fast and had sex in the first third of my story, which- so i noticed - took away a lot of tension. you want to tease the reader (dont overdo it though :D (dont go back and forth, steady development into one direction). at some point teasing becomes annoying instead of provoking).
PS im still at my frist book and just an amateur writer (also, im german so excuse my english) so take the tipps with some bias.
Bless you for this oh my god
@@hajirahshahzad2358 thx :D
Thank you so much for writing it down. I'd like to learn more about your thought process. Thank you once again. @Kliersheed
As you're German - have you ever heard about the program "Papyrus Author"? It's designed for exactly the purpose you describe in your first point. There are youtoube Videos where you can take a look. (I'm not using it, as I work differently. Just thought, it might be up your alley).
I cannot agree more with 5. People for some reason love that trope, because they are incredibly in love with themselves more than anything and want to believe that "what's special about that character is his humanity, not, well, what's special about that character", but it's almost always annoying to read.
I would like to insert the other side of the excessive tags is the missing tag. A conversation is going on, not every comment is tagged, and it is fine, then there is that one comment that was not tagged and could have been said by any of the characters and the reader is left wondering. If the "voice" of the character is not clear, you need to tag it in some way.
I completely agree. In a lot of the books I’ve read, I would have to go back and reread dialogue to understand which character the lines belonged to. It’s really confusing and definitely something I try to avoid in my own writing (which sometimes then leads to over tagging…)
omg yes
I write fan fiction and I don't do the tags I do for instance
Steve: blah blah blah
Would be him talking
Damn right! My point too!
I learned to write by reading a lot and mimicking what I read. It‘s interesting to watch this video because I barely recognize any of those mistakes in my writing. I think the biggest mistake people make is not read enough cuz if you read it you‘ll instinctively pick up on a lot of things without being aware that you’re doing them. I do struggle with some of those mistakes still, I think mostly describing too much instead of showing it in what‘s happening but I‘m aware of it, I just lack creativity in this particular case 😅 but you can always go back and edit which is like 80% of my writing process anyway.
I transitioned to fanfics/worlds built off books I like with original characters for a bit and am starting to transition back to published work and honestly, reading unpublished work has helped me develop a sense of "great, good and could be better" writing examples. I have been able to critically think more about the things turning me away from a story and what will push me to keep reading even if something makes me want to drop it. Now reading published work again, I feel more picky about what I read because I can see where it could have been better. Reading helps 100% because you know what you don't want and what you love so you can write what you want to read.
I so agree with this comment.
Will following your advice (to read and mimic the writing of others) leave me misspelling the word “because “ as “cuz” (like you) if I read and mimic your writing?
@@KateGladstone theres a difference between books and youtube comments
Excessive descriptions/dragging things out was definitely my main mistake when I started out. My first "serious" story that I wrote when I was 14 or 15 was about a girl who runs away from home, and I spent 30+ pages on childhood flashbacks and "oh she feels SO SAD you guys!" while she was riding this horse into the night. I thought it was genius and super emotional.
30 pages? 🤣
I used to be like that, too. I'd spend a whole paragraph basically rewording the same exact thing like five different ways, because I couldn't figure out how to organically add length to a story.
i mean, this is what the most famous writers used to do, they could describe a field by witing 50 pages on how amazing it looked lmao
It’s funny because… Lord of the Rings
@@LordofFullmetal I DID EXACTLY THIS! it was something like : "i feel so hurt - she said, crying. her boyfriend had cheated on her. - why did, he cheated on me?" SO MESSY AND ANNOYING
It seems like people often forget to mention...being too brutal &/or harsh with your characters is or can be just as bad and amateurish as being too precious.!
Yes, don't be afraid to have bad things happen to your characters; BUT it is also okay to have good things happen to or for them sometimes too, that doesn't always only have to be saved up just for the big finale conclusion or whatever at the end of the book. (And that can actually help with developing subplots or worldbuilding sometimes too.)
Jaginaia Electrizs agree, otherwise the misery becomer overwhealming and the story too depressive. too much of a good thing is same as bad as too much of a bad thing is a... bad thing. wow, who would have thougt. unless youre into torture porn and the misery is the whole point.
characters need to breathe and how they express happines says a lot about them, same as what they do when they are in danger
Looking at you, Mr. Martin. I feel like Game of Thrones is a huge offender in this. Some people really dig the Grim and the Dark, though, so it's another one of those subjective things we'll all never agree on.
@@Railstar1976 I mean.. grim-dark is pretty much a whole genre now, kinda like horror is, so .. I'm not entirely sure if that counts? BUT it is absolutely true - it certainly IS one of those totally subjective things that is going to differ from person-to-person, and that's okay. 👍🏻🙂 Lol
The best advice I read about this was "give your protagonists small wisps of hope within their whole dilemma - make sure they are motivated to overcome their problems." This has served me well ever since.
Thank you for this comment,it's really really helpful
Should I prepare my coffin before watching?
Note to everyone: these aren't hard rules. As with all things, these are guidelines.
She makes several great points but if you want your book to have very flowery writing, you can!
It is a writing STYLE, meaning you can make it your own.
Yeah, you can pry my flowery writing (and speech for that matter) out of my cold, dead, pretentious hands lol
@@starcrysis23 Absolutely my thoughts!
Idea for a video/series: read excerpts from Wattpad stories that we request through Insta twitter wattpad and yt comments and you give them critiques/feedback based on what you have read.
maybe self submitted pieces? it'd be weird without consent
ididnt66797 oh yea true so it would probs be just stuff you wrote
I mean I don't write stuff but yeah just like, ppl willingly taking part
That is a VERY good idea!
everyone else can learn from that!
@@ooo_111_ooo That's a fair point... buut, at the same time, if it's posted publicly? They have also (whether this was what they consciously intended to do or not) kind of already given license out to the public people in general to read and/or review and/or react and/or critique their writing just about however ppl see fit. ? 🤔🤷♀️
I've spoken English my whole life and I can't explain tenses 😂 I just use them on intuition.
THIS.
My native language is German but I speak English and Spanish too. I can't explain tenses in any of these languages, because I use intuition 😂
In a nutshell, tense is how you use the verbs in your writing. For example, I walked to the store (past), I am walking to the store (present), I plan to walk to the store (future).
@@LesandaMooreAuthor yeah, but there are multiple future tenses, multiple past tenses and some weird mixtures (at least in german) Its hard to separate those xD
@@editaweber7042 yes there's 4 different types of past tense: perfect, continuous, simple, and perfect continuous
After working on my first story/book for awhile I stepped back and realized that all of the characters were basically the same person, because I didn't know how to make them friends without them agreeing all the time and that ended up meaning they all thought and talked the same. I struggled to create characters, they always seemed hollow and the same. I focused on worldbuilding for a time because that came easier to me. I finally came back to characters and have actually figured out how to do a decent job with them.
I create their backstories and motivations (doesn't need to ever be included in the actual story but I need to know) and from there I ask myself How do they think differently? How do they speak differently? One thing that helps differentiate them for me and the reader really well is the speaking style. What words or phrases do they use alot and what are some they never use? Do they speak casually, have an accent or are they more formal?
This is great thinking. A group of people that come to mind is Team RWBY. Though they’re all generally around the same age, they all act completely different from one another, based on their back stories and upbringing. Weiss speaks affirmatively and militant while Blake speaks mysteriously and guarded.
What I like about groups like that is that sometimes it’s OK to not be friends at first who only have to get along with each other for the sake of teamwork and camaraderie .
One that makes me crazy is a specific form of info-dumping / pacing. It's when characters are mid-conversation, and suddenly the story diverts into a bunch of narration - typically some back-story that sheds light on why the conversation is playing out the way it is, or a drawn-out exposition about the MC's current thoughts or feelings. It is very jarring, and unrealistic, to have a character mentally relive a prior event or wax poetic on their internal state during the minuscule time span between one character's line and the next character's response. Sometimes there is so much narration interjected into a conversation that by the time the dialogue picks back up, you've forgotten what the characters were even talking about. It's a really lazy way of abusing dialogue to sneak in an info-dump.
Some people actually do that, mid-conversation, in reality though. Because some people can multitask the conversation AND the internal poetic-waxing...OR because the flashback takes far less time to actually recall a past thing than it would take to describe it being recollected in words on a page.
_(But, still, I do agree that writers should generally still be careful with using this too.)_
I agree, it drains so much energy
The truth is, not just people new to writing do this. I see a lot of these mistakes and I shake my head. I realized that a lot of problems I have with books are universally hated as well
I'd say if you want to do that, at least acknowledge in the story that your character is zoning out, thinking about something else other than the dialogue, otherwise it's extremely unrealistic
I info dump but only to change the pace of the conversation or shift the dialogue or scene. I don't know if that makes sense.
Language that isn’t regionally appropriate always takes me out of a story. If the story is set in the US, it doesn’t take long to clock a native English speaker from another country if they haven’t researched and/or gotten someone from the US to weed out the things that don’t fit. Some basic examples that come up a lot in what I read:
“flat” rather than “apartment”
“car park” rather than “parking lot”
“uni,” or “university” in the context where “college” would be more common (eg “I’ll be starting college this fall,” even if you’re going somewhere where “university” is in the name)
“washroom” rather than “bathroom”
The really sneaky ones, especially in dialogue, are small grammatical things:
“meant to” rather than “supposed to”
“smelled of” rather than “smelled like”
“I’ve not” rather than “I haven’t”
“in hospital” rather than “in the hospital”
Obviously this isn’t specific to amateurs, but it might be something that an amateur writer is less cognizant of. It at least tells me that they didn’t completely do their due diligence in finding someone who’s from the place their work is set to give it a read. I know I wouldn’t be able to pull off a story set in England or Australia without a helping hand! Mayyyybe Canada. But elsewhere, no dice. 😂
B. Gordon this is true! So long as I had a native speaker of the dialect I’m trying to mimic on board, I would feel capable of writing something set in another country. I wanted to put my own blind spots out there in part to avoid coming across as a smug, US-centric American, and in part to make it clear that as an individual I’m not above making these mistakes. Even if I made a concerted effort to learn the ins and outs of another dialect, I would still want someone to check it over to catch those weird, tiny-but-telling nuances that can throw off characterization completely.
Here's the thing though... Americans are actually incredibly diverse, and the standards of language used sometimes varies from region to region or from generation to generation or even just from family to family or from person to person. Especially in this day and age. (And some Americans are also well-traveled, or well-read, and/or have many online friends from around the globe.) I, for one, am 100% American born and raised{and never yet been anywhere outside of this country} and I use "meant to" and "I've not" all of the time. Just for one tiny example. A lot of the times, wording choices are entirely subjective and personal-preference based not exclusively country/cultural. I think one of the biggest mistakes that anyone can make is assuming that there are no exceptions to any "rule". 🙂
Jaginaia Electrizs very true, there aren’t hard and fast rules, and there are always exceptions. The examples I offered are generalizations, and some are more of an indicator when they appear in casual dialogue rather than narration/prose. In the case of “meant to,” Merriam-Webster’s site highlights the distinction between “intended to” vs “supposed to,” the latter of which they flag as British. In my experience, that’s broadly accurate, but that doesn’t make it an absolute.
@@mrsb50 Which is all I was saying, really. If you were to read something written by me{or by any number of my immediate family members}, you would likely often find characters saying "meant to" even in casual dialogue, among other things in the example you gave - I{/we} often use it in casual conversations myself{/ourselves}, and have not even personally found it all that uncommon to run into other fellow Americans who do too. ((But I am definitely American myself, with no British that I know of in my family at all, let alone recently enough that you'd think it should have any sway on family speech patterns. Although I have been told that apparently I do sometimes come off sounding a little like I'm a Canadian or something when I type, and actual Canadians have from time to time concurred; I have no idea why that is, except maybe if my being located in a state that's kind of nearer to the Canadian border somehow has anything to do with that...despite the fact I've never been at all to or across that border myself.)) 🤣🤣
So, I find that kind of interesting and amusing.🤔🙂 Lol
@B. Gordon Also, Very true. 👍🏻👍🏻& Same, here! 🙂
This is something I see a lot in manga, I hate it when authors spend chapters and chapters on backstory. Especially when they interrupt the main storyline at an important moment to give us the full backstory of the character. Like "X just managed to escape from his kidnappers, gets injured" - now you wanna know what happens to X next, you don't wanna spend 5 chapters reading about his high school days and how he got to know the kidnapper in his youth. In my opinion it's faaaar better to drop hints and short glimpses into the past, showing how they knew each other and why they ended up like this, so by the time the intense scene happens, you just need a final piece of the puzzle to understand the whole thing, and that piece can quickly be added without slowing down the pace too much. That's my biggest pet peeve when reading a manga at least :P
Let's keep a tally:
✔ Tense shifting: only in draft 1.
❌Info dumping: working on it
✔ Dialogue tags: not anymore!
❌Repetitive sentence: shoot, guilty
✔ melodrama: nope
❌ redundancy: yeah guilty, too long of trying to get high word counts
✔grammar: not after draft 1
❌filler: once again an issue with having wanted high word counts
⭕story pacing: getting significantly better
✔ Dialogue cheat: not in my past few stories
✔ word counts: always very aware of this
✔ missing B plot: thank you save the cat
⭕worldbuilding: I think it's good but not confident enough to give myself a check without beta readers
✔ capitalization: rarely
✔ headhopping: separate scene pov
⭕telling: in my first draft it is common, working on cleaning it up in revisions
✔ internal logic: lots of character building before writing
✔ fancy prose: maybe with characters bu not general
✔ formal writing: same as fancy prose
✔ character soup: I keep it limited or I'll loose ability to keep track
⭕ character problems: they're flawed and I cause horrible things to happen to them, but I'm working on agency
Well... Not as bad as I thought.... But definitely lots of work to be done
Sounds good so far.
Excellent!!
Your checklist is genious. I hope you and your family lives a blessed life.
"...missing B plot: thank you save the cat"
Had a good chuckle over that!
how you doing now?
“1. Tense Shifting”
yup, this is the video for me
"Get ready! They'll be coming!" he shifted tensely.
@@geraldfrost4710 😂😂😂
I passed English class high school with a flying grade of 70... 10 years ago. This is my first attempt at writing anything creative and it's been a journey so far. Thanks for these great videos! it's really helping me procrastinate while learning more at the same time!
You best believe my book has an astronomical amount of grammar mistakes in it that I have to go through and fix later.
What does it say about me that my self insert character is the single most flawed person in the book?
I think as long as you can recognize and accurately portray your self insert as a flawed human, they’re okay. But I definitely agree that those perfect self inserts drive me crazy
Lauren Alyssa i have the same thing going on! my self insert is really shitty in ways i would never allow myself to be.
There is a difference between a self-insert and a Mary Sue, after all. 🙂
_(However, people often forget to account for human individuality as well: What may _*_seem_*_ "too perfect" or "not flawed enough" or whatever to some may actually be genuinely true and accurate for others, not all people are always exactly alike in any way.)_
sometimes, if an mc is too bad in comparison to others, i don't read it, because it feels like the side charcters have no real reason to deal with mc since mc is so flawed. so as long as mc isn't significantly more flawed than the rest in an obvious way, it's fine.
@@fkdjdjcmckdjdjf3728 That's very valid, but for that, I usually counter with a power role given to the MC. Example: a lot of people don't like my pirate MC but because she's the first mate to the captain, who is this hella charming and very nice guy, they grudgingly deal with her
Just as long as the self insert isn't too much like you, and if you write multiple different books then dont include a self insert at all. Whenever I read a Stephen king book and theres those characters based off him (Bill from IT, the guy that goes crazy in the shining, theres more too, but I dont want to name them all)
And it sometimes ruins the book or movie, I cant watch IT without seeing steven king as Bill. Just my advice.
In first drafts I ALWAYS start too early in the book. This always leads to a very boring beginning with no action and no reason for the reader to keep reading. I fixed this by diving right into the action. Instead of starting the book with the character in school I began with the character sneaking out with his friends during the night. It was more interesting and it gives the reader a reason to keep reading (To see what happens and if he gets caught).
On the Writing Excuses podcast, they mentioned that an editor reading a first-timer’s manuscript will often skip about forty pages in because “it takes new authors forty pages to start telling their story.” It sounds like you’ve already shaved off that novice habit. But sometimes I wonder if the “normal day” pseudo-chapter is a helpful exercise for you as a writer.
Starting "in medias res" has been good writing advice ever since Homer first got written down.
Andreas Eschbach (a German writer) gives the advice to check, whether you can entirely delete:
- the fist chapter of your book
- the first scene of every chapter
- the first paragraph of every scene
- the first sentence of every paragraph.
Helped me a lot ...
My style of writing as I am told is very flowery and descriptive, but wayyyyyyyyy too many details. My goal is to get every aspect of the story, but it can become overwhelming and confusing for the reader. So, I find myself stuck, but reading other people's works help me narrow it down so it makes sense.
So a thought that I've had about info-dumping. It can be helpful to write that part out, but only for yourself. I was going through the book "the Black Prism" by Brent Weeks; and it occurred to me that something he did well was establishing the entire world as a going concern (the magic system, the history, the current situation, and so on) and then he had his characters act like people already familiar with all those things. So the protagonist talks about color wights, and doesn't explain what those are. He encounters a color wight, and you can tell *he* knows what a color wight is, but he doesn't tell you what they are. You figure it all out gradually, as the information emerges. It feels a lot more like the world existed already, and this protagonist went out into it, and we are figuring things out through their experiences. I want to try that at some point.
That's actually how I'm trying to write my book🥳. I as an author knows things that maybe my readers will never know. The big question for me is: what SHOULD the reader get to know about this world. How much should I explain (at some point) about the magic system, and how? We'll see what happens if I ever actually finish.
This is super hard to do, especially, if you're a novice writer.
You go with "The reader will gradually discover things & piece it together later". The outcome: reader doesn't understand what's what, because it's 100 times easier _for you_ to piece it together, since it's all in your head to begin with, and it's difficult to go completely into beholder perspective.
You go with over-explaining (said info-dump) - it comes off unnatural & reader feels like he's being handheld.
The happy medium, as it often is, somewhere in the middle, and it takes time to master the skill of finding it.
Hard stuff, honestly.
Giving the characters agency to make their own mistakes is a double-edged weapon. Some authors hear about agency everywhere, and misunderstand it slightly. Then, they end up with characters that seem "actively stupid" instead of "stupidly active" :)
(Often while telling the reader what a genius the character is...)
In my case it's:
Character: I'm a moron.
Other character: You speak of things I have never heard of and still do not comprehend. Trust me, you're a genius.
Stupid characters can say smart things.
"She says we are like two halves of the same soul"
"Yeah, I can see that. Not the same stuff in each half, obviously. More sort of sieved."
@@artofthepossible7329 How about the reader makes that conclusion rather than the other characters? Unless it’s off the typical logic and the main character’s ideas somehow coincidentally worked.
@@Laura-Yu I forget the actual name but you know "ignorant of their own ignorance"? Well it's based on that combined with someone who prefers to actually know what he's talking about.
Recall Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. Not unsimilar all things considered honestly.
I mean the reader can reach their own conclusion but honestly the entire point with that character is that there isn't a singular answer
But at any rate besides the entire thing being a dialogue I'm not sure what kind of epic to use an basis. *laugh* So how effective "ideas" are may not be important to how a character is viewed.
Can you say that again. In english
I am proud to say I’ve literally never struggled with tense shifting since I started writing actual novels. But I also am humble enough to get ready to be roasted with these other mistakes that I’m sure I’ve made. Love these videos lol
I find that it's best to use a Chapter change to change tenses, if you need to do so.
I really really struggle with rushed pacing. My stories are basically skeletons of stories and should have way more worldbuilding and charachter development. I think it's mainly a fault of my ADHD, I'm so impatient and want to get through the story quickly :( Basically I end up writing extremely condensed scifi "novels" that are around 10K words long...
10k is a lot! not a novel, but its still something to be proud of
I'm ADHD and have the opposite effect. I put so much energy in world/character building to where I feel I didn't give enough plot.
@@MF863 that's exactly what i do with my ADHD
i always get too excited for a story i get an idea for, and i just start writing it without knowing where its going and then it crashes and burns in a dumpster fire that will stain the internet forever
A good way to fix it would be to write the novel how u want it and once it’s finished u can edit it and add all the worlbuilding and minors facts and stuff
Some helpful advice I heard in regards to telling: use telling when you want to speed up the pacing and use showing when you want to slow the pacing down.
I would get very anxious trying to decide whether to show or tell something; this advice made it much easier for me.
Great way of looking at it
I'm learning to write by creating my own fanfiction story, and thanks to your advice, I've found that I need to rewrite all seventeen chapters. Including minor plot holes that I missed. It's not a big deal, but it would add more realism to the story. Thanks!
31: 12 "You're allowed to use contractions." *head pats viewers* "Its okay."
That made me smile. Thanks for my head pat.
Wow my own tears softened the burns I received!
15:40 to be honest, i'll personally take that method over info dumping. it can be fixed to be more plausible, but it's flowing better and more naturally than paragraphs of exposition explaining the situation, suddenly coming out of nowhere
More! More knowledge 🥺 Alexa, would you mind talking of the genres that a becoming increasingly popular for Adult and Young Adult? Not only genre, but also elements that are increasingly popular (I feel like heists are one of them), and also the opposite of what's not so marketable with regards to both elements and genre? (I heard Aliens are doing poorly)? I know you made the dead genre video, and I'd love an update on that + some insider knowledge on what's becoming attractive! I'd be forever grateful!
yeah that would be great!!
Same! I would love to see such a video
This would be great!
I’m an amateur, so I’ve heard all these criticisms at least once, but your explanations are practical and actually helpful. Imperative and not just declarative. Please make future videos that go deeper into each of these novice mistakes if you have time.
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.
I have to say, I LOVE that you're breaking your videos into sub-sections with individual titles so it's easy to find the specific issue you're talking about at each moment. I watch/listen to a lot of your videos at work, so I often have to pause and restart mid video to handle work issues. That makes it SO easy to go back to the beginning of a topic to make sure i didn't miss anything. Thanks for doing this (and the videos in general)! It's super helpful to have content I can listen to that helps keep my mind on improving my writing while I'm stuck at the dreaded day job. :)
It's a great new UA-cam function! I just had to figure out how to use it--the trick was creating a timestamp for 00:00. I'll be going back to edit older videos where I can so they have Chapters too.
If this was a 'put your finger down if you do this challenge' I'd need two extra hands 😭
What's wrong with using "whispered", "shouted", "hissed" etc. as dialog tags?
Definetly better than using "said ".
I think using it excessively would create an unwanted sense of repetition, regardless of how many varieties you could come up with. Some writers I've seen manage to use them sparingly, then add it back once in every couple of dialog sentences.
I KNOW I SAY FACSIMILE WRONG. STOP TELLING ME. I KNOW. All the comments gleefully informing me that I am stupid are not productive.
Ignore them, they are dumb and jealous that they don’t have a yt channel
I can't stop myself from helping you to say facsimile = FAK-sim- ill- lee
(Not implying that you are unintelligent)
This is one of my favorite quotes about this matter: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading." You keep doing you Alexa. You're awesome :)
Nah. As a South African I like the way you say it, even if it is wrong.
And "y'all"!
9:31 every dyslexic writer: *holds down “delete” until manuscript is entirely gone*
Leave me alone
Im in this pickture and i dont like it
I’m close to turning 20 and I’ve been writing since i was 12 years old. I’ve been writing the exactly same story. A planned series of four books. The past years I’ve been rewriting the same first draft of the first book and i can’t seem to find an end because every time i finish something i get anxious and stressed that it’s wrong or not good enough. I’ve told myself to stick through it and just finish a draft and so in 2021 i did, indeed, finish my first draft. Currently I’m rewriting the parts that felt bad or wrongly paced or messy and I’ve cut out 18 side characters since. So needless to say, i had to cut out a lot of stuff that was surrounding said characters and now i need new stuff to fill up these spaces. I’ve been having such a hard time with it all, currently over-plotting and planning every detail, every chapter but i still feel like I’m doing it wrong or like it’s not enough or just not good. I don’t know where to start or where to end or what to keep in and what to keep out, how to properly share details without info dumping, how to make things make sense without confusing a reader, how to portray emotions and connections
And all that despite being a writer for almost 8 years and always working on the same project. I know my characters and my world building and their stories and every detail like the back of my hand and yet.. i seem to be rather blocked and it’s demotivating, stressful. My only ever goal in life was to write this story but i can’t seem to do it. I’m afraid of doing it badly. I’m afraid of writing something that it wasn’t meant to be. I’ve been watching videos like this up and down, internalizing every tip i get but I’m just at a loss these days.
I wrote my first book at age 23. I’ve been editing it for 4 years now. I have changed so much over those years. I’ve read more, learned more, written more. I’ve finished a trilogy since writing that book. 27 year old me is so much more mature and different. At 20 you’re a baby. You have sooooo much more growth to go through until you’re a full fledged adult. Your brain isn’t even finished cooking yet. I didn’t publish my book because I felt off about it. And I was right to. Trust your gut and don’t panic. Put the book away for a while. And I mean A WHILE. I stopped editing mine for a year and came back with way better edits.
Dood, that is already in itself an impressive feat! You've been writing the same story since age twelve! It's an incredible show of perseverance, hard work, vision! Recognize that what you did is already great, and don't lose hope in your teenage dream! However, keep in mind that you have learned a lot in that journey, which is already an accomplishment in itself.
Is it bad that I lowkey love purple prose while reading lol
No. It's a totally subjective stylistic writer/reader choice. ^-^
Right?! Fellow purple prose lover here! Sometimes writers just write so pretty it’s genuinely fun to read it, even when it doesn’t advance the plot or whatever.
Me too! When it's well done, it feels like poetry and makes me super happy, I'll feel even more immersed in the world
Agree, purple prose sometimes cannot be that bad it just depends on an author of how they write it. just take the example of the novel "Lolita"-it had such a unique writing style and beautifully written purple prose and I absolutely got immersed to the story right at its introduction. since the flow of the words in it are so smooth it's one example of purple prose novel that done right. and despite the controversial main character in it, I sometimes cannot help but sympathize with him cause he's quite likeable since his internal dialogue is written in a quite "hypnotizing way" (as I described) and added more to it his charismatic humor. and to be honest I'm quite surprised that there are people who aren't fond of purple prose since I thought it's common in fiction. but oh well I'm wrong.
Flowery writing that's enjoyable to read isn't purple prose. Purple prose is when the style is so needlessly wordy that it distracts the reader. What counts as purple prose is somewhat a matter of opinion.
Hearing some of these (and their fixes) are making me level up.... but man, writing a book is hard.
Felt that
It's a marathon, not a sprint. Take each improvement at a time: I've been writing for about 12 years on and off and I'm still refining my craft - keep it up!
Your like the mum of the writing community, you give criticism to better ourselves and really twist the knife,
All got to say is
THANKS!!
Something I have noticed lately while reading, is when multiple characters in a book have the same language, and vocabulary. It gets confusing when the characters are exchanging words. Sometimes it can read like the main is talking to a mirror. Lol
Hi Bethany. Yeah, true, I've noticed that. You sometimes see in TV sitcoms too.
the funny thing is, I try to just slowly get my readers into the world, by just dropping info that is relevant, but my writing instructor told me once that I shouldn't because humans didn't come up until like chapter 3, and she didn't know there were humans and so I should have stated that earlier, and I'm like, in the first two chapters, the humans don't even matter
I disagree about the dialogue tags one, as I have actually read a few books where I often get frustrated that there wasn't any dialogue tags and it's hard to keep oversight of when one quotation ends and begins, as well as who said what. I would rather have one dialog tags too many when reading a book than have to deal with that. At least when you are spelling out what they said, rather than stating they explained something (that the reader is already aware what is), or its a point you cant hear what someone is saying or something like that.
What would you suggest instead if you want to keep it easy to keep track on who said what, but not change what the characters are saying?
I agree. I was reading Lee Child a while ago and I found myself having to count backwards through the lines to figure out who said what. It really was a bummer on an otherwise very good book.
Admit it. You're here to improve your fanfictions.
Well, my story is manga so it’s not novel writing. But I have a fanfiction I need to get on writing ._.
So yesn’t.
@@HiBuddyyyyyy same.
i did a oneshot long time ago but yeah i'm here watching this because i'm writing one for the first time actually 🗿
Hello Alexa Donne, everyone here to tell you that you're doing a great job! Your advice has really helped me on my writing journey.
The more I watch, the more I realize how guilty I am of amateur writing. I am working on my first story, so it's shouldn't be surprising. Thanks so much for this. I'll be watching more to help myself out. Writing is a mid-life career change for me and I am realizing how much I've forgotten about the basic writing structure I was taught back in primary/middle school.
Thirty-seven minutes? Sheesh, you really don't want us to write, do you. :)
Sometimes I wonder if I’m watching too much of these writing videos instead of writing 😅
Yeah, but I count this as research for my book 🙂
@@ramonarobot Yeah, I too got to that point. Now, I still subscribe to this and a few other channels but seldom watch a video, instead spending my time writing more than ever to practice what I've learned.
@@FionaA17 Similarly, I count these videos as education, in this case a checkup. I passed with flying colors, but I admit Alexa mentioned a few things I hadn't heard before, things that were not a problem in my writing -- at least not yet, and now thanks to Alexa they should never be.
I internalize these more lengthy writing tips. I immediately subscribed. Writing to me is just a way to exercise my creativity- the more I educate my subconscious, the more I enjoy the exercise. As someone said, these identified pitfalls only make the next one better.
I would greatly appreciate a video on style and tone. Sometimes run-on sentences and redundancy are helpful in creating tone if the POV/narrator is close to the characters. And some writers use writing “flaws” very carefully to form a writing style. Like putting commas in unnecessary places to help with pacing.
Currently writing my first novel on Inkitt, still afraid to publish it. I’m not a native English speaker and I’m constantly rewriting chapters to make them perfect in my eyes. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and I feel like this is what breaks my neck as a writer. As a amateur it’s nice to hear tips from a published writer. I’m glad I found you and this video was very helpful! Thank you 🙏🏼
A couple of these: tense shifting and head hopping, are actually a-okay if you do them intentionally and artfully, rather than sloppily and unintentionally. In classic fiction (Jane Eyre, for instance) the narrative will sometimes slip into a different tense from what the majority of the book is written in, or into the head of another character in scene, or offer some backstory about them that the main character has no way of knowing, and it works brilliantly. You just have to know what you're doing. In some ways I feel prose conventions have become more restricted over time, not less. Remember, tense and POV and so on are just labels we use to describe particular kinds of writing, not rigid categories which we must conform to at all costs. They should serve your story, not the other way around.
Thank you!!! I’m currently writing a book with a few different main characters and almost every chapter is shown from a different character’s first-person perspective to help the reader understand them and show the different perspectives on the events in the story, such as in the beginning when one group of characters in in one place and the other group of characters is in a different place. I fully agree with what you’re saying and as long as it is right for the story, you should do it!
thank you so much for this content. i'm a fanfiction writer but this really helps me to write good quality fanfiction.. i'm so thankful!!
I am, too! I love watching these videos, they're really helpful.
Me too!
Right!? The assumption that fanfiction in general by nature has to be badly written or amateurish or anything is super annoying. I have read a lot of fanfiction in the past that was better written than some published novels were.
But, also...I mean, HEY: if you actually intentionally want to write a melodramatic type story = you should absolutely be free to go for it too! Just like there are all different types of audience-viewers for different fentes of tv series or movies, there are all different types of audience-readers for books or fanfiction alike too. Some people actually enjoy melodrama, they have fun with it, they don't like taking stories too seriously and the over-the-top and/or sometimes almost-misplaced ridiculousness or whatever actually makes them smile. You really just need to think about WHY you are writing it the way you are, and whether or not it's stylistically consistent throughout your whole story. People sometimes forget how entirely subjective and/or personal-style oriented things really can be. 🙂🙂
I absolutely applaud and commend you for actually caring to hone and/or improve your craft like this even just as a fanfiction writer though - that is always an admirable endeavor for a writer of any kind to partake! ^-^ 💜💜💜
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 thank you so much! your comment really encourages me because I really do like some "cliche tropes" and I have fun writing them.. I like reading and writing them but sometimes I feel insecure because of all the people that criticizes it. But as you say, I should have fun and keep in mind that there are different types of people when it comes to story preferences. Thank you so much again! 💖
@@nazarenamaximo7376 aw~You're very welcome! 🙂 I'm always happy if my comments happen to do something positive for someone and don't always end up just being me running my fingers &/or getting things outta my own head or whatever.💖💖
I honestly wish more readers would remember that, these days, as well-and more readily accept when sometimes it's just a stylistic difference and if a particular writer's style wasn't to their reading preference .. it doesn't necessarily mean it was badly written...sometimes it just wasn't the right reading-"fit" for them personally. It's a distinction that I believe all writers and readers alike should try to always be aware of, even if the line between the two things is or can be sometimes very fine and at times falls differently for different people too. ^.^
Would love to see another video like this specific to memoir/non-fiction. Really helpful! You’re describing all of the things I heard at my local “writing” group, which turned me off and no one spoke up about. I was new so didn’t say anything, and thought I was the crazy one cause I didn’t like most of the stories being shared. Thank you for the validation.
You're not the only one that thinks that way about writers groups. Writers groups are full of wannabes and parrots often with little or nothing substantial to offer. If you're going to be in a writers group...vet it's members. And, remember, just because they've self-published their own book, it doesn't make them an authority on writing. Anyone can publish a book...few have learned the writing craft and are able to put it to good use.
If you want expert advice...read some of the greatest modern day writers that have ever put a pen to paper.
I recently read “Saturn Run” by John Sandford. It was very good but had some sections with paragraphs of technobabble. I eventually scanned past parts of it and as I suspected none of that info was needed to enjoy the book. The other problem was there were 15-20 characters which is OK, but the writer had them using their first names, then last names, some nicknames! (Then mixed it up) Ouch!
Lol I use all your writing lessons to write a fanfic
A big mistake of mine in the past was excessive description and purplish prose because I was somehow convinced I *had* to do that to make the atmosphere and action more impactful. NOPE. I've found out thanks to videos like these and from feedback in my writer's group that it's okay to let things breathe and not choke every single paragraph with unnecessary description.
Can i just say that your channel is incredible? It is.
One of my favourite mistakes (that I'm certainly guilty of) is not wanting to cut something just because you've fallen in love with the imagery in those few paragraphs, even though it adds nothing to the plot or is irrelevant.
I tend to put those images to one side and feebly hope I can put them in somewhere else.
THIS OMG
No matter how many videos you watch, you can only get good if you write and start to have experiences, when you write, and get responses of your reader over what they like or not. You started to bent your story towards the viewers expectations and learn your mistakes. ❤
That's the fantastic thing about writing today, you can share it very easily and get nearly instant feedback. ❤
I love purple prose and florid writing! I like to call it poetic prose because purple prose is derogatory to many great authors. Writing simply with a sense of economy is a very American thing to do.
It really is unfortunate that there's so many people who seem to think that ALL descriptive, poetic prose is just "bad writing". Everything seems geared toward fast moving plots to catch and keep the attention of readers with ever shorter attention spans. The problem with that is that I WANT to luxuriate in the story, not be hurtled along until it's over. I love a strong sense of setting and atmosphere, which makes me feel like I'm actually there. Too many books these days skimp on descriptive language in fear of "purple prose" which gives only a vague sense of the setting and makes it seem generic.
"As you know, Bob, or you would have known if you hadn't slept through class yesterday, there is a time and place for expository dialogue."
You just opened my eyes to see the real beauty of writing! As a senior high school student, we have to write a lot of essays and stories so this was really helpful for me. Since English isn't my first language, it's kind of a challenge to me to be exposed in writing, expressing my thoughts into writing.
Also, I like how you explain how such structures in writing is needed to be fixed or either be more creative and fun with it and not just sounding fancy and telling the reader the entire plot. It just made me realize a lot of things when it comes to it. Great job on explaining things. Thank you.
Love this! I would only disagree on the character soup thing - I actually love when novels have a lot of characters and they all have their own backstories and arcs. It makes the re-read so much more enjoyable because a character that might be only be mentioned once in the beginning of a book can turn out to have a huge role by the end of book 3, for example. As long as they have a role and it isn’t just “oh hi Rebecca, random girl from school” of course... Great video though, didn’t even realise I watched a 37 minute video so easily!
These videos are so helpful to watch when approaching editing. I'm so grateful for all the lessons, but for awhile the information made writing so overwhelming. Then I stepped back and realized that so much if this is better to do in editing, and to not worry so much about avoiding all of these on the first draft.
This will definitely be a video I will rewatch time and again!
When I first stumbled across your channel, I was taken aback by your bluntness. A few weeks later, my writing is better and I appreciate the honesty. Thanks Alexa.
What a great video. I've come a long way with my writing and I'm happy to say I've gotten past most of these issues, but it was a long and rough road. Ugh. The biggest issue for me is the telling vs showing. There are sooooo many facets to it, and so many ways to fall victim, and I'm constantly learning about new ones and trying to root them out.
*Stares at book for ten minutes after watching this, before changing everything* (Thanks for the great tips!)
I know you made this a couple of years ago, but I'm just now seeing it. Thank you so much, Alexa, for this golden advice. I've always made up stories since I can remember. Ten years ago, I tried putting one down on paper. Three years and multiple rejections later, I was about to toss in the towel. I just enjoyed writing so much that I couldn't quit. I shelved the book for four years and recently have been really working it over again. I've been getting a lot of tips and advice from UA-cam channels, but I have to say that yours has been the most helpful and eye-opening. I'm definitely a newbie to all of this. I'm not expecting to be the next Hemingway, I just discovered I love to write. Thank you again so much. God's blessings to you.
I find *telling* - rather than implying or inferring - one of the most useful things to do in a narrative. It makes for great clarity, and it really helps the reader. It has never spoiled a good story, for me. Many writers can be too 'clever' for their own good, and simply confuse the reader by trying (often desperately) to be too 'subtle'. Writing for show.
i have to disagree with you on the telling verbs during dialogue tags. I think they're really helpful and create a clearer narrative/picture in the mind, whereas only ever using "said" makes it sound like everyone's speaking with a monotonous voice and absolutely no urgency. This may be because I'm German and am used to it from German books, but I've been reading almost exclusively in English for 10 years and I really miss descriptive dialogue tags
No one's saying "only" use said, but said should be the default. Said is invisible to the reader, which is why it's preferred over other dialogue tags. If you want to show the voice and urgency of a speaker, you can do so with an action tag instead of a dialogue tag. i.e. [Joe checked his watch for the third time. "He's late."] or [Joe punched the brick wall. "He's late."]
Agree, even if I'm slovak, I too think that if it's not in every dialogue tag, it can be helpful to better visualize character's behavior in situation. But it really should be rarely, for example; when character changes more drastically, it's not necessary to describe every eyebrow or nose movement. What do you think? 🤔
@@melissawalsh8760 to some readers to me said sticks out like a sore thumb and I usually gloss over the text I just can't stand said.
Same here, but I'm Portuguese. We are taught not to use "said" when writing and our dialogue tags are quite different from the English ones. It's one of those things where my native language creates cognitive dissonance when reading in English, though my brain has learned to shift reading modes in between languages.
I’m a native English speaker and I actually agree with this. While I don’t think it’s okay for every dialogue tag to be “whispered” or “hissed” I think it definitely creates a more vivid picture when used correctly. If two people are hiding from someone tell us that they whispered. Then after that stick with said for the rest of the conversation.
Helpful to someone (myself) who worked as a journalist and wrote non-fiction. Dialogue and NOT telling is difficult for me. Thank you!
Fascinating how some of these things are actually needed in screenwriting, like head hopping (since we're dealing with camera angles) and all A plot no B plot (I mean, there are exceptions in big productions and feature films but if you're making a short film, definitely all A plot). Filtering is another bad habit I have, probably since I learned to leave the dramatisation up to the actors lol These are all things I'll keep in mind and avoid when attempting a novel now :)