10 Reasons Your Book Is (Probably) Weaker Than It Should Be
1. You didn’t bother to spell check.
2. You think everything has to work out in the end.
3. You believe your characters must nod, glance, glare, stare, look up, turn around, or move back and forth the same way over 75,000–100,000 words.
4. Your dialogue tags contain more narrative than your story.
5. The main character has more inner monologues or thoughts than a Shakespearean play…
6. If they gave a Ph.D. for clichéd writing, you would be the professor. Hands down…without a shadow of a doubt.
7. You love “…” like 55 times in your story. NOBODY pauses that much in real life.
8. Your characters are more motivated to reach some word count than organically finish their stories.
9. You “start to,” “begin to,” “hesitate to,” “seem to”, or whatever 500 times in your story. Do or don’t…
10. “Nearly,” “barely,” “almost,” and “hardly” are used so often they should be “obviously” tattooed on your body…
Writing Tip O’ The Day- It’s great to write novels. But it’s also important to develop your brand. Things like Twitter, a blog, and writing in shorter formats help to get your name out there.
Writing contests, too, are a super way to get your work seen. There are a number of short contests one can enter for some PR. And there are bigger contests that are worth a shot. In fact, I just got word I won Honorable Mention in an international writing contest.
The contest was for works 300 words or fewer (one page).
Of course, tons of people entered, but I made the top ten. It doesn’t change my life, but it’s one more drop in the bucket towards standing out in writing.
It’s a fun way to put down larger works and have some writing fun!
