Writing Tips

What to Think About When Writing Your Masterpiece

The biggest mistake writers make when writing is trying to say too much at once. Their story may have a great idea, but it usually ends up being buried under a truckload of irrelevant details and explanations.

If your story is about a particular change in a person’s life, say a wedding, don’t start with the birth of their mother’s mother, two generations before.  It will become a bunch of wasted paper or precious computer disk space.  All that flowery language and explanation about every little thing stalls a story.  People choose to read a book for the story premise and they want to get into that story right away.  They don’t want to read about what happened forty years before the story unless it directly relates to the immediate story.  Irrelevant details, no matter how beautifully or cleverly written, mean absolutely nothing to a reader.  Readers want to turn the pages of your book, not fall asleep to them. 

Everything you write must move your story forward, orient the reader into the setting, and be culturally relevant for the character.  Anything else is a waste.