photo by Joel Benjamin

Back in September, I was lucky enough to meet Joe Finder when he attended the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in Denver. Finder is the best-selling author of nine novels, including Power Play, Paranoia, and his latest, Vanished. You can find out more about Joe at his website: www.josephfinder.com or follow him on Twitter @joefinder. Thanks to Joe for this invaluable advice!

“The best, most successful writers are not the most talented, they are the most stubborn.”

These were Joe Finder’s first words to our workshop when he started talking about his marco career philosophy when it comes to being a writer.

According to the conference program, Finder would present The 6 Biggest Mistakes Even Best-Selling Writers Make, but we were in for a treat because Finder had not 6, but 14 mistakes for us. Here they are:

1. The Passive Hero
The definition of protagonist is “lead struggler.” This means your hero must be active and do things, not just sit around waiting for things to happen to him (or her).

2. The Stick-Figure Hero
People read novels for the characters. The plot may bring them in, but they need to care enough about your characters to root for them. When you create cartoon characters who are too good or simply made up of the expected stock straits, you cheat the reader. Bring your real life experience into creating your characters – it’s your material – and real life stuff makes reader connect. And this applies to your story’s villains, too. Create an antagonist who’s worthy of your hero and can’t be easily defeated.

3. Overwriting
Don’t try to be literary and use “opined” when you mean “said.” Be simple. Write like you talk. And check out Elmore Leonard’s New York Times article: Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points, and Especially Hooptedoodle.

4. Messing Up POV
Unless you’re as great as Ann Patchett when she wrote Bel Canto, stick to one point of view per scene or chapter – and definitely don’t switch POV in the same paragraph.

5. Prologue Overuse
In most cases, a prologue comes out as an ‘undigested lump’ of backstory which bores the reader. Whenever possible, jump right into the meat of the story.

6. The Long Wind-Up
Don’t make the reader wait – get your story moving! Even if you skip the prologue, don’t introduce everyone and everything in the first few pages. your goal is to give the reader just enough so that the reader can ‘get’ your hero (and root for him). Get to the inciting incident as early as you can.

7. Weak 2nd Act or the “Saggy Middle”
Too many stories fall apart in the middle and the culprit is often repetitive conflict. Conflict needs to escalate throughout your story and this means that the nature of the conflict has to change. You can’t keep doing the same thing to your protagonist over and over again. It is your job as the writer to engage the reader at every point in the story. Each and every scene must do work, whether that’s revealing character or advancing the story. Take this advice from the note Finder has taped to his computer: “Reverse. Reveal. Surprise.”

8. All Plot, No People
The best thrillers (and I’d argue virtually all stories) are about people and personal relationships. You get invested in people, not things so make sure you give as much attention to creating muti-faceted and believable characters as you do your plot.

9. Too Much Action
Too much action, and specifically, action without emotion, is boring. Break up the action in your story and give the reader a rest. That rest gives your reader a chance to appreciate the action and gear up for more.

10. Predictability
Defeat your reader’s expectations. Readers (as well as agents reading query letters) love to be surprised so don’t reduce your story to yet another cliché.

11. Backstory Dump
The reader doesn’t need your protagonist’s entire history presented in a single, undigested lump. Layer in those bits and pieces of your characters, better yet give the reader tiny slivers of this information exposed through their actions and dialogue.

12. The Lousy Ending
What ever you do, don’t let your story just peter out at the end. The ending needs to do more than just wrap things up. It’s one of the most important parts of your story (second only to the beginning and far more crucial than most people give it credit for) and it must be satisfying. It’s the last thing you’re leaving the reader with so don’t offer up a boring and seemingly endless explanation. Certainly you should try to surprise the reader, but you must play fair. The ending has to make sense and be organic to the rest of the story.

13. Research Show-Off
Don’t tell the reader everything you’ve learned about a topic in order to prove to them how smart a writer you are. Keep the details to a bare minimum because fact dumps slow the story down.

14. Overly Explicit Dialogue
Don’t confuse dialogue for exposition – that’s what narrative is for. Dialogue should read like real people talking.

And finally, just write the crappy draft. There’s no need to get hung up on the rules when you’re writing the first draft; you can fix it when you revise, but you need a first draft to work from.

lara
My Story Writer
www.mywritingsoftware.com