Aug 08 2008
Five More Mistakes First-Time Novelists Make (#46-50)
This short article will help beginning novelists avoid another five common mistakes that will usually cause publishers to throw out a manuscript.
46. Ambiguous endings are perilous and should not be undertaken lightly. After your audience has read 300 pages, they will feel they deserve to know whether the hero has succeeded or failed. If you’d like to write an ambiguous ending, prepare to explain the decision to your editor. Will your reasoning sound remotely like “I couldn’t come up with anything better”?
If you’d like an ending more complicated than the hero accomplishing his goal and living happily ever after, please consider an ending that suggests the hero’s starting quest is not as important as the one he picks up along the way. For example, Casino Royale leads viewers to believe that the main plot is whether James Bond can stop a terrorist financier or not. [spoiler] But it’s actually a red herring. Even though James Bond stops the terrorist financier, he fails to save the only woman he’s ever loved. What does it say about Bond if he can finish the job his boss gives him but not the one that matters? [end spoiler]
47. Exhaustively mapping out your plot is probably not necessary unless you want to use a twist ending. A good twist is almost never a last-minute addition by the author. Pulling off a twist requires methodical preparation and careful attention to details. Consequently, it will probably be easiest to write a twist if you still have a substantial chunk of the story (perhaps 25%) left to go. Alternatively, you could write the story and then retroactively add the twist, but you would probably give yourself away by failing to edit every relevant detail. For example, in Casino Royale, a government accountant refuses to give Bond the money he needs to buy back into a poker tournament. [spoiler] But we later learn the accountant was attempting to steal the prize money all along when Bond won. So she had absolutely no reason to refuse Bond. [end spoiler] The more surprising your twist ending is, the more you will have to work to remove continuity errors.
48. Please do not include a copyright notice with your manuscript. It is not legally necessary and will suggest that you are a paranoid amateur. If you are dealing with a remotely professional publisher, you are in more danger from falling coconuts than plagiarist editors. If a publisher liked your work, they would publish it; there is no reason to steal it. If they did steal it, you could prove your authorship with your notes, drafts and previous submissions.
(However, if anyone produces artwork for your website, you may wish to include a copyright notice or the artist’s signature. Your artist will appreciate that).
49. You can break any “rule” of writing, but you may have defend your decision to a publisher. Try to justify yourself in terms of the benefits your choice would add to the reading experience. What will your readers think? Will they feel that they’re getting a story that really clicks or will they just scratch their heads?
50. Writers make mistakes. Lots of them. If you expect a magically smooth path from here to Authorial Greatness, I invite you to play the Superhero Nation drinking game by reading a chapter and taking a sip whenever I disregard my own writing guidelines. Like writing, this game is not for the faint of heart.
I will leave you with this: writing is like trying to beat a hole in a wall with your head. It is painful, daunting and you will never know if you are one more head-bang from glory.
This article was the tenth part of a series. If you’d like to read about how to avoid other common writing mistakes, please read the other articles.
Wow! I’m glad I found this site!
Welcome!
I found this site a couple of days ago. Since then, I have been stuffed with so much info that I will most likely forget everything in two weeks. Even so, I am in love with this site.
Sucking up is not my reason for commenting, though…
I need some novel advice.
My novel is about adolescent Charles, a 14-year old trapped in a middle-class life. All is average until he gets a major life changer…a girlfriend! Yet, with great women comes great responsibility…
What will help me write this?
It sounds like a parody, the way you described it using the theme quote from Spiderman.
What’s the genre? Is it just romance? Are there superpowers involved? (Though you didn’t mention any, it’s always safer to ask, around here.)
It’s a romantic comedy. I was planning on parodying spiderman via the spiderbite in the first chapter. Other than that I wasn’t planning any superhero references.
Thank god for you. I was paranoid for ages that my book sucked, but I’ve been re-assured. And, this’ll be great advice to make another book.
… ooh. You’re a bad person B.Mac.
*Snatches up a bottle of whisky and a shot glass and then pulls up the first chapter*
Just kidding. But I do have a spectacular urge to play that game now.
Love this site. 47 actually reminded me that I probably *should* exhaustively plan out part three because of the twist at the ending. Many thanks.
This site is very good. It’s extremely helpful for a beginner fiction writer, like me.
thank you for all the tips !
Found this site through NaNoWriMo.org. Great reference- thanks so much!
After reading through all these, I would like to comment that many of them do not apply well to manga. (At least, shojo manga targeted to girls, which is the majority of what I read..)
While there is much to be said for having developed characters, manga seems to be one of those literary forms where Mary Sue-ism is encouraged for a protagonist (so long as she grows), and strange eye and hair colors are used often as a symbolic form to convey character information. (It does help that the artwork accompanies the text.)
Eating and drinking scenes are very common, as how a character eats their food or shops at a market often establishes the character into a basic character type when the reader meets him. Further character development is established as the story goes on, but in a medium that has very little text space to convey information, eating is one of the classic ways to show if the character is a slob or prim and proper. Beyond that, food is also used in many plots to show trying to win affection, looking out for others, or for comedic purposes.
It is the same with waking up. Many wonder animes and manga start with a character waking up.
Not revealing the premise is also a secret of anime and manga – but it must be used wisely. Episode 2 of Seraphim Call is perhaps my favorite use of this (as well as a fine example of how to write a show about someone’s ‘daily routine’)
Any of the things you spoke of would be bad if done incorrectly. Yet I have also seen them done very well, although usually in mediums that combined art. Even in print, however, over-powerful characters with shallow development can stand out. (As I read recently, someone pointed out that Wolverine’s character development can be summed up as a ‘cranky Canadian with a murky past.’ Yet he is an enjoyable character because he is the ‘best at what he does’. (Not counting the later X-Men movies.) So how does a character with shallow character development and overpowered skills become so popular, if by your standards both of these are bad?)
I would propose that readers are willing to forgive a great deal of super-powers in their hero so long as it makes sense in the context of the story – and if they have something to latch onto within the character. (Indeed, often it is the anti-heroes and villains which are the more popular, for we sympathize with their failings and their inner thoughts more than we can grasp at the heroes virtue.)
Fairytales are classic examples of Mary-Sues who defy all odds and persecution to meet their prince charming. Today there may be a hundred versions of any given fairytale, each with much more character development and depth and far more exciting to read – but which version is remembered by the masses? The version where Cinderella is a mad-scientist and trades the king a pound of fish for the hand of the prince, or the version where she is the abused stepdaughter whose fairy god-mother turns a pumkin into a carraige?
While a character might be complex and deep, it is important to keep the more basic traits in mind as well. Cinderella, perhaps the biggest Mary Sue there ever was, resonates with the reader because she is poor. She has dreams and longings. She suffered loss, and all that was rightfully hers was taken away. While some Cinderella versions try to downplay the Mary Sue and add complications and depth (The very well written ‘Ella Enchanted’ – not the movie), others play up the Mary Sue and keep the very basics that made her a beloved character. (‘Ever After’)
Again, it is not that many of these things you warn against (except perhaps, grammar errors), are mistakes. They are mistakes if done incorrectly. As most – shifts in timeline or POV, are hard to pull off even for seasoned writers, then it is true that every aspect must be treated carefully and it might be better to ask if the fancy extras are truly essential.
Yet I have read pieces where the picking up of a cup, the glance from a window, the touch of a hand, or who ordered what drink was significant. It is good to beware the mundane if it merely is the mundane, but if the mundane reflects the deeper reality of the piece, then it is no longer mundane but essential.
“After reading through all these, I would like to comment that many of them do not apply well to manga.” A point well-taken, but please note that the title of the series is “Mistakes of First-Time Novelists.”
I just wanted to give a note of thanks for this thorough guideline of common mistakes. I have learned a great deal and have high regards for this website, its articles, and specifically, B. Mac.
I’ll be sure to reference you on my website.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Delores! *blushes*
I am so glad I found this site! It is packed full of good little hints like this that make my fingers itch to get writing! Thank you so much!
Thanks!
Thank you so much for making this site with all of this useful information! Best website ever!
I totally agree with Ally.
Thank you very much!