Nov 18 2008
Three urgent pieces of novel-writing advice
- 52% of the readers that took our interactive writing quiz admitted that they describe what a character looks like by having him stare at his reflection in a mirror. Please don’t! It screams “amateur.”
- 45% of readers admitted to using food-centric scenes (like dinners, Elven banquets, etc). That’s not necessarily a problem, but please make sure that your eating scenes are more dramatic than “pass the biscuits.” If the food is the most interesting element of the scene, the scene is almost certainly boring. No one started reading your book to learn what foods your elves like to eat.
- 55% of readers admitted to overusing obscenities. As a rule of thumb, please don’t use more than one obscenity in a sentence. Please also try to limit the number of obscenities on each page. If you use too many obscenities, the piece will probably suffer (even if you’re writing about Marines). See this for an example.
