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How to Realize your Mistakes

I just recently sent a copy of a chapter from one of my works to a member of this forum because they offered to take a look and edit it. I had revised that chapter so many times before I sent it away and to my disappointing surprise there was a lot that the member here thought needed work on.

Now I took a look at all of their notes and while I agree with most all of them I never realized they were even there when I tried to edit myself. I guess I'm so used to writing with these bad habits it is hard to break them and see my mistakes.

So is there any advice you can give me to be able to see my mistakes? I was rather quite embarrassed by my sloppiness but when I read it on my own I thought it was gold. I obviously want to be a better writer so an invaluable skill I need to learn is how to see my mistakes and fix them. I think sometimes I try to be too descriptive and leads to awkward phrasing and redundancy so maybe I should try a more simpler approach.

I apologize in advance if there are any typos I am using my phone and I can't backspace anything because the cursor gets all messed up and goose back to the beginning.
 

Jess A

Archmage
This is why giving your work to fresh, critical minds is a great idea, and why you did the right thing sending the forum member a copy of your work.

I find my ability to proof-read my own work improves after giving my mind a rest. Take your eyes off it for a week and come back to it. And make sure you get more than one opinion on your work, as people's opinions are always going to differ.

Once you or someone else has identified the issues, then you should be able to use this new context to read the rest of your work. Perhaps then you will be able to see where you have gone wrong in the rest of your work. Don't be embarrassed, either! I read some of my work and I cringe! It's a process we must go through.
 
Feedback is definitely the best way.

Another (especially if your feedback starts showing a theme) is to pick one or two weaknesses you seem to have, and make fixing them either part of the planning or the one thing you check after you finish a scene-- not reediting the whole thing yet, but just checking for that one thing.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Work with someone who can act like an editor, submit a few pages at a time (to start) for a line edit, and if he's any good he will change something in almost every sentence (well.... assuming you're ready for your first line edit). By chapter 3, though, you should see what you've been doing wrong and most of them will just disappear.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Generally feedback is the best way, but if that isn't always available in a timely manner, here's what I do to eliminate and see my mistakes.

1- I read my chapters/scenes in the morning, noon, and night. In the mornings, I tend to be fresh and I tend to catch more of my logic mistakes during this time. At night, I'm tired, so my brain doesn't have the energy to fill in the errors, and accept if the flow and pacing is off. Noon, it's a combination of both. If I can read something and have it feel fine morning, noon, and night, then it's as good as I can make it. Doesn't mean it's perfect, but it's as good as I can make it at present. It's time to either get feedback or move on and come back later when I'm not so close to it.

2- in editing, pay attention what exactly all your words are saying and implying. Try to say as much with as few words as possible. We all have a tendency to repeat ourselves when we communicate. We tend to say things twice.:p We do this to drive home points because when we speak, people don't have the benefit of being able to reread sentences when they miss things.

For example let's take this tiny paragraph. It's an example of kind of things I look for when I want to trim my writing down. At first blush it doesn't seem too awful. It may even read well, but...

Mike shivered. It was cold. The snow fell from the sky in flakes, landing softly on the ground.

Can you spot the redundancy and unnecessary words? It can be subtle.

We don't need the sentence It was cold. because the shivering and the mention of the snow already implies that. We also don't need to say the snow fell from the sky. Unless snow doesn't normal fall from the sky in the story world, it's expected and understood that snow falls from the sky. Same with it falling in flakes, and it landing on the ground. Also if the snow falls in flakes instead of chunks, you could expect that it's falling softly too.

So when you edit everything down to only what's necessary you get.

Mike shivered as snow fell softly.

To me, the two paragraphs say exactly the same thing. You might even be able to get rid of softly too. Depending on the description around these words and mood you create, when snow falls, it's can already be assumed it's falling softly unless otherwise stated.

One last thing, redundancy isn't always bad. As I mentioned before it can be used to drive home a point, but there's a difference between driving home a point and being a nag.

Hope this helps a little.
 
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Sparkie

Auror
Now I took a look at all of their notes and while I agree with most all of them I never realized they were even there when I tried to edit myself. I guess I'm so used to writing with these bad habits it is hard to break them and see my mistakes.

So is there any advice you can give me to be able to see my mistakes? I was rather quite embarrassed by my sloppiness but when I read it on my own I thought it was gold.

Little Storm Cloud touched on this as well, but I'd really like to emphasize the passage of time as a great aid for catching all kinds of mistakes. I feel that it's best to get away from a given piece for awhile, then come back to it. Let yourself 'fall out of love' with your work. Depending on the writer, this can take as little as just a few days or as long as a couple of months. You'll have to judge for yourself the amount of time it takes to distance yourself emotionally from your story. Good luck!
 
Penpilot those are a lot of the mistakes I make. I realize now I make sentences redundant. I try to make the story have long descriptions so the reader has a vivid picture in their mind but I think I EMS up adding unnecessary details. That's something I know I have to work on. The only problem I have with trying to make it shorter is that I feel like the story will be too short. The member highlighted a lot of things they believed didn't need to be there. While I agree I realize that my chapter would be so much shorter. I purposefully try to make these long descriptions because I feel that the plot will advance too fast and this will help to lengthen my story.
 
Edit: EMS should be end. Sorry about the auto correct on my phone.

And a problem I have with trimming my writing is I feel it becomes bland. Take your example. Yes they both say the same thing and I see your point but should I try to write in the mindset that my reader should assume everything
 
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TWErvin2

Auror
Get feedback and input. Learn from it and you'll be less likely to make those or similar errors again. That's how many writers improve.
 
I realize now I make sentences redundant. I try to make the story have long descriptions so the reader has a vivid picture in their mind but I think I EMS up adding unnecessary details. That's something I know I have to work on.

A classic challenge about description. "He shivered. It was cold" is redundant, but sometimes that's the image you want to say twice. (And that was a throwaway example after all; it looks better as "He shivered in the cold" or "He shivered. The snow... The wind... The ice... It had never been so cold.")

That's always the balance, of how many elements of the view to mention, versus how many aspects of each to point out with how much space. Quick nods to Forward & Sides & Sound and move on? Get literary fleshing one detail out at five lines, or integrate it into every other description? The trick is to add things by choice, aware of that balance.

The only problem I have with trying to make it shorter is that I feel like the story will be too short. The member highlighted a lot of things they believed didn't need to be there. While I agree I realize that my chapter would be so much shorter. I purposefully try to make these long descriptions because I feel that the plot will advance too fast and this will help to lengthen my story.

If that's your style, great. Just be sure it's that you feel your story legitimately is half in the journey and the view, not that you think the plot's light.

(One thing that might make the descriptions more useful: keep the plot in mind when picking what to describe most. The more you talk about the size of the fortress walls rather than the variety of merchants within, the more fun it is when the dragon knocks the walls down.)
 
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I realize now I make sentences redundant. I try to make the story have long descriptions so the reader has a vivid picture in their mind butI think I EMS up adding unnecessary details. That's something I know I have to work on. The only problem I have with trying to make it shorter is that I feel like the story will be too short.

Read Hemingway. He does short sentances. Not a word out of place. But he summons a scene that sticks, with very few words.

I have the same problem, (after getting obsessed with flash fiction). My stories are too bloody short. I shake my head in wonder when Rothfuss can write a 250k novel, but my WIP is finished at 30k ... So it goes! :eek:

Writing is self-discovery. Taking a critique is like looking in a mirror and suddenly seeing the 'warts and all', and having to ask why you didn't see them yourself. Next time, you will watch for those mistakes, and submit to criticism, and others will be pointed out, but with any luck, less. It's a process of refinement.

This makes me sound very snobby and high falutin', but this has been my experience. Avoid passive verbs. Read aloud (or use a program to read it aloud to you). Justify every word's existence. Solzhenitsyn used different coloured pens for description, action and dialogue, so that when he went back to rewrite, he could adjust all the red words, or cut back on the green words etc.

(All written IMO; terms and conditions apply)
 

Jabrosky

Banned
By far the most lethal of the mistakes I frequently make are plot problems that occur to me after rethinking about what I've written or outlined. Sometimes I write down an outline of the plot and feel pretty good about it, but when I look over it again, I realize huge holes. Alternatively, if I'm writing as I go without outlining, I write myself into a corner. Either way, solid plots keep escaping me; every plot I have devised has some gaping error that collapses the entire story. :(
 

Ankari

Hero Breaker
Moderator
I think that we, as aspiring authors, try to find the one-shot solution to our writing. If you read a lot of comments on this forums, you'll see that they are pretty much the same thing: That's an info dump, cut it, use active verbs, avoid telling, and cut back on the description (telling).

Here's the problem. Stories can't be conformed to a single rule. You have to know when to apply all of the tools available to you. That includes telling, passive verbs, descriptions of the setting, etc. I'm developing a theory that, as a society, we are have such an aversion to failure, we don't want to invest in reading a story if we don't think it will pay off. That is why you see such advise as creating a hook, ending with an moderate amount of cliffhangers, etc. To keep the modern reader interested enough to keep reading.

But of all the awesome authors I've read, not one has avoided using the taboo techniques mentioned above. I consume world building. You can only put so much of the world in action and dialogue. Sometimes (a lot of times), you have to share the nuances of your world, the things that give your setting life, through telling.

Don't practice eliminating telling, passivity, and description. Practice timing the applications of such tools.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Edit: EMS should be end. Sorry about the auto correct on my phone.

And a problem I have with trimming my writing is I feel it becomes bland. Take your example. Yes they both say the same thing and I see your point but should I try to write in the mindset that my reader should assume everything

First, you don't have to tighten things up to the extreme I did, but realize that what the trimmed sentence expresses pretty much all the real information that's there. The way I look at things, each unnecessary word is like dropping a pebble into a bucket on the readers back. Too many pebbles can get pretty heavy and drag the story and the reader down. A pebble here there won't matter too much, but if it's a shower of them, then you're in trouble.

As for thinking you're story is bland, let me put it this way. I play hockey. In hockey we have this saying, don't confuse activity with achievement, meaning just because you're feet are moving a million miles an hour doesn't mean you're getting anything done. So just because you have a lot of words doesn't mean they paint a vivid picture. It can actually be the opposite. The picture gets muddied by the unnecessary words.

If you can chop as much from your text as I did in the example, it could be a sign that you're not digging deep enough to find the true details to fill out your settings, your characters, and your plot. It's like trying to sweeten ten gallons of coffee with one sugar cube. This was my experience when I started trimming mercilessly.

Another thing, when I chop text from my story, it doesn't mean that that the word count goes down. The words tend to get replaced by new information.

Let's go back to the example.
This paragraph of 18 words got shaved.
Mike shivered. It was cold. The snow fell from the sky in flakes, landing softly on the ground.

To this. Six words.
Mike shivered as snow fell softly.

Ok let's see what else we can do with the extra words we now have.

Mike shivered as snow fell. His feet crunched. His breath steamed. His father's memory chilled him more than winter.

Dam... couldn't do it in 18. Needed 19 to get it across. But anyway. See how much more information I got in. Nearly the same word count but more information. More brush strokes painting the picture.

We get the auditory sensation of his feet stepping on the snow. We a visual of his steaming breath and maybe even the feel of it as it brushes back against his skim. And finally, we get a bit of emotion in. If I'm doing things right, the reader gets the feeling that he's a bit upset about something to do with his father, which is a bit of a story question.

Obviously, if this were a real story, there'd be more elaboration in the following sentences, and probably I wouldn't have wrote it so tight, but it illustrates my point.
 

Jess A

Archmage
By far the most lethal of the mistakes I frequently make are plot problems that occur to me after rethinking about what I've written or outlined. Sometimes I write down an outline of the plot and feel pretty good about it, but when I look over it again, I realize huge holes. Alternatively, if I'm writing as I go without outlining, I write myself into a corner. Either way, solid plots keep escaping me; every plot I have devised has some gaping error that collapses the entire story. :(

This happens to me a lot. I'm always convinced a certain part of the plot is rubbish. So I go back and re-work it, and the entire plot collapses. Maybe I'm just too fussy. But I understand exactly where you are coming from.
 
Thank you everyone for your advice and especially yours penpilot. I've I have to say that last post of yours has to be one of the most helpful posts I've read on this forum and I do mean that.

As I am coming to better understand it writing isn't about a set of rules you have to abide by but rather there are many rules that you have to balance. its like asking which part of your body is most important. Most people would say the heart or the brain but what about lungs? Or veins? You can't just choose one thing because everything works in accordance with each other. I read somewhere recently that with writing while it is good to go into description and detail we shouldn't add unnecessary words to a story the same reason there aren't extra paint strokes on a painting or extra parts to a machine.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad I could help. Sounds like you're on the right track with they way you're thinking about things.
 
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