#beginnermistakes

Hey guys! So I’ve been taking a break from writing my own novel, (which will be the 4th one that I’ve completed when finished), and I’ve been reading a lot and I keep coming across these mistakes that newly-published authors have when they’re writing a series. So I thought that I would share on how to avoid this mistake when writing your novel in your series. 

Let’s say you’re writing the first novel in your series, and you have everything planned out EXCEPT for the ending. You have a general idea of what you want to do for your ending and how you want things to wrap up, etc. But how do you wrap up your novel in such a way that you command the reader’s attention and demand them to come back? 

While 60% of that is how you write, your characters, and the story you are telling, the other 40% is how you end your novel. And you may think, “Oh, come on, the ending can’t be worth that much!” But... it is. 

The ending to your novel can be what gives you bad reviews, what changes readers’ opinions of the book in an instant, what defines and sets the stage for every single book in the rest of your series, and what keeps the readers coming back for more. A poorly written ending can turn a reader off more than a poorly written book. Don’t believe me? Google the reactions to Allegiant by Veronica Roth and see how much one ending flipped the reviews of the book upside down. 

Now, I’m not saying Allegiant is a bad book, but that it’s ending certainly pushed several readers away, including some of my closest bibliophiles who LOVED the rest of the series. 

So how do YOU avoid that mess and give your book the best first ending it could possibly want? 

Simple! You have to find a balance!

There are two sides to the book coin. 

First, you have the books that end on a cliffhanger. They finish unexpectedly, with so much of the plot unresolved, and have several events that will need to be finished in the second, or third book. 

Then you have the wrap-up. These books fill out every nook and cranny of their plot, go over every detail and make sure that they aren’t missing anything important by the time you finish the book. 

Cliffhangers are books that are found more in series, or trilogies, whereas wrap-ups are found more as single publications, or solo novels. But these days, writers of series are beginning to lean a little too much towards the wrap-ups. And here’s the problem with that: most authors will not be able to fully explore all of their characters, relationships, and plot points in the page-count they’re given. 

(Most new authors are encouraged to keep their page count between 300-350.)

Meaning that the characters, relationships, and plot points don’t have enough to them, or aren’t given the kind of love and attention they deserve to draw the reader back in. 

This leaves the book at an awkward, halfie phase, where the book is nearly all the way wrapped up but has one or two “events”, or foreshadowing, left unresolved; not to mention that the character dimensions and depth of the story are not nearly what it could’ve been. 

Or, is what I call, “the money ending”. 

These books could’ve wrapped up in one book, but are continued into a series because the author either dragged out certain elements of the book and didn’t give themselves enough time to finish the book in a true cliffhanger ending, or they want to publish more, and having an-already published first book will guarantee them an easier, second-publishing. 

So how do you avoid, “the money ending”, and make sure that your readers are fully immersed into the book?

1. KNOW YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC.

What do you want to write? Do you want to write a series of stand-alones that act as their own story but provide different aspects to the series overall? Do you want to write a progressing series that follows from plot point to plot point? Do you want to write a series of great length?

2. DON’T PUT YOUR PLOT INTO SPECIFIC BOOKS.

A great many of us writers say, “We want our book to be this and it has to have these plot points and it has to end like this”. But we’re essentially limiting ourselves to what we can put in the book. Instead of designating a plot to a certain book, have your plot planned out as far as you can think of, and then divide the plot up equally between your books. (This also avoids the “middle book mistake”, where the middle book is significantly less than what the first or the last book will be and is mostly fillers.)

3. DON’T FUNNEL.

Your book’s plot should look like a venn diagram or Gallifreyan writing. It should never look like a funnel trickling down to one point. 

There should be plot points inside of plot points inside of plot points. And every time one plot point is resolved, one or two more should pop up along the way. 

When you’re finished with your book, having three or four plot points left unresolved is basically telling the reader: hey look, we’ve still got so much left to explore! And will give you stuff to write about to start your next novel! It will also help the reader know what direction the second book is going in and if they will want to continue the story to find out more. 

When books finish with one thing left unresolved, what it says to the reader is, “I could’ve resolved this but I didn’t because--books.” And this is essentially funneling, or resolving every issue until only one remains to carry the story on it’s back. 

Imagine being that single plot point and having to carry the whole story because the writer resolved everything a little too nicely. Ouch. 

4. GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS MORE SCREEN TIME. 

Despite what your English teacher might say, no, your characters do not exist solely for the plot. Your characters are people, and you must treat them like people, even if you don’t really see them that way. Your characters should be allowed to have time to grow, learn, and build relationships with each other--and no, not the ones you forcibly build them. 

If you learn to love your characters, so will your audience. But if you never give them the chance to be anything else than puppets then that’s how your audience will feel about them too. 

And if you follow this step, you’ll find that it will be easier to land a cliffhanger ending, as you’ll run out of recommended pages before you reach your ending; already fixing your problem. 

Hopefully this will improve some of your own writing and give you more hope towards your novel in the future! If you liked this, please hit that fancy follow button or tell me what you think. If you liked the advice and have some of your own, feel free to comment. But until next time...

A Bookish Blogger out!

Whaddup writer fam! I started this series a little while ago just talking about mistakes that I see new debut authors, or new writers make all the time and you guys LOVED it. Like, wow, I was impressed with the way you just absorbed that information. So, here I am with another mistake that I see young/new writers make. 

THEY PUBLISH THE FIRST BOOK THEY’VE EVER WRITTEN. 

Now by publish, I don’t mean uploading it to Wattpad, or whatever writing website you love to use. I mean, actually taking your first book and sending it to an agent and (after lots of other steps) getting it published. 

If you google book reviews on any one of these books there are a few things that you might find. 

1. The characters are simple or ridiculously contradicting/out of character. 

2. The writing style is basic, if not the definition of inexperienced. 

3. The books are simply ODD. 

But why? Because people can tell when you are a new writer with no experience.

Writing, believe it or not, takes many years of practice, of re-writing, editing, and learning what your style is. And I’ve heard so many authors in private interviews talk about how they were ripped off as a new author because: 1. they didn’t know the industry as well as they should’ve. 2. the quality was terrible, and years later, they recognize that. And 3. They didn’t put their best foot forward. 

The book community is HIGHLY competitive. I mean, INCREDIBLY. And when you put a book out there, you want a book that is going to start getting traction and grabbing people’s attention immediately and by publishing the first book that you’ve ever written, you will be doing the complete opposite of that. 

Now you might be pointing to these book examples and saying: hey, even though they published these books they’ve still got a huge following and people like them!

But here’s the difference: they have a social platform that was dedicated to them long before they ever published anything. Meaning: they had nothing to lose by publishing. 

Whereas: you possibly have everything to lose. 

BUT YOU WANT TO PUBLISH A BOOK! AND YOU WANT TO BE A FAMOUS POPULAR AUTHOR WITH LOTS OF READERS!

I know. And here’s how:

1. You’re a brand new author. You just finished a manuscript. So hold onto it. Don’t throw it away. Just put it away and give it 6 months to a year or two and come back to it.

2. After you put it away, WRITE A LOT. READ A LOT. Expose your mind to good books, books that you want to write like, and try to write like them. Notice the tiny things: how the talk about food, how they phrase dialogue, how they move their characters around scenes, how they describe things, etc. 

3. Try to finish a new script! Write something entirely new, something that you had thought about and just wanted to finish for fun! Something that you can easily finish because it’s simple and sweet!

4. Now put that away and bring out your other script! Read over it, make changes where you think language, characters, ideas could be improved and then get feedback. 

5. Getting feedback: Your feedback needs to be more than, “oh it looks good!” Or, “I really liked it!” 

Here are some questions you can ask your readers: 

-Which character did you like the most?

-Which character did you hate the most?

-Which character did you think was boring/not important?

-Do you think the characters act their age?

-What was the most cliche thing you saw?

-When did you put the book down? (what page/area?)

-When couldn’t you put the book down?

-What was overwhelming/too much?

-What was underwhelming/too little?

-Do you like the main pairing/OTP in the book? 

-How would you change the plot to make it more exciting?

-What is one thing that irked you while reading?

-What is one thing that you would never change for the world?

6. Re-write it! More often than not, when you get feedback, the people reading it can see problems you can’t. So don’t dismiss them! Take their advice into consideration and make the changes where they’re necessary. 

7. PUT IT AWAY AGAIN. 

8. This time, once you put it away, brainstorm on how things in the world would affect your characters. What would a sudden rise in taxes do to them? What about a change in school policy? What would an army invading a neighboring country do? Plan out your political/worldly day-to-day things. Ask yourself, what other businesses are in this small town? What foods would they taste and then never eat again? What TV show just came out that they’d like to watch? Write it down, keep it around and then whenever you need to add little details to round out your world, BAM! You’ve got pages and pages!

9. Pick it up! Re-read and re-write! Add new details! Add more detail to background characters!

10. MORE FEEDBACK.

11. Re-read and re-write!

12. AND NOW you send it to the publisher. Just kidding, you actually send it to an editor who reads through and tells you how to fix your stuff so it looks better. Keep in mind there are a lot of different kind of editors. There are editors who will go through for content. Some will go through for details. Some will go to fix punctuation. Others will go to help your characters. Etc. There are editors who specialize in everything so make sure you’re doing your research before you just send it to anyone.

13. Re-read and re-write!

14. Now you send it to your agent! And if they decide that they like you, they’ll send it to a publisher! :D (you don’t actually send things to a publisher, the agent does that. If they like you.)

(if you are wondering in any way that this is satire, I am afraid that it is not. This is actually the writing process that one should have when starting a new series and/or you’re a new author. And the publishing part only gets more difficult and complicated in terms of cover art, royalty fees, editing, communication, etc. You may find that some book companies will try whole-heartedly to screw you over while some will be a day in paradise to work with. :/)

If you’re looking at this list and going: this is too much! I could never do this! I won’t do this! Then, you, my friend, probably shouldn’t be writing a book in the first place as you’ll just be wasting your time. 

Keep in mind, this is for authors who just finished their first manuscript. If you’ve already finished three or four, you just don’t know which one to publish, you’re in an entirely different ball-park and this will hardly apply to you. This is like the boot camp for writers who want to be writers but don’t know where to start. And to all you others, I will say...

A Bookish Blogger Out!

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