#commonmistakes

Doctor: We had to remove your colon.

...without making it sound flowery.

As writers, a big struggle is trying to make prose pretty without making the mistake of making it ‘flowery’, or overly poetic and very unfitting with the words around it. I’m in no place to give advice about making writing poetic, but here are some tips for making it sound better!

1) Don’t use passive voice.

If you’re a newer writer or not that into technical stuff, you might be very confused, but passive voice is when an object is effected by something rather than something affecting the object. For example, ‘The ball was hit by the cat’ is in passive voice while ‘The cat hit the ball’ is active voice. 

Why should you avoid passive voice? It adds more words than necessary, it takes the focus away from the person doing the action, and it slows pacing. The only time it would be better to use is when the subject is the main focus of a scene. 

For example, if someone is being manhandled in a horror scene, maybe, you could say “Her arm was pulled by the man” instead of “The man pulled her arm’’, but I personally try to never use passive voice.

2) Don’t use past perfect tense.

This is another nit-picky thing that only writers care about, but it does make a difference. Just because an average reader doesn’t know what past perfect is doesn’t mean they won’t realize the writing is off.

Past perfect is when you say ‘I had said’ instead of ‘I said’. It adds an unnecessary amount of extra words if you do it throughout the story. It doesn’t change the meaning of a sentence and it just adds clutter or ‘fluff’ to the story that does not need to be there. It’s very small, but try to compare your manuscript that uses past perfect versus not using it. It sounds cleaner, flows better, and keeps pacing steady.

3) Use the same tense throughout a story.

Yet again, average readers won’t notice this, but they can notice when something is odd. If you start a story in past tense, don’t switch to present tense halfway through. If you start a story in present tense but the second paragraph is past tense (and it isn’t a flashback or retelling anything), then it’s inconsistent. It doesn’t flow as nicely as writing in the same tense.

Of course, as all things in creative writing, this does have exceptions. If you’re writing a flashback or telling backstory, it should be in past tense, even if your story as a whole isn’t, but in general scene prose, don’t. 

An example of what not to do is, “She says ‘hi’ to him. He said ‘hi’ back.”

4) Don’t info-dump.

This is an obvious one, of course. Info-dumping is when an author tells the entire backstory in normal chapter prose instead of using a prologue or letting it come up organically.

Info-dumping is seen as bad in the writing community, and there’s a reason for that. Not only is it hard to retain information when you hear it all at one, but it also slows pacing and adds fluff. Just... don’t.

5) Avoid -ing verbs.

This is a technical thing and one I haven’t seen talked about. I saw it in a ShealinWrites video on YouTube, and since then I’ve avoided them and my writing has sounded so much better.

Since this isn’t something I came up with, I don’t know exactly why this sounds so bad, but it does.

Of course, you have to use -ing verbs sometimes, but use them less than verbs ending in ‘s’.

For example, “She walks into the room and says, ‘Blahblah’.” sounds nicer than “ ‘Blahblah,’ She says, walking into the room.”

It actually doesn’t sound too bad typing it out once, but when you use -ing verbs, it leads to the use of them more and more. The build-up of them sounds ugly.

6) Avoid long, uncommon, difficult words.

A lot of young writers make this mistake. When I first started writing, I did this a lot. I would use big words to try to sound more mature or advanced, but this is a bad idea. If a reader sees a word they haven’t seen before, it will take them out of the story for a minute. One of my biggest pet-peeves is when I’m reading and I see a word I haven’t seen and have to Google. You lose that immersion.

Of course, some words are good and better than simple words, but you shouldn’t be using lists of ‘Top 10 Pretty Words You Never Heard’ or a thesaurus for every adjective.

7) Don’t try to sound poetic in uncalled for situations.

Of course, sometimes it’s good to try to make your writing sound nice, but don’t do it when it doesn’t make sense for the scene.

If you’re writing slasher horror and in the middle of a violent axe murder you describe the blood as ‘red as a rose under moonlight’, then I’ll set the book down and leave. If you’re writing a love story where the characters kiss for the first time, describe it as magical and poetic and beautiful, but only do it when the situation is right.

You can use poetic metaphors and figurative language in romantic, nostalgic, or emotional scenes, but avoid it in day-to-day life, angry, or dark moments.

8) Use simple verbs.

This is closely related to number six, but whatever. If there’s a situation where a simple verb describes an action better, then use it! Don’t go out of your way to use bigger words.

One thing I see a lot, from young writers especially, is using long sadisms and dialogue tags. Instead of using ‘deadpanned’ (which I’ve had to leave the story to Google multiple times in my life), just say ‘said’ or ‘joked’. Add an adverb if necessary. You can mess up the reader’s immersion by using incomprehensible words.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully I could help! If you have anything to add, feel free to reblog with your tips, and if I helped I’d really appreciate a like/reblog/follow! If you have any other writing questions, my asks are always open!! I’ve been a fiction writer for almost nine years, I’m a creative writing student, and I’ve written in almost every genre there is.