{"id":849505,"date":"2025-11-06T17:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=849505"},"modified":"2025-11-13T12:25:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T12:25:38","slug":"six-mistakes-almost-all-authors-make-and-what-to-do-about-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/six-mistakes-almost-all-authors-make-and-what-to-do-about-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Six mistakes almost all authors make… and what to do about them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been working as a freelance editor for twenty years and have run the Jericho Self-Edit Your Novel course since April 2011, together with Emma Darwin. In that time, I\u2019ve spotted some general trends when people come to self-edit – though sometimes people don\u2019t realise just how messy their draft is, and how much work they need to do before they have a sparkly final draft, ready to pitch to agents and publishers or to self-publish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But listen: don\u2019t feel bad about murdering darlings. Nothing is wasted when it comes to creative writing. But do please be open to making radical changes if it means the story will work better for readers. That might mean accepting third person works better than first, for example, or changing the tenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, I\u2019m going to take you through the top six most common mistakes that authors need to correct when they come to self-edit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Starting in the wrong place<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some people start their novels too early. They write their way into the story, which doesn\u2019t actually get going until chapter three or four. Other authors start too late. They want their story to begin with an attention-grabbing bang, but then realise that the reader has no idea who these people are or what\u2019s going on. That means the following chapters move into back story, and the promise made in the first chapter hasn\u2019t been upheld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Scenes lack narrative drive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Everything in your draft needs to have an identifiable function in moving the story forwards in some way. If both plot and character are in the same place at the end of a scene as they were at the beginning, that\u2019s probably a sign that the pace has slumped. On the Self-Edit Your Novel<\/a><\/strong> course, we share techniques and tools for ensuring that everything in your draft earns its keep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. It’s not clear which character (or characters) have ownership of the story<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Characters are the reader\u2019s representatives in your fictional world, but there\u2019s a limit to the number of people they can fully identify with. There should be a minimum of one person whose journey readers follow from beginning to end, and all your charactersneed to be distinct from each other.You\u2019d be surprised at how many manuscripts I see that have multiple characters whose names start with the same initial, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Want to read the rest of this article? Log in<\/a> or join our free community – you’ll get the rest of our top tips, plus a truck-load of other resources. Whoever said you don’t get anything in this life for free?<\/h4>\n\n\n\r\n