Novel writing ,
Six mistakes almost all authors make… and what to do about them
By Debi Alper
I’ve 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’ve spotted some general trends when people come to self-edit – though sometimes people don’t 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.
But listen: don’t 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.
Here, I’m going to take you through the top six most common mistakes that authors need to correct when they come to self-edit.
1. Starting in the wrong place
Some people start their novels too early. They write their way into the story, which doesn’t 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’s going on. That means the following chapters move into back story, and the promise made in the first chapter hasn’t been upheld.
2. Scenes lack narrative drive
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’s probably a sign that the pace has slumped. On the Self-Edit Your Novel course, we share techniques and tools for ensuring that everything in your draft earns its keep.
3. It’s not clear which character (or characters) have ownership of the story
Characters are the reader’s representatives in your fictional world, but there’s 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’d be surprised at how many manuscripts I see that have multiple characters whose names start with the same initial, for example.
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By Debi Alper
About the author
Debi Alper is the author of five novels, the first two published by Orion and then republished under her own imprint, along with the next three in the series. Since 2006, Debi has worked as a freelance editor and creative writing tutor. She runs the phenomenally successful Jericho Writers Self-Edit Your Novel course, together with Emma Darwin, and won the inaugural RNA Indie Editor of the Year Award in 2021. Debi also acts as a competition judge and was a reader for the Costa Short Story Awards.