I live in a very tiny but blessed minority. For some reason, known only to God, I get to work from home and do what I love most: work with words. Over the last few years, I’ve worked more with novel writing than with anything else, and I’ve seen a lot of common mistakes. Here are a few of the most common ones, along with solutions. 1. The Info Dump Often insecure authors feel they need to dump a lot of back story at a novel’s beginning before readers will “get” the main story. It’s logical thinking: “Before you get this, you need to understand this.” But the problem is, they tend to give the info dump in the first five pages or so, those precious pages acquisition editors look at first. (Check out The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman.) While back story is often important for character and plot…
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See Part 1 and Part 2. #3: My novel must be pretty awesome—my significant other and friends certainly think so. This is faulty thinking; with few exceptions (consider the amazing story behind The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans) significant others and friends could never replace industry professionals. Ask any established novelists, and they’ll tell you. Because spouses, family members, and friends have the relationship at stake and don’t want to hurt our feelings, we can’t expect them to provide an impartial evaluation that will deliver the goods we need as authors. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should cut them off from our projects if they want to be involved. For example, my wife, Kim, a voracious reader, is always the first reader of my books. She always gives me great feedback beyond “This is wonderful because my husband wrote it,” but her review has its limits. Even someone…
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