by Ari Meghlen
Penning a manuscript takes time, patience, and perseverance. There are so many things to consider while getting your story down on screen or paper. But I want to discuss 8 things not to do when drafting a novel.
Ignoring Research
Almost every story has something that needs checking and researching. Whether it’s the name of the tack used when riding a horse, or how long a clean fracture can take to mend. Don’t ignore research, and don’t use things like your favourite TV programme as a reference. They get things wrong...a lot.
Readers can be picky, well, some of us can. An error in the writing can get under the skin and bring a reader out of the story. Are you writing about pirates? Then you need to know the parts of a ship and the different types of ships. Are you writing about knights? Then you need to learn about the pieces of armor, the weaponry, and the training. If murder mystery is your jam, then it’s good to know police procedures in the location where your story is set.
While writing, you might want to stop and do research every time you reach a point that requires it. But make a brief note for yourself as a reminder to check once your writing session is over.
Not Considering Your POV
Points of view can be tricky. There are often expectations about POV in specific genres. For example, YA and science fiction are often written in the first person. Romance is often written in the third person limited. Whereas fantasy is often third person multiple or omniscient.
While you don’t have to stick to these expectations and can write whichever POV you want, it’s always a good idea to be aware of such expectations and why so many writers use specific POVs for specific genres.
The main thing is to decide early on about the POV of your story and work with it. To save yourself from having to rewrite your draft in a different POV, take the time to consider the POV you want to use and why. POV allows your readers to immerse themselves in a single character or spread across many. They all have pros and cons to consider.
If you are still not sure, write a few scenes using different POVs. From there, you should be able to see which reads better and which you find easier to write. Get feedback to help you.
Once you have your POV, keep it in mind. It is so easy to make mistakes such as writing in the first-person limited and revealing something the character doesn't know. Or, if you are writing in the third person, watch out for the dreaded head-hopping. Where you randomly shift perspectives to a different character within a scene – that’s a big no-no.
Ignoring Story Structure
Even if you are a pantser, I believe you should have a basic idea of where your story is going. It should have a beginning and a middle and an end, even if these are pretty vague. Now, granted, there are some people who can sit down without even the smallest of notes and churn out a story. But these people are rare.
Even a few notes about where the story is going can help you keep track of your basic narrative arc. This can help your pacing flow well as you move from action point to action point. Your arc should identify the inciting incident, rising action, and try-and-fail moments before leading the reader to the climax and finally the resolution of the story.
If you ignore story structure and fail to keep in mind your arc, you may end up writing a lot of excess. This slows your novel down and loses the readers’ interest. New writers often make the mistake of taking too long to get to the inciting incident (aim for by the 2nd chapter at the latest) or having a sagging middle where the action points are few and far between.
Using Excessive Exposition
Excessive exposition, also known as info-dumping, is when you include a lot of background information within your story. Usually, this is done early to give readers a crash course in backstories, events, cultures, etc.
It can be within the prose or in dialogue like some villainous monologue. Both are bad.
It can feel like you need to get the reader up to speed asap. It can seem important that readers understand this world you created and all the cultural and societal relevance within, as well as key players right at the start. But all this does is slow your pace and bore the reader. Most readers skip large info-dumps to get to the more interesting parts.
Information should be added throughout the story. Despite what you might think, readers don’t need to understand everything about your world and characters immediately. They can be curious and learn as they read. You don’t need to write three paragraphs at the start of chapter one explaining the history of the land and who the queen is and how she came to power. But, when your main character gets a summons to an audience with the queen, you can filter some information through the proceeding pages.
If you are struggling, just put in the excessive exposition and then highlight it. Keep writing to get your story written. Then go back and take all that exposition out. Make notes of all that information you wanted to share, and figure out when and how those different pieces can be added throughout the story.
Skimping on Descriptions
When you’re in your first draft, you can be forgiven for skimping on the descriptions and getting the meat of the story down – especially if it’s flowing. But you must make notes to go back and add in this stuff. It’s not just “filler” it’s flesh, it builds up the story’s image in the reader’s mind. It helps them become more immersed.
It should be sprinkled liberally throughout the story. Don’t just dump all the character’s physical descriptions into a paragraph the moment we see them and never reference those again. Pepper them in to remind us in small ways. Does she brush a tangle of sable hair from her eyes while she’s arguing with her friend? Do his rich brown eyes sparkle with amusement? Are her freckles stood out proud against her skin as it pales in terror?
I’ve read stories where I’ve gone through the whole book and didn’t know what anyone looked like as it was mentioned in passing on page 3 and never again.
You need to paint the picture of your world, and that includes the looks, sights, sounds, scents, and tastes. Show us the rolling fields of wheat dancing in the summer breeze, or the crashing surf pounding against the black rocks of the cliff. Describe the battle scar cutting across the neck of the weary soldier or the hazy perfumed air of the local smokehouse.
As per my earlier point about info-dumping, descriptions are perfect for falling into the info-dump trap. They can lead to endless paragraphs describing the glorious castle on the hill with its spires, turrets, parapets, portcullis, etc.
Keep in mind that descriptions should not become too chunky, and instead, you can break them up with character actions and dialogue.
Not Knowing Your Characters Well Enough
Yes, you will learn more about your characters as you write their story, and they will develop with everything you throw at them. Even if you work out most of the details early on, things can change.
You don’t want to overdo it by creating 8 pages of character profile sheets for everyone in your story – that’s just a form of procrastination, trust me. But you do need to have a good knowledge of your characters when drafting.
There’s a fine line. There are some things you should know about your characters, like their basic personalities, how they react, likes and fears. You don't need to know what brand of coffee they drink or who their mechanic is right away.
Some things will come through from the writing, and any new developments you come up with you can add to their profile and keep going.
But you need to know about your characters before you start drafting. This is to help give them their individual voice. Your characters need to sound different and unique from each other. It can become too easy to have all your characters sound the same. Making your characters 3-dimensional and fleshed out is what develops their voice.
Listening to The Inner Critic
We all second-guess ourselves and our stories. We wonder whether anyone will give a flying fig about our characters and the stresses we are putting them through. Our inner critic can be loud and obnoxious, and it holds us back. It slows down our writing and makes us obsess over every little piece until that first draft never seems to get completed.
The Inner Critic will tell you how awful your writing is. If it's your first draft, that's probably true. The first draft is supposed to suck because it’s just the bare bones, the foundation that you will build on with rewrites and edits.
However, if you allow your Inner Critic to harp on while you write, you’ll find the writing starts to dry up. You’ll become demotivated and might even abandon the project for another one. Not that it helps, the Inner Critic will simply turn its beady eyes to that too.
Learn to push back against that doubting voice, hush it up with your characters' voices and tell their story.
All you need to do is write until the story is finished. Yes, there will be plot holes and loose threads, but all these can be dealt with after. Just write, get down the first draft no matter how terrible your Inner Critic tells you it is. Only then, can you fix it.
Failing to Give Yourself a Break
Okay, so while I did just say you need to get your story finished, what I don’t mean is run yourself into the ground to do it. You don’t need to write every day if that isn’t going to work for you. You don’t need to have huge writing sessions if it will leave you mentally exhausted all the time.
Not everyone can write every day, and while it’s often touted as great writing advice, it can be detrimental. You need to do what works for you and treat your mind with kindness. Just like if you overwork a muscle in your arm or leg, you can overwork your brain. Work within your means and your schedule.
There’s a push within the writing community that you need to be writing and publishing multiple books a year to keep up. However, the only competition, really, is yourself. And if you need to write slower and take longer, that’s fine.
You also need to take breaks. This is not just to refill the creative well, but to clear out your head so you can spot things that were not working within the draft.
If you go from writing to editing to rewriting with little or no break, you are doing your writing a disservice. Don’t create deadlines for yourself that don’t allow you time to step away from your work and come back with fresh eyes. There will always be things you missed.
In my opinion, a few days at minimum are required – if not a week or two. That distance from your work will be just as good as getting a second pair of eyes on it.
Above all else, don’t let drafting become a chore. Yes, there are tough times, like when you can’t imagine doing another edit pass or sometimes you can spend 20 mins agonising over the choice of a word or be stuck for too many days (or weeks) within a plot hole. But in the end, writing should be fun; it should be a passion that you want to do.
About Ari
At the age of 8, Ari Meghlen wanted to be a pirate, because who doesn't look great in baggy pantaloons and an eyepatch.
However, lacking any access to a ship this dream was relegated along with so many others: Professional ninja, best friend to a dragon, dinosaur wrangler.
Yet Ari found that, in stories, she could be anything she wanted and so a great love affair started with the written word.
When she’s not writing, she is blogging about writing or answering writerly questions on The Merry Writer Podcast that she hosts with friend and fellow author Rachel Poli.
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