There is no denying the fact that writing a book takes a lot. For the moment the seed of the idea germinates, to planning the plot and the characters, writing each chapter, maintaining a discipline, not losing focus, and not hating what you have written. Anybody who has written even one complete manuscript, whether it’s published or not, will agree that a lot gets invested in the entire process of writing a novel.

Now, every storyteller might not be a language expert and that is fine. However, it is expected that you are moderately fine in the language that you are trying to tell a story in. Not only with it allow your writing to be better, as the writer you’ll be aware of how to better your writing. So, keep reading. And, keep writing.

Every manuscript requires thorough editing. Especially if you are self-publishing because then the responsibility lies completely with you. When yours manuscript is with the editor, there will be feedbacks and suggestions for which you’ll need to be aware of what is being told.

The dialogues are awful

Apologies beforehand, I don’t plan to mince my words here. I write these blog posts for new authors to learn from them and write better. I love stories and want them to reach everyone.

Good stories with awful dialogue writing are more common than one might imagine, and I have encountered it in 80% of the manuscripts that I have edited, or beta-read. What do I mean by awful dialogue writing? This is not something one would get to read in published books usually because the editor would have already done their job. What happens is while writing, the author gets carried away and starts imagining the characters of their story to be larger than life. Dialogues need to be exactly how we talk. Word count is precious and unnecessarily long dialogues not amounting to anything are not appreciated. The idea behind writing your novel is to entertain your reader – dialogues between your characters shouldn’t bore them.

Keep the exchange of dialogues realistic. Just because they are fictitious characters, they will not start talking any differently. They exist on paper, but they behave like you and me.

Dialogues are there for specific purposes – like to carry the story forward, perhaps to provide some information, to deepen characterisation, and such. Dialogue writing is not rocket science and in fact, quite simple. Keep in mind that they needn’t be in the plot without any purpose (don’t reveal something major, and then not follow up on it). I shall write a separate post on dialogue writing very soon, and link it to this one.

The narration switches a lot without warning

Narration perspectives can be tricky to handle if one is not paying minute attention to detail. Switches in narration at unexpected places like within a chapter can throw your reader off balance. If your characters are narrating their own story, make sure there aren’t too many characters doing that. And, when the perspective changes, a chapter should too. There are many layers to this point, I will write a detailed post soon and link it here.

Lack of structure in your story

Lack of structure is a sign of a haphazard writer which is not a great personality trait. When your writing style is haphazard, so is your actual writing. And most times, what the readers get to read is similar to a whole lot of unrelated spices mixed in one pot and cooked together. The structure is important and without it, your story is going nowhere. I am not asking you to determine everything even before you begin to write, but what I definitely would stress on is to create a rough structure. Make an outline, figure out how the story will progress, and write down the chapters. Of course, you can change the chapter when you get to it, but you’d still be following a structure. And believe me, when I say this, the structure is an important, invisible tool that takes your manuscript to the next level.

Your manuscript is filled with complex words

This is a major pet peeve with me. I have many manuscripts, as well as published novels where the language is too heavy. Remember, you want your readers to enjoy what you have written. You wouldn’t want them to refer to the dictionary every few lines. The idea is to entertain them, not bore them. Stick to simple language. Simple doesn’t mean pedestrian here, but remember to not use big and complicated words for no rhyme or reason.

There are too many descriptions

It is good to be descriptive; helps the reader imagine the story unravel in front of their eyes. But there is a trick here. Your description needs to be just enough to entice, and not boring. Remember that this is a story that will be read and not a show or movie that will be watched. Explaining every person in great detail is not only unnecessary but tends to drag the narration too. A bit of clever writing is required here – your descriptions of people or events need to be maximum in minimum words. Don’t mince words, but don’t also write long sentences just to increase the word count.

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If you are reading this post and have reached this part, it is a given that you know I am a professional manuscript editor. If you want your manuscript edited, evaluated, help with ideating or writing, or even a ghost writer – drop me an email to editor@samarpita.in and we can have a conversation. There is so much I want to share about writing, editing, and social media for authors – I have so many informative posts planned for the next few weeks – hope you find them helpful. If you do, or if there are things under these topics that you’d want me to write in detail about, leave me a message in the comment box and I promise I will create that content for you.

You can also hop over to author.to/Samarpita and check out my ebooks on how to write better and make a social media presence before your book hits the market. The books are FREE on Kindle Unlimited.