BAD WRITING HABITS

There are a few simple tips to remember, and if you ignore them, you’ll write badly.

I was in my agent’s office one day, and her submission pile was high on her filing cabinet (she prefers to print off). I asked her what it was that made a submission worth calling in, and she said that she can usually tell by the end of the first page. There you go, that’s how long you have to give an agent or publisher a hint. Agents get endless submissions, so don’t blow yours with bad writing. And the tips are easy.

Here are what to focus on:

Adverbs
Avoid. Adverbs are bad, examples of lazy writing. People don’t run slowly. They jog. They don’t walk quickly. They rush. They don’t smile broadly. They beam. To quote Stephen King, if you’re using an adverb, you are using the wrong verb.

A quick tip: put in the letters “ly” into the search bar in your word document, just to make sure none have slipped through.

Bad words
The word “really” falls into the same category as adverbs. It is lazy writing that shows a lack of descriptive skill. Something isn’t really big. It is huge. It isn’t really small. It is tiny.

I’m sure you get the drift.

He said/She said
Those are the only words you should be using to describe who is speaking. They are speech indicators, nothing more. Forget all the “she opined”, or “he replied”, or “she shouted”, or “he snarled”. It is wearing, and shows that your dialogue isn’t good enough.

If the character asks a question, you don’t need to add, “he asked”, because the fact of a question tells you that. If you have to set out the emotion used when saying something, perhaps you haven’t written the dialogue well enough.

Use the dialogue to set out the drama, the emotion, not the speech tags.

Love the White Bits
Keep hitting the return button. No one wants to wade through a page-long paragraph. If you are writing a thriller, the more white parts of the page you can see, the more the story will skip along.

Write actively, not passively
Prose should contain action, not inaction. Here are some examples:

Harry ate rare steak for dinner. (active)
At dinner, a rare steak was eaten by Harry. (passive)

Bounding hares filled the forest. (active)
The forest was filled by bounding hares. (passive)

Sue changed the punctured tyre. (active)
The punctured tyre was changed by Sue. (passive)

To put it most simply, if you write actively, the character does the action. If you write passively, the actions happens to the character.

Write positively, not negatively
Similar to above, it’s about action.
For example:
He wasn’t very often on time. (negative)
He was usually late. (positive)

Once you've ironed those out, it's time for the big edit.