Writing is a skill. It takes time to master. That doesn’t mean you can’t earn a living writing before you achieve an expert level, but you will need to refine your skills to have a career.
Here are 9 signs of amateur writing and how to avoid them:
1. Poor Grammar
You can’t get around this one. It’s a foundational skill. You cannot write without knowing the mechanics of how it is done. If your grammar skills are rusty or nonexistent, grab a book or take a class now. This is non-negotiable. Writers need to know the basics. This means spelling too. Don’t rely on spell-check to fix your errors. It doesn’t hurt to expand your vocabulary while you’re at it. New writers often ignore this advice. They think ideas more than make up for poor writing skills. They don’t. Learn your craft.
2. Not Making Sense
The whole point of writing is to share. Whether you are telling a story, conveying an emotion, selling a product, sharing a joke, drafting a speech—you need to make sense. No one wants to read rambling sentences that go nowhere, have no point, or simply confuse the audience. Figure out what you want to say and how you are going to say it. Sketch it out. If you are opposed to plotting, at least organize your points in a logical pattern. Know what you are trying to say and figure out the best way to say it so your audience will understand. This should happen before you start writing. Making sense also applies to what happens within the story or copy. If what your characters are doing makes no sense (for example, splitting up in a horror movie, which always ends badly, or laughing during a somber moment for no reason), you risk losing your audience. New writers often struggle with story logic and structure (see below). There also is a tendency to add things to be cute, funny, or sound intelligent. Don’t. Write clearly and simply.
3. No Structure or Poor Structure
This is related to the point above. Every piece of writing — whether a blog, script, or story — needs a structure. Novels use everything from the Three Act Structure to the Hero’s Journey with many variations in between. Scripts do the same. But even a blog should have a structure-—a clear beginning, middle, end. There should be a logical structure that holds the ideas together and leads the reader from beginning to the end in a way that enhances understanding. It (mostly) doesn’t matter what structure you choose. The structure you use will change depending on what you are trying to say and to whom you are saying it. But it does matter that there is a structure holding the ideas together. I often hear new writers railing against plotting and it baffles me. Even if you don’t know what is going to happen page-to-page, you should have an idea of the major elements that will hold the story together or move your character from the beginning to the end. Structure is even more important in nonfiction and freelance work. A companion to this mistake is not understanding the structures of different types of writing. For example, writing a script is vastly different from writing a blog. They each have their own way of handling information. Writers need to know how to structure, format, and use those differences to benefit the work.
4. Allowing Extraneous Stuff to Survive Editing
Every bit of your work should serve the story and contribute positively to the whole. If it doesn’t, cut it. This applies to extraneous chapters, scenes, characters, paragraphs, sentences, and words. Be ruthless in your editing. If it doesn’t propel the work forward, it doesn’t belong. New writers (and older ones too) have a hard time cutting their favorite bits if they don’t fit the story. It’s tough, but necessary.
5. Forgetting Your Audience
This is true for all types of writing. The audience matters. It determines your vocabulary, tone, approach, and style. Writing for engineers is not the same as writing for children. Knowing who makes up your audience is critical. Find out who they are, what they know, and tailor your content to them specifically. Do not try to write for everyone at the same time. This is something many corporations and organizations try to do to cut down on cost. They want a script that will address staff, customers, lobbyists, Members of Congress. It is impossible and ineffective. When you try to speak to everyone at once, you end up addressing no one. Split your audiences if necessary. New writers often forget who they are writing for and focus too much on what they are trying to say. The two go hand-in-hand.
6. Poor Pacing
Good writing includes pacing that moves the story forward. Pacing speeds up the action, slows down the heartwarming elements, and finds a middle ground for exposition. Think of it like music. If you only use one tempo for an entire song, you’ll bore your audience and they will stop listening. It’s too like a monotone speaker with no break from a single note. You need to vary the pace to keep your audience engaged. Build pacing with varying sentence length and structure. This is one of the most difficult skills to learn for new writers. It takes patience and lots of practice. Keep working on it.
7. No Stakes or Low Stakes
Without stakes, no one cares–not even the characters. If there is nothing to lose, then why would the character do anything differently than they had before the inciting incident? Why wouldn’t they just walk away? You must have some consequence for not making a difficult choice after the inciting incident. You must show why it matters to the characters. In nonfiction or corporate work, you need to show why the audience should care. Stakes are how you build empathy for the characters or cause. New writers can get caught up in what is happening and forget to build empathy for their character or cause. Without that emotional link, you’ve lost the heart of your writing.
8. No Motivation or Purpose
This is similar to the tip above, except that it goes deeper than consequences. This speaks to the throughline of the story—-the why of it. There needs to be a point to what you are writing. No one wants to slog through thousands of words for no reason. As the writer, you need to know what that point is and how you are going to make it. You need to have a purpose in telling the story or writing the white paper or web copy. Then you need to take that purpose and weave it into what you are writing so there is a clear reason for your story or call to action. Without that purpose, it’s just words. New writers often forget their main point or theme in their haste to tell the story or write the copy. Don’t make that mistake. The point is what matters most.
9. No Moderation
It is easy to go overboard when writing. This means writing too much overall or going too heavy in one area over another. For example, having so much dialogue that your novel looks more like a play than a book, or having nothing but action and no characterization or dialogue. Too much of a good thing is not good. It does not help. Moderation should be the goal. Think of it as the Goldilocks Principle. You want the balance between elements (dialogue, action, exposition) to be just right. New writers tend to lean into their strengths and shy away from those elements that are more difficult. This often causes imbalance in the writing or awkward transitions.
These nine signs of amateur writing are fixable, but they aren’t the only sins new writers make. Stay tuned for the next blog to read 9 More Signs of Amateur Writing & How to Fix Them.