So...what's your weakness?

tengraceapples · Feb 11, 2012

Hey!

I was reading the thread about YA lines from wp and you guys have some really great stuff. It made me wonder what kind of weakness we have as writers. I think if you know the answer to that you can get better at it. Maybe with advice from someone in this thread for whom that is not an issue.

I can start. I have dyslexia so I always put letters backward. ANd they seem perfectly alright to me. I also need to work on my tense. Sometimes my mc is in the past and then I change the tense and don't realize it.

J.S.F. · Feb 11, 2012

tengraceapples said:
Hey!

I was reading the thread about YA lines from wp and you guys have some really great stuff. It made me wonder what kind of weakness we have as writers. I think if you know the answer to that you can get better at it. Maybe with advice from someone in this thread for whom that is not an issue.

I can start. I have dyslexia so I always put letters backward. ANd they seem perfectly alright to me. I also need to work on my tense. Sometimes my mc is in the past and then I change the tense and don't realize it.

---

More power to you for overcoming dyslexia and writing. I don't have dyslexia and I still use spellcheck!

Thing is, you should get someone who will check everything for you spelling-wise (assuming you still get confused when your computer does it) and verb-wise. That's all I can recommend, really.

My weaknesses were using 'that' and "was/were' too often when I first started out, and it's a natural mistake. With my second novel, I had a really good editor who provided great advice on how to format, consolidate my ideas, get rid of the 'that's' and so on, and also recommended putting in actions here and gestures, dialogue, and whatever there, in order to make the action play better. She also cautioned me on too many dialogue tags and suggested clever ways to get around them. I imagine someone else will chime in and offer some more advice and best of luck in your writing!

amlptj · Feb 11, 2012

Hi there. Your not alone. I myself have several severe learning disorders. My spelling and grammar are horrible, worst part is i cant notice or fix them myself. So i have to depend on the kindness of others and expensive computer programs that are like spellcheck on crack. Still they dont catch alot of my issues. Those are by far my greatest problems but try as i might, i cant drastically improve on those. Just something you have to live with, and try to work around.

Other problems I can and have been trying to change are: overuse of exclamation points! Odd and extensive word use on dialogue tags. Telling rather then showing.

Kube · Feb 11, 2012

I'm terrible with punctuation. Luckily my GF is studying to be an English teacher so I have her proofread all my stuff. If I'm lucky she keeps me after class.

Vornad · Feb 11, 2012

Procrastination is my biggest weakness. It's so easy to say "well, the day's half done already, just wait until tomorrow to write."

owlion · Feb 11, 2012

My biggest weakness is probably some weird grammar mistakes, including occasional apostrophe use (only in fiction writing though!). Also, tending to be quite brief.

LittleDovekie · Feb 11, 2012

Dyslexics of the world untie!

My biggest weakness, aside from spelling and grammar, is the tendency to edit in the middle of writing first drafts. To the point where I will re-write a scene five or six times before even going on to the next one. I've rewritten the first half of my WIP five times! I never can get past the midway point.

chocowrites · Feb 11, 2012

plotting. (really, anything that has to do with the structure of a story).

Emberchyld · Feb 11, 2012

Em dashes-- ellipses............ and that, Oh MY!

randi.lee · Feb 11, 2012

The dish ran away with my attention span. I'll have all of these great ideas I want to write while at the same time I want to walk the dog, read a book, play video games, go downstairs and exercise, head to the mall and... oh, look: shiny object-!

amschilling · Feb 11, 2012

Commas. Those stupid things take over my novel. It's hard to not write like I speak, and that's where my trouble comes in--I put a comma in where I'd pause if I was talking.

Plus I have a strange, almost pathological issue with using semi-colons. I need a twelve-step group for it, really. When I was in school (back when dinosaurs walked the earth), you only used them for certain types of lists. Putting them in the middle of a regular sentence was just a sloppy way of making two sentences into one and was IMPROPER. My last beta (an English teacher) loved to tease me about it. She actually counted and in my entire ms. I only had one.

missesdash · Feb 11, 2012

I've gotten a really good idea of my weaknesses from the whole submission process. I've realized that although I write really sparse, I overplot.

I tend to have 100 possible books written into the plot of one! The good news is that I'm learning to strip away the excess aspects and can definitely see how less is more in that regard. I now know that too many plot elements leaves some of them underdeveloped.

I also get to take these other elements and save them for another book on an entirely different subject. So that's always nice.

So in my WIP I've been steadily stripping away and it's really rewarding to step back and see the story once you clear away the needless aspects. About to jump into a round of revisions and I feel a lot better having identified that aspect of my writing. I know my future stuff will be better for it.

inspiredbymusic · Feb 11, 2012

I think my greatest weakness is the opposite of missesdash's: my plots are usually lacking. Happily I'm confident that my current WIP has a significant and "hooky" plot. : )

Stiger05 · Feb 11, 2012

I get rambly. (Yeah, I made that up). My first drafts are always too long. On my current WIP I'm trying to edit and cut more as I go, but it slows me down.

I also lack confidence about my plots. I live in eternal fear of too low stakes.

Sage · Feb 11, 2012

Technical weakness is forgetting to use question marks. It's the reason I keep grammar check on.

I have two writing weaknesses. One is occasionally underwriting my female characters' positive emotions (like love). I don't know why it's not a problem with males or with negative emotions (like anger).

The other one is plotting. I consistently separate my novels into three parts with three focuses going on. One particular agent called me on it after reading a couple of my books. For example, in AFTRLYF, the first part focuses on the job of being an angel of death, with very little danger hinted at beyond her day-to-day problems. Then the second part has a big mystery of trying to figure out who is killing the angels of death. The last part goes more disturbing when she finds out who it is, stops him, and goes crazy. And even knowing this, Hero/Villain was written with three really obviously divided parts and Taylor-made will also be, so I still haven't beaten it.

Winterturn · Feb 11, 2012

I am halfway through writing my novel so at the moment it feels like everything is my weakness. When I get to the end of this draft I'll have a more realistic view of what my strengths and weaknesses are ... but when I'm in the middle it seems impossible to be objective.

missesdash · Feb 11, 2012

Sage said:
Technical weakness is forgetting to use question marks. It's the reason I keep grammar check on.

I have two writing weaknesses. One is occasionally underwriting my female characters' positive emotions (like love). I don't know why it's not a problem with males or with negative emotions (like anger).

The other one is plotting. I consistently separate my novels into three parts with three focuses going on. One particular agent called me on it after reading a couple of my books. For example, in AFTRLYF, the first part focuses on the job of being an angel of death, with very little danger hinted at beyond her day-to-day problems. Then the second part has a big mystery of trying to figure out who is killing the angels of death. The last part goes more disturbing when she finds out who it is, stops him, and goes crazy. And even knowing this, Hero/Villain was written with three really obviously divided parts and Taylor-made will also be, so I still haven't beaten it.

Is this always a bad thing? I had considered doing it for something I'm working on. I think I've heard someone refer to it as "episodic" is something like that? Definitely curious about this.

tengraceapples · Feb 11, 2012

Lol, I'm kind of lucky in that my plots tend to be solid. But I can' take credit for that. Most of writing for me is listening to the characters and they tell me what happened. The only thing I do is edit when they are long winded. But oh commas are the death of me. Yeah, i said it!
Sometimes I spell check five or six times before posting here. Thinking rocks will be thrown should I make a mistake. So crazy!

Btw, sage I sent you the book link. It's also below

Smish · Feb 11, 2012

My greatest weakness is that I don't finish anything. I hit the wall, and instead of pushing through, I move on to something else that I won't finish.

Windcutter · Feb 11, 2012

1) Not enough explanation/exposition. Partially it's because I'm obsessed with providing as much suspense as possible.
I also had several comments on how my writing has lots of visuals, but not enough introspection. I guess it falls under the same umbrella, even though it's also a matter of taste.
2) Artificial dialogue. One-liners, comebacks, word play. It doesn't even matter whether they are successful, sometimes I need to create a more natural flow.
3) This one is more about publishing. I need to learn to condense my plots into very short forms. Like, tell us about your book in a single sentence. I tend to get premise-heavy instead of encapsulating the whole plot.
4) I also feel like I need to become more prolific, because practice makes perfect.

Becca C. · Feb 11, 2012

Procrastination is my biggest problem by far. Also distraction by internetz

But sometimes I feel like I write the same kind of thing over and over again. Thing happens, characters react. Thing happens, characters react. Conversation is had. Thing happens, characters react. That's not exactly what it feels like, but sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in a rut in the way that I write things. It's probably all in my head though, and once I read this manuscript over again we'll see just how big of a problem it is.

piano_island · Feb 11, 2012

Becca C. said:
Procrastination is my biggest problem by far. Also distraction by internetz

But sometimes I feel like I write the same kind of thing over and over again. Thing happens, characters react. Thing happens, characters react. Conversation is had. Thing happens, characters react. That's not exactly what it feels like, but sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in a rut in the way that I write things. It's probably all in my head though, and once I read this manuscript over again we'll see just how big of a problem it is.

Same to all of the above! I also have a problem where I work the story over so many times by myself that I'm like, "I already know the story. I'm not writing the rest of it down. Finished!"

mellymel · Feb 11, 2012

commas are my nemesis. i have read and researched and read and have been told a gazillion times and i still CAN.NOT.MASTER.IT. I hate them! I hate them! I hate them!

maybegenius · Feb 11, 2012

I have a bad habit of repetition. I'll keep falling back on the same character tics or phrases over and over, or I'll repeat information. I also have a bad habit of doing "Q&A" style info dumps that I have to go back through and liven up. You know...

"How did I get here?"

*explanation*

"But why?"

*explanation*

"I don't understand. Explain it to me again."

*explanation*

I had to fix like three instances of that in my last MS. It's like I didn't even realize I was doing it.

Paul · Feb 11, 2012

missesdash said:
I've gotten a really good idea of my weaknesses from the whole submission process. I've realized that although I write really sparse, I overplot.

I tend to have 100 possible books written into the plot of one! The good news is that I'm learning to strip away the excess aspects and can definitely see how less is more in that regard. I now know that too many plot elements leaves some of them underdeveloped.

I also get to take these other elements and save them for another book on an entirely different subject. So that's always nice.

So in my WIP I've been steadily stripping away and it's really rewarding to step back and see the story once you clear away the needless aspects. About to jump into a round of revisions and I feel a lot better having identified that aspect of my writing. I know my future stuff will be better for it.

same affliction.

dont know why. but i'm a big plot watcher of anything i read see or hear. so might be the idea that simple = non-credible.

dunno, but i better get it sorted and soon!

So...what's your weakness?

tengraceapples

J.S.F.

Red fish, blue fish...

amlptj

Speling & grammer murderer, Sorrie!

Kube

Fresh Meat For The Grinder

Vornad

owlion

Absorbing inspiration from the moon

LittleDovekie

chocowrites

scaredy cat

Emberchyld

Hanging out in Medieval Castles

randi.lee

Certified Non-Genius

amschilling

missesdash

You can't sit with us!

inspiredbymusic

Stiger05

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

Winterturn

Scribble, scribble.

missesdash

You can't sit with us!

tengraceapples

Smish

Reads more than she writes.

Windcutter

Becca C.

piano_island

...

mellymel

maybegenius

might be a giant

Paul