Mistakes in novel # 2.

Patty said:

Is this like children? Please say this is not like children.

Click to expand...

It's like children.

Yep, children all the way.

But to your question, some mistakes will be the same, others different. All my character tend to talk alike. For some reason, many of my characters's names start with the same letter (I'll never figure that out). However, each new project presents its own challenges.

-Riv- said:

It's like children.

Click to expand...

Yup.

You spend all your time trying to make them perfect, but you make mistakes. Nothing you learned from the first one seems to matter by the time you finish the second.

Plus, the all the little things you wish you'd done differently keep you awake at night LONG after you're supposed to be done.

Chris P said:

Yep, children all the way.

But to your question, some mistakes will be the same, others different. All my character tend to talk alike. For some reason, many of my characters's names start with the same letter (I'll never figure that out). However, each new project presents its own challenges.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is me, too. One of my books I swear I had 15 characters all starting with M.

I tend to overuse the same pet words (that, just, etc) and overuse the same motions (smiled, nodded, etc) in all my first drafts. I am more conscious of them as I write, but they're sneaky little buggers and I still end up with a zillion of them.

I'm not sure it's a mistake or just the way I work, but my first drafts are always light. I can picture the scene in my head, so I literally have zero description of setting. I don't even notice until one of my crit partners is like, "Ummmm, where are we??" and I'm thinking, "In the coffee shop, duh," when I've never mentioned a coffee shop. LOL When I try to work it in as I write the first draft, it slows me down, so I'll make notes in the Comments feature and roll with my settingless scenes.

But yes, to keep things interesting, I will screw up brand new things in each manuscript.

Every book I've worked on has its own problems. I think I've learned not to make a lot of the major mistakes I made in my first (Characters with no backstory, literally starting every single sentence with "I") but I think there are probably still some smaller mistakes that I still make. At least now I know that I'm going to have to spend months editing every novel and that I can always fix those problems. When I "edited" my first couple of books, I just went through them to fix grammar mistakes and didn't think about characterization, plot, or world-building issues. I just assumed that the story I first wrote was what the story needed to be and I just had to make sure the grammar was good and then voila! A perfect novel!

I guess that's probably the biggest mistake that I've learned from.

Your writing improves with every novel. Which doesn't mean problems go away, just that they get less egregious. Unfortunately, when you get your overuse of adverbs under control, you start to notice that your characters all sound the same. Then when you get that under control, you realize that you use certain words like 'just' far too much. Then you get that under control, and realize that your beats are all shrugging, nodding, grinning, etc. Then you get that under control and you realize your adverbs are still overused.

Rinse, repeat.