I am The Book Nurturer, a ghostwriter and editor, so when I see common mistakes in manuscripts and books by major publishing houses, it frustrates me because they are so easy to fix.
I believe you can train your brain NOW.
Awareness is everything! Once we're clued in, we can avoid them before they are committed to paper.
1.
Using the same adjective in close proximity.
I find published books using an adjective and then using the same exact same adjective in the next sentence.
This is all right once in a while and can actually be used creatively for emphasis, but used over and over, I think, "Where was the editor?" Doreen Virtue and Philippa Gregory do this all the time.
Find another descriptor! 2.
Using words that are essentially meaningless and using them too much.
I'm editing a manuscript now where the writer uses "nice" quite a bit.
Nice is one of those adjectives that doesn't really mean much unless you say it sarcastically.
You can use nice to describe a person, a drink, a cat, a house, a job...
which renders it pretty much useless doesn't it? It's lazy writing.
Reach for a different more accurate and evocative word.
Ditto for: "really" and "very.
" J.
I.
Rodale's Synonym Finder is the best thesaurus on the planet.
You don't want your writing to sound overly highbrow, fake or as if you obviously used a thesaurus, but you do need to give it some flavor.
3.
Misspellings in published books.
Editing is a meticulous job that requires mental energy, focus and concentration.
If you're editing your own writing, hire someone to copyedit it so they can see what you cannot see.
Your eyes have looked at the material so many times they have glazed over.
I counted seven misspellings in a mid-list book by a mid-sized house.
More and more books are being published with errors.
Spell check is not enough.
It will okay "their" and "there" when you mean "they're," right? Take pride in your craft and spend the money for a professional editor or proofreader.
4.
Leaving too much in and being too attached to your writing.
Philippa, here we go again.
When I read The Other BoleynGirl, I thought, this book could have been cut by 60 pages or more.
Granted, she did all that research and didn't want it to go to waste, but the book labored on and on and became more unbelievable as it continued.
She needed a good editor.
I sympathize.
When I first started writing screenplays, it killed me to cut anything.
Hey, that's my blood spilled upon the page! Now I cut judiciously because I know when I've gone on a tangent, it detracts from my message.
If it's distracting or confusing, it needs to go.
The reader is likely to put the book down when they don't understand something...
and may never pick it up again!