Even the most compelling writing and subject can fail if you let the small irritations get in
the way of that connection with your reader. Make your writing worth reading and take it
from good to great by avoiding these seven pitfalls.
1. Poor organization. If your reader can't follow your line of reasoning or
organization, they will eventually give up. The writer may not have created a beginning,
middle, and end that readers get hooked on and want to take to the end. As a writer, you
are taking your readers on a journey, so don't lose them.
2. Passive voice. When an author lacks confidence in what she is saying or in her
expertise, there is a tendency to write in passive voice: "The boat was overturned" versus
"I overturned the boat." Passive voice is a legitimate writing tool, but authors employ it to
avoid their own power. Used this way, it undermines the strength of the material.
3. Limited vocabulary. A book is a two-dimensional medium, so it is up to the
writer to deliver the words to paint a picture that becomes three-dimensional in the mind's
eye. This is just as true for a nonfiction book as a novel. If the words are trite or
uninteresting, the book becomes forgettable.
4. Poor sentence structure and grammar, misspellings, incorrect abbreviations and
capitalization. If you make mistakes here, the reader may assume your ideas are in error
too.
5. Writing that isn't tight. You may find that you ramble when you write a first
draft, so then you go back and take out the extra words and shorten sentences. For
example: "I've often thought that we should consider what we want out of life so we won't
make so many mistakes." Translation: "Consider what you want from life to avoid
mistakes."
6. Trite phrases. For example: "As I've always said....". We don't need to know
what you've always said. Just tell us what you want us to know.
7. Over-emotionalism. The more clearly you can tell a story straight out and let the
reader become emotional, the more effective the story will be to make your point. That
doesn't mean you can't use words to make a story poignant and meaningful; it just means
you don't tell the reader how to feel about the events. Tell how you feel only. A sign of
this is when a writer uses exclamation points throughout his or her book. If you use more
than one exclamation point per chapter, you've probably used too many. Another amateur
mistake is words with all capital letters, the written equivalent of shouting. It is much
more effective to talk softly.
Readers are trained from good experiences to be open to your book from the start.
Don't dash their optimism with poor writing. It takes just as much time to rewrite and
polish a book as it does to write the first draft. Know that, expect it, and spend the time
necessary to make your work great.
About the Author
Gail Richards is founder of
http://www.AuthorSmart.com a dynamic website
connecting aspiring authors with the classes, audio library, tools, information and
resources needed to make smart, informed decisions at each step in the nonfiction book
publishing journey. Jan King is the founder of
http://www.eWomenPublishingNetwork.com a membership organization devoted to
supporting and coaching women who become successfully published nonfiction authors.
