New Author Pitfalls

Don't fall into these traps!

Before I get to the tips: This Christmas season only, you can buy Eternal Dream Christmas, a massive collection of 10 of my fantasy books taking place in the Eternal Dream universe. Ideal for new readers and veterans alike, you (also great as a gift) can read all the tales that take place before the Moonsong series, including The Bright Children, never before available as a retail book. Available as an ebook and as a huge A4 paperback volume!

On to the article:

1. They don’t work consistently. I wrote Keys to Prolific Creativity before a writing manual (which I still haven’t finished) because the biggest obstacle to writers is themselves. They simply don’t spend enough time working to develop enough skills to utilize any knowledge about storytelling techniques. The quick advice is this: work every day.

2. They don’t realize they will suck. Every person forgets at some point how difficult it is to begin doing something new. Think of how hard a toddler has to work at walking, something most of us take for granted. Know that your first work as a writer is going to be bad, and embrace that fact. You’re getting better! Growth feels great. Just get rid of the expectation that your first story (or book) is going to be great. It will be bad, but that’s okay because there are more on the way.

3. Overspending. They spend too much on covers, editing, marketing, etc., when they need to develop as a writer first. Remember that every dollar you spend on a book has to be recouped through sales, and it is much harder to sell 1,000 copies of a book than you think. Beware conferences for authors promising special industry insights – even if the people putting on the classes made their money in the book market (they usually, in truth, make their money from new authors by selling them classes and conferences), chances are that you haven’t developed enough as a writer and haven’t learned enough about the business to take advantage of some kind of special marketing or writing secret. It’s better to keep your first releases lean and learn from them than to blow your savings and crush your motivation early on.

4. They write too much. Not too often, but their stories and books have more in them than is necessary for the story to work. The superfluous material ends up interesting to the author but to nobody else. It takes time to tell just what your story needs, but a quick exercise is to ask whether the scene you are writing is necessary to understand the characters and plot. If not, it is probably safe to skip it.

5. Not focused on the market enough – New writers aren’t aware of what genres are popular, oversaturated, or non-existent, and also don’t have a firm grasp on what market segments want from a book. They write wholly for themselves and then are devastated when nobody wants their book. It’s okay to write niche or unpopular books (I have done so intentionally), but just temper your expectations to that reality.

6. Too focused on the market. Rather than having something unique to say, new authors try to make a book that hits every trope for a target market segment and ends up being bland. The key to writing to market is “same, but different,” with the different part being more important than the tropes you include. Also, writing too close to a formula is boring and, for writers like myself, torturous. You may never finish a draft trying to do a Save the Cat style story and instead despair of the whole affair.

7. Too focused on style rather than substance. They want to emulate a certain writer (some are worse than others) with his style, or how he crafts sentences and what vocabulary he uses, rather than aping what makes his stories memorable. Setting, characters, and plot, well-designed and executed, trumps beautiful prose in every contest. Great sentences are like decorations – they can be pretty but will never make a condemned house beautiful.

8. They focus on the big picture rather than the real writing. The inverse of number seven, new authors can put all their energy into having the “right” story elements and forget that they also need to execute at the micro level. You don’t need to have amazing prose, but it ought to be clear to the reader what is happening and why. Dialogue doesn’t need to be as memorable as Shakespeare’s, but it ought to be crafted with care, be functional, and sound natural. This is usually developed with practice, as per point number 1.

9. Endless Editing. The inverse of point number two, new writers have a tendency to be deathly afraid of negative feedback, which leads them to endlessly revise their early work and avoid publishing. They will even write it off as the “character flaw” of perfectionism when it is really just fear. Unfortunately, editing is not the same as practice. You need to write to “get the suck out,” as author and editor Brian Neimeier says, and without growing fully during that phase, you are unlikely to have the skills necessary to revise your own work. You’ll be a new author revising a new author and shouldn’t expect much. Save the big rewrites for later and focus on practice.

10. They don’t read! This is a bad enough tendency that Stephen King addresses it in On Writing, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write.” Imagine being a musician who doesn’t listen to music or an artist who never looks at paintings. Inconceivable! And yet, authors will try to write without actively consuming their own medium. Reading the work of others is important to pick up on effective style just as much as effective story elements, so, sorry to say, you must read books—movies and games are not adequate substitutes! Our world is busier than ever, but even so, it is easier than ever to cram in some good reading. You have a phone. Use it for books instead of doomscrolling. Buy e-books. Listen to audiobooks. I prefer to sit and read for long stretches with physical books, but I make use of technology and the bite-sized consumption it allows. You can, too!

Want more? Check out my creativity manual, Keys to Prolific Creativity, and don’t forget to grab the limited-edition Christmas special!

I am an independent artist and musician. You can get my books by joining my Patreon or Ko-Fi, and you can listen to my current music on YouTube or buy my albums at BandCamp.

This month, you can get the ebook of my literary fiction collection, Afterglow: Generation Y.