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We all do things we know are bad for us. I drink too much coffee. I love ice cream. I eat carbs. These things I tend to do with full knowledge that they are, in fact, bad for me. I don’t care. I do it anyway.
But what your writing? Have you developed bad habits in your writing? One of my favorite websites, storyfix.com, had a wonderful, humorous post on the very subject, so I thought I’d steal share that post with you.
Here’s a bit of the post followed by the link:
A Few Bad Writing Habits
by Chris Scott
I’d like to take some time to write about a few bad writing habits.
The first bad habit is to use first person unnecessarily.
The second bad thing is to reference the reader in the second person. Like, you or yours. You get that.
And the third thing is to create a numeric list of things (like “first” “second” and “third”) to represent new points in your work.
That’s the first of three things I’m writing about today.
Below, I would like to tell you about some more things that qualify as bad writing.
http://storyfix.com/a-few-bad-writing-habits Read the entire post, it’s well worth it and a great offering for a Monday . I read it, loved the topic but knew I couldn’t possibly write it better than Mr. Scott did. (who has a post on his blog titled “Outsmarting a Walmart employee Part II. Sort of begs to be read, doesn’t it?) But before you meander away and click on the pretty links, cough up your bad writing habits. I know you have them. Just like I know I’m not the only one who has been tempted to eat an entire carton of Haagan Daaz ice cream in one sitting. (Never done it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.) My Bad Writing Habits – I love exclamations. They are so pretty on the page!! Fortunately, my backspace button works beautifully. I’m a little surprised the label on it hasn’t worn off yet. – I have a few words that no matter how often I look at them, write them or type them, I can never spell them right on the first try. I have to wait for the little red squiggly line to show up to remind me I’m wrong. (Thank you to the Geek God who invented spell check.) Pyschology Psychology is one. – My first draft sees a truly lazy habit. In scenes when I haven’t quite nailed down the emotional impact, I just toss in a “she gazed at him.” type of sentence. Don’t add my name to the “Never to read” list just yet. I promise, the first task on my editing/Second Draft list is copious usage of the Find feature. Any version of “gaze”, “look”, “eyes” is studied for any other option. So that would be the first three things on my list. I’m sure I have about two hundred other bad habits. What about you? Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
10 comments
Ridiculous, license, and camouflage are the words that eat my lunch. (And I just spelled them all correctly! Go figure!!!! LOLOL)
Okay. I like exclamation points, too, but not in my actual writing.
My worst habit is head hopping. I’ve worked hard to confine it but I don’t always rein in my characters’ thoughts. If I find it happening a lot in a scene, I just go with the flow and then come back to edit, usually rewriting it several different ways to see how it works the best–if I can’t figure it out on a second read through.
Oh! And ellipses. And em dashes! Wicked creatures that they are! So seductive!
Silver, yes!… ellipses–and and em dashes– are wicked, indeed. I find I use them all too often. I fully imagine I’ll be buying a new backspace key before I need a new keyboard. LOL
Hmm… who here can write the worst comment?!?! How many bad habits can we put in our comments? LOL
Great post. My worst writing habit is procrastination. Thanks for the link also.
I’m totally there with you with the exclamation points. I use them way too much. I also have a tendency to write long sentences. For example, a month ago my 1st two sentences would’ve just been. Luckily someone pointed it out to mee and now I pay more attention to it when I’m writing 🙂
ARGH and let me also add my bad habit of editing my writing, but then not rechecking to make my edits are correct!!!! There should be a “one” after “would’ve just been.” *shakes head in shame*
make SURE my edits are correct. What is WITH me tonight?!?
Em dashes are my favorite–just deleted about a hundred of them out of my first round edits on a current contract. For me it makes sense because em dashes are how I think. I never think in complete sentences and often one thought interrupts another.
I can never seem to spell lightning right. I usually spell it lightening and my cp always laughs at me.
Sometimes I forget to turn off the volume on my computer and everytime I get a little ‘ding’ for a new email, I immediately click over to read it/them.
I’m good with exclamations in writing, but WAY overuse them in e-mails because I want to sound excited for people. 🙂
On my way to click links and read.
Yep, I’m the em dash queen. Sigh. Sounds like I’m not alone. Good. Misery loves company. 🙂
Great post, Jeannie. Thanks for striking up an interesting conversation.
I’ll jump on the band wagon with the em dashes. And, too many gazes but gee I like the visual tension this brings. I have trouble with the spelling of the definitely I always want to use ate instead ite at least I’m consistent. Another big fault for me is reusing a scene. I hope I get these out after the 1st draft but I tend to ‘see’ the same scene for the characters. For me it’s not to worry to much just keep typing and pick it off in the edits. Thank heavens for todays technology with spell and grammar checkers. I would have had some real messes back in the pen and paper days.
Great post Jeannie! I think I do a lot of gazing too… Lots of smiling, lots of laughing. I need to go through and do FIND search for those things too. LOVE the Find tool…