4 (or 10) Most Common Manuscript Mistakes and How to Fix Them

[pbray]

I mentioned earlier that jennifer_dunne and I had improvised a talk on common manuscript mistakes for the START Your Engines Writers Conference. Over the next 10 days we're going to take turns giving a short recap of each of the key discussion points.

The talk was divided into four sections, and the points are listed below.

1) Prevents you from getting in to the story
- Formatting, grammar, spellcheck (Patricia)

2) Prevents you from connecting with the characters
- Starting in the wrong place (Patricia)
- Telling, not showing (Jennifer)
- POV (Jennifer)
- Character Motivation (Patricia)

3) Interferes with story sustainability
- Dialogue (Jennifer)
- Scenes without points (Jennifer)
- Weak conflict (Jennifer)

4) Destroys an otherwise good story
- Sloppy/inadequate research (Patricia)
- Overpolishing (Patricia)

Look for the first point to be posted later today.

Comments

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

Great presentation! Thank you for taking the time to do this, pbray and jennifer_dunne.

[fancythat2.livejournal.com]

Speaking of grammar issues...
How about: Great presentation! Thank you, pbray and jennifer_dunne, for taking the time to do this.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

:-)