WHAT ARE A WRITER'S SEVEN DEADLIEST SINS?
D.L. Wilson, Panel Master, with Neal Baer, Lisa Gardner, David Hewson, M.J. Rose, and John Sandford
• Laziness - we are all prone to it. Don't go off of what you've already done, dig deep for new, interesting ideas.
• Good Student - it's one thing to study and do your research for a great, stable book, it's something completely different to just regurgitate facts. Your primary job is to entertain the reader, not show the facts. This can also bog down your pace, so be cautious of too many facts that make people snooze or flip ahead, loosing impact of what your book can provide readers.
• Emotionality - don't get involved with people in the business. No one will take care of you at the end of the day, you need to take care of yourself.
• Marching down your outline - creating an outline is a great tool for covering all of your bases, but following an outline to the 't' can take away life from your book. Don't ignore that fabric of life
• Gender hangups - no stereotypical male or female characters.
• Write your story - don't add filler just to get to a certain word count, it will show in the final product.
• Just write!
• Writing is simple - don't over complicate. Enable yourself to be artistic and creative.
• READ! Not reading can stunt your growth as a writer. You gain new ideas, vocabulary and creativity by reading other's works.
• While influence is great, imitation is bad.
• Take yourself out for a reward when you finish a novel, don't wait for others to reward you.
My Take - See, I told you there were more than 7! I'm no writer, but they all make perfect sense, and I'm sure there would have been more if the hour time slot was longer. Being 'sinful' in this case can be the difference between a book that succeeds and one that falls flat.
Have you been guilty of one (or more) of these sins? How do you combat these dark urges? What are we missing?
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment