Monday, March 25, 2013

8 Common Writing Mistakes

…and this has what to do with #dcmooc? Strike through 'creative' or read it small 'c' to mean any and all writing as acts of creation. Clearer now? If not, then very simply: the advice here holds for all writing. If it didn't then it would not be very good "creative writing" advice, would it? 
common creative writing mistakes
We all make mistakes in our writing. The most common mistake is the typo–a missing word, an extra punctuation mark, a misspelling, or some other minor error that is an oversight rather than a reflection of the writer’s skills. 
A more serious kind of mistake is a deep flaw in the writing....grave mistakes that are often found in various forms of creative writing. 
I see most mistakes as an opportunity to either learn something new or to make an improvement to a piece of writing. While mistakes can certainly be frustrating and rewriting to weed out mistakes can be laborious, each fixed mistake is a step toward a more polished piece of writing, and every time you resolve a problem in your writing, you become a better writer.
Read on to learn more about the 8 Common Creative Writing Mistakes elaborated on in this piece. They are as follows:

1. Dull Beginnings
2. Unnecessary descriptions and details
3. Verbiage (excerpt included: this one is a particular bête noire
Despite popular belief, verbiage is not a synonym for words or text. It specifically means an “overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness” (source). Verbiage is not a good thing. It means you’re using too many words and the work could be more concise....Don’t spend an entire paragraph saying something that could be said in a single sentence. You’ll put your readers to sleep!
4. Redundancy and stating the obvious
5. Unnecessary or ineffective repetition
6. Failure to use or over-dependency on spelling & grammar check
7. Filler words and phrases
8. Lackluster ending 

(Take note: these can infest any form of writing ~ why should we be satisfied let academic, reporting, blog posts, articles in popular or niche mags, how-to or any kind of writing be bad reads? I won't get into how much the expression, "creative non-fiction" pisses me off)

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