In a post on Writers Helping Writers, Suzy Vadori identifies four things that might be boring your readers and offers advice for fixing them. “I can guarantee that the idea for your book is interesting, and that there are readers in the world that will agree with you,” she says. “But if those beautiful ideas in your mind are falling flat on your pages, your reader will get bored.”
Vadori recommends checking your writing for these problems:
- Using Writing Clichés. “Writing Clichés are situations that are so overused they will be a snore for your readers, and believe it or not, can mark your writing as amateur,” Vadori says. These clichés include starting a scene with a character waking up, ending a scene with a character falling asleep, or using a mirror to describe a character. The easiest way to fix these clichés is to cut them.
- Draining the Well Dry. While you need to know how your character spends her day, your reader doesn’t. “Unless this minutia directly relates to the message you’re trying to convey with your book, skip it,” Vadori writes. “We probably don’t need to watch your character brush their teeth.”
- Writing Exhaustive Dialogue. Writers are told to copy IRL conversation to make their dialogue sound more natural, but this often results in dead spots. Cut extraneous language, such as introductions, small talk, and repetitions. “Dialogue in books doesn’t have to accurately reflect how we speak in real life, unless you’re ironically trying to show how pedantic it can be,” Vadori says. “In most books, aim for dialogue that sparkles a little brighter than the mundane conversations people have.”
- Not Enough Exciting, Showing Details in Your Scenes. Now that you’ve cut the words that are wasting space, spice up your writing with sensory language and specific details. “Drawing out important moments by sharing a specific showing detail or two will always draw readers in, making your story come to life for them,” Vadori writes.
