Shewanda Pugh's Blog: The Wandering Mind of a Romance Writer - Posts Tagged "writing-mistakes"

I once made the worst writer's mistake known to man. Far worse than a simple grammatical error, head hop, or issue of formatting--I committed the writer's cardinal sin.

I was boring.

For some writers, there are other, more egregious errors--but for the reader, this is simply unforgivable. Nothing equates it, except perhaps sheer goobledygook on a page.

Thankfully, my instance was eons ago, in a graduate level wirting course headed by Brenda Serotte, author of "The Fortune Teller's Kiss. For those of you who have ever had the unequivocal pleasure of meeting the Bronx diva, her belligerent scrolling of "BORING" across the front of my paper in firey red will come as no surprise. Since then, I've implemented a a rather effective checklist to ensure that I never bore the melanin off a reader again.

1. Does this scene move the story towards its eventual goal or climax?
2. Could this scene stand alone as an interesting read?
3. Does something happen at the end of every chapter, upon which the reader is forced to think "I need to see what happens next?"
4. Are my characters behaving naturally? Am I driving them or are they driving me? Ideally, I prefer to keep a loose goal in mind and allow the characters to surprise me with the story.
And finally, the most important question of all:
5. Am I bored yet? Because if I'm bored, then the reader has already closed the book.