29 Writing Blunders from William Noble
Author William Noble is a fascinating man. He is the author or co-author of many books. His books for writers, each a main selection of the Writers Digest Book Club (now defunct), include “Shut Up!” He Explained; Make That Scene, Steal This Plot, and Conflict, Action, and Suspense (Elements of Fiction series). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in more than 40 magazines and newspapers. He has appeared on more than 80 TV and radio shows in connection with his writing, and now is a full-time writer based in his 150-year-old farmhouse in Cornwall, Vermont.
I bought William Noble’s Noble’s Book of Writing Blunders (Writers Digest 2006) based on the strength of it’s summary, which included good ideas like Don’t write for your eighth-grade teacher, Don’t complicate the obvious, Don’t add adverbs and adjectives to prettify your prose. Common sense reminders of what I should know but forget in the flurry of my own prose. After spending an hour with it, I decided the best ideas were listed on the dustcover, but that alone made the book worth it.
These sound good, don’t they:
Don’t Pacify Your Verb Voice
Don’t Repeat Without Relevance
Don’t be Afraid to Make Your Own Rules
All writers who haven’t made a name for themselves, and with that garnered the permission to write as they please, must follow enough rules that an agent will read their mss. I can add a few more to that list–Show not Tell, Beware the Gerund.
Inside the book, I found less-well-known blunders:
Don’t be a slave to the grammar guru. The only time to ignore grammar is in dialogue.
Don’t write the perfect paragraph. I didn’t have to read anything to know where this one headed
Don’t sprinkle the poet’s urge over the narrator’s product. I get that one too–and I’ve abused it. But then, I grew into my writing, decided to leave poetry for others.
Here’s what I decided: The book has good tips, but Noble takes a long time to make them. The best list of self-edit tips I’ve ever found is in the Marshall Plan. They’re brief, more like reminders than missives, and all very (very) important.
You can read the background on William Noble on his webpage. He seems a likeable, even charismatic man, with a long history of writing. I like that. I may even try one of his other books.
Here are the 29 mistakes William Noble believe you never ever–I mean ever–want to make as a writer. If you want more detail, buy his book and read the relevant chapter:
Don’t write for your eighth grade teacher
Don’t complicate the obvious
Don’t be a slave to a grammar guru
Don’t let that point of view waver
Don’t freeze and formalize language
Don’t use journalese or slangify words and phrases
Don’t overuse the thesaurus
Don’t underuse the dictionary
Don’t duck the punch in punctuation
Don’t wallow in a sentence straightjacket
Don’t write the perfect paragraph
Don’t get trick and jazzy with style
Don’t add adverbs and adjectives to prettify your prose
Don’t sprinkle the poet’s urge over the narrator’s product
Don’t let rhythm and sound turn sour
Don’t dabble with smoky words
Don’t expect the maid to clean up your mess
Don’t hug fad words without your fingers crossed
Don’t get cute with spellings and dialogue
Don’t wave away cliches and botched metaphors
Don’t pacify your very voice
Don’t hide parallelisms in the prose
Don’t ignore effective italics
Don’t repeat without relevance
Don’t assume author absolutism
Don’t wrap characters in the same grammar blanket
Don’t neglect grammar when mood and atmosphere change
Don’t underestimate the richness of the English language
Don’t be afraid to make your own rules
By the way, if you’re going to purchase this for your library, Barnes and Noble has it for $1.99 online (a/o 4/5/14).
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More writing tips from authors:
Ten Commandments from Richard Bausch
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman , the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. In her free time, she is editor of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer.
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