How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

by Howard Mittelmark

We do not presume to tell you how or what to write. We are merely telling you the things that editors are too busy rejecting your novel to tell you themselves,

If your reader doesn’t care what happens next—it doesn’t.

Know what the chase is, and cut to it. Do not write hundreds of pages without knowing what story you really want to tell.

The central dilemma of a novel should be important enough to change someone’s life forever.

words like “amazing” and “unbelievable” can be used to obscure any experience, event, or setting

“Whose real name is Joseph Mengele—ring a bell? He escaped to Paraguay after the fall of Berlin, got radical plastic surgery, and began life again as Josephine Womengele.

Protagonists should only be as nice as everyday people are in real life. Making them nicer than the average reader will earn the reader’s loathing, or make her laugh in disbelief.

Unless somebody actually figures into your plot, we do not need to meet the person. Like a small business, a novel cannot afford to carry dead weight, even if it is a close family member.

In a movie, when Scarlett Johansson appears, and the male lead instantly falls for her, we see why. In a novel, we see the same typeface we’ve been seeing all along.

There are no excuses for using words you yourself do not know.

Beginning in the late seventies and early eighties, writers like Stephen King and Ann Beattie developed writing styles that were often referred to as Kmart Realism.

you might protest, “And that’s how real people speak.” True, but those very same people will not sit still to read it.

While some people will share their latest therapeutic breakthrough with strangers at the drop of a hat, it is because they are universally shunned, and strangers are the only ones they have to talk to.