Common Writing ‘Mistakes’ Found in Entries to Our 7 Day Story Writing Challenges
We’ve compiled the following list using the feedback we’ve received from our judges. It’s important to note that you don’t have to let their opinions influence the way you write. However, if doing well in the competitive aspect of the challenges is important to you, it’s probably a good idea to check them out. Figure out if they apply to you and keep them in mind for future challenges.
(The tips in this post are not aimed at writers with years of experience and competition wins under their belts. Those writers have probably mastered these techniques and may have already moved on to effectively subverting these rules in their writing. These tips are designed for beginner writers or writers that haven’t made it onto a competition shortlist yet.)
If you’re looking for more tips for writing fiction, check out our blog post ‘Top Tips for Writing Fiction’.
Too Much Telling, Not Enough Showing
If you’re not sure what this means, check out this great article that explains the golden rule of writing, with plenty of examples.
Basically, telling is any time you tell the reader a piece of information outright and showing is when you allow the reader to work it out for themselves.
Telling: Richard was divorced.
Showing: Richard traced the impression on his finger where his wedding band used to live.
Telling: It was an old building.
Showing: Time had worn the brick edges away and the crumbling walls no longer held themselves upright against the relentless wind.
Here’s the thing: if you want to do well in a writing competition, you simply have to master ‘show, don’t tell’.
To find out if you’ve been doing too much telling and not enough showing, go through your story with a red pen. Underline every time you tell the reader something.A little red on the page is fine, but if your story is covered in red pen, it’s a problem! You’re clearly telling the reader far too much.
The goal of any story is to activate the reader's imagination and allow them to piece things together for themselves. If you tell more than you show, you miss out on the opportunity to make your writing enigmatic, mysterious, and exciting.
You also stop the reader from becoming immersed in your story. Instead, they’ll read the whole thing feeling detached and at a distance.
In order to keep your reader engaged, you want to foster curiosity and hook them to your story and not just spoon feed them information.
Too Much Plot
For these challenges, we receive a lot of entries that read much more like the synopsis of a novel than a short story.
Short stories usually range from 1,000 to 10,000 words and the length of the story should almost always determine the complexity of the plot.
A short short story should have a much simpler plot than a longer short story and not just the same plot told in fewer words.
When you come to plot your story for the challenges, it’s so important to begin with a simple plot. Don’t just come up with a complex plot and then just try to find ways to tell the story quicker.
Typically, a great story of 2,000 words (the limit for our 7-Day Story Writing Challenges) will have an incredibly simple plot. This allows the writer the space to include enough subtlety, detail, and literary flourishes to really impress the judges. It’s those interesting, clever, beautiful details that win a short story competition, not how ambitious the plot is.
If you really don’t like writing stories with simple plots, there are ways around this, but it can take an incredibly experienced writer to pull them off.
If you’re just starting out and you want to do well in the competition, we’d definitely advise that you keep it simple. You really don’t want to submit something that feels more like a synopsis than an actual story!
There’s no such thing as a plot that is too simple if the writing and the larger themes and ideas behind the story are interesting enough.
Let’s talk about genres for a minute. You might think that some genres (dystopian, historical, fantasy, science fiction) require complex plots, but actually there’s a way to write a simply plotted story no matter which genre you’re assigned.
It’s the same for exposition and worldbuilding. With a 2,000-word story, you’ll need to find ways to allude to a fully realised world without having to overflow with exposition. You need to learn how to cleverly hint at what’s going on in the wider world your story exists in. The reader doesn’t need it all perfectly laid out at the beginning of your story.
What is exposition? This article explains exposition really well and goes into detail about why too much too soon is a really bad idea!
The aim of the first part of your story shouldn’t be to tell the reader where they are and what is going on. Instead, it should make the reader question where they are and what is going on. As the story unfolds, you should drip feed the reader enough information that they start to work it out on their own. This applies to all genres, but especially genres that require worldbuilding.
The key to worldbuilding in fantasy, historical, science fiction and dystopian short stories is to keep 90% of it off the page. Work it all out so you know all the details, but don’t think you need to put all that worldbuilding right there in the story.
Interested in learning more about worldbuilding? The great Jerry Jenkins has a step-by-step guide and supplemental video to world building.
It can be really tempting to do a giant info dump of all your clever ideas right at the beginning of the story, but resist the temptation!
You want your world to feel real, right? Any story that is overflowing with exposition instantly has less credibility. Excessive exposition reminds the reader that they are reading a made up story full of made up people. Describing all the details of your fantastical world or dystopian hell-scape simply reminds the reader that you invented it all!
Newbie writers often spend far too much time explaining their world to their readers. This could be due to a lack of confidence.
Remember, you are the writer and this is your world. You’re letting your reader inhabit it for a time. This world existed before your reader came to visit and it will exist when your reader has finished the story and left the world behind. This world doesn’t simply exist for the purposes of this story. It needs to feel like it exists outside of the story, too!
Too much exposition and explanation will give the reader the impression that this place only exists for the purposes of the story they are reading.
So, if you are writing a dystopian short story, don’t begin by explaining how this new reality came about. If you do, the reader will instantly think this has all been created for the purposes of this story.
Instead, work all those details out off the page. Create the world in your own mind and then put the reader right into the middle of it.
Don’t tell us that water is rationed in your dystopian world, simply show a character fetching their supply and lamenting how long it has to last.
Why is water rationed in this dystopian future? If you want the reader to know why, that’s fine. But why do they need to know at the start of the story? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to reveal it later on?
You can even write an entire dystopian story without ever telling the reader the sequence of events that caused this hellish new reality. Many people unfamiliar with the genre will assume it’s a necessary part of the story. However, it’s totally up to you whether you reveal it at all.
Top tip: Judges love ambiguity!
Whichever genre you get assigned in the challenges, it’s imperative you leave enough ambiguity to make your story compelling and for it to stand out!
Remember, your story is not being judged in isolation, but against the other stories. If you want to make sure yours is the story that the judges can’t stop thinking about, add a little ambiguity!
Looking for inspiration? Why not check out our list of the 20 Greatest Short Story Writers of All Time!
A Clichéd First Paragraph
It’s not only excessive exposition that should be avoided at the beginning of a story, there are plenty of other things to watch out for too.
We do believe in creative freedom, however, there are several story openings that should definitely be avoided. They’re not wrong; they’re just a bit overused.
Yes, we know it’s your story, and you can begin however you wish. But with an infinite number of possibilities; why would you want to begin with a well-known cliché?
Don’t forget, the judges are going to be only too familiar with these clichés. Don’t start your story off on the wrong foot and waste an opportunity to make a good first impression!
Here are some overused story beginnings to avoid:Starting with a character waking up, regaining consciousness, looking at themselves in the mirror, or stepping out into the ‘cold night air’.
Describing the weather – try to avoid mentioning the weather at all in the first paragraph. About 80% of all the short stories submitted for writing contests will begin with a description of weather, so here’s a great opportunity to set yourself apart from the competition!
Telling the reader that today was just an ordinary day or that someone thought it was an ordinary day, but it turns out that it isn’t.
Introducing a character by telling the reader their name, occupation, place of residence, or running through their life story thus far.
When it comes to clichés in writing, it’s important to note that they don’t mean that your writing is bad or that you are a bad writer. They’ve only become clichés because they’ve been used so often. They’ve become overly familiar, so familiar that they’re jarring and take the reader out of the experience.
You want your story to be as immersive as possible and avoiding clichés will certainly help.
As well as cliché story openings, look out for other clichés in your writing. Are some of your characters and ideas a bit old hat? You can also be guilty of using tired and overused phrases in your writing, too. Check out this article on 681 Cliché Phrases to Avoid in Your Writing.
Writer’s Digest have a good article for advice on How to Avoid Clichés.
Our number one tip for how to open a short story? Begin as close to the end of the story as you can. If you’re not sure if you’ve achieved this, look at it again. Try cutting out the first paragraph. You’ll be surprised how often this makes your story stronger!
Using Small Talk in Dialogue and Stories That are Dialogue-Heavy
Newbie writers often find comfort in writing dialogue. It can seem like the easy part because, hey, we all know how to speak, right?
Actually, writing good dialogue is one of the hardest parts of writing fiction. Firstly, the rule of thumb is that unless it moves the action forward or reveals something crucial about a character, then it shouldn’t even be there. Every word of it must serve a purpose. Any piece of dialogue that does not serve an incredibly important purpose should be removed in the edit.Writing a story that’s predominantly dialogue might feel easier while you’re writing it, but trying to win a writing competition with this kind of story is so difficult.
If you’re not the most experienced writer (and doing well in the competition is important to you), we suggest reading this article that lays out the conventions of writing dialogue. Follow the advice therein and you’ll master the art of good dialogue. Once you’ve gotten that down, then you can start to experiment.
With writing, you need to learn the rules before you can break them.
Check out our article on ‘How to Write Good Dialogue’ for more tips!
Failure to Edit Ruthlessly
It’s easy to think that writing is like painting. You begin with a blank canvas, and you keep adding to it until you create something beautiful, right?
Actually, writing is much more like sculpting, and the first draft is simply creating your block of clay. It’s in the edit where the magic actually happens.
Every first draft has a winning story hidden within, but you need to learn how to chip away at your story to reveal it.
Of course, it’s okay and often necessary to add things to your story while editing, but it’s what you take away that will make all the difference.
A big mistake with writing is to think: more is more. Not so! You have to learn how to cut away at your story ruthlessly and remove absolutely everything that isn’t serving a purpose.
Go through your story line by line, word by word. Ask yourself:
What is this line/word doing?
Is it earning its keep?
Will my story still work without it?
Will my story be streamlined by its removal?
Will my story be simpler and more impactful without it?
If it goes, will there be more mystery and ambiguity?
Here are a couple of great articles with advice on the editing process: Eight Things to Cut or Reconsider When Editing Fiction and 43 Words You Should Cut from Your Writing Immediately. If you want to get better at editing, you should consider writing drabbles or microfiction. When you try to write stories that are only 100 (or a couple of hundred) words in length, you start to see how important it is to make sure every word is earning its keep. With short fiction, you have a little more leeway, but it’s still important to edit ruthlessly.In a contest like our 7-Day Story Writing Challenges, it can be difficult to set aside enough time for editing. That’s another reason why we recommend a simple plot. Get that first draft done and then spend as much time as you can chipping away at it!
Final Advice:
Research your genre if it’s unfamiliar to you.
If the more research you do, the more you dislike the genre or the more confused you become… Stop researching! Find the simplest definition of your genre. For example:
Romance: a story about romantic love between two people.Thriller: a story that gives readers a heightened feeling of suspense, excitement, or anxiety.
Horror: a story which is intended to frighten, scare or disgust.
Crime: a story that centres on a criminal act.
Then write any kind of story you want, as long as it still fits that broad definition.Begin by choosing a simple plot that fits the theme.
Try to start the story as close to the end as possible.
Come up with an interesting and unique first paragraph that avoids all the well known clichés. Keep the reader guessing and drip feed clues about what is going on.
Write in your own style. Don’t try to copy the most cliché writing style of your assigned genre. You’ll end up with an accidental parody.
Bend the genre to suit you, the writer. Don’t try to become a completely different writer each challenge. Keep your voice!
Use dialogue only where necessary.
Show, don’t tell.
Finish the story with plenty of time for editing.
Edit, edit, edit. Edit ruthlessly. Remove anything that isn’t serving a function. If you love part of your story, but it isn’t doing anything important, extract it from the document and save it for later. Kill your darlings!
Want to take these tips and try your luck with other writing competitions? Check out our ‘Big List of International Writing Competitions!’
MORE FROM GLOBE SOUP . . .
Globe Soup Writing Competitions
Short Stories to Read Online Now!
The Definitive List of Short Story Competitions
Show, Don’t Tell: A Guide With Examples