Just by the title, this chapter seems pretty brutal. I don't intend it to offend people or make them feel bad. The reason I feel the need to write this chapter is to increase awareness. When most of you start out writing, you start out writing a certain way. After becoming comfortable writing that way, you may continue to write in this manner for no other reason than that it has become comfortable for you to do so. However, you may not know why you do it, and you may not realize the "negative connotations" you may receive for choosing your narrative.

To be clear, ignoring the title, these examples are not "weak" writing in and of themselves. They are simply one of many different forms of writing, and great authors can use them to great effect... so can you. However, you may not be aware that this kind of stuff is the stuff every new author chooses, or that by sticking to these methods, you're kind of choosing to stick to the lowest common denominator.

I also speak in generalities here. There are plenty of exceptions. You may not start out writing like this, and you may write like this and do it fabulously, subverting the very idea that it can be considered a weakness. However, more often than not, this is used as a crutch, and while I'm not saying you shouldn't use these examples, it'd be a good idea if you were aware that they're a crutch, so that you can work towards using them in other ways. What am I talking about here? I'm talking about things like:

The first two entries in this post are perhaps the least fair. Telling someone not to write in first person is absolutely ridiculous. They're only three points of view, two if you rule out the limitedly useful 2nd person. If we cut out 1st, then everything will be third! Obviously, that's not what I'm trying to get at here.

I use this example because it makes the point the best. When I call something weak writing, I'm not necessarily calling it "bad" writing. The majority of books written are written in first person, and to go so far as to call it "weak" undermines way too many works of fiction. Therefore, I want you to keep it in perspective here. When I call first person weak, I'm talking about the state of new authors who choose to use it.

If you just started writing and you're under 20, you're almost certainly starting by writing in first person. It's not difficult to wonder why. It's way easier to insert yourself into a character than to create a living, breathing person objectively through the camera lens of third person. You can give them personality, spirit, and history. Plus, let's face it, most young writers are more used to writing with I.

It is one of the first things you're taught, and there are no shortage of essays, cover letters, and opinion pieces where you put yourself in the first person to explain your opinion. When you tell stories to your friends, you always refer to yourself as I. It's rarer to describe someone else than it is to describe yourself.

Plus, this by no means leads to a bad story. Being in that first person view gives you a front row seat into someone's mind. You see the world through their eyes... or at least you see it through the eyes the narrator wants to show you.

However, writing in first person IS the go to for new writers... and thus it gets a bad wrap as being weaker writing. After all, first person limits you in the sense that you can't do multiple character's PoV at once easily. You either have to label them via chapter, or label them via headline... and that also looks weak when you do it. It tends to be received as the easy way out.

So am I telling you to not write in first person? No... I'm telling you the same thing I've said in every chapter up until this point. You should have a reason for the PoV you're telling the story in. First person only becomes weak writing when it's told in a story that would be better off third, or told by person who picked it because it was easier.

If you ever find yourself picking a form of writing "because it's easier"... feel good, because you just found one of your weaknesses... and what you should do is spend a while writing exactly the harder form so you can get better at it. Once you can use each form equally, then you can start deciding why you feel this story is best told in first and this other story is best told in third. For some advice on that, go back to my chapter on describing PoVs.

Perhaps even less fair than first person, is to talk about present tense. You can only write in present or past. But as I said before, I'm not demanding you write everything in the past tense. Present tense is NOT bad writing. Basically all the points I just made above you can make again.

You should not be picking present tense because it's easier. In most cases, poorly written present tense is harder for your readers to read than poorly written past tense. This lead me for a time to pretty much say no on writing in present. I've opened up and learned the error of my ways, but I'll still push people to try to work with past, especially if they are not good at it. Being not good at present tense is crippling to the writing. Being not good at past can still make a passable story.

However, at the end of it, it's the reason you choose one or the other that matters. Even if you don't consciously pick the reason, if you feel you have a strong one then you're fine. If you think back and realize that the reason you picked present tense was because you felt it was easier to write than past tense... well, you know what to do.

Faulkner once criticized Hemingway by saying "He has never been known to use a word that might send the reader to a dictionary." Hemingway replied: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

There is a thought among many new writers that they need to concentrate on word variety. Advice this very book has given suggest you need to find "stronger verbs", removing the 'is', 'are', and adverbs in order to describe the actions occurring in the story.

However, if you get the themes of this book, taking things too far tends to go disastrously wrong. Personally, I don't open a thesaurus. You may not believe this, but my verbose vocabulary is all mine. I was surprised to find there are no shortage of other authors who feel the same way. Opening a thesaurus is not the way you want to be writing.

There is the more obvious issue. Adding synonyms that you don't know the definition of clearly can lead to those synonyms being used wrong. Words that don't quite fit in the sentences you used them in can lead to some very awkward writing. Well and good are synonyms, yet 'I feel good' is considered bad English. That gets compounded the more desperate you are for another word.

As I mentioned in the dialogue tags chapter, there is no reason your writing needs to be a smorgasbord of words. You shouldn't need to send someone running for a dictionary. In fact, if we're arguing readability and enjoyment (as opposed to academic merit), you'd typically want to avoid big words that make it hard for your audience to follow.

Yet, every once in a while, I stumble into a book that was clearly written with someone hovering over a thesaurus. Quit doing that! It's weak writing!

"But that's how I learn new words! That's how I become a better writer!"

To that, I have two responses. One... I don't think "reading a thesaurus" really increases someone's vocabulary in the long run. I think the easiest way to increase your vocab would be to read more. Read more books, read harder books. That will increase your vocabulary more thoroughly than trying to force feed it to yourself.

The second response is that even if this is THE way you have to help you increase your vocab... you don't have to include it in your writing. Just because you looked up a bigger word, doesn't mean you need to use that bigger word. You don't have to show that to other people. If your excuse is it's for learning... then why does it show up in published work?

Still, you should try reading more to increase your vocabulary. The thing you get by reading bigger words that you don't get by looking up bigger words is context. You need that context to know when it's appropriate to use that word.

I also should add that I am not telling you to never use a thesaurus. If you just can't think of the word and it's at the tip of your tongue and you know the word means "this" then feel free to use that thesaurus so that you can get the word. The difference being that you already know the word, and you're trying to remember it, rather than you're using another word, but you want a bigger one.

You know you better than you know anyone else. This makes it really easy to create characters that are superimposed with your own personality. This is why 9/10 starting books involve someone in high school or middle school, because most of you started writing this story (or currently are writing this story) when you were in high school or middle school. Maybe a few wait until college, but the point is, you're not writing your story from the point of view of a 70 year old. There are few stories that are written from the PoV of a 70 year old. This isn't because 70 year olds aren't interesting, but because most people aren't 70 year olds when they're writing... and even if they are, they're basing their "lust" for writing on how they felt 50 years ago.

But isn't that a shame? I can pick out a billion stories about a high school girl who wants to be a writer when they grow up who has boy troubles... because most of you are high school girls who want to be writers when you grow up who occasionally experience (or at least watch others experience) boy troubles. But wouldn't a story with a wish-fulfillment fantasy where instead of a young fit 20 year old who gets everything he wants (power, riches, women)... instead we see an old man with nothing to live for receive the same? No... usually these stories would have him turn back to the age of 20, using some kind reincarnation or time travel shenanigans.

The point I'm making is people write what they're comfortable writing, and what they're comfortable writing tends to be the same crap everyone else writes. It springs up from a lack of creativity, innovation, and skill... and it infects every art and science out there. Once again, I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, and like I've said before, you can infuse a clichéd story with innovation and make it interesting.... But you have to do that. The story, in itself, just isn't that interesting. Another white girl meeting another bad boy on her first day of school is not very interesting. It's what you do differently that keeps your audience. And once again, your audience may want the cliché. There is a reason werewolf fan fic gets popular, some people want to read that, but you go to do more.

There is a bit of a cheat here. If YOU are a minority, then you can get away with writing you. If you're story is complex and diverse, then you can end up writing a story about you that is also complex and diverse. This can take the more obvious run, creating a biopic of your experiences, and this can take a less direct run, creating characters that don't necessarily show up in every story ever written. Fair or not... if you're in the white, female, high school-college lineup, writer enthusiastic demographic, you're in a majority... and when you write you, you write the same crap everyone else writes.

I'm not saying don't do it... I'm saying be aware you're doing it, and the potential implications on how your story is perceived as a result.

Sticking to the lowest common denominator is exactly that. You're sticking to the weakest form of writing. A 1st person story written in the present tense with randomly strewn vocabulary words about a girl in high school who is starting her first day of school is about the most clichéd story you could write. However, you can go one step farther by adding it all into the first chapter.

This is a bit of repetition, although I don't feel too bad since I think a lot of people just read the chapters that sound good, so repeating myself will help catch the people who might have missed a point I thought was worth making. In this case, the point was in the chapter on Filler Introduction Chapters. These are chapters that don't really start the story, but instead perform an info dump on the reader.

This point focuses on a particular aspect of the Filler Introduction Chapter, which is the pathological need to dump every detail you can in that first chapter. Every character needs to be introduced. You need to know what the main character looks like, who her parents are, their careers, the list goes on... It's a savage attempt to completely set the story up by the first chapter. Part of this is just a consequence of people submitting books online and having only one chapter to "hook" a reader... but most of it just comes from weak writing.

So don't do that thing I just said you shouldn't do. Space out your story. Unveil characters, descriptions, and events gradually and naturally. Make your story count and give every chapter something new. While I won't guarantee you this will lead you to a "better" story, I do guarantee it will lead you to a "stronger" story.

That might confuse some of you. This entire chapter has focused on "weak" versus "strong", whereas I'm not talking about "good" or "bad". What's the difference? In the context of this chapter, weak and strong are the scaffolding of your story. Your story is built on its PoV, its tense, its wordchoice, its setup, and its themes. The better you build your scaffold, the better foundation you have to rest your story on. Your story can be good, or it can be garbage, but that doesn't matter if you put it on weak scaffolding. That scaffolding could crumble, and no matter how good your story is, it can fall apart.

Sometimes, the difference between a weak foundation, and a strong one, is simply knowing why you make the choices you make. Give yourself a reason for writing things the way you write. It's not too difficult, and having a strong scaffold to put up your story will be more important the bigger your story gets. You don't want a five story skyscraper built on sand, and you don't want your story built on a weak foundation. Build it strong, and you'll help any story stand on its own.

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