Abbie Emmons believes your story matters. She’s here to make your author dreams come true.
If you want your readers to keep turning pages instead of using them for origami, listen up. Here are her top pet peeves you should avoid at all costs when writing.
First is lack of character development. Especially when the main character – the protagonist, the one we’re supposed to be rooting for – has no internal conflict, no deep-seated desire for anything, no goal, no fear that’s holding them back.
“If I start reading a book and the main character falls into this category, where they just do not have any sort of development,” Abbie rants, “I cannot understand who they are, what they want, what they’re afraid of, what their misbelief or fatal flaw is? I lose interest so quickly. I do not care. Nothing matters to me. I can’t see how it matters to the character; therefore, it does not matter to me.”
Okay, so, invent vivid characters or Abbie will toss your book like a frisbee into the nearest dumpster. Got it.
And that segues beautifully into Abbie’s second biggest pet peeve: a flawless protagonist. This is popular amongst the “strong female character” trope. She’s got no flaws, no faults, and that’s what makes her strong, right?
Cue the eye roll. It’s just not relatable.
Easiest way to fix this? Give ’em some good ole internal conflict; a desire, fear, or misbelief.
Next is the infamous “I’m not like the other girls.” Every girl in every book ever has pretty much said that. If she’s really not like other girls, stop saying it and show the readers that that’s the case.
What else? Fake tension. Otherwise known as fake-outs of injuries, deaths, breakups, or anything else where the writer wanted to add conflict but without committing to it.
Like the classic cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, where you think the characters are about to get into a car accident and then the first line of the next chapter’s all, “Sike! Jake swerved at the last second – disaster avoided – everyone’s gonna be fine!”
If you do stuff like that, this is Abbie cocking her gun. (You can leave now.)
Another no-no? Infodumping. “I cannot even tell you how many books I’ve DNF’d for this reason,” Abbie says.
“I stopped reading them because I had such a headache just trying to orient myself in this story. I didn’t even wanna meet the characters at this point. It’s just like, ‘Please stop. I need a break from this,'” she adds.
The way to fix this, if you find yourself dumping all your world building, at once, especially in the beginning – please don’t do that – is to sprinkle it in as you go. To broaden your readers’ horizons as the protagonist broadens theirs.
Abbie also hates characters who’re a punching bag for the plot. Passive characters. Helpless. Letting everything happen to them. The plot jabs ’em repeatedly and they simply react without ever really making any active decisions to change things or to be a main character in their own life.
So what other pebbles are in Abbie’s shoe? Complicated words and pretentious, flowery prose. Nobody’s trying to set your book down to Google what something means every third page. Knock it off. Jerk.
Eager to have Abbie in your literary corner?
She offers a Scrivener Masterclass – your ultimate guide to novel-writing triumph – for $47; a bundle of 7 Custom Scrivener Themes for $7; an Edit Your Book Like a Pro Masterclass – covering revisions, line edits, beta readers, and beyond – for $47; a How to Write a Bestselling Book Blurb Masterclass at $149; plus mentoring and support through Patreon, Discord, and a private Facebook Group – all for $15 a month.
If I ever graduate from writing “u up?” texts and that’s-what-she-said jokes, I’ll definitely be a customer.