What's Your Writing Flaw?

[powerplantanimations]

Bringing this up because two writing sessions in a row, I realized I have a habit of letting scenes linger on. Like a character will discuss their emotions and I kinda... overdo it. I remember an old co-writer pointing this out two years ago. He was like "Yeah, you need to cut that down".

I also overthink things? My biggest fear is inconsistencies so my brain makes simple scenes SUPER COMPLICATED. When in actuality, I just needed to take a deep breath and delete like... one scene or one line lmao.

What about you guys?

[Lucky_Foot]

I can definitely relate to that feeling! It's easy to get caught up in the moment when writing and forget about the bigger picture. But the key is to stay focused on your character's motivations and make sure every scene is moving the story forward.

One thing that's helped me is to take breaks throughout the writing process to step back and reassess. It's amazing how a little bit of distance can give you a fresh perspective and help you see where you might be overdoing things or getting too bogged down in details.

And don't worry too much about inconsistencies - they happen to the best of us! The important thing is to catch them early and make adjustments as needed. And remember, sometimes less is more - a simple scene can be just as powerful as a complicated one.

[darthmongoose]

I ramble in prose...a LOT, and it's a major reason I'm better at comics, where my short attention span, and unwillingness to draw two people standing around talking for too many pages effectively makes me have to cut down all the dialogue by about half.

I'm uncomfortable writing serious and sentimental scenes, and have to fight my strong urge to turn everything into a flippant joke. It's a defence mechanism; people can't laugh at you if you're deliberately being a clown and making fun of yourself. It's something I've been working on a lot in recent years.

I don't think I'm great at writing natural-sounding dialogue. If somebody was ever adapting my work for a show, I feel like I'd tell the writers, "please, somebody who can talk like a normal human rewrite the dialogue. This probably all sounds awful spoken aloud"

And finally... I can never just do something simple with a strong elevator pitch and nice, big tropes that people like. I always overcomplicate and over-engineer everything!

[Surihpas]

How much time to do you have? lol.

No but to keep things short I'd say I definitely also tend to drag things out. I'm also not great at visual descriptions. Like... it's about a thousand times easier for me to come up with what characters say than what they do. Which often makes me feel like my scenes are too bare or boring.

[cherrystark]

Self-doubt. I know that's a common thing to say, but doubt definitely lingers in the back of my mind a lot.

I noticed recently that I have no sense of timing when it comes to my scenes. If it's a solid sequence, everything flows together and is fine. But since my mind thinks in cut scenes, it becomes nonsensical when I read it again. Then I start doubting myself and the quality of my work, it becomes a vicious cycle.

[Lensing]

I do love descriptions of settings, I generally like to descibe everything to detailed.
When I let the camera zoom in into the apartment of someone I want the reader to
smeel the croissants of the nearby bakery. And this is something which probably
nobody wants to read

The luxury bedroom was a sight to behold. The room was lit by warm, golden glow emanating from the luxurious chandelier above.
The intricate shadows etched into the deep burgundly walls, adorned with delicate gold patterns, danced in the light.
The floor was covered in plush, soft carpet, and large french windows overlooked the twinkling city lights below.

The centerpiece of the room was a grand four-poster bed, draped in rich velvet curtains of the same color as the walls.
The bed was adorned with plush pillows, upholstered in crisp whit sheets...

[faisalhussein394]

Interesting, my biggest writing flaw is exposition and worldbuilding. About 65% of my prologue is filled with worldbuilding, history, and lore.

Now the 1st chapter is currently in a backstory state with a little pinch of expositions.

I could not control myself when I have the opportunity to make expositions, I really want readers to know about the world my characters are living in, especially its origin, and history.

[Hoku_1]

This is my problem I can’t come up words to make the scene more descriptive but I think as I write my novel my writing is improving and I tend to search some descriptive words online to help me.

[cherrystark]

I'm actually okay with this kind of "extra" detail. There is a point where it gets to be too much, for sure. But I'd prefer room description over clothing descriptions. Like those stories where they include an "example" image of the MC's outfit and then describe it in the story.

[Hoku_1]

I try to write like light novelist putting more dialogue in there since I have no problem coming up with that. Mostly sometimes it gets hard for not knowing how I could use words to describe something. Like I know how the scene should be but I suck at describing it. Though today the chapter that I posted is descriptive since I’m trying to learn and make writing better.

[Lensing]

That´s good to know, thank you.
I only do that in establishing scenes and then don´t do it for the rest of the chapter.
I only describe clothes vaguely when I do it at all and think that´s better for the reader
to imagine. Sometimes some details about clothes are important imo, i.e. when there is
a sleazy person who has a tacky style with mismatching colors. But it doesn´t have
to be too detailed.

I like to describe things like how a kiss feels like but I think that´s something very poetic
and also nice to read when it´s well done

[powerplantanimations]

OOF yeah I can relate with the human dialogue thingy. THAT took me FOREVER to get that down especially since I barely go out. The funny thing is, my MOM is the person who fixed this problem.

She watches reality shows NON-STOP and most of them devolve into social experiments. I was thinking about making a thread like this, and 90 Day Fiance is the one that I was going to recommend people because you get some of the craziest lines. Same with Housewives. I WANNA share my favorite Housewives clip, but what the lady said was just so messed-up you have to be REAL ANGRY to come up with something like that.

Impractical Jokers is another good one too where these four people compete to embarrass each other in public. The people in the background are the REAL stars. Just seeing their reactions and how they differ. Some turn out to be angry (no surprise there), but then you get some of the biggest curveballs ever. This one guy wouldn't stop smiling for example after being pranked, but then he threatened to call the cops and flipped to the point where producers had a difficult time explaining it was a joke. It's just a gold mine lol.

[marnieed92]

Dialogue is one flaw. I try to make it sound natural but it doesn’t always sound that way, and most of my chapters either have too much dialogue or hardly any

Another thing is describing stuff like places, people, or anything else. I can picture what they look like in my mind but when it comes to writing it down I struggle with it a lot :’) and probably the overuse of pronouns in sentences.

[powerplantanimations]

Yeah I have a relative who's trying to get down visual descriptions too. I DO recommend music though. That helped me paint the scene (although, whenever I recommend this, I tell people not to do orchestra or anime music).

@faisalhussein394 I will say exposition isn't a bad thing. Araki does it really well and he gets really wordy. Even in the middle of battles... but only because he always finds absurd ways to drop it.

[cherrystark]

I only describe clothes vaguely when I do it at all and think that´s better for the readerto imagine. Sometimes some details about clothes are important imo, i.e. when there isa sleazy person who has a tacky style with mismatching colors. But it doesn´t have to be too detailed.

For me, clothes give insight into the character. I "default" to having all my characters wearing jeans and a t-shirt. That's a "basic" outfit today. I don't need to go into more detail because it's safe to assume people are also wearing things like underwear and shoes (though you have to question in romances )

Unless the characters are complaining about their impractical footwear or something like that. I don't think it's important. But like you said, if they're wearing something completely off the wall that makes them stand out, tell me about it. I want to see their outfit in my head.

[harlan]

Too many sentences that are too long, with multiple clauses and commas like they're going out of style and I have to use them all up now! Writing in a (hopefully) more terse voice for Ef Noir is a constant challenge.

I might overdo descriptions a little because of my love of history. Why yes, this dialogue does have to take place in a roman era public restroom complete with water buckets with sponges on sticks for wiping after defecation.

[cherrystark]

Dialogue is one flaw. I try to make it sound natural but it doesn’t always sound that way, and most of my chapters either have too much dialogue or hardly any

Dialogue can definitely be a place where doubt creeps in. I feel safe in assuming that you know exactly what each of your characters is supposed to sound like in your head. Write what's natural to them. If it means a lot of "yeah... umm... uh..." that's fine. If you listen to human speech a lot of speech is nonsensical. We invent different slang and shorthand to fit into our daily lives. So "realistic" and "natural" sounding dialogue might not always sound natural and realistic. But it could be perfectly natural for the character.

*Carl Reiner was probably the best writer at writing natural sounding dialogue. He would listen to each actor's natural speech pattern and then write their dialogue to be natural to them.

[abigaillmartin]

Probably repeating words in the same sentence and being too wordy.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Write what's natural to them. If it means a lot of "yeah... umm... uh..." that's fine. If you listen to human speech a lot of speech is nonsensical. We invent different slang and shorthand to fit into our daily lives. So "realistic" and "natural" sounding dialogue might not always sound natural and realistic. But it could be perfectly natural for the character.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, and it's always made me lowkey self-conscious as a writer that I'm the only person I know who does this. ^^;

Like, I use a lot of ellipses and 'um' and 'oh' and 'like' all the time, because...I mean, that's how normal people tend to sound when they talk. For everyone in a book to "Say exactly what they mean in clear efficient words. Period." is really weird and immersion-breaking to me...it's a constant reminder that I am, in fact, Reading a Novel, instead of simply experiencing a story.

And I kinda think maybe a lot of writers would struggle less with dialogue if they allowed themselves to let characters sound like people, instead of always saying something "quotation-worthy". There's a time and a place for the zingers and the poetry; when you make characters talk like that all the time they just sound artificial.

Anyway, my own biggest writing flaw is (fittingly) making characters talk too much. ^^; I love dialogue; I love to just sit and watch characters converse in my head and write everything down. I don't even mind large group discussions, especially when the characters know each other fairly well and everything flows naturally.
Unfortunately, the longer I go on letting them talk, the further they tend to go off topic. ⚆u⚆; Every time I set up a long conversational scene, I look forward to it, but the work of constructing it is usually weeks of revising and re-revising to get rid of cute, fun lines that don't actually make sense, or deliver the wrong message about the character, or take the convo in the wrong direction, etc.
And it's very painful...to the point where sometimes I weaken and just leave in a line I really like even if it's not particularly "right" for the scene. It's fine...no one will know......

*Carl Reiner was probably the best writer at writing natural sounding dialogue. He would listen to each actor's natural speech pattern and then write their dialogue to be natural to them.

Whaaaa, is that true?? I feel like it would explain a lot about why I enjoy his TV writing so much. ^^
Tbh I find myself doing the same thing with my voice actors...more and more often I imagine their voices when I write instead of the "anime dub" voices I usually use, and tailor their lines accordingly~

[cherrystark]

Whaaaa, is that true?? I feel like it would explain a lot about why I enjoy his TV writing so much. ^^Tbh I find myself doing the same thing with my voice actors...more and more often I imagine their voices when I write instead of the "anime dub" voices I usually use, and tailor their lines accordingly

Yeah! I heard it on a documentary or a video commentary about the Dick Van Dyke show. The actors were all pros so he trusted a lot of their choices. I remember that the actor who played Buddy had a very particular way of speaking so he learned how to write to how the actor spoke.

Even if you didn't know his writing style, if you listen, all of the dialogue sounds "normal". Like you could easily perform the script in the 21st century and not tell the difference. Compared to other shows of the era, they sound very... theatrical? They sound very staged and phony