Five Newbie Writer’s Mistakes to Avoid when Writing Your First Novel

If you are new to writing, specifically novel writing, you might be making some of the very common mistakes that newbie writers make. However, we will help you identify some of the common issues so that you might be able to start digging in and avoiding them when you write your draft or fix them in revision later. 

And don’t worry – all of these mistakes are fixable. 

Info-Dumping

The first mistake that many aspiring novelists make is the mistake of info-dumping, which refers to the aspect of cramming tons of backstory and additional information into your novel – especially in the opening chapter of the novel. 

If you start out your opening page with your main character musing over an incident for three paragraphs, you will bore the readers. However, the same is true of world-building. Initially, your readers don’t have to know the mechanics of everything about the world where your story takes place and how everything works in the world. 

You can include the details by sprinkling them here and there in your plot throughout the many scenes, chapters, and pages. You can provide much-needed insight to the readers through interesting character interactions and scenes. 

Detailing Everything

This mistake is quite similar to the one that we mentioned earlier. However, when we say “detailing everything,” what we essentially mean is to give a play-by-play of everything that happens to the characters or what the characters do.

The readers don’t necessarily need to read or experience the details to enjoy the novel. Detailing everything includes explaining how the character wakes up, chooses an outfit, takes a shower, gets dressed, has breakfast with their family, gets on the school bus, etc. 

Don’t Give A Play-by-Play 

You get the point: you don’t need to give a play-by-play of everything that your character does or thinks. If you do that, you won’t only slow down the pacing of your book but also drag your readers into unnecessary details to the point that they might abandon your book and do something better with their time. 

When you choose to detail everything, it means that you don’t have enough conflict. Your readers need a conflict to latch onto because this is what will keep them hooked to your story and read it until the last page. If you struggle with keeping things mysterious and getting your readers hooked, we recommend taking a break and opting for a novel writing course instead. You can always resume your writing project later and cut out the mistakes that you made. 

Not Enough Conflict

Another mistake that a lot of newbie writers make, especially when writing a novel, is that they don’t have enough conflict to keep the readers interested. Now, you should know that conflict is the thing that gets in the way of your character and what they want. Conflict includes everything that makes the character’s journey difficult. 

From a conflict, you derive stakes, which are the things that your character stands to lose if their conflict gets in their way. This is also what good storytelling is about. Good storytelling in a novel comes from good conflict.

Understand What Makes A Good Conflict 

On that note, good conflict isn’t always a matter of life and death, where the character fears dying. Good conflict can be anything, such as a disagreement between friends, a love triangle, disagreement with parents, an annoying boss, rivalry at school, etc. 

Some conflicts are more interesting than others – but if your plot is feeling lifeless or you are just not getting the desired response from people that you want – you should think about your conflict and whether you have enough of it happening to your character or around your character in your novel. 

Nothing Bad Happening 

Many newbie writers make the mistake of making nothing bad happen to the main character. Another adjacent mistake to this would be the mistake of portraying the main character as pitch-perfect who has absolutely no flaws. 

Now, think about it: your character is flawless, and they are good at everything because they are that flawless. What this will do is make your story lack conflict. The character won’t have conflict with other characters or at least some level of internal conflict. 

Usually, newbie writers are kind of afraid to mess up their characters and make them a little dirty.  Newbie writers are too afraid of giving their characters flaws or making them difficult to like. Also, they struggle to make bad things happen to their main character.

Let the Worst Happen And See What Happens  

If this is the first draft that you are working on, it can become incredibly hard to do bad things to your main character. The best you can do is to take the plunge and think about what the worst possible thing is that can happen to your character, and then proceed to do that thing for them. 

Why, you might ask? The thing is that if you make that thing happen to your character, that is possibly the worst – it will make your novel so much more interesting and dynamic. 

Bad Dialogue Tags

Another mistake that serves as a tell-tale sign that you are absolutely new to the world of writing and quite amateur at it is the use of messy or bad dialogue tags. This aspect indicates that every single line of dialogue has a tag where you have written: she “said,” he “spoke,” etc. You should know that you don’t have to identify the speaker with every single line of dialogue. 

But – you should identify the speaker frequently enough to help the readers have a sense of who is talking, who said what, and where exactly the characters are in the scene. Now, if you were to choose a go-to dialogue tag, we recommend sticking to “said” because these are the invisible dialogue tags that the reader’s eyes just gloss over. This dialogue tag is not distracting or annoying compared to some others, such as “exclaimed,” “cried,” “whispered,” etc.

Now, there is nothing wrong with using other dialogue tags according to the situation that characters are in – but try to use them incredibly sparingly instead of making every dialogue tag creative and specific.