Seven Deadly Sins of Writing

While wandering around on the NaNoWriMo Forum I found a thread about these. To my surprise, I had never heard of them before. So I did a google search and found one page that gave a pretty good list of these deadly sins.

Seven Deadly Sins of Writing

No use in me writing a whole article about it, when the article is right there. This is the best one I found, there was one other one given in the Nano thread.

But, since these vary from writer to writer, I thought I would ask. What are YOUR seven deadly sins of writing? What will you never commit, or cringe when you see others commit it?

And for the fun: What kind of punishments should be dealt out to the sinners?

I'll do one at a time, because I can't think of all the things I hate at once.

1. Poor grammar and spelling. I can't stand to read through something that's full of these awful mistakes, especially when the author, no matter how bad they think they are at this kind of thing, can really find these errors themselves, most of the time. If I see a whole bunch of spelling errors (spell check, people!) or you can't format your dialouge correctly, I'm immediately turned off.

Yes indeedy, I'll be back later...

I'll do the same as Cass.

PROCRASTINATION!!!!!

This is my worst fault of all. I love to write, and could prolly find time for it, but unfortunately I always say that I don't have time or have too much schoolwork or something. Yeah, I do, but I should find time to write.

RESOLVE: I write today if it kills me. *dies*

Yeah... Me and Cass have been arguing over our procrastination! I think its a common trait among writers. I actually have an article on how to beat it. its somewhere in here...

*coughs* Guilty as charged...

IV. Purple Prose. Overusing adverbs and adjectives, using cliches and euphemisms, and getting carried away with description in inappropriate places is called "Purple Prose." It's a lot of fluff with little substance. Instead of using an adverb to make a weak verb stronger or an adjective to make a weak noun stronger, omit the adverb/adjective and choose a stronger verb/noun. Instead of reusing phrases that you've heard before, find fresh ways of saying things. Instead of using euphemisms (attention: romance and love-scene writers!) for parts of the body, use real words. Too much fluff is just like too much dessert-it leaves us heaving. See the Tip Sheet on Creative Dialogue Tags for another example of this disease and check out the Controlling Character Emotion Tip Sheet for help in reducing the melodrama.

hee hee hee

I hate purple prose. That's one of my peeves...

Procrasination... the reason why I've only ever finished one novel (and it was only meant to be a joke novel >>). I'd say that's most definitely one of the seven deadly sins of writing.

I have my own 'writing rules' and I always stick to them. I find it is a whole lot easier if you write all the rules in the front of your writing notebook so you look at them every time you are inspired. I do this and I find it helps a lot.

RR*

Eh, I guess this could go in with "Purple Prose", but Mary Sues and Gary Stus. To me, that's one of the worst things a writer can do. And if they "commit" a Mary Sue, they should be forced to eat nothing but marshmallows for the rest of their life! (It sounds nice, but trust me, it gets old quick.)

procrastination isn't a writer thing, it's an everybody-does-it thing.

and as to the above: i agree completely. and no it does not sound nice. i hate marshmallows.