Ways Your Publisher Will Know That You’re An Amateur Writer
1. Using All Caps This is considered shouting at your reader and is frowned upon by agents. Use stronger verbs to show urgency in your writing rather than this. Once someone points out how annoying all caps is, it will bug you too.
2. Using Multiple Punctuation For example, don’t use ?!?!!?!?!?!?! Save it for texting.
3. Overusing Exclamation Points Unless a character is actually shouting, don’t use these. No matter how dramatic it is. Use strong verbs or body language descriptors. It’s annoying! See! How obnoxious is this?!?!
4. Using bizarre fonts, formats, or text sizes Stick to a standard font such as Ariel or Times New Roman, 12pt, and double spaced. Even if you hate it. It’s much easier to read.
5. Using Filler Words (too much) Words such as just, that, only, really, seemed, almost, slightly, are examples of words that might be removed from your MS. Do not go to the extreme of this and remove every that in your MS, because that has multiple uses. If you can read your sentence without it, and it still makes sense, cut it.
Example: Katie said that Jared was mad. Remove that: Katie said Jared was mad. Makes sense still.
When not to use this rule: When the sentence feel like it has a better flow with that that in place.
If that post about that that word wasn’t that confusing, you are on your way to become a good writer!
6. Using too many adverbs Truly, eloquently using illustriously contrived adverbs is overrated. Which is more impactful? “Look out!” Katie said loudly. or “Look out!” Katie shouted. This is an easy example, but you get the point. Strong verbs for another win
7. Using too many big words This may sound counter intuitive, but if you’re writing with big words (especially if those big words are not used appropriately) your publisher will know you are an amateur. As I heard once--own a thesaurus, but keep it in the shed across the yard. Don’t flip through it looking for the biggest word you can find.
