One of the most common errors that novice writers make is "telling" a story rather than "showing" a story. Following this advice dramatically increases a writer's chance of being published. Another very useful tip is to use action words instead of passive words.
However, the major reason most beginning writers fail to have their work published is because they do not follow the writer's guidelines for the publication where they submit their work.
Show – Don't Tell
Once a writer understands the difference and makes a conscious effort to "show" a story, it soon becomes second nature. The disadvantages to telling a story is that it makes a writer's work very mundane and average.
Showing a story engages the reader's senses and draws the reader into the scene.
Action Words or Passive Words
A tip that goes hand in hand with showing instead of telling is using active voice instead of passive voice. In English grammar, passive voice is easy to recognize. All sentences with passive voice use some form of the "to be" verb. The easiest way for a writer to ensure that he is using active voice is to eliminate all forms of this verb from his writing, unless it is absolutely necessary.
The following example is a scene that effectively tells what happens and is written with passive words. While it may seem dramatic, it reads like a newspaper report or a laundry list.
The bullet went past Ryan's head and he was knocked from the saddle. His body was slammed into the ground with a thud and then he went behind the nearest boulder. He looked around trying to find where the shot had come from.
The same scene rewritten below is in active voice and effectively "shows" the action.
A bullet grazed Ryan's head, knocking him from the saddle. His body slammed into the ground with a thud that drove the breath from his lungs. Gasping for air, he scrambled for cover behind the nearest boulder and peered cautiously around it while frantically trying to locate the origin of the shot.
Getting Published
Nothing irritates editors more that receiving work that does not adhere to their guidelines, especially when those guidelines are clearly posted and easily obtainable. Before submitting work, writers should ALWAYS read their potential publication's guidelines first, and then double-check and triple-check their work to ensure it meets these guidelines.
Some publications guidelines are more detailed than others. If the writer's guidelines for a publication does not tell the writer how to format their work, it is always a good idea to use standard manuscript format.
A large portion of submitted work is rejected simply because it does not follow a publication's guidelines, regardless of the quality of the writing. This error is inexcusable for writers to make and is perhaps the easiest to fix.
Matthew Pizzolato - Matthew Pizzolato is a writer of both short stories and articles and has completed two novels, neither of which have been published, but ...
