Novel No-Nos To Avoid
The first three chapters are the main event when it comes to your novel submissions. (Want to know what else you should submit with your first three chapters? CLICK HERE).
Yet as any script reader, sifter, intern or agent’s assistant can tell you, the average first three chapters simply don’t hit the mark. These ‘novel no-nos’ can be varied, so I’m going to list the most common here with links to help. Ready? Then let’s go …
1) Starting with the weather
Uh oh! This is one of classic author Elmore Leonard’s Top 10 Writing Rules. Remember: never, ever, ever start with the weather!
2) Streams of consciousness
Look, you can obviously use a character’s psychology in your novel … but you DON’T want it to be all thoughts and feelings, either. Plus this is your first three chapters, which means you want your character DOING things.
3) Big-ass info dumps
No, you don’t need to tell us a character’s entire back story. Or how this sci-fi or fantasy world works. Or anything else that sets stuff up BEFORE the story begins. Yes, there will be necessary exposition, so mete it ACROSS the narrative.
4) Starting with characters waking up or walking somewhere
Seriously, yawn. Just don’t!
5) Going OTT with ‘purple prose’
Purple prose refers to the overuse of descriptive words. This may mean:
- Too many similes or metaphors
- Trying to be ‘fancy’ or ‘literary’ with descriptions
- An abundance of adjectives or adverbs
- Overly long, meandering and overwritten sentences generally
Obviously some genres will use the above more than others. However, you still don’t want to overdo it!
6) Starting with ‘establishing shots’ to set the scene
Don’t describe all the locations or have characters talking to ‘introduce’ us to the story. Start with the story … That means begin with your characters DOING something. Your first three chapters are all-important in hitting the ground running.
7) ‘Laundry List’ character introductions
No, clothes do NOT make the (wo)man – or person! Readers are far more interested in character behaviour. End of.
8) Overwritten incidental character actions
Character actions should reveal who they are or push the story forward (or both). We don’t need every single movement that character makes, such as opening a fridge and taking out a beer … then raising the bottle to their lips … then swallowing … then. taking yet another sip. YAWN!
9) Seem to / start to
I read a manuscript once in which a character is impaled on a javelin. Nasty, right? Yet the author wrote the character ‘seemed to be impaled on a javelin’ … well, were they or weren’t they?? Just say what it is!
Equally, characters shouldn’t ‘start to’ do anything. They should JUST DO IT (whatever ‘it’ is).
10) Dialogue MIA
I always find it interesting how dialogue is frequently missing in action (MIA) in the first three chapters. That doesn’t mean we want them to open with characters explaining everything to one another either. It’s all about balance!
11) Head-hopping
Head-hopping occurs when the writer jumps between multiple character perspectives in a scene. This used to be the norm in ye olde novels (Austen and Dickens were fans of this technique, for example).
However, like many elements of novel writing it’s ‘out of fashion’ with modern readers. This is because Deep Third POV is much more common in the 2020s.
12) Insanely long paragraphs
Go to your bookshelf or Kindle and open a novel that has been published in the past five years. How long are the paragraphs? That’s right: paragraphs are on the shorter end right now. Somewhere between 3-4 lines and 6-8 is typical.
13) Bad spelling, punctuation & grammar
It’s not your fault if you have dyslexia, or are a non-native English speaker, or went to a bad school. However, you DO need to clean up your page before submission, I’m afraid. Pay a proofreader and/or use an app like Hemingway.
Similarly, you need to pick a tense and STICK WITH IT. MORE: How To Decide Between Past & Present Tense In Your Novel
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