Just Write 2020

Common Critique from the Judges

Hi New Writers

Our April competition is over and we thought we would let you in on some of the most common pieces of advice our judges gave in order to ensure that you can continue to grow and develop. Please don't take offence if this applies to you, we are not attacking you in any way and are simply trying to help you grow.

1. Using pictures instead of describing.
This is a big no-no in the writing world and is actually considered lazy writing. You are more then welcome to put pictures in your story but using them instead of doing proper in-depth descriptions of important people, objects and places is an absolute no. It is both or nothing at all. You are writing a book, not showing a book. So write the book. We know that effective descriptions are hard, but you are never going to get any better if you don't practice. Let us know if you would like a workshop on effective descriptions. Some of the best descriptions we had were from CravenCrowishRaven in their book Crow - go check it out to see how they did it!

2. Dialogue - saying, not writing.
Dialogue should not be the most important aspect of your story - unfortunately, this was a very common error that many of the judges found. You are not writing a script; you are writing a book and therefore you should never have more dialogue than you have narrative (descriptions, the actual writing). More so dialogue needs to be realistic. People stutter - your characters should too. People forget what they were saying in the middle of a sentence - your characters should too. People do not just confess their love in perfect poetry - so please don't make your characters do so too. Life is awkward and uncomfortable at the best of times, your book should also be awkward and a little uncomfortable at times because just like life, your book shouldn't have picture-perfect moments. Let us know if you would like a dialogue workshop too.

3. Revealing your characters
This is a big deal on Wattpad - having a cast list. Showing your readers how you picture your characters, this isn't the worst thing in the world but there are a few reasons why we advise against doing this. Firstly, it takes away the magic for your readers. Half the fun of reading is picturing the characters. Secondly, it often results in you the writer getting lazy with your character descriptions because your readers already know what they look like.

4. EDITING
Dear sweet readers, what do we have to do to get you to edit properly? What will it take? A million dollars? A new tesla? Tom Holland? Because proof-reading and editing are not the same thing and new writers seem to not want to touch either with a 6m long stick. You have to proof-read your work and you have to edit it too. Please for the love of great writing edit your work. We will be releasing a chapter dedicated to editing this week. It's going to be really long so please read it, and please EDIT your work.

5. Emojis belong in texts and nowhere else
Do not, no matter how strong the temptation is, use emojis in your novel, whether it is keyboard ones (^.^) or the actual little emojis icons. If you want to be taken seriously as a writer then you need to write seriously - emojis are not considered serious.

6. Research
We've mentioned it before, we will say it again, you have to do research. We know it can be boring, we know it takes time but it will make you a better writer. Research is how we make our novels and books more realistic. Its how we learn and it's how we find truth and reality in our writing - this is very important in keeping your readers engaged. Please, pretty please with a cherry on top do your research. We promise that you won't regret it.

7. Revealing too much vs too little
This is a very fine line and it can often be difficult to find the balance. Revealing too much about your characters too quickly takes away the mystery and magic of discovering your characters but revealing too little will leave your readers confused and very disorientated. If you find that people are getting bored with the story then you are probably giving too much away at the start. If you find that your readers are asking lists of questions and are often confused then you are revealing too little.

This is a difficult thing to balance but here's a tip: We don't need to discover your characters whole life story in the first 5 chapters, in fact, we don't even need to know it by the end of the book but we also need to have a sense of how they are in order to form a connection with them. @NobbleeWobbler did this very well in her book 87 Below - she still kept the intrigue going without revealing too much. The best way to learn this is to look at an example and discover the tricks from reading.

That's it for the common critiques! We hope this helped and if you would like to have a more in-depth chapter about any of the above things then please let us know. Feel free to ask any questions.

We look forward to reading your stories
The New Writer Awards Team