Forgetting the basics
If you’re writing about a person, then can I please have their age? It may not seem important to you, but in my experience there’s a difference between an forty-year old skydiver and a five-year old skydiver.
Too much connective tissue
If the movies made writing more cinematic (visual scene-setting, jumps cuts, flashbacks, etc.) can you imagine what the Internet is doing to our sensibilities? The hyperlink has prepared your reader to make bold jumps in content, logic, etc. so you don’t have to hold their hand through every transition. As the old saying goes, the shortest NASCAR track is 0.526 miles long.
Being afraid of the big knife
I know from experience that it’s hard to make drastic cuts, but every first draft is probably 25% overweight, and you’re not going to get it down to size by tweaking and massaging. Sometimes working on your “craft” means acting like a butcher.
No risks
You are not a writer. You’re a riverboat gambler with ice water running through your veins. You bet big and you bet often, and you don’t care about your hand, or if you win or lose, because you can talk or shoot your way out of anything.
Thinking the point is having an insight or making an observation, as opposed to taking said insight or observation and putting into play so it bumps into and rubs up against other insights and observations.
Know what I mean?
