Forum: Author Hangout

This subject has come up her often. I happened to come upon an article talking about the amateur vs professional writer and the first one sort of addressed this. It is:

THEY ONLY WRITE DOWN ONE-TENTH

1/ Amateurs see their story playing out in detail in their mind and only write down about one-tenth of it. In their mind it makes sense, but to anyone reading their novel they cannot make sense of anything happening. Whereas a professional writer would spend the time necessary writing down everything necessary for the reader to understand the story. Describing the details of the background, characters, and locations. Painting the correct picture for the reader to see. All ten-tenths are described not, one-tenth.

I think that's arse about elbow.

Professional writers write down ten tenths, then pare it down to the one tenth that's relevant to the particular story they're writing.They might, for example, write down full bios of their characters. It helps them make the motivations and actions of those characters more consistent.

Okay, the 'expert' has a point about amateur writers - it's a common weakness not to be able to read their story as a new reader would, and hence they don't spot things missing like inadequate dialogue atribution ;-)

AJ