Tag Archives: Writing Advice

Ten Story Tropes to Avoid

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Here are ten common tropes that have been used so often they’re usually better avoided. Also, I have to admit that most of these are seen more in movies, but I still consider that storytelling so, let’s just go with that and let me get away with it this one time. Thank you.

1. Crawling Through Air Vents

This one shows up constantly in action movies and thrillers. A character escapes or infiltrates a building by climbing into the ventilation system and crawling through ducts like they’re made for human travel.

In reality, most air ducts are thin sheet metal that won’t support a person’s weight. They’re also cramped, and if they are heating ducts would get pretty hot and probably cause you to pass out.

Once you think about how unrealistic this trope is, it becomes hard not to laugh when you see it.

For Fun I found a blog post that lists the top 5 air vent scenes in movies.

2. The “Knock Someone Out for a Few Minutes” Trick

This is where a character knocks the guard unconscious with a punch to the head. The victim wakes up later with nothing worse than disorientation or a milk headache.

In reality, a loss of consciousness lasting more than a few seconds is a serious brain injury. If your character regularly knocks people out this way, they’re probably leaving a trail of permanent neurological damage behind them. I would much rather see some chloroform on a rag get held in front of the guards mouth and nose, or a taser disable them for a moment.

3. The Conveniently Overheard Conversation

Your protagonist just happens to walk past a door just as the villain is revealing his entire plan.

No effort required. No investigation. Just perfect timing. (see also my post on what role luck should play in fiction)

This trope removes agency from the main character and replaces it with coincidence. Information in a story like this should come from effort, not luck.

4. The Villain Explains the Entire Plan

This works for me in the Bond movies because it sort of “is what it is” in those. I feel like those movies define the whole trope and I give them a pass for it. But even then it’s still clear that this kind of exposition exists purely as an information dump. If these were real villains, monologuing their evil plans would be very careless. There is really no advantage to doing that, unless you want to compromise the 4th wall and let the audience (or in our case reader) in on something.

5. The Countdown Clock

A bomb is set to explode in exactly ten minutes. We can tell this from the red LED display conveniently visible to the hero. Being a very technical person, this one has driven me crazy for years.  Bomb timers based on old-style alarm clocks where the alarm goes off and there is a physical contact closure built into the bell mechanism, yeah, that makes practical sense. Spending extra money and design time to put a digital LED read-out into something that will blow up seems like a lot of unnecessary cost and work.  It’s good to have a metaphorical ticking clock that provides pressure for the protagonist but it’s doesn’t have to be a real one and it rarely makes practical sense to have a LED display.

6. The Instantly Hacked Computer

A character types furiously for ten seconds and announces:

“I’m in.”

Complex computer systems do not collapse instantly under a few keystrokes. Real intrusion involves research, social engineering, and patience.

I also see this kind of instant solution when a character in a movie goes to hotwire a car – they put two wires together and have it running in a matter of seconds. I guess we are just supposed to ignore the fact that it would take more wires than that and the fact that the steering wheel is usually locked.

7. Guns That Never Run Out of Ammo

You see this when characters fire dozens of rounds without ever reloading. I have to admit this has gotten better in movies lately but you do still see it. The new foul is that they change magazine so often now you wonder where they were keeping all of that heavy ammo when the chase scene was happening.

In fiction, running out of bullets is often times more interesting than having an infinite supply.

8. The Totally Useless Security Guards

In many stories, guards exist only to be knocked out or distracted.

They rarely communicate with each other, never notice obvious problems, and seem completely unaware of their surroundings.

A competent security system has multiple guards, cameras, procedures and can create much more interesting obstacles for your characters than the cardboard cut-out guards we usually see.

9. The One-Line Medical Miracle

A character receives a serious injury but is fine after a quick bandage and a few minutes of rest.

Broken ribs, stab wounds, and gunshots tend to have a much longer recovery times than a few minutes. Think about the last time you were injured in anything more than an inconvenient way and how much that slowed you down. I literally had my back go out when I was turned wrong and sneezed one time and I was basically disabled for three days, bordering on tears when I went to put my socks on. I have to imagine being shot in the stomach would slow me down quite a bit more than that.

Injuries that actually affect a character’s abilities make stories much more believable and raise the stakes.

10. The “It Was All a Dream” Ending

Few endings frustrate readers faster than discovering that the entire story didn’t really happen. Now, I did just see the Wizard of Oz at the sphere (which I equate to Disneyland in the expense and “gotta see it at least once” factor) and I am giving that movie a pass at this but for every other piece of fiction, you have to realize that dream endings are a cheat. They erase consequences and invalidate the emotional investment the reader made throughout the story.

Unless the dream itself is the point of the story, this trope almost always a bad idea.

The Real Problem with Tropes

The problem comes when tropes becomes so familiar that the stop feeling like a story choice and start feeling like lazy writing.

Readers enjoy stories where events happen for believable reasons, where characters solve problems through effort and skill and where the world behaves in ways that feel authentic.

If you find yourself reaching for one of these tropes, ask a simple question:

“What Could really happen instead?”

The answer is often surprising and far more interesting than the cliché. Spend a bit more time thinking through potential endings and as David Mamet would say, “make them surprising and inevitable.”

-James

Profanity in Fiction: When It Helps and When It Hurts

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Profanity is one of those tools writers either lean on too hard or avoid like it’s radioactive. But swear words aren’t automatically “bad writing” or “edgy writing.” They’re just words and like any other words, they need to earn their place on the page.

If you’re deciding whether to drop an f-bomb (or like in some of my stories, fifty), here’s some guidelines I go by:

Every word should serve character or plot

A useful gut-check: what does this profanity do?

  • Does it reveal a character’s temperament, background, stress level, or worldview?
  • Does it intensify a moment that matters to the plot?
  • Does it sharpen the rhythm of dialogue in a way that fits the scene?

If the answer is “it just sounds cool” or “it makes this feel more adult,” it’s probably filler. Profanity is strongest when it functions as characterization.

Try this: Remove the swear word. If the line loses meaning, tone, or character truth, you may need it. If nothing changes, omit it.

Profanity comes with a real risk of offending some readers

I do think this is less of an issue than it was say fifty years ago, but it is something to keep in mind.The key is to choose intentionally and ask yourself:

  • Who is my target audience for this story?
  • What’s the tone I’m going for here (cozy mystery vs. grim thriller, for example)?
  • Am I okay with losing some readers because of this?

One thing profanity is good at is a quick way to signal genre and voice. It can also break immersion for readers who don’t like it.

Profanity should be true to the character, not the author

The best profanity usually feels inevitable. In other words the character couldn’t have said anything else.

A few examples of true to character uses:

  • A character swears when they’re scared, cornered, or losing control.
  • A character uses profanity casually because it’s part of their everyday speech.
  • A character never swears… until the moment it finally slips, and that tells us something about what is going on.

On the flip side, try to avoid:

  • A character who suddenly starts cursing because the author wants the scene to feel “more intense.”
  • Everyone in the cast swears in the same way (same words, same rhythm), which usually makes it feel like it’s the writer’s voice coming out of all of them.

Can you identify who’s speaking if you remove the dialogue tags? If swearing makes the voices blur together, then it’s really not adding anything of value.

Profanity should also be thought of as a natural byproduct of:

  • real emotion
  • real conflict
  • real character choices

If the scene is already powerful, profanity can add some heat, but if the scene isn’t working to begin with, adding profanity won’t fix it.

The one F-word check. I see this in stories a lot more than you would expect; a story has little to no swearing then, out of nowhere, a character drops the F-bomb.

If you use the F word only once in the entire story, ask yourself whether you really need it. There are two reasons I can think of why, as Ralphie would say, the Queen mother of dirty words would only appear once:

  1. It’s true to the situation.
    Maybe it lands at the exact right emotional peak, and the rarity makes it hit harder. Sure go ahead and keep it it in.
  2. Shock value.
    If the profanity exists mainly to jolt the reader, it can feel cheap and manipulative. Readers can can tell when the author is yanking at the steering wheel. It reminds me of a creative writing teacher I had who would always talk about the author “Showing their hand.” His point was that only in rare cases is that a good thing.

Before you submit, ask these questions:

  • Does this word reveal character or move the plot?
  • Would this character really say it, right here, right now?
  • Is it doing more than just trying to sound edgy?
  • Am I okay with the readers I might lose?
  • If this is my only F word, is it really needed?

If you can answer “yes” to those, you’re using language with intent.

The goal is to write in a way that is true to the characters and true to the story. Remember a great way to to test is by taking out the “bad words” to see how it affects the story. If, after that you still can’t decide… well, sometimes you just have to say “Fuck it.”

-James

Why It’s Hard for Us to See Where Our Stories Go Wrong?

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You’ve written a story. You’ve poured your heart into it. You’ve rewritten sentences, perfected metaphors, and shaped characters you care deeply about. You’re sure it’s good, hell, maybe it’s even great. Yeah, the big names will want this one. It’s probably worthy of The Atlantic or the New Yorker. This could even be the one that finally nails the Pushcart Prize.

Then the wind goes out of your sails when the first person to read your masterpiece points out how you spelled the name of your main character differently in two places in the opening paragraph. How could you have missed that? You must have read through the story a hundred times with all the rewrites. It’s embarrassing and aggravating.

And it’s one of the most fundamental truths in writing: it’s incredibly hard for us to see the flaws in our own work. Here’s why:

We’re Too Close to the Story

Writers live inside the world they’ve created. We know every motivation, backstory, and all the subplots. The backstory that isn’t on the page lives in our heads “rent free” as the kids say. We mentally fill in all of the things we know about the story as we read through it. Your brain fills in the gaps, smoothing over inconsistencies and connecting dots that were never actually drawn and not clear to other readers.

We’re Emotionally Invested

We writers form emotional bonds with our characters and often fall in love with select scenes and phrases. This emotional attachment can make us blind to, or cause us to push back against, needed changes. Cutting scenes and characters, also known as “Killing our darlings” as the saying goes, feels like a loss to us even though it usually makes a story stronger.

Sometimes we don’t really know the Story We’re Telling

We often begin writing with an idea but no clear theme. Or we have a theme but it gets lost in the logistics of plot development. The result is a story that meanders or contradicts itself. I also tend to see a lot of what I call “lopsided stories” where way too many words are spent on things that do not advance the plot or develop the character.

Hard Work Doesn’t Make It Good

We sometimes confuse “I worked hard on this” with “This is the best it can be.” But hard work doesn’t guarantee a polished end result. Rewriting, re-envisioning, and sometimes throwing everything out and rethinking it from the ground up, often lead to better storytelling.

Our Brains Want to Be Done

Writing is hard. Getting through that first draft is a triumph. So when we type “The End,” part of our brain wants it to be done. The desire to move on and submit makes us less critical of our work. We stop interrogating where the story doesn’t work.

So What Can You Do?

  • Time: Step away from your draft. A few weeks or even months can give you enough distance to see it with fresh eyes. Sometimes when I go through my “false starts” that I haven’t touched in years, I am surprised at what I see. It often feels like someone else wrote the words I am seeing. (and I mean that in both in a good and bad way).  This is the ideal kind of distance you want from your work, where you have forgotten about the story entirely and are coming at it completely fresh. Unfortunately that isn’t always practical.
  • Read your work out loud: A more immediate solution is reading your story out loud. In Steve Martin’s Masterclass he talked about how he reads his work to his cat. I will even record myself reading a story so I can play it back later and really listen. Hearing your story often reveals awkward pacing, unclear dialogue, or tonal shifts you might miss otherwise.
  • Re-outline: After the first draft, take the time to outline what you actually wrote. It often differs from your plan and can reveal plot holes. One trick I have learned, especially if if I have “pantsered” a story is to force chapter breaks and title those breaks in the story as though they were chapter headings. I do this even though I am mainly writing short stories, which don’t usually have chapter titles. It really helps me to see the plot progression and where I have sections that repeat information previously covered. It also really helps me to see where I can cut.
  • Get feedback from others: Other people have a fresh set of eyes and the advantage of knowing nothing about the story. No preconceived notions, no biases (other than these people are likely your friends so they might be softer on you than you need). Issues we tend to read past will stand out to them like a neon sign.  

Recognizing that we have literary blind spots is the first step toward better writing. Every great story was once a messy draft, written by someone who couldn’t see the flaws, until they eventually found a way to work through them, often by giving a story time and/or getting feedback from others.

-James

Writing the Words That Nobody Reads

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You will write a lot of words that never, ever get read.

I often wonder how much content writers like Stephen King have that will never see the light of day. We tend to measure how prolific a writer is by what makes it to print, but how many drafts and failed attempts are sitting back there in his creepy Victorian home that will never make it to print? I can only imagine it is double or three times what he has had published, probably even a lot more.

Chances are the vast majority of your words will go unread by anyone other than yourself. Even if you do manage to get published, the number of eyeballs parsing your prose is likely far fewer than you think.

I recall hearing the majority of traditionally published books sell between 200 and 2,000 copies over their entire lifetime and self-published books often fare even worse, with many selling fewer than 100 copies total.

Those numbers might make you want to stop. Why write if no one is going to read it? Why struggle with plot, voice, pacing, or character arcs when no one will see it?


We say we write for others, but we actually write for ourselves.

It’s like working out. The final physique might be for the world. But the daily discipline of exercise is ours alone. The early mornings, the sore muscles, the days when you show up just to keep the streak alive, few see that (nor do we want them to) yet it is essential.

Writing is the same. Every word you write teaches you something. Every awkward paragraph, every overwrought metaphor, every false start are all part of the mental muscle-building.

Those words we throw out are the reps needed to get to the words we keep.

I’m not an expert on how to get there. Honestly, I’m probably a better example of what not to do. This very Blog is a great example. As of this writing, there is not a lot of daily traffic. I can blame it on the SEO algorithm, but it’s probably comes down to me not be writing what people want to read.  

But still, I write. Ignoring the stats and pushing through because, while I hope people find value in what I have to say, the truth is these words are mostly for me.

If you’re a writer who feels unseen, just know that you’re not alone. Even if your words don’t find a large audience, they still matter.  Words that are thrown away are essential. They are needed to get to the words we keep; the ones that end up being foundational elements for the strange and beautiful craft of turning thoughts into language and language into story.

So keep writing the words that don’t get read until you get to the ones that do.

-James

How volunteering to read slush makes you a better writer

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I remember the first time I received my assigned slush (story submissions) from the editor of Allegory. Twelve unread submissions, each hoping to land in the publication. It was exciting, daunting, and very eye-opening for me. Once into a routine of reading stories for a publication, you can really get a feel for which kinds of stories editors see too often and what makes one story stand out from the pile.

Here are some of the common problems I came across when reading slush:

Telling instead of showing

There is a ton of information on this out there already, but in essence, telling is useful for moving through information quickly, but at the potential cost of distancing the reader. Showing brings us into the story and paints a picture in detail.

The blurb I used when providing feedback went like this: Telling has its place. It works well for quickly covering a lot of ground, but it tends to distance the reader. We would much rather see the bouncing knee and infer the character is anxious as opposed to reading “Bob was anxious.”

A lack of conflict

Sometimes everything was fine for the character, too fine, actually. With no conflict, there’s no story. I think this can happen to a writer sometimes when they really like their character and don’t have the heart to put them through any hardship. But that hardship is needed to drive the story forward.

Scenes vs stories

This is where there is an often extensive description of the character and his/her world but nothing that resembles a story arc. The character is just hanging out at a bus stop, eating a sandwich, and waiting, and in the end, nothing has really changed (other than the sandwich is gone). Sometimes these scenes can even be beautifully written, but without a story arc, these pieces are not interesting enough to pass on to the main editor.

This one often occurs in conjunction with the lack of conflict problem.

Slow development

This is the one I saw the most. It’s when a story takes way too much time to get to the core conflict.  For a 5000 word story, if I am past page three or four and don’t know what the conflict is about yet, I am probably going to pass.  I also saw a lot of stories where the intro paragraph could have been omitted and the story would have been better for it. Not that the intros were necessarily bad, but often times it was unneeded.  I feel like this probably happens a lot to the “Pantser” style of writer. The ones who hop in the chair, shift the keyboard into Drive, and start writing without an outline. If you operate this way it can take a bit to get the flow of the story headed in the right direction.

No ending

This one was also a frequent occurrence. Sometimes the story was really good and kept me going, but then just ended. The stories that were the most unfortunate were the ones that had a clear way to end, or several ways to end, but just stopped. In order for the reader to feel fulfilled with a story, things need to wrap up at the end in a satisfying way.  The more unique and surprising the ending the better.

Downer endings

A lot of the stories coming through the slush pile end with a downer ending. It’s not that a downer ending is wrong or bad, but slush readers see a lot more of those than upbeat positive endings. You absolutely don’t have to write a happy ending but if you do, and it’s well done, your story will stand out for that alone.

Flow

Tiny issues, like awkward phrasing or inconsistent tone, can pull you right out of a story, even one with a great idea and is otherwise clear and well-paced.

One other secret I learned:

Feedback to Writers

As a slush reader, I decided early on that I wanted to offer personalized feedback whenever possible. Instead of sending the standard “not a fit for us at this time,” I made myself articulate why a story didn’t work for me.

That discipline really sharpened my editorial instincts for my own work. If you ever want to learn what makes a story effective, try forcing yourself to explain what did and didn’t work. The times you find this really challenging is when you are learning something new.

Here are a few insights I picked up about when a story is good:

  • If you find yourself thinking about a story you read hours or days after reading it, it has something special. A lot of times for me it was some concept the story covered (Sci-Fi nerd here). Sometimes it was a character or a character trait.  I recall one story to this day where the monster had a pillow for a head.  That kind of simple, clear, and unique, imagery is the sort of thing can make a story stick with a reader long after they finish it.
  • You shouldn’t have to work at reading or understanding a story.  As soon as I have to reread a sentence to understand exactly what is happening, the story is starting to lose me. A few more of those and it’s a rejection. I liken it to a trip in the car. If the road is bumpy and you have to go around fallen trees and are always unsure of where you’re going, it’s not an enjoyable ride.
  • Another great sign is if you immediately want to tell someone else about the story. If you get done with a story and think “Oh, man, so-and-so would love this.” Try to take note of what made you feel that way. It’s not always easy to do, but the more you do the exercise of pulling apart a story to understand how the pieces fit together and work, the better you will get at writing a great one.    

Reading slush to see the other side of short story publishing and choosing to provide authors with feedback accelerated my growth as a writer. If you’re serious about breaking into the craft, I recommend volunteering to read slush. There is a lot of need out there. You will probably be able to make a connection pretty quickly on your own, but email me if you want me to put you in touch with an editor in need.

-James