Submission Flaws to Avoid

This week one of my assignments for my Reading in genre class was to examine a passage in the book Writers Workshop of Horror. The passage was titled ‘Ten Submission Flaws that Drive Editors Nuts’ and was written by Brian Yount. As part of this assignment, we were asked to answer the question ‘"submission flaws" do you find yourself guilty of?’

I am guilty of almost all of them and none of them at the same time. While I am a new writer, I have never submitted my work to an editor for review. I have however submitted my work to critique partners. Therefore, I will look at this assignment through that lens. I will look at the top three on the list that I am guilty of in my writing.

The first one that I am guilty of is #1 on the list ‘Too much telling’. I have heard the term used mush this semester ‘show and don’t tell’. After learning what this means I realize that I do this quite a bit. I am slowly learning to identify when I do this so that I can fix this flaw in my writing.

The next on I just discovered yesterday when reading this assignment. It is #5 on the list ‘Obvious mistakes. Yount states that a writer can find and prevent these types of mistakes simply by reading their writing aloud. This will enable us to hear and identify mistakes. I had never thought of this, but I will be doing this going forward in my writing.

The third item that I am guilty of is with the #8 ‘Stories with forced dialogue’. This is when your story has forced dialogue which prevents it from proper flow. Dialogue has been a weak area for me this term, but I have made huge improvement. I will continue to work on my dialogue so that it becomes a strong element in my writing.

In conclusion, I must say that I am guilty of all of the items mentioned. Some items on the list I do better with then others. They are all important and I will continue to work on each as I improve as a writer.