Reddit reviews How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

That book is gold. Here's the Amazon link if anyone is interested (not affiliated, just a fan.)

There are books about that such as:

• How not to write a Novel
  
  
• Getting the Words Right.
  
  Two low level editing tools I use on my stories are text to speech software and the hemmingway editor. Getting the computer to read your story in its uncarying monotone will really makes the awkward bits stand one. Ditto for the Hemmingway app, every time I massage anything its highlighted until the highlighting disapears I'm invariable happier with the final product then I was with what I started with.
  
  Oviously these tools won't help you with the high level editing like decising if particular chapters, scenes or paragraphs should be cut entierly because they don't contribute enough to the story.

I recommend "How Not To Write A Novel". It covers this and a lot of other crazy awful things writers do that are un-publishable.

Havemercy

I don't even know what to say except I was reading this: How Not to Write a Novel around the same time and it read like a checklist of things you'd find in Havemercy. At that point I became worried that reading a book about writing was making me nitpicky, so I grabbed another book out of my to-read pile, read a few chapters, and decided that Havemercy is, in fact, technically terrible.

I also take issue with the publisher's decisions regarding the cover image and dust jacket text, both of which imply some sort of swashbuckling steampunk dragon adventure. This book is actually a male/male romance novel written by a woman who shows no indication of even the slightest bit of insight into the emotional lives of men.

If you're looking for writing practice in your fandom, have you considered writing fanfiction? It's not all slash and smut - it can actually be a darn good way to hone your skills as a writer. You've got pre-established characters and settings, which allows you to focus on storytelling and plot.

You can also learn a lot about writing from other fans, in the fanfiction forums. When you find a writer you admire, ask them to beta a story for you. It's a great way to apprentice in the writer's craft.

Also - a wonderful book to read, though not specifically aimed at scriptwriting, is "How Not to Write a Novel" by Sandra Newman. Hilarious and spot-on. (http://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Misstep-Misstep/dp/0061357952)

When i first started writing I read a book called How not to Write a Novel.

http://www.amazon.com/Write-Novel-Them---Misstep---Misstep/dp/0061357952/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

It similar to your book but took a more constructive angle. You seem to be doing well sales wise so my opinion doesn't matter but your book seems a little mean spirited.

Let me just hunt down some links:

how not to write a novel

A good albeit dry one I read recently

First 50 pages

Edit: moved the links around

I know it's hard to hear that your story isn't up to snuff. Seriously, I get it. I spent seven years writing a novel and had some guy stop reading it after the first paragraph. You're in the submitting game, my friend. Your story is ONLY as long as people are willing to read. I know you technically wrote more, but you gave zero reason for anyone to stick around, so yes, your story does not progress beyond the first couple hundred words, at best. That's the honest truth. I took time out of my day to convey that--agents usually don't. So I encourage you to refrain from showing frustration directed towards future readers.

Since you brought up The Hobbit, I would also encourage you to dwell on two things. One, the difference between Tolkien and you is that he is published many times over. The Hobbit is not a manuscript. The story goes on with or without a magazine's opinion, or a redditor's opinion, on whether or not it should be published.

Secondly, go back and read The Hobbit, or any book for that matter, and compare and contrast with what they have written and what you have written. You will find no published author doing what you have done. That's usually a good indication that some heavy editing needs to happen. And even if I were to not read The Hobbit after its first page or so like I did yours, The Hobbit does not start out in a room with nothing happening but talking. In fact it throws out many amazing images and action, lots of sights and sounds that move quickly from one paragraph to another. It's not some dude drinking tea. Making comparisons between oneself and a prolific author is dangerous grounds to not be taken seriously. I know your heart is in it, but since you want to be published I would advise you look into how you're responding. How you respond to criticism is probably more valuable than the actual critcism.

Below is a link to a good book for beginning writers that comes highly recommended and I think could help you. "How Not to Write a Novel."

Many books out there are people's personal opinions on how TO write a novel, but this book takes the opposite approach and shows everything that gets writers almost instantly rejected. I think it's a great read.

https://www.amazon.com/Write-Novel-Them-Misstep-Misstep/dp/0061357952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521554570&sr=8-1&keywords=how+not+to+write+a+novel

I'm a huge fan of How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.

I'd enjoy reading the rest of the story. It's always good to see people bring their creations to life. However, How Not To Write A Novel puts dream sequences into its list of things it doesn't think belongs in literature (of any genre). (Seriously, it's hilarious; everyone serious about writing should read it. It's not infallible, but it's a complete gas.)

Dream sequences are odd beasts (2 links). Sometimes, they can be too specific, and sometimes too vague; the problem is, dreams in real life are far too abstract to make sense of at the time, and aren't often terribly interesting at the point at which they happen. People put them in stories to give the reader an abstract prediction of what's going to happen later on, because they have to be relevant to be included. This can heighten tension, but equally, when they're just random sequences of events (is there going to be an actual rotting man in the story? if so, you've just spoiled us. If not...why write one in?), it can seem like a waste of words.

Thing is, I can't remember reading a professionally-written/editd book where I saw into a character's dreams except for the purposes of psychic action (such as the excellent Twinborn series by our own /u/JSMorin, where dreams have a mechanical reason to exist and operate with consistent rules, events within them being perceived accurately). I experiment with waking moments of precognition --- a man in my WIP has a psychic insight through the shock of walking in on two people engaging in an intimate moment, rather than sleep. Dreams make it into Morin's book because they add to the magical mystery of the book. I've used characters sleeping to scry on someone else. So used sensibly, dreams can add rather than detract from the story.

I think a more interesting device could be a PTSD flashback. If the character once saw a man rot from inside (say, from gangrene or tuberculosis) and this is a relevant situation for the story or to depict a person suffering from past trauma, then yeah, that fits the tone of the book. You could show this as a waking nightmare, which could cripple someone at an inopportune moment, or it could alternatively offer them an immediate insight into what's hiding in plain sight. But just running across an abyss --- what is the relevance to the plot? why show us this metaphor when you could show us concrete reflection in the waking world?

Bascially, all this scene really tells us is that a great trial awaits Jaen. All that word-count and imagery just to tell us, essentially, what we know because Jaen is a character in a fantasy novel. It's like someone writing a scene in which the characters are planning something - is there really a need for them to walk us through the events of the next scene?

So what you've got to ask yourself is, how much does this add to your story --- how much does it really add --- and how much does it just strike you as a pretty piece of writing shaped like itself without a real purpose except to give us some hallucinatory imagery and basically what we already know.