My last blog post talked about the interesting parallels I’ve seen between my work as a judge for the prestigious John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award and my work as a book coach and editor. I noted that there are two discreet skill sets involved in writing well in either domain: writing skill and story-telling skill.

I find the topic so interesting that I wanted to go into a little more detail about the issues that I find many people struggle with, either in their fiction writing or their non-fiction writing.

In terms of Writing Skills, it’s important to remember that your editor will be able to catch the errors you might inadvertently make – but the more careful you are with the original material, the less it’s going to cost you in editing fees. So there’s an advantage to being as careful as you can up front.

The issues I see most often in the area or writing skills tend to be in the areas of:

• grammar
• tenses
• proper use of prepositions
• being clear on when things happen in relation to now, and in relation to other events
• limited vocabulary or improper word usage
• typos
• incorrect use of quotation marks
• clichés – as in, there are often too many of them. We don’t need to hear that things are “right as rain,” or that there was “an added bonus” (which is a redundancy anyway). We need original, delightful phrasing that shows that you, as the writer, sat and thought about what you wrote

We all want stories in our business books, just as much as we want there to be a strong sense of story in a work of fiction. Issues with your story might be harder for your editor to straighten out. Not all editors have a lot of training with story-telling and some don’t feel that it’s really their place to work with an author to fix a weak storyline. Others really just want to help with the mechanics of the writing and unless the language itself has been badly mauled, you might not hear that your story is a dud. You want your editor to help you fix your duds!

The problems I see most commonly with story-telling—in fiction and in non-fiction writing—tend to be in the areas of:

• Detail. Say there’s a chair in your story. Is it big, wooden, fabric, plastic, or metal? Does it have cushions on the seat, purple slipcovers or is the paint peeling off a spot at the bottom of the right front leg? What colour is the room it sits in, is the man sitting in it wearing a jacket that is much too big for his slender frame, and was his hair so messy you could tell he was having a rough day?
• Engaging the senses. I want to inhale the fishy scent of the beach, and feel the heat rising off the sand to brutalize your bare feet while you are interviewing the owner of an ocean-front retreat centre you are thinking of renting for your clients. I want to hear the hum of a lawnmower, and flies buzzing at a window pane while you are waiting to hear if you got the contract.
• Vagueness. I, your reader, don’t know everything. If you are dumping a “yellow box of sin” into the recycling bin I won’t know whether the box contains paper, lemons, budgies or pencils. You have to tell me!
• Endings. A weak ending leaves the reader feeling lost. Circle back to the topic you introduced at the beginning of your chapter, draw some conclusions about the material you have just presented, and get me to do something or conclude something about the information you presented. Don’t just drop the topic. Tell me why I should care.

I could fill a book (and maybe someday I will!) with the neat things I notice about our efforts to become better writers. As I’ve said before, we are each on our own writing continuum and there is always more to learn. But whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, good writing is good writing, and there are certain things you can do to really boost your work from “OK” to Memorable. If you think you’d like to work with me as your writing coach to help improve your work, please get in touch at susan@crossmancommunications.com and let’s see if we have a fit. I love to help other people awaken into their own writing greatness and I’m standing by to put decades of experience to work on behalf of your goals and objectives. Get in touch!