15 Common Mistakes When Studying Creative Writing (And How to Fix Them) | LearnByTeaching.ai
Creative writing is a craft that improves through practice, feedback, and deliberate revision. Unlike subjects where memorization helps, writing improves only when you produce work and study how published authors achieve their effects. Here are 15 mistakes that hold developing writers back.
Telling Instead of Showing
The most common craft problem: stating emotions and traits directly instead of rendering them through action, dialogue, and sensory detail. 'She was angry' tells. Slamming a door and speaking through clenched teeth shows.
Writing 'John was a kind person who cared about others' instead of showing John noticing a stranger struggling with grocery bags and silently taking two from their hands without being asked.
How to fix it
For every abstract claim (he was nervous, the room was creepy, she was brilliant), rewrite it as a concrete scene with sensory details, physical actions, or dialogue that lets the reader infer the quality. Trust your reader to draw conclusions from evidence.
Writing Flat Characters
Characters defined by a single trait or who exist only to serve the plot feel like cardboard cutouts. Real characters have contradictions, desires, flaws, and histories that make their choices surprising yet inevitable.
A villain who is evil for no reason, or a protagonist who is perfect and faces no internal conflict — both are uninteresting because they lack the complexity that makes readers invest in a character's fate.
How to fix it
For every major character, define at least: what they want (external goal), what they need (internal need, often different from the want), their central flaw, and one contradiction (the tough person who is secretly gentle, the honest person who lies about one thing). Let these tensions drive the story.
Resisting Revision
Beginners treat the first draft as the final product. Professional writers revise extensively — the first draft is raw material, and the real writing happens in revision. Attachment to first-draft prose is the biggest obstacle to improvement.
Turning in a first draft for workshop with minor spelling corrections, rather than a substantively revised piece where scenes have been reordered, weak characters have been deepened, and entire passages have been cut or rewritten.
How to fix it
After finishing a first draft, set it aside for at least several days. Return with fresh eyes and be willing to cut, rearrange, and rewrite entire sections. Ask: does every scene advance the story or reveal character? If not, cut it regardless of how well-written it is.
Dialogue That Sounds Like Exposition
Characters deliver information the reader needs to know through unnaturally informative speeches. Real people do not explain things they both already know to each other.
Writing 'As you know, Sarah, we have been business partners for ten years and your father, who died last March, left us this building in his will' — no one speaks this way to someone who already knows all of this.
How to fix it
Read your dialogue aloud. Does it sound like something a real person would say in that situation? Characters should have their own speech patterns and reveal information through conflict, subtext, and what they choose not to say. Find other ways to convey backstory — narration, flashback, or gradual revelation.
Starting the Story Too Early
Beginners front-load backstory, setting description, and character introduction before anything happens. Readers need a reason to keep reading from the first paragraph — start as close to the action as possible.
Spending three pages describing the protagonist's childhood, morning routine, and commute before the story's actual conflict begins on page four. Most readers will not reach page four.
How to fix it
Start in medias res — in the middle of action, conflict, or a moment of change. Backstory can be woven in later through brief, well-timed revelations. Ask yourself: where does the story actually begin? Then delete everything before that point.
Overwriting and Purple Prose
Using elaborate, flowery language where simple language would be more powerful. Overwriting calls attention to the writer's cleverness rather than serving the story.
Writing 'The luminescent orb of celestial fire descended beneath the cerulean horizon, casting its sanguine effulgence upon the rippling aqueous expanse' when 'The sun set over the water' communicates the same scene with more impact.
How to fix it
Use the simplest language that achieves your intended effect. Strong verbs and specific nouns are more powerful than piles of adjectives and adverbs. Read Hemingway and Carver to see how restraint creates power.
Not Reading Enough
You cannot write well without reading widely and critically. Students who write without reading lack models for structure, voice, and technique. Reading is not separate from writing practice — it is an essential part of it.
Writing a short story without having read published short stories in the past year, then being surprised when workshop feedback points out structural problems that reading widely would have prevented.
How to fix it
Read at least one book per month in the genre you write, and one outside it. Read as a writer: when a passage moves you, stop and analyze how the author achieved the effect. Study sentence structure, pacing, and transitions.
Taking Workshop Feedback Personally
Workshop critique is about the work, not the writer. Students who cannot separate their identity from their writing either shut down defensively or abandon promising pieces after negative feedback.
Receiving feedback that a story's ending feels unearned and interpreting it as 'my writing is bad' rather than 'the story needs a stronger setup in the middle to make the ending feel inevitable.'
How to fix it
In workshop, listen and take notes without defending. Look for patterns: if three readers had the same confusion, the text has a problem regardless of your intent. Wait 24 hours before deciding which feedback to act on. Not all feedback is useful, but you cannot evaluate it when you are emotional.
Plot Without Character Arc
Events happen, but the protagonist is unchanged at the end. A plot is a sequence of events; a story is a sequence of events that changes someone. Without character transformation, even exciting plots feel hollow.
An adventure story where the hero faces challenges and overcomes them but is exactly the same person at the end — same beliefs, same flaws, same understanding of the world.
How to fix it
Define how your protagonist is different at the end compared to the beginning. What have they learned, lost, gained, or accepted? The external plot should force internal change. The climax is usually where external conflict and internal transformation converge.
Inconsistent Point of View
Shifting between points of view unintentionally confuses the reader. Students often head-hop between characters within a scene without realizing they have violated the narrative contract.
Writing from a close third-person perspective on Character A and suddenly revealing what Character B is thinking in the same paragraph, without any scene break or transition.
How to fix it
Choose a point of view and commit to it within each scene. If using close third person, you can only reveal what the POV character knows, sees, and thinks. To show another character's thoughts, use a scene break and switch POV deliberately.
Abandoning Projects Before Finishing
Starting new stories is exciting; finishing them is hard work. Developing writers often have dozens of abandoned openings and few completed pieces. You cannot learn to write endings without actually writing them.
Having started 15 short stories and finished none, perpetually chasing the excitement of new ideas rather than doing the difficult work of following one through to completion.
How to fix it
Commit to finishing your current project before starting a new one. Set a deadline. A completed mediocre story teaches you more than ten brilliant abandoned beginnings. Finishing is a skill that requires practice like any other.
Relying on Adverbs Instead of Strong Verbs
Adverbs often signal that the verb is too weak. 'She walked quickly' is weaker than 'she strode' or 'she hurried.' Strong, specific verbs do more work with fewer words.
Writing 'He said angrily' when 'he snapped' or 'he snarled' or even just the dialogue itself, if written well, conveys the anger without any attribution at all.
How to fix it
In revision, search for -ly adverbs and ask: can I replace the verb-adverb pair with a single stronger verb? Not always, but often. 'Ran quickly' becomes 'sprinted.' 'Looked carefully' becomes 'scrutinized.'
Using Cliched Descriptions
Phrases like 'her eyes sparkled like diamonds' or 'it was a dark and stormy night' have been used so many times they no longer create vivid images. Cliches signal that the writer is reaching for ready-made language rather than finding fresh expression.
Describing a character's fear with 'her heart pounded in her chest' or 'a chill ran down her spine' — these phrases are so familiar they pass through the reader's mind without creating any sensation.
How to fix it
When you catch yourself writing a familiar phrase, stop and observe the actual experience more closely. What does fear really feel like in the body? Find a specific, unexpected detail that conveys the same emotion with freshness.
Not Writing Regularly
Writing improves through consistent practice, not sporadic bursts of inspiration. Students who write only when they feel inspired produce less and improve more slowly than those who write on a schedule.
Writing 5,000 words in a single inspired weekend and then not writing for three weeks, rather than writing 500 words daily and accumulating more total output with steadier improvement.
How to fix it
Set a daily writing habit — even 15 minutes or 300 words. Consistency matters more than volume. Some days will produce good writing, others will not, but the discipline of regular practice builds craft over time.
Ignoring the Power of Specificity
Vague descriptions ('a nice house,' 'she wore a dress,' 'he drove a car') create no mental image. Specific details ('a peeling Victorian with Christmas lights still up in March,' 'a yellow sundress with a coffee stain on the hem') make writing vivid and believable.
Writing 'they ate dinner' when 'they shared cold leftover pad thai straight from the takeout container, passing a single fork between them' reveals character, relationship, and atmosphere in a single sentence.
How to fix it
In revision, find every vague noun and ask: what specific version of this thing belongs in this scene? The details you choose reveal character and create atmosphere. Not every noun needs to be specific, but the ones that matter to the scene should be precise.
Quick Self-Check
- Can I rewrite a 'telling' sentence into a 'showing' scene with sensory detail and action?
- Does my protagonist have a clear want, need, flaw, and arc from beginning to end?
- Have I revised my current piece at least twice, making substantive changes beyond fixing typos?
- Can I read my dialogue aloud and have it sound like real speech rather than exposition?
- Am I reading published work in my genre at least monthly and analyzing how it achieves its effects?
Pro Tips
- ✓After finishing a first draft, print it out and read it on paper with a pen. You will catch problems on paper that you miss on screen because the physical medium changes your relationship to the text.
- ✓Study the opening paragraphs of 10 published stories in your genre. Note how quickly they establish voice, conflict, and a reason to keep reading. Then compare your own openings.
- ✓When stuck on a scene, skip it and write a later scene. You do not have to write in order. Often, knowing where the story ends up makes the middle scenes clearer.
- ✓Keep a notebook of overheard dialogue, specific sensory details, and interesting character observations from daily life. This raw material will feed your fiction.
- ✓Read your work aloud to catch rhythm problems, awkward phrasing, and dialogue that does not sound natural. Your ear catches what your eye misses.