5 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School
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Think back to your English classes in school. Maybe you loved them, maybe you hated them, but either way, they probably taught you some terrible writing habits. Wait — that sounds like a total contradiction, right? Isn't the whole point of English class to teach you how to write and read better?
Don't get me wrong, there is certainly a ton of value in English classes. I myself was an English major, so I love the subject. But as I started studying the craft of fiction writing, and as I became a book editor, I realized that some of the habits drilled into our brains in English class can actually hinder us when it comes to writing creatively.
Today I'm going to go through five bad writing habits you learned in school, with examples, and give my tips for kicking these habits to the curb to allow your creative writing to flourish. Make sure you read all the way to the end, because the last one is arguably the most detrimental to your writing practice.
1. Sticking to Rigid Grammar Rules
The first bad writing habit you learned in school is one that was drilled into all of our heads: sticking to rigid grammar rules. In English language and composition classes, we were all taught a laundry list of grammar rules; never start a sentence with “and” or “but,” never end a sentence with a preposition, and avoid sentence fragments like the plague. But adhering to all of these strict grammar rules in your creative writing can make your narrative end up sounding stiff, overly formal, and unnatural.
Don't be afraid to bend or even break some of these grammar rules if it helps you craft a more authentic-feeling narrative. After all, you want your characters to come across as human first and foremost, which means having them speak the way that we naturally speak.
In a creative work, you also sometimes want to intentionally and strategically break grammar rules to achieve a certain type of tone or to establish your unique narrative voice as an author. I'm not saying that you should intentionally mangle your grammar to the point that your sentences become incomprehensible to your reader, but if you find sentences here or there that don't adhere to strict grammatical correctness, it's not something to worry about. What you have on the page may actually be more effective than if you had revised it to be grammatically correct.
Here's an example where you might use a sentence fragment strategically:
She waited. For a sign, for anything. But none came.
Here, technically that second sentence is a fragment, but the reader can still easily comprehend what's being conveyed. In this case, the series of three short sentences feels emotionally charged. If we were to revise this to be perfectly grammatically correct, you would lose some of that sense of rhythm and therefore some of the dramatic effect would be diminished as well. The technically correct version would read:
She waited for a sign, for anything, but none came.
Both options could work depending on the type of tone that you're going for in your story, so don't feel like sentence fragments are always off limits.
2. Overusing Figurative Language
The next terrible writing habit you learned in school is overusing figurative language. Do you remember learning about metaphors, personification, and similes in school? I remember being taught that these literary devices are what truly elevated prose and made writing great. You might have been encouraged to use these devices to enhance your writing and make your descriptions pop.
Figurative language certainly does have a place in fiction writing, and the best writers use figurative language effectively and strategically. However, it should be used very deliberately and selectively because using too much figurative language can have the opposite effect and make your writing actually sound amateurish. Less is often more, and the more figurative language that you pack into your prose, the less effective it is likely going to be.
Too much figurative language can even make your writing start to feel dramatic, and you can run the risk of using metaphors or similes that feel cliche or have been overused in fiction. For instance, how many times have you read some iteration of a character's eyes “twinkling like the stars” or their tears “flowing like a river”?
Let's look at an example of how overusing figurative language can weaken your writing:
The sky was a deep, inky blue, as dark as the depths of the ocean. The grass, a brilliant emerald green, swayed gently, like a thousand tiny dancers performing a delicate waltz.
Because these two similes are placed immediately back to back in subsequent sentences, you lose the effect of each one, and you start to disorient the reader as to what they should be visualizing in their mind. Are we looking at a deep ocean or at a thousand dancers? Here's a revised version that scales back:
The sky was a deep blue, contrasting the emerald green blades of grass, which swayed like tiny dancers performing a delicate waltz.
I personally would retain the second simile in this passage because it feels more unique to me. Notice that I also omitted the unnecessary adverb “gently,” which is already implied by the phrase “delicate waltz.” With figurative language, you'll often find unnecessary adverbs creeping in.
3. Using Flowery Vocabulary
The next terrible writing habit you were taught in school is using flowery vocabulary. In English class, we're often taught that the bigger the word, the better, and some of us definitely remember spending hours studying SAT vocab words. Many newer writers think that using lofty, multisyllabic words will elevate their writing on a literary level and make it sound more impressive, but remember that your story is not a game of Scrabble. You don't get more points for bigger words, and in many cases, the most straightforward, simplistic language is the most effective language.
In fact, Stephen King talks about vocabulary in his amazing craft book, On Writing. One of my favorite pieces of advice he gives is, “Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is to use the first word that comes to your mind if it is appropriate and colorful.” In other words, try simply saying what you mean in your story. Resist the urge to reach for a thesaurus and find a more complicated way of saying it, because oftentimes that more complicated phrasing will sound unnatural.
It is true that you will want to vary your prose, particularly if you find yourself using a pet phrase over and over. In general, though, don't overthink it, and don't shy away from using straightforward, simple language. Here's an example of using too much flowery vocabulary that really obscures the meaning of what the writer is trying to say:
She commenced an expedited traipse down the convoluted thoroughfare, assailed by the symphony of passing vehicles.
Really, you can distill this down to the barebones of what's going on:
She walked quickly down the crowded street as cars whirred past her.
4. Prioritizing Writing Over Storytelling
The next terrible writing habit you learned in school is to prioritize writing over storytelling. English class focuses on teaching you how to write the composition of sentences — the choice of words — but truthfully, how you string words together is only part of the equation of writing a successful story. You also need to know how to craft engaging characters, a propulsive plot, and pace a story effectively.
Often in school, less attention is given to what makes a story so compelling. How do you get your readers to engage in your story from beginning to end? How do you craft complex, authentic-feeling characters that your readers will care about? How do you emotionally move your reader? In fiction writing, it ultimately doesn't matter how amazing your prose is on a line level if you're not telling a meaningful story.
Good writing does not necessarily equal great storytelling, and because the latter is so much less concrete, it's tougher to learn. Ultimately, crafting stories is an art form. If you want to strengthen your abilities as a writer, it's critical to focus not only on the craft of writing but also the craft of storytelling. Both are necessary to ensure that your story resonates with others.
5. Writing to Please Others
The last terrible writing habit you learned in school is writing to please others. As I said in the intro, this might just be the most detrimental habit you were taught in school. All of us had the same goal of writing in the classroom — to get a good grade — and we were often given a rubric or criteria against which our writing assignment would be graded. I know many of us would see that minimum word count requirement on an essay and go back in and bolster up our paragraphs to reach the minimum, even though we all know that this isn't how creative writing works.
In the real world, it can be tough to kick that habit of wanting to check boxes and get some kind of approval. Ultimately, though, writing to meet someone else's standards can stifle your creativity and undermine your confidence in yourself as a storyteller.
I hear from so many authors who want to “crack the code” as to what literary agents and publishers are looking for in manuscripts submitted to them, but the truth is there is no rubric you can check off to see if your story earns an A, B, or C. To produce a compelling story in the creative writing space, you ultimately need to write for yourself first and foremost, not to please someone else. You cannot be forced to write as part of an assignment. The drive and desire must come from within — that is the only way to write an emotionally moving story.
Now that we got through all of those terrible writing habits, you can revisit your manuscript with new tools in your arsenal to prioritize storytelling over rigid writing rules. Thank you so much for reading, and happy writing!