The Seven Deadly Sins for Non-Fiction Writing
Author: Gail Richards

The Seven Deadly Sins for Non-Fiction Writing
Even the most compelling writing and subject can fail if
you let the small irritations get in the way of that
connection with your reader.  Make your writing worth
reading and take it from good to great by avoiding these
seven pitfalls.

1. Poor organization.   If your reader can't follow your
line of reasoning or organization, they will eventually
give up.  The writer may not have created a beginning,
middle, and end that readers get hooked on and want to take
to the end.  As a writer, you are taking your readers on a
journey, so don't lose them.

2. Passive voice.  When an author lacks confidence in what
she is saying or in her expertise, there is a tendency to
write in passive voice: "The boat was overturned" versus "I
overturned the boat." Passive voice is a legitimate writing
tool, but authors employ it to avoid their own power.  Used
this way, it undermines the strength of the material.

3. Limited vocabulary. A book is a two-dimensional medium,
so it is up to the writer to deliver the words to paint a
picture that becomes three-dimensional in the mind's eye.
This is just as true for a nonfiction book as a novel.  If
the words are trite or uninteresting, the book becomes
forgettable.

4. Poor sentence structure and grammar, misspellings,
incorrect abbreviations and capitalization. If you make
mistakes here, the reader may assume your ideas are in
error too.

5. Writing that isn't tight.  You may find that you ramble
when you write a first draft, so then you go back and take
out the extra words and shorten sentences.  For example:
"I've often thought that we should consider what we want
out of life so we won't make so many mistakes."
Translation: "Consider what you want from life to avoid
mistakes."

6. Trite phrases.  For example:  "As I've always said….".
We don't need to know what you've always said.  Just tell
us what you want us to know.

7. Over-emotionalism. The more clearly you can tell a story
straight out and let the reader become emotional, the more
effective the story will be to make your point.  That
doesn't mean you can't use words to make a story poignant
and meaningful; it just means you don't tell the reader how
to feel about the events.  Tell how you feel only.  A sign
of this is when a writer uses exclamation points throughout
his or her book.  If you use more than one exclamation
point per chapter, you've probably used too many.  Another
amateur mistake is words with all capital letters, the
written equivalent of shouting. It is much more effective
to talk softly.

Readers are trained from good experiences to be open to
your book from the start. Don't dash their optimism with
poor writing.  It takes just as much time to rewrite and
polish a book as it does to write the first draft.  Know
that, expect it, and spend the time necessary to make your
work great.


About the Author:

Gail Richards is founder of http://www.AuthorSmart.com a
dynamic website connecting aspiring authors with the
classes, audio library, tools, information and resources
needed to make smart, informed decisions at each step in
the nonfiction book publishing journey. Jan King is the
founder of http://www.eWomenPublishingNetwork.com a
membership organization devoted to supporting and coaching
women who become successfully published nonfiction authors.