Jennifer Crosswhite - March 5, 2026 - 5 min. read

Writing Errors: 5 Costly Mistakes Writers Keep Making

Writing errors show up in places we don’t always expect. This is not a post about cats. Well, maybe it is. A little. I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen a cat with six-pack abs. Every cat I know has a soft, flabby belly. We had a cat growing up that we called Flabby Tabby.

How does that relate to writing? I’ve been a book coach, editor, and author for over 20 years. And I find the same types of problems crop up over and over. A lot of flabby bellies in writing, if you will. So let’s discuss them here so you can look for them in your own writing and weed them out.

Point of View

One of the most common writing errors writers make is not realizing how powerful POV is. When we are truly inside your character’s skin and brain, and not just watching him or her, we develop that deep emotional connection that makes for a great reading experience. If readers love your characters, they’ll follow them anywhere, even through a bad plot.

POV is only what the character whose head you are in can see, feel, think, know, etc. It is the key component in creating an emotional experience, which is the standard we measure our story by. Getting POV correct makes a huge difference in the emotional experience for your reader.

What I find is that because we watch TV and movies, we muddle POV. When you watch a TV show or a movie, they are showing you the person’s face as they talk or react. When the director wants us to know what the heroine is feeling, he shows us her face, actions, and dialogue.

Writing is very different from video. We need to crawl inside the hero’s skin. When we do that, we don’t see their eyes or their faces.

Put yourself in the scene as your character. What are you thinking, feeling? What are you doing with your body? What things are your five senses picking up? Show what it’s like to be that person from deep inside of them, not by showing us from the outside.

Do Double Duty

Among the most common writing errors writers make is failing to ensure that every action, thought, and word does more than just convey one piece of information. Use each as an opportunity to show emotion or reveal something about your character’s personality.

For example, a character simply crossing the room to pick up her phone can tell us a lot. Don’t just tell us she went over and got her phone. Did she stalk? Did she drag her feet? Did she nearly skip? See how each one shows us her mood as well as showing us what she’s doing? And for the phone call. Do her actions convey dread? Excitement? Anger? Make each bit do double and triple duty and you won’t have the dreaded flab that must be cut.

Cut the Flab

When we read about what your character is doing (or has done) we expect it to mean something. If you tell us she went to the grocery store before going home, there should be a reason I need to know that. Did someone see her there? Did she need to avoid someone so she forgot the milk? Did that errand delay her arrival at home so she missed being there when the burglar broke in?

Just as your words need to do double duty, so do any actions that either appear on stage or are summarized in narrative. Keep asking yourself why we need to know this. And, what else can this action tell us?

Where to Begin

One of the most frequent writing errors I see is that writers don’t know where to start their story. That also applies to scenes. I often see scenes that flounder a bit in their beginning, giving us too much info about how we got here.

Readers don’t need a lot of set up. Regardless if you’re a plotter or a seat-of-your-pants writer, you need to know what you want to accomplish in each scene. Scenes can take place close together or farther apart in time, but they should only contain actions that move your story forward.

If you’re writing a romance and the hero and heroine haven’t spoken in two weeks, you don’t need to spend a lot of time in your next scene explaining what they’ve been doing or why (unless it directly relates to the plot or subplot). You can easily say something like, “After not hearing from John for two weeks Jane was surprised to see his number pop up on her phone.”

You could change “surprised” to something that might more closely convey her feelings, like annoyed, irritated, elated, angry, miffed. But we don’t need a long explanation, just jump into the action. When in doubt, start with the action and add any explanation or transition later if you really need to.

When It’s Over, It’s Over

And then when the purpose of the scene is over, end it. It’s much better to leave your readers wanting more than to linger too long in the scene. Think about the purpose (or better, purposes) of each scene. How does it move the plot forward? How does it deepen characterization? What questions does it raise that will keep the reader turning pages? When that’s done, your scene is done.

The problem is that, as writers, we love our characters. They live in our heads; they are our friends. We want to hang out with them and spend time with them. And that’s fine, but do it elsewhere if it’s making your story flabby.

Use these tips to avoid common writing errors and tighten up your writing, whether it’s for a contest or not. And your scenes won’t look as flabby as a cat’s belly.

Want to go deeper?

I created a YouTube playlist “5 Question You Must Answer” where marketing expert Stephanie Feger and I discuss each of these questions in detail on our Beyond the Page series.

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