Noticing Newbies

At the moment I am wandering the electronic corridors of WRITING.COM peering into doors and windows, as it were, to see if a paid subscription is of value to me. So far the venue appears to be worth a paid membership.

Yesterday I wrote a brief review for a piece of writing here, and the writing I reviewed was / is very poor: the topic of the writing was not apparent to the reader, as there were far too many unnecessary diversions and that added nothing to the story and did not move "the story" (if there even was one) forward. I was as kind as possible, yet also honest in pointing out the problems.

The writer of the story sent email to be, upset I had pointed out the problems, and then blocked me. Heh. That was my first day here. I hope this is some kind of record, and that I get a prize for being blocked merely by helping someone.

Most of the sample writing I have seen on on-line writer's forums tend to be weak in the same areas. Generally speaking:

1) New writers tend to "tell" instead of "show;"

2) New writers tend to pad their writing with far more sentences and even whole pages that are utterly unnecessary and do nothing for the story;

3) New writers tend to add words, most often adverbs, that make the writer appear lazy or to have a poor vocabulary;

4) New writers tend to write exposition / "data dumps" where not appropriate.

Writers who wish to be authors need to understand how to avoid these basic problems.

I write humor; I am also writing about the USA Southwest; tea cozies; a western; and a thriller. My first memoir has so far sold ~540 copies in 13 months.