This is a list of advice I’ve gathered from multiple craft books, critique groups, and workshops. And yes, there are exceptions, but you have to know the rules before you break them.

 1. Adverbs make your writing weak. Avoid adverbs. (That whirring sound you hear is all the deceased English teachers rolling over in their graves.)

2. “That” is a non-word, that you shouldn’t use. It’s unnecessary most of the time.

3. You can use one exclamation point per book. One. If you’re conveying the emotion, you don’t need the exclamation point. So say’s Stephen King. And if you use multiple exclamation points in a row, (!!!) Stephen King will come to your house and read you a bedtime story involving psychotic alien clowns. You’ve been warned.

4. Do not have your character look in a mirror and describe her own appearance in flowery language. She can think her hair looks like a frightened blond poodle perched atop her head. She cannot drag a comb through her shiny blond main of hair, which flows down her back like a waterfall.

5. If your character is thinking something, it doesn’t go in quotes. It doesn’t even have to be italicized. You don’t need to use a tag, such as “she thought”. If we are in her POV, who else’s thought would it be?

6. Speaking of POV, do not head hop. You can have one POV per scene or chapter. And yes I know, Nora Roberts changes POV midstream, but she’s Nora Roberts, so she can do whatever the heck she wants.

7. Give details of the setting as the character would see them. Do not list every item of furniture in a room or every detail of a character’s outfit. A male character wouldn’t go into detail about the type of dress or blouse a woman was wearing. He’d focus on the curves underneath the clothes or the exposed cleavage.

8. Do not have a petite woman with legs that go on for miles. That’s not physically possible, unless she is one of those weird rubbery superheroes.

9. Do not have your hero growl his lines. Unless he’s a shifter of some sort, he can’t growl. The same goes for hissing his lines, unless your character is Voldemort.

10. Make sure your dialogue sounds realistic. Use contractions. Don’t repeat your characters’ names over and over again. No one says, “Hello, Bob. Do you want to go out to lunch, Bob?”

11. Don’t have your character’s think something and then say what they just thought. It’s too repetitive.

12. Winking is creepy. In YA, guys seem to wink a lot. In real life if someone winked at you that much you’d cross the street to avoid them.

13. Watch for repetitive movements: smirking, smiling, nodding, eye rolling, and shrugging.

Can you think of any other writing pitfalls to avoid? List them in the comments below.