It’s a good thing. Sets you up for learning and growing so much better than thinking you already know stuff. And then there’s Beginner’s Luck, which by definition can only happen once and mostly it’s too late for that.

Brings me to beginner’s mistakes. I recently had the honor on behalf of my writer’s group to review five entries into the chapter’s writing contest, and I was struck by how consistent the mistakes were from story to story. The same things kept coming up:

Opens too slow, pace too slow. Slow might be good for cooking food, but it’s not good for storytelling. You gotta get it going fast and keep it going at a pretty good clip if you want to capture and hold your reader. I was taught that by James Patterson, number one bestselling thriller writer in the world.

Too much backstory, too much description, both errors that slow down the pace.

Scenes don’t work, conflict not clear. The fundamental requirements for a story are intention and obstacle. I was taught that by Aaron Sorkin, one of my writing gods. The samples were full of scenes that lay inert on the page for lack of a clear intention and obstacle.

Cliché descriptions, pointless dialogue, tin-ear repetitions of the same word (you have to listen for that) — these are just bad writing. The important things that came out of this experience for me were:

Start fast and keep it going. Be sparing with description and backstory. Construct the story and every scene in it on the basis of intention and obstacle equals conflict.

Not necessarily in that order.