by Thracius

I have to thank a couple of my fellow writers for this idea. As a fairly pious Catholic I thought it was a clever and interesting idea, so I’m going to expand on it: what are the seven deadly sins of writing? Or, rather, how do the seven deadly sins apply to writing? These sins won’t send you to Hell, but they might send your book to the bottom of the bargain bin.

Pride

This is a big one, especially for new writers: you can’t be too prideful. If you spend a year or two writing a book and you publish it and get bad reviews, don’t go to the review and leave a nasty comment. It’s unprofessional, it’s petty, and it’s bad authorship. Chances are, the person has a point, even if you don’t want to hear it. No matter how experienced you are as a writer, keep in mind that you can always improve. Never think of your writing as perfect and unimpeachable and always be willing to accept criticism.

Envy

With the smashing success of A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV series, Game of Thrones, it seems like everybody wants to be George R.R. Martin. The “realistic fantasy” schtick, where there’s some magic and other fantasy bits but people’s motivations and character are grim and realistic, seems to be becoming more common in recent years. The same goes for the “wizards in real life” gimmick of Harry Potter, and it seems like every YA author copies the same basic idea as every other YA author: angsty teens who live in a reality that is like ours, but slightly different. The point is, don’t look at others’ work and think that you have to copy their ideas to be as successful as they are.

Wrath

Don’t write anything, whether a short piece or a book, out of spite. J.K. Rowling admits that she nearly killed Ron Weasley, the beloved ginger, out of spite for fans. Can you imagine the fan’s outcry if that had happened? The fans cried when Ron’s lesser-known brother Fred died, and Fred had an identical twin with an identical personality, so it was hardly even a loss. Doing anything in a book out of spite will just make people angry, it won’t be entertaining or satisfying, and it might hurt your reputation.

But even worse is putting out a book as a hit on a particular person. For example: “The Anti-Obama Book – The Straight Facts to Why Obama Sucks” is hardly a magnum opus. The same goes for “Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy”.  Putting out a book to slander someone, regardless of who it is or the content, is petty, it makes you look bad, and it’s a waste of your creative talent.

Gluttony

This one lies beyond the realm of authorship. To be gluttonous is to use what is, in the industry, called purple prose. Good writing, or prose, flows well and, while eloquent, isn’t excessive. It’s modest. Purple prose is prose that is excessively ornate and flowery, calls attention to itself, and can water down the point of your passage by being far too dramatic. The reason it’s so bad is perhaps that, while reading, the reader shouldn’t be aware that the author exists. They should imagine being able to see all these things, not imagine them being described. With purple prose, it’s so excessive that you can’t not imagine someone narrating it. Here’s an example of purple prose from The Eye of Argon, an awfully written book:

“The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.”

Just avoid that.

Lust

Don’t write obscene scenes for their own sake. (Unless it’s a Nora Roberts kind of book, because that’s the point of those books.) If you’re going to write a scene that is obscene in some way, whether it’s lewd or gory, make sure the scene has some kind of meaning; otherwise you’ll end up with an excessive and decadent book or story.

Sloth

Write, write, and write some more. If you’re feeling lazy and don’t want to write, too bad, do it anyway. Try to write at least a few hundred words a day. It doesn’t have to be good – you can make it better with editing. But never give up writing.

Greed

Don’t write books for the sake of making money, because that’s when you start to publish drivel. Write books that are good, that people will enjoy, that tell a good story, and money will follow. J.K. Rowling was homeless when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. Don’t let money get in the way of good writing: if you’re writing something just for the money, you’re not making a story; you’re making a product.

The TL;DR version of all this: be modest as an author, don’t try to emulate others, don’t write anything out of spite, be modest with your prose, don’t make your book excessively explicit for its own sake, don’t be lazy, and don’t let money get in the way of good writing. If you avoid these seven sins, you’ll avoid many of the mistakes that plague writers both experienced and new.