After the SPR Book Awards each year we get together and analyze the judges’ comments. Here are 2019’s most common author mistakes that you might be able to learn from next time you take the plunge and enter a book contest.

1. Info Dumping

By far the most common issue this competition.

Too much dialogue

The biggest problem this year was the amount of dialogue used to tell a story. Pages of it, like a movie screenplay. You cannot tell a story without character development. This means we need to experience situations and know how characters feel about what is happening to them, and dialogue used as an ‘information dump’ is not it.

Only use dialogue when you absolutely need to, and certainly not more than a couple of lines of exchange.

Too many characters

Why are you introducing a character? To dump information? Having characters in and out of scenes to deliver a line, such as a soldier who has a big description and name and then leaves, never to return, is really confusing for readers. Make sure you give main characters lines instead or work out how to tell us that info without literally having another character tell us.

Too much exposition

Make action at the forefront, and weave your details in as obviously important where necessary. Don’t leave readers grappling to store information for later. It’s exhausting. Having lists of equipment, weapons, clothing, details of appearance, names, family trees, and then not giving the reader an idea of the level of importance of all of this makes your writing impenetrable.

So many thoughts…

Characters who think in italics is just horrible for a reader to sustain, especially during action sequences in battles and the like. Also, having paragraphs of a character’s thoughts about the past to fill in backstory is horrible to read. While you may think you have told the reader everything necessary for later, reading the information in past-past (past perfect tense) takes the reader too far away from the action. “She thought about how, twenty years back, she had had a house by the sea…” Not only that, but we have no way of knowing which detail is important for later because everything is a blur of past thoughts.

2. Not enough editing

Rushing a book to get it into the contest was a common issue. Without a developmental edit, i.e. someone balancing your story, sentence structure, and proofreading your text, your book will not be the best it can be. Editing consists of several stages, and the first of those should be a developmental edit/copy edit. This will hone your plot arc and point out glaring errors that you have not spotted because you are too close to the work, wood-for-the-trees style. Once you have combatted these issues, you should move on to a proofread. This is where you correct spelling and grammar errors. There is no way you can skip either of these steps and consider your book ready for sale.

The golden rule is, with the exception of YA Magical Fantasy (Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings etc.) and children’s illustrated books, if you have more than 120,000 words you have a lot of flab there that needs cutting. On the other end, if a book is less than 50,000 words, you haven’t really got a book yet and you need to consider what needs fleshing out.

Try our editing service if you need help.

3. Formatting/design lets you down

There were some books we saw that were well-written, but the author had not spent time or money on getting a professional format for the interior, or they hadn’t shelled out for a good cover design. Without good presentation, your book won’t win any prizes and certainly won’t sell on Amazon or in bookshops. Claiming to be an amateur is not an excuse — if your book is on sale, then you are a professional and must produce a book worthy of being sold for someone else’s hard-earned money.

4. Wrong tone

Too personal

If you write a book about finance, and you have it all weighed off with a nice cover and it’s in the Finance category of Amazon…why are you then dumping in a chapter about God and prayer? If you have sent in your upbeat summer romance, why have I got twenty (non-fiction) pages at the front about your cancer journey before the novel starts? Have you seen any other novels that do this? While life’s events are serious and inspirational for writers, mentioning them in the front of your book is not the right place.

Too localized

There are loads of business books or religious theory books on sale on Amazon. But is your book actually a book in the same way, or are you trying to publish a PowerPoint presentation, a church’s local history, or company training handbook that won’t be of wider interest? Maybe you are publishing your very personal family tree, which will not have any value for anyone outside your family (we didn’t know Aunty Flo with her gammy leg in Australia). While it is a godsend that we can all use KDP to publish anything and give out copies to friends, colleagues, and family, some books will not have appeal for others and won’t do well in a book contest for that very reason. Many very specialized topics will be unreadable for a broader audience (we are not going to award a book on Canadian plumber’s unions’ governance tips above a great science fiction novel or a brilliant historical work, for example).

How can you make your book sell? Writing about how to do family tree research, generalized governance application in business, or an illustrated guide to churches in Illinois, for example, may be much more interesting and readable to browsing readers, and give you more scope for producing a solid book.

Inappropriate

If you write a book about a fourteen-year-old having an adventure, why have you included a sex scene? (Ewww…) If your kid’s book is about monsters, having one of the protagonist’s friends killed in their bed is not a good start. What audience is your book for? Why did you write it? Are you using titillation instead of good story writing?

5. Didn’t read the rules

Wrong file formats sent. Book was not published within the timeframe allowed. Book is not available on Amazon. Book was entered last year. Didn’t send any book files. You get the idea. We had several entries that were disqualified for these reasons, including one book that could have won had the rules been followed. When entering a contest, make sure you follow the rules to the letter.

We have rules for entry for reasons that may seem petty or inconsequential, but to make this a really great book contest with kudos, we have devised a system to judge books that takes into account the author’s presentation and writing as well as their attention to detail, all to a high, professional standard. This is why it is really worth giving it your all when entering a book contest. You may surprise yourself and win!

You can enter the 2020 SPR Book Awards here.

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