Quick and Easy Writing Fixes

A monthly column offering easy, effective solutions to writing and revision challenges.

Technique to please readers: “Delight”

Posted on April 6, 2026 by christinedesmetauthor

When a writer I’m working with (including myself!) gets bogged down, I often suggest they step back and do this:

DELIGHT readers.

Why care about that? Too often we get mired in “seriousness.” We worry about plotting, or plotting dire deeds and cliffhangers, maybe murder, or a sad person moving to a small town to start over, war, galaxies torn apart, romance not working, and so on. Memoirs also might bog down.

Stories are serious, but readers also need relief amid the seriousness.

“Delight” is subjective, of course.

Delight operates in all genres, though.

Giving a character a moment of delight can “illuminate” your character in a way that makes them memorable, a much talked-about character.

Delight means to give joy or pleasure. Even for a moment. We sometimes describe the feeling as “delicious.”

For a project that’s not working to your satisfaction, look for your “delight quotient.” It operates in EVERY GENRE or type of story, novels, memoir, scripts, etc.

What can help a reader ENJOY your first page? Scene? Chapter? The other pages?

Delight can surprise you. Know your genre. Delight might be a bloody fight or a quiet kiss, depending on genre.

Many authors bring animals into a manuscript to provide delight. Cute children and lovable older characters also get hauled into usage, and that’s okay because readers “delight” in those things if not overdrawn to the point of clichéd. Strive for originality to deliver “delight.”

A fun word or phrase can deliver delight. Most of us might recall a movie’s tough Indiana Jones saying “I hate snakes” after he encounters the huge pit of snakes.

Being able to IDENTIFY with “delight” makes it work for readers.

Delight is a feeling and a reaction, therefore often based on what YOU have experienced. Trust yourself and include it.

Will every reader “get it”? Maybe not and that doesn’t always matter. You’ll find your readers if you do a good job satisfying the overall need for “Emotion and Entertainment” in any writing project.

Delight can be contagious even when we have not shared the same experience. I don’t play major-league baseball but when a player hits a grand slam and jumps up and down like a little kid, I also experience the feeling of delight.

Delight with earned success is a common reaction no matter the subject. We enjoy watching someone in a first recital, and we clap heartily at a graduation. I also cheer after I finish writing a good chapter or scene.

A “reversal” of fortune can delight readers, too.

Delight need not be funny.

Delight readers with daring danger. Car chases and going into dark caves often do it for readers.

Appeal to our five senses. Hearing a baby’s giggle delights us, for example. Spotting a rainbow makes us pause and point it out. A tasty, unique description of eating chocolate cake can delight readers.

Being original instead of clichéd will bring delight, almost guaranteed.

Delighting readers is a seduction. What does your reader like? Give it to them!

Caution: Over-doing anything can kill the feeling of delight, though that depends on genre sometimes.

“Delight” usually needs a spotlight and simplicity. Piling on actions, objects, characters, and sensory images in a short space can overwhelm readers and not feel delightful at all.

How would your character experience true delight? Have you shown the readers that on the page? Where? Soon enough?

Give your readers the OPPORTUNITY to feel delight. Reward will follow.

Categories: Quick and Easy Writing Fixes | Tags: writing | Leave a comment

Mistakes bother you—but create EXCELLENT plots

Posted on March 11, 2026 by christinedesmetauthor

If you look up “mistakes in writing” or similar wording you’ll find hundreds of articles about how to avoid mistakes such as a meandering plot, or too many long paragraphs, or how to delete clutter, and so on.

Now consider how mistakes create the best characters and plots.

Mistakes are handy as part of plot action and characterization. If you can’t figure out how to start your book, or how to conjure the next chapter or scene, have your character make a mistake.

The mistake should have a good measure of consequence.

Characters might have a good plot goal, but if they come off bland, consider having your character make a big—even huge—mistake.

In my March 2026 emailed newsletter I reviewed the great novel I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney. It’s about an obituary writer who makes small mistakes that lead him into a big mistake—he accidentally publishes an obit about himself. Everybody thinks he’s dead. From there, chaos ensues; he makes other mistakes.

The big mistake creates the novel’s Inciting Incident.

Mistakes create mysteries, scenes, plots, reversals of fortune.

Mistakes create funny and serious issues that pull in readers. How will the character get out of the mistake? In Kenney’s novel it’s not easy. A mere apology won’t cut it with his editor and fellow journalists and even some friends. Life changes in big, serious ways.

Mistakes compel the character TO DO SOMETHING.

That’s the trick with using mistakes to create plot and character: the mistake has to be serious enough to make the character REACT.

After a mistake, the character should engage in a plan to FIX things (or AVOID things for a time). That plan is the PLOT. (See how the mistake may write the novel for you?)

A good character also has some level of remorse.

Mistakes make good characters reach out for help, and reach more deeply within themselves.

Starting with a BIG MISTAKE automatically leads the character (and the writer) into finding the FATAL FLAW of the character (usually by the Midpoint Crisis).

Any character that makes a big mistake ultimately has to ask: Why? Why did I do that? Those questions bring in other characters, actions, and plot turns.

Working with a MISTAKE might help you write your entire novel or short story. Perhaps you’ve been stalled. Or you’ve started with actions that don’t matter. Now introduce a mistake and watch what unfolds.

Can a series of small mistakes work the same way? Anything is possible. Creativity is boundless. The danger with “many small mistakes” is that “sameness” will come into the prose, a predictability. Vary the heft of the mistakes so readers feel SURPRISE.

Make your character’s big mistake or a series of small mistakes (your creative choice of course) DRIVE their change and growth:

Why did the mistake happen?

What is it your character didn’t know about themself?

What are they learning from that mistake?

If you haven’t used mistakes in a concerted way, don’t make the mistake of ignoring the fine tool of “MAKING A MISTAKE.”

What are “THE” over-used words in your prose?

Posted on January 29, 2026 by christinedesmetauthor

Clutter—often from common, over-used words in everyday speech—is one reason for a pass by industry gatekeepers. Clutter creates a sluggish feel.

Clutter can bloat word count. That creates extra pages nobody can afford to publish or buy.

Lists of over-used words abound. An internet search will yield advice.

Editors and publishers tell us these are probably the top over-used words: so, some, but, that.

Do a search for those in your work. (It’s a great topic for a critique group. Report in next month with what you find.)

We all have our “favorite” words, too. An internet search won’t find those. A good writing friend, experienced critique partner, or copy editor will find them for you.

At one time a friend of mine caught me using “And” too much at the beginnings of sentences. Was I trying for a snappy pace or attitude from the characters? Neither goal resulted from the “And Disease.” I’m glad for good critique friends! Also watch for compound sentences stacking up with “and” in your prose. Perhaps we’re in a hurry AND rush ahead too swiftly?

Guess what other word I catch over-used by writers?

“The.”

Over-usage of “the” brings in a sing-songy, irritating sense at times.

Example: “They went to the store by the corner to get the macaroni and the sauce for the dinner.”

That example contains five instances of “the.” Notice how slow and awkward the sentence feels.

Here’s a new version with only one instance of “the”: “At the corner store they bought macaroni and sauce for dinner.”

Find your “favorite” words. Search for “the.”

Revise and improve your style, voice, and word count overnight.

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Land and soil—your sure-fire way to pull in readers

Posted on January 8, 2026 by christinedesmetauthor

Land speaks to our heart, our emotions. Soil itself crushed in hands or felt by bare feet speaks volumes to a character’s soul.

If you’re not getting traction with your novel or other project, look at your setting. It may offer you gifts.

Do you have the usual house, apartment, café, bakery, coffee shop, mountain cabin, or romantic cove?

We writers so easily construct those things but forget we exist in and on a landscape, on landforms, on soil that has history and a sense of magic with it.

Author and college instructor James W. Hall and his students analyzed bestselling books. Many centered around “land”:

Capturing land and lost Eden.
Fresh beginnings in virginal wilderness.
Struggling to return to the land.
A contaminated land.

We humans care deeply about land and soil, even specific types of soil and landforms. But do your character care? What is that relationship? Readers care.

Recall the importance of land in Gone With the Wind, and Pulitzer winner Lonesome Dove—about the last great cattle drive. More recently James and Demon Copperhead showed characters wrestling with difficult relationships with land they worked on or wanted to run from.

There are several popular mystery/suspense series that feature tracking dogs and rangers at national parks. They explore mysterious and interesting landforms. They give us facts about soil, the history of mountains, the plants and animals living there and such. Readers love learning, but this goes beyond that. We feel something special about the mountain itself, the soil itself. Wise writers bring that into the equation to please readers (including agents, editors, publishers, reviewers).

Land can have barriers—a river your character needs to cross and can’t but thought was beautiful just yesterday. Do a “setup” for that “payoff.”

Land and soil can provide a big moment in your plot paradigm/diagram. Consider the Midpoint Crisis literal landmark in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, by William Goldman. Outlaws climb a mountain, struggling against loose soil and rocks, barely ahead of the posse. Robert Redford and Paul Newman arrive at a cliff—high above a river. Their choice: surrender or chance jumping several hundred feet into the river, which will probably kill them.

Characters working land are considered noble. We love a farmer trying their best. Stories of the Dust Bowl or disasters with land break our heart. If you have a character beta readers or agents aren’t liking, get that character’s hands dirty.

Land and soil matter to readers because our lives depend on healthy, fruitful land. This is elemental stuff.

Around the world readers have land and soil in common. This aspect can expand your readership perhaps.

When writing about land and soil, be specific. What kind is it? Name? Texture? Landforms came about how? Different soils have names.

Soil and terrain resonate with readers. Wine and cheese from different world regions or the next county taste differently because of “terroir” or “gout de terroir,” a French term for the taste of the soil.

In memoirs, read Marc Hamer’s bestseller How to Catch a Mole and subsequent memoirs about tending a rich woman’s garden called Spring Rain and Seed to Dust. Working in soil became a metaphor for the man’s ups and downs in life.

Sometimes a novel can be just about the suspense of a landform. Consider the volcano in the famous Robert Harris novel, Pompeii. The geologist—who knew the “personality” of the soil and landform—couldn’t convince others of what was unfolding.

Popular nonfiction journalism books tackle “land” a lot, such as Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Classic, older regional books have loyal readership, too, and will give you ideas, such as The Land Remembers by Ben Logan.

Soil reacts to how we treat it; experts consider soil “alive.” Soil is truly a “character.”

Did you know every U.S. state and territory has an “official soil”? Lists and info about soil anywhere in the world are online.

So, instead of your cop meeting somebody at the clichéd coffee shop, what if they meet in the city park where the cop volunteers to weed flowers with children, get their hand dirty? What do they name their soil? Find in the soil?

What do YOU love about land and soil? Use that to enhance plot, characters, setting, and your unique voice.

Categories: Quick and Easy Writing Fixes | Tags: Books, fiction, nature, writing | Leave a comment

Messiness—important plot & character tool

Posted on November 12, 2025 by christinedesmetauthor

At a recent library presentation I showed attendees my very messy notebook page (8.5×11 inches) scribbled with the beginnings of a new novel plot. The entire novel was on that messy page.

I had scrawled a line across the 11 inches and added marks to represent the must-haves in structure: three acts and Midpoint Crisis. White space on that notebook page contained scribbles of characters and names, relationships to the suspect, a possible motive, places for bad deeds, and notes about possible serious actions.

That messiness is familiar to most writers.

Now transfer “being messy” to your key characters. Characters who get themselves into a mess and then get out of it are the stuff of great stories.

As soon as we see a messy situation on a page or in a movie, we’re hooked. How will the character get out of the MESS?

Messiness gets you out of a rut with a dull character or plot or chapter.

Messes lure us. Messes mean multiple issues or problems happen at once or are compounded.

It takes work to create character and plot messiness and resolve messes, but we live messy lives and we love witnessing how characters get out of messes.

The best writers in all genres create a character in the middle of a mess of some sort from the start and add to it certainly at the Midpoint Crisis and Climax.

A story might start without a mess, but readers seem to want to see a mess unfold within only a few paragraphs or pages. Give us a mess as the hook, then even more of a mess for your cliffhanger.

Here’s an example of revising for messiness:

Consider the classic scene: A driver with an urgent need to get to a hospital to see a buddy has to suddenly stop for cows or sheep crossing a road. You could have your character wait (maybe even impatiently) and your character gets around the sheep and zooms onward to the hospital to visit their friend.

Boring. Seen it before.

What if you revised for messiness? Give readers more entertainment that will sell your book or script.

A mess is more than just pausing for sheep. Messiness is created by a series of problems and decisions that often go wrong quickly.

As an example of a revision, the scene is now a sequence of scenes: Your character stops for the sheep, but this time is more impatient so your character decides to turn around and take a different road, BUT that delivers him to an encampment with people who steal his car and take his shoes and phone. THEN, he decides to walk a certain direction and that’s a mistake and he becomes filthy, and then he hitches a ride with a minister who is late for a funeral so NOW your character has to ride along before getting shoes from the church donation box and FINALLY your character in a hurry begs for a ride in the now-empty hearse and gets an interesting driver in the bargain to give him a ride to the hospital.

Messiness gives us a glimpse of how DETERMINED your character and YOU can be.

Messiness is usually more ENTERTAINING and SELLABLE than the opposite of it.

Categories: Quick and Easy Writing Fixes | Tags: creative-writing, writing-tips | Leave a comment