Nope, Not Buying It: How Do We Maintain Believability in Our Writing?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

You don't want your readers to think, "Yeah, right, that'll never happen."

My brother-in-law is a nurse, and he can't watch medical TV shows. It annoys the snot of out him how wrong so many of the details are. My husband is the same way with anything computer related, and I notice the screw-ups in publishing and graphic design. Odds are you have your own area of expertise, and you notice when a show, movie, or book gets it wrong.

The number of authors who goofed by putting a safety on a Glock is pretty high. And readers catch those goofs. 

All stories in all genres get bonked on the head when they lack credibility. Readers don’t believe a character would act a certain way, or they doubt a situation would ever happen, they find details that are flat-out wrong, or they call BS about how something is handled. 

Once you blow your credibility with a reader, it’s really hard to earn back their trust. 

The Budrys Rule: Three Writerly Sins, One of them Cardinal

By Dario Ciriello

Part of The How They Do It Series 

JH: Dario Ciriello returns to the lecture hall today with three "rules" writers should never break. And for once, these rules are ones writers really should live by.

As an editor/copyeditor who reads a lot of manuscripts, I see many potentially fine, well-written novels with believable characters, rollicking plots, and crisp dialogue fail because they fell short of what I call The Budrys Rule.

The late Algis Budrys was a famous science fiction author, editor, teacher, and critic. He taught for many years at the Clarion Writers Workshop, and worked as a book editor for Playboy magazine. In his fine little 1994 craft manual, Writing to the Point, Budrys gives one of the clearest and best pieces of advice to authors I’ve ever read, and does it so succinctly it works as a simple mnemonic.