Overly Mechanical Writing (& How to Fix It)

[@coffeecreateconnect]

I really appreciated the use of examples. Without examples I have a hard time actually understanding the point of the advice. I always prefer videos that give examples for this reason. Thank you for your time and advice.

[@AlexaDonne]

I'm the same! I wish had more, but honestly it pained me so much to write the one I did ha. Hopefully the "short form" ones where I just told you about the examples worked too :)

[@MrEvldreamr]

@@AlexaDonneyes. Using good and bad examples helps tremedously

[@legendary.was.momentary]

I’m so scared that I’m doing this as a new and young writer, thank you for this video!!

[@EmilyParagraph]

Just got to the example and honestly, it sounds like what I do when I write fanfics. However, when I write fic, I'm basically frolicking in a field and playing pretend with myself, so I don't particularly care to refine my prose. Readers are either on board with me or not, I'm here to relax in between original projects so I can keep the juices flowing. Could it be better? Sure. Will I sometimes revise if I truly ain't feelin it? Yeah, but it ain't that deep. However, I did recently finish an original book I want to query, and during a final copyediting pass, I found several examples of this type of writing. Mostly in the form of reactions. Mostly my characters swallowing (as in when scared, like a cartoonish /GULP!/). I had a good laugh and took out 90% of them, even joking to a friend that it sounded like my characters were choking all the time. It's incredible how so much of it seems important in the midst of writing, but after getting my Fresh Eyes, it's just mechanical, if not silly.

[@shalini_sevani]

To be honest, that type of writing doesn't bother me as much as when writers are overly descriptive. The other thing that I see a lot in best selling books is when they and make the main character relatable by sharing all their boring thoughts.

[@zoomzoom103]

When you pulled out the example I was like "Ooh, I think I do this" and it clicked for me why there are sections or my WIP that I can't connect with but couldn't figure out what exactly the problem was. Thank you for this video!

[@AlexaDonne]

I'm so glad it helped!

[@Rachel-art-and-design]

I started reading a book called Building Great Sentences by Brooks Landon and it is about just that, creating a great sentence. It isn’t just about grammar it’s about putting words together to create what you want to convey as you build a paragraph and beyond. You can basically use the same words but when you arrange the words, it conveys different ideas and how the sentence feels for the reader. It is a fabulous book so far.

[@martinebonita2658]

Thanks for this, great rec

[@ViridianForests]

Thanks for the recommendation, it sounds interesting!

[@TomorrowWeLive]

I just started a book called How To Write a Sentence (And How to Read One)

[@caelanjpeters]

Love this video! My first draft characters ought to get headaches from how often their brows furrow😂

[@gabiocampos]

Mine too lol, all wrinkly by now too 😂😂

[@itslizzieann]

This is so me 😭

[@rollierollout]

YES! Thank you for this! I read a book recently where the mechanically-ness progressed from minimal in the beginning of the book to extreme by the end of the book. The end of the book screamed, "This author was definitely trying to hit a deadline!" It was an incredibly painful read, especially because the story was interesting in the beginning. The main character had an elaborate plan to release 300 prisoners from their cells in a dungeon. The end of the book: "She released the 300 prisoners. Everyone cried happy tears." It was ridiculous.

[@SuperHappyNotMerry]

I have no idea if we're thinking of the same author but considering this is the author that immediately came to mind when I read the term "mechanical writing" and one of their books heavily features a prison escape I do wonder…

[@rollierollout]

@SuperHappyNotMerry It might be same one!! Poor us for having to suffer through it 😂

[@sarahsander785]

Oh, this could be me *lol* I have a draft of a story here that literally ends with "He gave the medicine to the king. The king got cured. Kingdom's saved. End."

[@rollierollout]

​@@sarahsander785 Bahaha! Love that! 😂 The operative word is "draft" though! Good luck on your story! I'm already intrigued just by that ending!

[@AJDunnReads]

I often struggle with the internal stuff, but I recognize it's importance. I fully appreciate it in the books I read. I often work in two separate ways with my first draft being what I call "cinematic," where I write the action, the dialogue, the visuals I want to convey. Then the second draft is where I do the more "psychological" writing, knowing full well this is where I struggle; what is the character thinking about, relating to, remembering, associating other characters words and actions with. After that, the third draft is about melding these two together in better, more meaningful ways. I tell myself that I can't work from nothing, so getting it down on the page is the first thing to accomplish in whatever way I can do that. Cleaning it up and making it "pretty" is secondary to that for me.

[@Man-ej6uv]

i get it. i struggle with describing emotions and inner feeling for some reason, or i describe it so subtly people miss it :/

[@nina-w]

I'll definitely try this

[@frozenweevil4022]

for me i like to write questions and leave them unanswered in the internal monologue. it’s the characters thoughts and they have questions that they don’t know the answer to and i think it is a good way to show their fears and anxieties

[@freyavalon]

Mechanical writing can be great for getting that elusive first draft down on paper. But if it's still there in the final version, to a great extent, that seems like a red flag for a lack of quality editing to me.

[@PianoGirl091]

Yeah, those of us who work at bookstores or libraries... we know EXACTLY which author writes this way. 😅 Thank you so much for making this video. It's such a fantastic topic and it's really going to help me with my own writing!

[@vazzaroth]

Receipts, gurl!

[@cadburyyork5052]

I'm a hospital librarian and I feel so left out lol tell us, we need to know!!

[@AlexaDonne]

I mean I can think of MULTIPLE authors who write this way 🤣

[@BbGun-lw5vi]

We need to know! Don’t leave us this way!

[@letsreadwithcats8748]

SJM? 😅

[@roxxisquared15]

These glasses are GORGEOUS on you! They really bring out the green in your eyes.

[@AlexaDonne]

Thank you! They're my "fun" pair. I switch between them and my "normal" blue glasses :)

[@yvesgomes]

Yeah. They're fab, even though they don't draw much attention to themselves.

[@sarahsander785]

I totally do this and it was pointed out to me a long time ago with the words "I bet you write good essays, cause this feels like one" and my mind was "Well, that's not what I was going for". But it took me some years to figure out why that was and how to fix it. First of all, I didn't really describe at all and still need a revision round to put descriptions of place and characters in. Mannequins in a white room would be a appropriate name for all of my first drafts, thou it gets better. Second, I had no plan on what should actually happen, so I meandered around until something struck me. This has gotten a whole lot better after I learned more about plot and how to structure ideas and self-edit properly. There are still parts when I end to be overly mechanical, especially when trying to convey emotion and especially if I am not clear myself, which emotion is on hand. So yeah, I will lead all issues back to clearity, at least in my case.

[@mihotaisuki840]

I literally do everything that makes bad writing that you mentioned in the video 💀I'm so glad someone like you exists. I was trying so hard to find out what I was doing wrong, always asking people if my writing sounds like you would see it in a novel. I thought it was because I read manga way more than novels or that it was because the story I'm writing was originally thought and meant to be in manga form. But now I understand and can identify the issue. You're literally the only person who has come close at all to the help I need, so thank you.

[@cjradenbaugh]

Thank you for this! I’ve noticed that mechanical writing can sneak up on me, especially if I’m struggling with my health, and it is so frustrating bc I know there’s a better way to put it, but my brain is mush. 😅 I really like the way of explaining this by saying “reporting on the scene” or “being in the scene.” That helps a lot!

[@lostgoth3980]

What a great topic. I think this isn't talked about enough. Thank you!

[@jessnw5441]

Good stuff! I've watched a lot of your videos because I love how dishy and gossipy your presentation is (and I mean that in the very best way, you talk to the camera like you're talking to a close girlfriend, like we're all in on the secret) but this one so HIT! I learned so much, and I was so inspired, thank you thank you thank you!

[@bagelchickenlegs]

Amazingly helpful video! Can you pretty please make a video discussing "overly relying on bodily reactions" more in depth, particularly how to replace this in your writing... My characters are constantly beaming, smirking or eye rolling 😬

[@nutshell93]

I think I just had an “aha” moment. I think this is the issue when I really like the sound of the premise of a book but then I read it and it’s not bad but it wasn’t… wow.

[@kaylac2049]

TV Tropes refers to this overly dull writing style as "Beige Prose".

[@k--music]

I usually see 'beige prose' describing a minimalist writing *style* that focuses on being brief/direct/literal instead of poetic/embellished/wordy more than a type of bad writing. And what she describes here is more bad than beige imo, especially when it comes out as an overly wordy paragraph that just describes beat after unnecessary beat w/ the same structure without tying the actions into the story in an interesting way. This isn't really fixed by embellishing those bits, which would just turn 'beige prose' into 'purple prose' with the same issues.

[@KEEFOj]

so cute profile picture!

[@yesyes9698]

I feel mechanical is more detached. At least beige prose is evoking something, even if minimalist. Mechanical is just text….

[@tweegerm]

If you have any inclination to delve deeper into bodily reactions as a crutch I would LOVE to hear it. I'm 90% sure I understand the problem you mean but I don't think I could articulate what's wrong with it and how to write better. It's frustrating to sense that I'm not really fixing the 'show don't tell' problem by just writing 'he smiled' instead of 'he was happy' but I don't know where to go from there!

[@whatareyousayinggirl]

am i the only one who feels like the romantasy genre is full of books with writing like this? it's very telly, doesn't let you engage with it, and is often questionable in terms of language and grammar choice 😅

[@aaronhunyady]

Romantasy is probably the lowest quality genre right now, but also much of fantasy & sci-fi. These genres push world-building for world-building's sake and high word counts as higher priority than following the other tenets of storytelling. Telling simply gets more "details" on the page easier than showing does, and the drive to release rapid-fire books with high word counts stops that internal (and external) developmental editor from cutting that garbage out once it's on the page.

[@Holsp]

Alexa, I really appreciate you making videos again. Just when I once again want to get back into writing. Thank you!

[@vazzaroth]

Ah, 'control freak' writing! That makes this idea makes a lot more sense. For a non-book example, the recent Final Fantasy XIV Expansion (Dawntrail) had this writing sin as the #1 issue of the story. The writer would have 3 ppl standing around, and one would say "We think X happened" and then look around and everyone nods. Then he'd say "And that means that Y also happened" and everyone nodded. Except it was as tangentially related as saying "There is a fly in the house. Therefor, our food has spoiled." And NO ONE would challenge these gigantic, chasm-crossing monstrous leaps of logic. It's one thing if someone said "but why?" and he explained or had a good reason for those leaps, but no. it was just spoken authoritatively and once that occurs 2, 3 times, you REALLY start to lose the illusion this story has any internal consistency or authenticity that links it with real world logic or even real world people and brain functioning and you start to realize you're just in this author's little fantasy land inside their head where they are 100% correct and right every time. For me, the very second I get a WHIFF of that, your worldbuilding is shattered, your characters are puppets and you wearing 15 masks, and all immersion, and therefor buy-in or benefit of the doubt, is gone from me. You can write, mechanically, the best story ever told. But I will still be giving you 1 stars b/c you basically (and this is my opinion, mind you) "abused" my fantasy and simulation brain with your overpowering need for control control control and needing to be 110% CERTAIN that my fantasy brain worked EXACTLY AND PRECISELY like YOUR fantasy brain when you authored this script which ruins the ENTIRE exercise of even reading or consuming a story in the first place, which is escapism and a reason to use your fantasy brain that ends up with a payoff. If there's no agency for the reader, then you're not dealing in fiction, period. (oh my gawd and then 80% of the story that would have been put, in previous expansions w/ a diff writer, into showing cool bits of of the world and it's inhabitants was instead put into LABORIOUSLY explaining and explaining and explaining and recapping and summarizing and then RE-EXPLAINING and then EVEN AFTER IT HAPPENED RECAPPING THE EXPLAINATION OF WHAT HAPPENED AGAIN any dang ol' plan you're about to get up to. So you get 35 lines explaining, MECHANICALLY, what WILL happen, 2 mins of that thing actually happening [what a surprise, it went according to plan more or less....] then 15 more lines congratulating everyone on a plan well followed and recapping what happened!!!! It is infuriating to have to sit through that. But hey, it was all, mechanically, accurate at least! >:( I always joked it must have been a task given to whoever got really good at taking meeting notes and creating agendas at their game dev company, it seemed lol)

[@kokoro_flow]

Omg, I would’ve suffered like you if I played that game, too. 😅

[@AmandaEngland-r2k]

Love this video! My characters really like the knot in their chest whenever something bad happens 😅

[@trinaq]

Thanks for your insightful advice, Alexa. You always seem to come out with a new tip, on the very issue I'm struggling with at the moment.

[@rchom]

Technically correct, but it lacks commitment. It’s clinical, not emotionally evocative. As a person who’s been in visual arts much of my life, I have an approach to writing: if I can draw it, I might as well just do that. This is actually why I disagree with the (literal) “show, don’t tell,” because some things *can’t* be shown. You’re writing literally what you see. That’s a screenplay, not a novel. Some things are *felt.* “His heart beat quickly,” lacks the gravitas of the moment. “A thousand horse beats trampled through his heart.” “The vibrations of the L-train reverberated through her bones and into her chest.” Not everything *needs* to be so colorful, but if the moment is important, emphasize the importance. Roller coasters have their ups and downs and middle grounds. Work within the medium; play to its strengths. Literature is quite cerebral, so lean into the thoughts.

[@kinuchiha]

Definitely needed this! I don't think all my writing is mechanical, but I know I fall into it sometimes, especially when I just want to get through a scene and be done with it. I like the tip of asking yourself "why" is a character assuming something. The filter word I struggle the most with getting rid of is "seemed", so asking myself why that character/thing seems that way will probably help me a lot!

[@lbow5479]

Just to offer another perspective, I think I'm one of the readers that doesn't mind and sometimes prefers the "mid" type of writing. Sometimes I'm really taken out of a book when the author is taking extra time to linger on unimportant details or describing something in an unnecessarily quirky and involved way, to the point where I end up skimming to get to the important parts. I think this happens when the action of the scene is far more interesting than the voice of the prose but the author still wants their prose to be "artistic," even when a scene doesn't call for it. (Though I personally think the sparser, mechanical style can still be artistic on its own. It might not be for everyone, but that doesn't mean it's always awful. If it's become a trend in popular books, maybe it can be helpful to think about what those books are doing well, why they resonate with readers.)

[@anthropomorphicpeanut6160]

Confession: my prose is way too mechanical and i feel like shit about it😅

[@AlexaDonne]

The key thing is that you're aware, which means you can work on it! I'm always just grateful I'm aware of my flaws (though when I realize them, I get so embarrassed, re: past work!), because I know it means I can do something about it. Let me tell you, when I realized I had a filtering problem but literally didn't know for YEARS?! But now I just keep it front of mind when I'm working :)

[@anthropomorphicpeanut6160]

@@AlexaDonne thanks for the encouragement! Yes, at least I know where to start in order to improve my writing ☺️

[@StarlitSeafoam]

OKAY...I feel bad saying this, but....Brandon Sanderson is this for me. His prose is super mechanical most of the time. And it really drives me nuts. He has such cool worlds, but I rarely feel like I'm truly in them. And his characters are SO HARD for me to connect to because their emotions are so often either told straight to me or left entirely absent. He doesn't use physical descriptors/reactions to convey emotion most of the time, or filter descriptions of the setting through his character's emotions at all, and I realized that my brain actually got bored not being able to pick up hints and put things together for myself. He has gotten better in later books, but I find it such a struggle to make progress through his massive tombs. I just plain don't enjoy the experience.

[@gd_cffn]

I struggle with mechanical writing a lot in fighting scenes, I have no idea how to write them, it always ends up as a list of actions 😭

[@CaseyFieslerPhD]

That girl on the bus note was an *exceptionally* good note. Thanks again. :)

[@erenepsara794]

I love listening to you. So informative. Thank you.

[@michellecornum5856]

The newest, biggest piece of mechanical writing I have found is when I'm suddenly aware that I am reading Save The Cat. I find that being able to detect the writing device used -- jarring. It takes me right out of the story.

[@martinebonita2658]

Oh face card on this girl never declines omggggg

[@cheyannebuckhannon815]

I love this so much❤️ Everyone's always talking about writing books fast (at least in the groups I'm in) and not about the poetry of the writing itself

[@gwbeetle]

do you think you could talk more about leaning too heavily on physical reactions? i was thinking earlier that my characters smile, frown, and sigh way too much and now i feel both validated and called out lol.

[@AlexaDonne]

oh gosh I'll have to noodle on actual suggestions to "fix" it b/c I do it SO MUCH. I'm so bad at it! ha. Major crutch! But I'll go over my line edits for The Bitter End and see if I did anything clever that I can pass on :P (also in fairness: in moderation, it's actually a great writing tool!)

[@BbGun-lw5vi]

@@AlexaDonneI would love a video on this too!

[@moirak5332]

Watching the first 10 minutes, knowing I have very mechanical writing in my first ever attempt at a draft, but still getting my feelings hurt about it.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

You know what's my problem with show don't tell, as a reader? I'm autistic. When you're trying to show me someone is frustrated, I don't see what you're showing me. I just see random irrelevant information about bodily movements and such, which means nothing to me. If you want to say that character is frustrated, just say he's frustrated, dammit. In your "corrected" example, I totally lost the point that C is reacting to D's perceived distress. She's trying to be nice. Maybe she's condescending to the poorer girl (or that's what you *tell* me D thinks is happening), but there's no distress, and no reaction to distress, in the new text. I've been in many situations where I used pen and paper when others around me used laptops, and I didn't feel distressed about it, so why would D be distressed?

[@kristincox4041]

My first draft is purely mechanical. It’s just me explaining the story to myself. There will be adverbs galore. I have fibromyalgia and ADHD. The brain fog combined with ADHD symptoms can make me forget what I wanted to write in the middle of a sentence or forget a word or description. So I do my best and put words that I think may be related to what I want to say and I’ll even put related emotions and expressions in brackets. My favorite part is editing. Once I let something sit, I come back with fresh eyes and since the mechanical framework is there, I can start building on it and make my story into something someone may want to read.

[@rach9466]

That’s really freeing to me, thank you. I tend to get bogged down trying to write descriptions perfectly the first time and lose the whole story..

[@jd5368]

I LOVE when people give specific writing examples (and then improve on them!) So much writing advice online is so vague it's all but useless. I appreciate you going into depth about these topics!

[@kovarnosra]

The video was too much tell and not enough show

[@aestover91]

THANK YOU!!!! I knew the problem of mechanical writing, and "interiority" is a buzzword fix in workshop circles, but i think you're the first person to explicitly and clearly bridge the two into an easily digestible explanation of how and why interiority helps so much

[@RobertWardJones]

IMO to uses the analogy of the rings of power...One ring is showing not telling. Another ring is write in the language the reader expects. If your reader doesn't understand or cant visualize what's on the page they will stop. Another ring is to respect the reader's time... get to the point. A reader is reading a story to get their needs met and not to meet the author's needs so keep it in mind. Also the ability to visualize is not something everybody can do so to tell and not show makes it more accessible for a lot of readers. And the one ring to rule them all is to have a great story. A great story beats every other ring of power. How you encode that story on the page maybe less important to the average reader than the just having a very compelling and satisfying story that they can summarize to their friends who will then get excited enough to buy the book.

[@AlexaDonne]

You and I are inherently different readers.

[@RobertWardJones]

@@AlexaDonne I love beautifully written modern stories with pretty prose and luscious layers of subtext. I also enjoy the writing styles of older books when they were considered works of art with leather bindings and foil embossing. I love love love poetry! However, I think that the phenomenon of best sellers with less than ideal writing doing well these days is worth an honest analysis. Something or a combination of somethings made them sell well. If so, what? Sure they have flaws and wouldn't' or shouldn't have made it past the gatekeepers. But they did. So...Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find out "Why do bad books sell well?" Despite the obvious flaws, the books did somethings correct enough to sell well. I shared some of my opinions in my post above as to why. What are your opinions?

[@k--music]

@@RobertWardJones Put simply I think the bestseller phenomenon for most writing quality questions is just explained by the split between readers who care most about the content and readers who care most about the delivery. Same reason a lot of commercially successful films can cut corners technically without losing much money. Plus, demand isn't defined by quality as much as mass appeal. A lot of books sell well which could be considered 'bad' for any number of reasons regardless of writing style. At the end of the day though I think this video is helpful because even (especially, imo) if you have a very direct/simple style of prose there is a big difference between delivering a story clearly to the reader and failing to show / writing too mechanically & dropping a list of unneeded beats without detail, and when you have that direct style or focus on the story itself, it's especially important to keep this in mind. A lot of people take for granted how hard it is to write well in that style. You'll notice the best ones don't actually just say "this happened and this happened then this happened and this happened," and those that do can make a great story harder to read.

[@Mengchuu]

PRAISE THE HEAVENS ANOTHER ALEXA DONNE VIDEO

[@TheVioletWolf]

This makes me feel better about picking up a book that my friend suggested that's VERY popular, and I felt very much like I was in my own camp of wondering why eveyone is obsessed with these books. I find myself rolling my eyes at a lot of the lines, however, the writer in me wants to be gentle and say that itll get better, and i focus more on the story/writers strong points.

[@AlexaDonne]

There are too many good books for me to spend time on books where I don't enjoy the writing--that's my motto nowadays. I also used to trudge through books with bad writing, but I just can't anymore, you know?

[@FeeBeeCreating]

Thank you for giving a name and explanation to the type of writing I hate. I’ve always had an issue with it, but never been able to properly verbalise why. When people ask in future what my problem with it is, I will just link them this video 😂

[@dansheppard2965]

I reckon filtering is a side-effect of fear of any suggestion of head-jumping or omniscience in narrative. I am so over characters going all Marcel Marceau just to avoid upsetting readers with an overly-acute sense of cringe. As a reader I definitely hate filtering more than an incidental, clear, well executed head-jump or a sentence or two at 30,000ft. The current near-universal obsession with strict limited first and third and its associated filtering and communicating by poker-tell semaphore has driven me away from reading new authors back to the classics. Guys, it's a *story*, not a deposition by a mortician. There's a *story-teller*, and they're allowed a personality.

[@Lizzypen]

Thank you so much for this! I always see videos talking about 'crafting' your novel, characters, setting, etc. How to build and plan all of that. But no one really talks about the actual writing of the thing! This is so helpful!

[@jaginaiaelectrizs6341]

For me, I would used the phrase "[X] assumed [y] was ____" IF I was implying that [x] could actually be incorrect about how [y] was or wasn't feeling entirely-but only in a context where the character was like lost in thought to themself or making that observation yet choosing not to say anything about it to [y]'s face for some reason, versus if the character were actually interacting with the other character in some way they could or would ask 'why are you so ____' or whatever. Lol

[@chelle_nz]

Read any Lee Child, book and you'll be scratching your eyeballs out. AND I QUOTE. "He was perhaps forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Indian, or Pakistani, or Iranian, or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian. His passport was British..." As my eyes bled I wondered how the man's nationality couldn't be condensed to something like "...his nationalilty well masked, somewhere between middle eastern to southeast asian?" Then another 400 pages later of the same telling dribble we get... "He was medium height, medium weight, expensively dressed but a little rumpled. He was maybe forty years old. He had thick black hair, shiny, beautifully cut, and the kind of mid-brown skin and regular features that could have made him Lebanese, or Algerian, or even Israeli or Italian." How this author has 100 million copies sold... The mind boggles.

[@asemikaela9135]

I really appreciate this, because it's something I've been thinking about subconciously while I write, so I'm really good at some things, but then (of course) I heavily rely on other crutches, so my writing still turns out mechanical -_- So yeah: thanks! This video has really given me inspiration to go back and work on a scene I really dislike :D

[@_Risa1992_]

I say something controversial: I like this, because it's not neurotypical writing and standard way of thinking etc. I heard sometimes "your writing is not emotional enough" or "nobody analyzes feelings that way." Well, I do...? 😅 Can we like stop only calling standard neurotypical writing good. Also I find lot of "good writing" already to be... terribly purple prosing or overly emotional, when it's not needed at all. Just state what is happening in a good sentence structure.

[@patrickcoan3139]

Just jumpung into this, the word 'stilted' comes to mind, but that's not exactly it. Maybe its a lack of speaking through our character's perspective, a lack of personality in the narrative? I'll finish the video😅

[@MarcusDwrites]

You've described my writing perfectly without even reading anything 😅😅😅

[@MKSholundauthor]

Yes! Seeing this a lot of these basic amateur writing styles in my critique group. Never thought of it as mechanical writing as we (in my group) tend to call it listical or text book writing because it reads as this happened and this like a list of a high school text book on biology or the Renaissance. It’s a way to convey info, true, but it is so boring and not an ideal way to tell a story. I also agree everyone uses at least one of these in their writing, by accident, including me. I agree with the advice, strive to tackle the issues one by one and try to resolve 25-50% of them. Writing apps like a ProWriting Aid and autocrit have been helpful for me in spotting these occurrences when I can’t. Good topic!

[@jaginaiaelectrizs6341]

30:53 - I guess, it depends maybe, are they actually trying to inform the reader that this particular character utterly lacks charm OR are they merely trying to introduce the reader to the fact that it is the POV narrator's opinion that this particular character lacks charm? (And later writing can either demonstrate how mistaken the POV narrator was or reinforce how right they were and why-unless the point wasn't at all about this particular character at all, but more just about the POV narrator and how they interact with or judge other things/people/etcetera around them. Context matters! It's not always just how the sentence is or isn't, but _why_ is it that way or not.?. Or maybe that's just me!) 🤔🤔👀🙃🤷🤷‍♀️🤷🏻‍♂️😁

[@bangaloreshydrohome5863]

Oh God...this definitely helped...one of your best video Alexa🎉🎉

[@daze3x87]

I've noticed I had this issue with mechanical writing. I feel the issue stems from how my writing is inspired by video games. Ideally my story would be a video game, but you also need amazing art skills and programming skills to create a game (or infinite money to hire artists and programmers). And even if I had all the skills I need, it would still take enormously long. Writing it as a novel is basically the compromise. Video game stories are almost always all dialogue. Action is done through animation or through the actual gameplay. Since I tend to envision each scene like a game cutscene, I can conceptualize the scene in my head, but I can't figure out how to deliver it as prose. That also leads to a different kinda mechanical writing where I write extended dialogue scenes with no narration. Just two or more characters doing a back and forth with nothing else happening or being narrated. Sometimes I'll throw in gestures or adverbs to mix it up, but it still feels off. It's moments like these I wish for voice acting and animation lol. Will try to fix this issue though

[@Allison_Troy]

That mechanicalness is something that a lot of writers have to untrain. There was a point in the mid-to-late 1990s when this was a trend as part of "more realism" for a lot of popular novels. I think it has lingered -- because I was doing this in the mid-00s and have spent the last 10-15 years breaking the habit after several college creative writing professors were pushing it. I will say for some writers "mechanical writing" is fine for the first draft as it keeps from missing getting the character from Point A to Point B. Your second edit (imho) should be removing the mechanical writing any place where an action can go without saying.

[@zanemarion7211]

Almost feels like AI could have written it. I rarely use dialogue tags. Only when needed. That sample I would told you trash it. Rewrite that crap. If I write that way it sticks out like a sore thumb and I find I can't move on with the book till it is fixed. My editor gets onto me for not using dialogue tags. Cause and effect. Every action has a reaction. Every reaction has another reaction. It should snowball.

[@TheEccentricRaven]

I've seen this problem in my own writing 😂 but not in books I've read. Maybe it’s because I'm particular about the quality I read.

[@ou1l]

I've been trying to write consistently and mechanical writing really shows when I'm not in the 'mood' to write anything. Not a problem, I just have to go back and edit what I wrote 😅 Building a consistent writing habit is important for me. I also notice this happens for me when I draft in bullet points lmao

[@xChikyx]

5 mins in, and I ahve absolutely no idea what mechanical writing is... can't follow the video like that edit: i like the first example more than the rework

[@elizalagonia1049]

So your deliberate rough draft writing reminds me of juvenile writing. If you look at early chapter books or young middle grade writing, it's very similar to that. About 5 years ago, I saw a post on a video about engaging writing asking to have adult books for someone who has an elementary reading level. I wonder if someone else saw that and just decided a lot of books should be written that way.

[@bicho6313]

I also think a lot of telling comes from a place of not wanting to overwrite, so writers tend to give general descriptions to fast forward the plot. But if you want to make your writing engaging and immersive, you gotta slow things down and give specific sparing details rather than a lot of generic ones.

[@zacharythorp6095]

Mechanical writing is a staple of the medium. It's the first draft of nearly all sections, that gets cleaned up later on. If you always started with great sections, your word count will plummet, thus the need to also learn how to edit documents. Also, just saying, WOW that's a night and day difference between the first and second examples.

[@oceanavenue2020]

Wow! Amazing and so helpful. Thank you for breaking this down and articulating the issues. This is an issue I have in my own writing and have been trying to figure out what steps to take to make it stop sounding so amateur.

[@SuperHappyNotMerry]

i think the thing about mechanical writing for me is that whatever story you are trying to tell, if you have overly mechanical writing it's sort of like anyone could have written that? not _told_ it because we all have unique stories that no one else can tell, but definitely written it. your own personal style just doesn't come through when you have overly mechanical writing so it almost feels…ghostwritten?

[@erenepsara794]

So in order to show instant of telling you have to.have dialog and scenes mostly through the book? Ithink a lot of dialog is tiresome.

[@tsukkiswisscheese5023]

Hi, I’m actually writing a fic where a narrator is unreliable so despite the action that was shown, he’d end up “telling” the readers something mechanical that’s opposite of the action

[@blueowl3474]

I've def seen a lot of this as well, and it's only after watching this video that i realized *why* i struggled to connect with the story and the characters. I thought it was just a me problem until now lmao. It just feels like the story lacks...a soul? Like it's an academic essay or a work report and not a fictional story

[@mytrikah]

I don’t necessarily think that mechanical writing is bad. I like to think of it as the skeleton of a paragraph, and it can be a useful tool to get the words out. On the other end of this, sometimes the writing is poetic and beautiful but makes no sense in the scene or situation. I think that writing (style) can flow and change depending on what's going on in the story. I'm not an author or even much of a writer, but I roleplay and that kind of writing differs as we only have access to our own character/s, so mechanical writing may be more useful to us as a tool to get our point across.

[@therealceciliatores]

I am new to writing, but in the process of writing, I thought of a funny story from Emily Henry, which has a lot of mechanical writing. thanks for now making my brain looking into this while I read romance novels ahhahah

[@alandavies3727]

Most books have got too much description in the story. It all becomes very boring. I mean , i really don’t want to know that they’re sitting on a white wicker chair. Who cares? There’s not many books that have a strong story.

[@leeasyy]

i had been moping over the 1st draft of my manuscript to the point that i started rewriting it again, but it still didn’t feel right and i had no idea why. i was genuinely so close to giving up because this hadn’t happened to me in the past with previous works, so i was going insane thinking it was just my writing that had been bad all along and i hadn’t noticed. but this video popped up on my recommendations and upon reading ‘mechanical writing’, something clicked in my head. i swear. watching the video only confirmed it. not all of my wip is written in that mechanical way, but many parts i couldn’t move past were, and now that i finally know what is wrong, i can’t wait to fix it and have fun writing again. thank you so much for this video omg. you saved my wip!

[@ghostdreamer7272]

I feel like a takeaway I’m getting from this is that there’s a thing as “too much consistency” and thinking that is balance or moderation. Balance and moderation still have variation. Total consistency is flatlining… and flatlining means you’re dead.

[@felight5700]

Bodily reactions are bad?? ;-;

[@AlexaDonne]

Nope. As said in the video, everything in moderation. I use bodily reactions all the time, but I also limit their use in my own writing as they can be a crutch.

[@king1091]

Yay! This is the perfect video for me right now!

[@prettyinpink9893]

I love this. Thank you! I want to sharpen my book review writing skills so these videos help me better articulate things

[@yvesgomes]

6:49 "harder to engage with". I actually wonder about this. Although it grinds my gears, I do wonder if many readers prefer the spoon-feeding and a prose that is not only bland, but that flows like a train of thought (along with incorrect punctuation). That might actually be more accessible and easier to engage with for a lot of people. It's as if the writer is writing like how the reader thinks.

[@AlexaDonne]

I think some people do prefer that but, uh, not for me :P

[@yvesgomes]

@@AlexaDonne Agreed.

[@ginajohnston5104]

I LOVE when you make long videos! It feels like im chilling with a friend discussing writing instead of being lectured. And I learn stuff! Thank you!!!

[@ladymairreads]

This is so informative! I called it and then and then and then writing but I love the idea of calling it mechanical writing. Thanks for making this

[@sabinemetscher6449]

Summer school par A lexa Donne✨ Thank you for the clues to craft well. My work is to write a story worth reading. Other than that I create visually 📚🖌️🗺️🐾🖊️💚

[@andeeharry]

yaya the queen is back, so missed your video contents

[@kirtiomart]

Great video! ... Glad to see you again 🙏🏼

[@zanemarion7211]

Telling is great but know when to do this. Telling too much leads to what she is talking about.

[@WilliamBilsters]

Yay, a craft video! Line editing is something that I really want to improve more because holy bananas I can structure scenes and fix the overarching plot well, but I always felt lacking or insufficient when it comes to line level writing! 😅

[@EleiyaUmei]

I really struggle with this after years of not writing fiction so it upsets me that you didn't really say *how to fix it* T_T

[@TheVioletWolf]

Yo, I i LIVE for long videos.

[@aidenignition]

7:32 What you described to me is something I think of as like puppeteering the characters. The characters don’t feel like real people, just puppets in the show, hitting their marks and delivering their lines (mostly poorly 😅). I read another authortuber’s first self published novel and I think I enjoyed 2 scenes in the entire book. There were SO many details but I didn’t care about a single one of them.

[@Grobanix]

Finally. To me, this was the most useful video yet. This has always been my greatest problem. Thank you.

[@bhsprinkle]

Thank you so much for the advice you give in your videos.

[@vmur20000]

Thank you so much! This has been me for very long; writing very tellingly (not a word, I know)

[@nina-w]

thank you for this! Personally i ran into this issue again and again while writing a mystery especially as a lot of it is so procedural

[@Kitsambler]

Thank you - very helpful to me at this stage.

[@sarahseason1838]

Thank you Alexa! I love your videos, they are so helpful!

[@glitt3rgalaxy]

Great video! I catch myself doing this sometimes, im glad i catch myself lol

[@augabachoo]

You’re the best on KZbin! Appreciate everything you post!