If there’s one thing fans of the channel tell me, it’s that they’re glad I’ve found a way to make these articles containing helpful writing advice while also using them as an obvious platform for my therapy.

Of course, I don’t deserve much kudos for that. YouTube videos can be about whatever. I’m sure there’s videos of men pretending to be cabbage and explaining how they didn’t realize who they truly were until they became cabbage. And there are probably videos of people pretending to be carrots who do reaction videos to those videos and talk about how those cabbage people are wrong, and the only acceptable vegetable to be is a carrot and anyone pretending to be some other kind of vegetable is threatening our children. Anyway, what I’m saying is… people come to YouTube because they literally have nothing going on in their life.

Readers, however, make careful time investments. Even the most avid reader can only read about 20,000 books in their lifetime. So while today’s video will mostly be about how I screwed up all my marriages, we’ll see how those same mistakes can lead you to lose readers in an instant. We’ll try not to totally fuck this up on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

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Pet Peeve 1 – Historical Inaccuracies and Anachronisms

One thing I’ve noticed my wives didn’t like is when I made up fake stories for where I was the previous night or month. And I know what you’re thinking viewer, but it wasn’t cheating, at least not with Wife 2, and not until the last six months or so with wives 1 and 3.

Sometimes I would just pretend to be homeless to conduct research for a novel, and sometimes I would follow more famous writers around to learn their secrets. For a writer, these are quite normal activities, but non-writers wouldn’t understand.

So, I’d make up stories. With Wife 1, I wanted to make myself look better so I’d often say I was working at a soup kitchen. Of course, it turned out my town didn’t have a soup kitchen and that’s also not really a thing anymore. Then, with Wife 2, I went in the opposite direction and said I had gotten really into underground dog fighting. But because I got the dog breed wrong, she saw right through that.

In a book, those mistakes can be deadly. Especially because readers love lording something over their favorite authors. I got into a lot of trouble when my novel Plastered Bastard, mentioned palm trees in Ireland. And any Marine who reads your book and sees you refer to a Marine as a “soldier,” well… let’s just hope they don’t have PTSD and access to your home address.           

Pet Peeve 2 – Characters Giving Flattering Descriptions of Themselves

If there’s one thing my wives all could agree upon, it’s that installing a ceiling mirror was an unnecessary risk. But if there’s another thing, it’s that I’m a bit too in love with myself. Now, that’s largely because to succeed as a writer, you need a lot of self-confidence. But falling asleep to a white noise with this on repeat got on their nerves after a while:

Characters in stories are meant to be flawed. When most people look in the mirror, they only notice their flaws, so your reader will connect more to a character who does this.

Pet Peeve 3 – Love that is Asserted, Not Dramatized

The thing is… this worked with Wife 1. Apparently, none of her other husbands would ever say this so I got brownie points for doing it. And it got me out of a lot of jams and won me a lot of arguments. Things like “I didn’t mean to forget your birthday, I love you,” and “You can’t spend the weekend with your sorority sisters, I love you.”

But Wives 2 and 3 never fell for it. “You can’t take a spinning class with a man that good looking, I love you,” just came across as whiny.

You’ve probably either written or come across a line like this before: “She never felt like this before about anyone.” That doesn’t generate any feeling for the reader. You need events that show the characters in love. You know, like one treating the other’s broken leg, or them discovering they both think there are holes in the moon landing story.

Pet Peeve 4 – False Suspense

My wives and I often spent long periods of time apart. It’s simply a reality you have to deal with when you’re a busy writer and your first wife is married to six other men and your second wife is having an affair and your third wife has a sick sister or dad or co-worker or whatever it was.

But I’m an emotionally needy person. Sometimes I would reach out for sex, sure, but mostly I just wanted someone to run their hand through my hair and tell me I’m a good boy and apologize for abandoning me as a child.

So I’d make up fake drama to get my wives’ attention. For example, I’d call to say I’d gotten in a car accident, or that I’d just witnessed a man get murdered at the Whole Foods.         

Readers similarly don’t like tricks like this. True suspense has a payoff and is meaningful to the overall story. Don’t end one chapter with a character screaming while driving down the road, and then start the next chapter explaining the scream was simply due to the fact they were now entering Omaha.

Pet Peeve 5 – Too Many Characters

Fans of the channel will know my mother left home when I was very young. But don’t feel any pity on me. I’m pretty sure this had no impact on how I turned out. I ended up being raised by an aunt who turned out to be a common hooker, but mostly my dad who was luckily deceased by the time I started dating.

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters either, at least any walking freely in society. And when I started dating my first wife, I thought she’d think it weird if I didn’t have any family. So I did what anybody would: I hired a bunch of homeless people and vagrants to pose as my extended family. It wasn’t the money that was an issue. Once I became a successful writer, they cost me less than an actual family would have. The problem was I could never remember any of the names I made up for them.

Anyway, a reader will have the same problem when you fill your story with too many side characters. You should try just deleting three and see if it affects your story in any meaningful way. Or see if you can combine characters. In my novel, Heartland, I combined the kindly, wise mail carrier and the stripper with a heart of gold into a single character and the narrative was all the better for it.