Five Mistakes I Made Writing My First Novel (That I'm Avoiding in My Next One)
- Sara Lilienfeld
- Jun 4
- 4 min read
In case you missed it, I recently revealed the cover design for my debut novel Magic & Murder in the Holler and announced the release date will be September 23, 2025 (details and blurb here). At this point, there's no more writing or editing to be done for that book, and my focus is now on the currently untitled sequel.
I've done some reflecting on how writing went, and some of the lessons I learned along the way. The ones that have stood out the most are the mistakes I made an a newbie writer, stumbling through the process. I want to share some of those mistakes I made and how I plan to avoid them in future books.
1) Having Unnecessary Summaries
For multiple drafts of Magic & Murder in the Holler, certain scenes would end, but I'd add an extra few sentences summarizing what happened next, including details that didn't impact the story either way. Those lines lessened the impact of some strong scenes, and pulled readers out of the story a little bit. They slowed down the pacing and I was often repeating information the reader had already been told, in a less effective manner.
For my next book, the fix is easy. I'm cutting scenes/chapters where they naturally end, and not adding unneeded prose.
2) Confusing "More" With "Better"
I had a little bit of a "kitchen sink" problem when I was writing my first book, on multiple fronts. Magic & Murder in the Holler takes place in a world with multiple different supernatural factions coexisting and I had more groups (vampires, witches, werewolves, etc) than were needed. This was partially to introduce potential conflicts for later books in the series, and partially because I found a book on folklore and thought "this legend is cool, I should include it" a few times, which led to plotlines and characters existing who served no role in the main plot. Thankfully, my developmental editor pointed this issue out to me and helped me pare things down.
For my second book, if I need to add new elements to the world, it will only be one or two aspects, and not four or five.
3) Having a Messy Magic System
George R. R. Martin describes writers as either architects or gardeners. Architects figure out the story before they start writing, while gardeners discover it as they write. I thought if I spent too long planning things, I'd get sidetracked doing research and never actually start writing. As a result, I sat down with a vague idea of how the different kinds of magic worked, and what the story would be, and began writing. My magic system was a bit of a mess in the first few drafts, as it wasn't clear the strengths, weaknesses or distinctions that existed between three kinds of magic in Magic & Murder in the Holler.
For my next book, the solution is simple: do some planning beforehand. I have a document that answers some basic questions about each magical/supernatural element, so that I can make sure anything new isn't too similar to an existing aspect of the world.
4) Letting the Calendar Dictate Success or Failure
When I started writing my first draft of Magic & Murder in the Holler, I gave myself six weeks to write 70,000 words, or between 1,650 and 1,700 words per day. I managed to keep that pace and even get ahead for the first 52k words, which got me to the 75% mark. Things got tough then, because I hadn't figured out how I wanted to execute the climax of the story, so I fell behind and didn't make the self-imposed deadline. Not meeting the deadline made me feel like a failure, and gave me no motivation to write, since I'd already "failed". A solid two months passed before I wrote another word.
For my second book, I'm reminding myself that deadlines don't really exist in a meaningful way. Quality books take time, and it's better to give myself some grace and let the book take as long as it takes, rather than rush towards a finish line.
5) Not Being Specific About Beta Reader Feedback
The beta readers for Magic & Murder in the Holler were fantastic. They gave me varied and helpful feedback, which brought issues to my attention and made me reconsider certain aspects of the story. I didn't have any experience with beta readers, so when I asked for feedback via a survey, the questions were generic and asking for overall impressions about the story and characters. I wanted to know how a certain character came across, or how they felt about a specific plot point, but I didn't explicitly ask about it in the survey. And, because I didn't ask, my beta readers didn't know to include anything about them in their feedback.
In the future, I'm still going to ask the overarching questions, but include more detailed questions as needed. I feel foolish now for not asking my beta readers opinions on specific things I was worried about, considering they had already agreed to provide feedback.
There you have it. The five writing mistakes I made on my first novel. Hopefully, these can be helpful to someone and I make newer, better mistakes in my next one.
I will see you next time!
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