Recently I did some editing for a new writer and some of the problems I noted and jotted down were the following:
Character development:
Let the reader visually see the characters either through the POV character's eyes including clothing, or in the main characters case, there are ways to let the reader know how he/she looks by problems if he/she is extremely short or tall, and preferred choice of clothing--why?
Dialogue:
How do people speak? Short sentences, clipped words, if they have an accent needs to be the same all through the book, use cliches, big words, incomplete sentences.
Dialogue tags:
Use the speaker's action, or what he does with his clothes, etc. as action tags.
Leave out the boring stuff.
Colors:
Description of what color things are--surroundings, clothing, cars, etc.
Smells:
Can be important in setting a scene--good smells and bad.
Weather:
Weather can add complications to the plot.
Where the heck are they? Give some descriptions of the scene.
Conflict:
Need to have conflict to make the story interesting.
If you can change a sentence around to get out of using the word "was", do so. Makes for better writing.
Just a few things I noted while going over the chapter I was editing.
Bet you could add some other good ones.
Marilyn
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