10 Writing Mistakes To Avoid, A three part lesson.

As CW has been thriving in an influx of posts about writing, not just with writing, I figure it's due time for a "Common mistakes to avoid" thread. I find I'm repeating myself over and over when I critique stories, so this is meant as a collective lesson on all the problems I'm usually harping on. This lesson consists of three parts: 1) The Worst Story Ever ™, 2) Why it's so terrible and 3) The same story, only a whole lot better.
Please bear with the first story. It hurt me more to write it than it will hurt you to read it.

---
“Hey John it’s time for school” she shouted.
“Okay mom I’m coming” John sat up. John smoothed his ruffled chestnut brown hair, which had little clumps of blonde that offset his pale blue yet piercing eyes in the morning sunlight while he sat up. John stood up and walked downstairs to the kitchen and ate breakfast.
“You’re going to miss the bus John” she said.
“Oh crap” John panicked and ran out the door. John was just like any other teenage boy and had slept in his clothes the night before. John started to chase down the bus but gave up halfway. John started walking back towards his house and he met up with his dog Fluffy. John ran home with Fluffy, tail wagging all the way home. John walked into the house and picked up his bicycle which was given to him by his father before he died in a plane accident but John doesn’t like to talk about that. The bike was very important to John it was red and worn with love. John wheeled his bike outside the garage but never made it to school because he fell into a plot hole and died on the way.
---

Now, that was pretty terrible, wasn't it? Here are the 10 reasons why:
1) The story is loaded with clichés. The plot is common, yes, but the way it's executed just begs to be rewritten. His dog is named "Fluffy." He is an angsty teenager without a dad. The harder you look, the more you find. The plot can be ignored (in this case, and this case alone) because it's meant as an example. But if we were looking at it, it could be noted that the plot is the beginning to every story ever.
2) Many sentences are redundant. Note these two (edited) sentences:

Don't they both say basically the same thing? That's right. You need to be extra careful that when you're trying to clarify, you're not being obvious. Redundancy is an annoying habit and should be avoided at all costs.
3) Too many sentences used the same structure. Note how almost every starts with "John." Not only that, but every sentence generally followed the pattern, "John [verbed] [stuff]." There are far more ways to start a sentence. With "He," for example. Or, "The bike." Or, "his hair refused to succumb to his will." This is where reading a story aloud becomes important. It sounds awkward when it's read, and this is one of the reasons why.
4) Quotes are utilized poorly. When a quote ends a sentence, the sentence's punctuation is ALWAYS included in the quote. When the quote isn't the end of a sentence, it includes a comma. For example,

The other commas are explained in point #8. But doesn't that read so much easier?
5) The writing style is pretentious. What does this mean? The author feels like they have to impress the reader. They also feel as if this story is desperately important, and deserves all the flowery language they can write. This sentence is pretentious, among other things:

Honestly, why do we care? This description could have been executed a thousand different ways. But how it's presented, the reader will try their very hardest not to care.
6) The characters are two dimensional. John and his mother have to be the two most boring people on the planet. Honestly. Real characters have conflicts, interests, quirks. There is no such thing as the "average teenager." Didn't you learn that in Kindergarten? No two people are alike. So you can't attempt to make a bland every-man. He'll come across as flat. Many authors try to use it as a plot point - "This guy is average, but he really has super magical powers!" or something to that extent. It doesn't work. Story is propelled by the characters, and if they're not believable, the reader isn't going to believe in any of your story. I don't care if it's fantasy, sci fi, "Slice Of Life" or porn. Without powerful characters, your story will flounder.
7) Horiffic run on sentences. Seriously. If a sentence is taking up three lines, you have a problem. Run on sentences reduce clarity.
8) A disconcerting absence of commas. Commas serve a basic grammatical function. They let you pause where you naturally want to. Commas go between clauses (parts of a sentence), after interjections ("ow," or "Crap," for example), and wherever the sentence needs a break. If you're not sure, read it aloud. There are too many examples in that story where you could place a comma, just understand that that story needs them badly.
9) The story lacks clarity.

Whose tail? John's or Fluffy's? That's a disturbing thought, isn't it? You must make sure that you say what you mean and mean what you say. Unless John suddenly sprouted an extra appendage, this needs revision. Also, the terrible grammatical problems throughout contribute to the clarity issue.
10) Let's face it, the dialogue sucks. The problem with writing dialogue is, you're not trying to write it realistically. You're trying to write it so it sounds realistic. If you just transcribed what your characters would have said, you'd have to include a lot of "um" and "err" and repeitition. That's no good, so story dialogue is always streamlined. However, since it's written, it can't be clarified as the speaker goes along. This is why commas in dialogue are so important. They control the inflection of the story. English is a touchy language, and one squiggly punctuation out of place could ruin a sentence. Besides that, the conversations between John and his mother are completely unbelievable. They talk like a 50's commercial for alarm clocks. You need to think from the character's perspective, and how they would speak.

And now, for the same story, only a whole lot better. I'm not saying this is a great story, but it's certainly on an entire different level from the first. Please observe how this story tries its hardest to avoid all the above pitfalls. (The story is still clichéd, but it piggy backs on the first's plot. So it will be excused. Also, you wouldn't normally separate paragraphs with breaks. This is also excused because of tabs not existing.)

---
“Jesus Christ, boy, you sleep like death with a hangover.”

John rolled over and tried not to wake up. His mother towered over his bed, glaring at him with bloodshot eyes.

“Don’t give me that crap.” his mother said. She yanked the covers from under John and sent him sprawling onto the floor.

“…ugh…Mom…”

“It’s seven fifty, and if you don’t get your sorry ass off the floor this instant, I’ll let you teach your goddamn self every day.” She grimaced. “Honestly, I don’t know why I pay for you to-“

“God, Mom, I’m up, I’m up.” John glared at his mother. “It’s not like you’re dressed, either.”

His mother adjusted her blue nightgown and frowned. “Watch your mouth, smartass. I don’t have to work until one. You, on the other hand, are late, and you’re not getting a note.” She rubbed her eyes and turned to leave. “Get the hell downstairs. I’ll grab you some toast.”

John ran a hand through his hair and followed his mother to the kitchen. He devoured his toast and glanced outside. Oh, shit. There was the bus, all right. John shot up, knocking over the kitchen chair. He bolted to the door and ran outside. The bus turned the corner, just three houses away. John ran faster. He lost sight of the bus and began to slow down. Oh…damn. He trotted to the end of his street, then turned back toward his house. He noticed for the first time he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

As he neared the yard, his mother’s obnoxious little hairball of a ‘dog’ ran up to greet him. “Hey, you stupid waste of fur.” He stuck his tongue out at her. She yapped. John detoured past the front door and walked to the garage. He pulled open the giant door and stepped inside. Quickly, he stuffed his feet into an old pair of boots and grabbed his bike. He jumped on the seat and pedaled furiously out of the garage, with his bicycle creaking in protest. A bit of stuffing stuck out the seat cover. He sped up as he reached the sidewalk, but careened off course as the dog raced in front of him. “Oh, shit.” He muttered.

The bike sailed off the concrete and onto the asphalt. His front wheel wobbled, and John struck a plot hole. He fell in and was never heard from again.
---

Now wasn't that so much better? I hope you've all learned something valuable today. Now go back to MS Word and write.

This post has been edited by Oxling on Jun 24 2004, 10:58 AM

The rewrite is just as much a cliche as the original.

That original, though, is too obviously bad to be a very good example. You should try picking apart your rewrite and use THAT as an example of what has gone wrong.

Sure you had good intentions, but do we really need a thread telling us how to critique?

Tonic: I asked around about making a thread like this a while ago and people seemed pretty receptive to the idea. It might be a little self-indulgent (and for that I apoligize) but there seems to be a lot of repetitive mistakes here on CW. The sticky doesn't cover enough of them IMHO. It's not about critique, it's just a set of things people need to watch out for in their writing. I've heard threads like this crop up every so often, so it seemed due time.

And Bandwidth, I know that. I wrote the second after the first, and considering the plot in the first was meant to be ridiculous, the second remains equally pointless. You're right - the second is no gleaming example of good character design or plot. It would have to be an entirely different story to be decent. It was more meant to be a technical example. No commas, run on sentences, and less bland then the first. While I mention other stuff, it's this that the rewrite focused on. Did I ever say is was a great story? Of course not. It's still silly.

Oh, you'd be surprised what you can find around here. Removing a bit of the self-parody, I'm sure you could find several recent stories posted that were little better. Seriously.

Give me a day, however, and I'll gladly pick apart the second as an example in crummy plot and cliché. (I need a day to forget that I wrote it, essentially.) You're right, that would be an excellent idea.

This post has been edited by Oxling on Jun 24 2004, 01:21 PM

Ahh. Well, that does make sense. Sort of like additional guidelines to proof-reading. I'll sticky it for a while, and see if the response is positive.

Bandwidth, you haven't been here long enough to know the kind of crap the CW is capable of producing.

Is the use of "plot hole" intentional or just a very humorous Freudian slip?

I noticed that as well, and I'm hoping for the latter.

Hey, Oxling - you might want to talk about the need for authors having to describe every single part of the person in the opening paragraph. That really is bad. >< (Essentially, you don't need to do it but lots of authors feel compelled to do it in order to increase the detail about the character. However, letting it all go in the opening paragraph isn't really the best way.)

I think it's a combination of Freud, late night writing, and a subtle irony in my subconscious that manifests itself in typoes. If a mod would like to remove the 'l' I'd be grateful. Also, here are the two requested additions.

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By request, #11 and Part 4 - Cliché and how to avoid it.

11) Overdescription of characters. As dutifully pointed out by Rubix, describing your characters in the first paragraph is an annoying habit. Description should be introduced as it is relevant. It needs to have a purpose - does it explain the setting? Does it explain a character's action, pertinent to what's going on at that time? Is it informative? Will the reader care? When you throw this sort of in-depth information into the first sentence, it throws the story off track. In this case, it's much more important to see what's going on than to hear about John's looks. Writing like this is self-indulgent, and is chronic in writers who make stories about themselves, only 'better'.

Common Conflicts with Clichés
There are too many banal and overused ideas to list succintly here; but there are many used repetitively in writing on this forum. I'm going to separate them into two categories - Characters and Conflicts, - explain how the 'example story' abuses them, and give a few suggestions to write without using clichés as a crutch.

Characters:

• A character is described as 'absolutely average.' The character is generally clumsy, a bit sloppy, but strangely charismatic. They are generally more intelligent than their friends. Will be made fun of, but ultimately triumphs by making snide comments at their 'tormenters.'
• A character is impossibly attractive to every other character in the story.
• A female character is scathing and cynical, yet still impossibly attractive.
• A character has one dead parent, and acts angsty about it.
• A character "nobody understands."
• Three characters band together in unlikely circumstances - usually the scathing female, the normal male and one other complimentary character.
• A character has an amazing power they don't know about, which they have to use to save the world.

Conflicts

• A character is tracking down their father or brother for revenge.
• A character is transported to another country, ideally Japan.
• A character obtains or does something mysterious that transports them to an alternate universe, almost always a fantasy world with magic. The character is generally important to this new world and will be their savior, yet doesn't know it.
• A character is in high school, and most contend with his horrific fate. He gets something to 'release' him, which could be a transport (see above), or magical powers (see #6 under characters.)
• The story begins with the main character having amnesia and not knowing where they are.

Those are only some of the most common clichés. With any particular story, it's easy to come up with more.

The sample story uses many of these - the angsty, average teen who is still strangely attractive. He is in high school, has no defining personality and is usually late for school. He is yelled at by his (one living) parent. He has a dog. He rides his bike. He has toast for breakfast. He lives in a house in Suburbia with a white picket fence, with sidwalks, a lawn and a garage. He does something stupid and clumsy (like forgetting his shoes.) If you review all of these facts, you notice that not one of them reveals anything about his character. Characters are explained by their actions, not arbitrary facts. If you character isn't given the opportunity to act and react, you'll be forced to use clichés to give the illusion of depth. But once we remove banal information, you notice that there is nothing to see. Now, what if we gave John the chance to act? Let's say he ran over Fluffy with his bike. That might give John the chance to show some character and do something interesting. Does he tell his mother? Does he bury Fluffy? Does he keep biking? Does he keep going, change his mind and turn around? Each one of these actions demonstrates more about John than any of the random information did.

The ultimate cliché-buster is knowledge. If you want to write something original, you need to move your sorry carcass and learn something. You're bound to find something interesting to mention in your story. Let's take Bill Watterson (of Calvin & Hobbes) for example. In his anniversary book, he mentioned how when he started drawing dinosaurs, he drew them like he had learned they looked in grade school. He drew tubby, short-armed and upright lizards. But you could see how his art evolved - he began to draw Triceratops, Teradactyls, Velocoraptors, and anything else he heard of. His drawings became engaging and realistic. Why? He said he became intrigued with Calvin's imagination and decided to learn more about dinosaurs. He became fascinated with palaeontology, and it reflected in his work. His dinosaurs were no longer - you guessed it - clichés. When you're developing your characters, research their interests. When you're developing your settings, research appropriate mythology and lore. If you're writing about magic, research alchemy or witchcraft. If sci fi is more your game, pick up a Discover magazine and see what crazy things they're coming up with next. Next time you want to write a story, go to whatever library you live near and pick up a random book. You should already be reading as much as you can (for stylistic purposes), so don't neglect nonfiction.

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BandWidth: Nice explanation. Your #11 is better than mine.

This post has been edited by Oxling on Jun 25 2004, 12:22 AM

Ala Robert Jordan, who is the master of prose to many of the people who write the majority of stories that I've noticed on this forum (ie, fantasy, which brings up the question of a lack of genre-free stuff, but that's not here, though it's potentially there).

As this is an educational thread, let me explain: giving such detail is bad in several ways. In the first, it gives mounds and mounds of data that most people will either a) skim over and not read in full or comprehend or forget about it before they finish with the first chapter. It also limits the imagination of the reader in that it restricts their image of the character to exactly as you want it. While it helps to be an egoist in your writing, it's a bit too egotistical to force such things on the reader, as the description might not always "fit" in their mind and make it difficult to continue reading with the forced impression.

Long descriptions are also boring. The thick stuff really slows down the writing, making it difficult to read in that people don't /care/ about the way the leather straps of her armor cross on her back. Things like that don't matter in the story. Unless some physical aspect is important to some part of the story, leave it out, or spend /maybe/ a line (at most) describing the color of the characters hair or eyes.

One case in which descriptions can be nice is in character identification. For example, a woman could have vivid red hair, and that could help identify her in the story. You can use that as a plot device later on, as long as you make sure the reader realizes that the red hair is important. To do that, you have to reiterrate the fact a few tims throughout the story and not just mention it once, off-handedly.

-----------------------

Ok, wow. I can't remember if any of that makes sense. I'm half asleep here, and if I come back in the morning and I realize it was a bunch of nonsense I'll get rid of it.

If it's /not/ nonsense, I hope it helps. ^^

I am away all this week, so I won't be able to add anything new to this guide. Don't be offended if I don't reply between now and next Saturday.

Most mistakes stem from just one....

1. Believing you have tallent.

I had to laugh at that. You spelled talent wrong.

This post has been edited by traa on Jun 26 2004, 11:06 AM

Unfortunately, all of those really only constitute /one/ cliché.

Perhaps this is really dissapointing, but most fantasy is falling into a cliché. If you want to escape that, you really have to write something extraordinary; Stephen King's Dark Tower series manages to escape the cliché because it's so /different/, even if it still remains in the fantasy realm. However, if you look at authors like Jordan and Goodkind, or Weiss and Hickman, they have incredibly popular stories and books, but they don't break out of the stereotypical fantasy setting. To there benefit (excepting probably Jordan, or at least putting him at the weakest) they have great prose skills which haul the readers through the story.

People here do /not/ have those skills.

Because of that, you people need to flex your /creative/ muscle and come up with interesting and different stories. /That's/ how you break out of cliché.

This post has been edited by BandWidth on Jun 26 2004, 02:01 PM

Regardless of the bashing Oxling has gotten, this little guide he's written is an excellent and comprehensive FAQ for some begining or ignorant writers which, evidently, CW gets a whole lot of. I think it's quite valuable to this board wether it be used as a reference link to new writers, or something to apply to our own work. There are a lot of people who could use this thing, and instead of wasting our time in our critiques, we could just link away to this little handbook.

Nice job Oxling.

Oxling, I love you. I've read some crap before (mine included...I always seem to cringe when I re-read my "work") those are some of the most annoying things I've come accross(excepting one: the repeating word. When people use a word over and over...and over...and over....blagh....) Go you.

I think this is a useful guide for avoidance of the worst clichés, which instantly lower story quality. It's hard to avoid all clichés (because there are so many now), but you can at least avoid the worst ones.

The unusual guide to cliché charachters

I probably will never post any of my work here, as it is of the despised type at the moment. Fanfiction

Thank you very much for the positive feedback. It's good to know I've contributed something useful here.

This links reminds me very much of the excellent Mary Sue Litmus Test, (many iterations of which can be found with google) which is the best comprehensive list of clichés I've seen to date. It's certainly worth a look. It has a few series specific points - but it's entirely applicable to any story.

Ack, I forgot to mention this one. (It's a pet peeve of mine when I see it.) Excellent point, Darkmuse.

You are completely right. 99.9% of all fantasy writers stick with the elves/dwarves/human/midget world, with elemental magic, and over-important characters. It's sad that 'fantasy' has really come to mean 'Tolkien-wannabe' in this day and age.

Exactly. (Research, people! Research!) Just as a note, for all prospective writers, I'd recommend Wikipedia for research. It's great stuff.

I wanna get attention to. Let me help.

11) Overdescription of characters. As dutifully pointed out by Rubix, describing your characters in the first paragraph is an annoying habit. Description should be introduced as it is relevant. It needs to have a purpose - does it explain the setting? Does it explain a character's action, pertinent to what's going on at that time? Is it informative? Will the reader care? When you throw this sort of in-depth information into the first sentence, it throws the story off track. In this case, it's much more important to see what's going on than to hear about John's looks. Writing like this is self-indulgent, and is chronic in writers who make stories about themselves, only 'better'.


I thought it'd be helpful to tell them how to avoid this mistake.( I see it so much) Most of these people are too lazy to read a book about writing, or learn anything about it. When people try to show character , theres no ill-intent They want to reveal their character, but don't know how. If you want to shed a little light, then put your character in situations that bring out their personality. How do I do this? Easy. Want to show something? It can be done in a single sentence. You don't need thousands of lines of text to show things about the character. See how much you know about my jon character( made just now)

Jon looked outside on the playground from the nurse office.
His clothes were worn and hand me downs.
He was nursing a black eye.
He's seen the school nurse plenty of times.

Jon nursed a with his black eye softly while looking out on the playround, looking up to see a familar face." Lets take that shirt off", Said Miss woman who had seen him many times before. He took of a dirty hand-me-down.

There, isn't that easy? ( If I was a much better writer, I could do better than that) You don't need to give us detail after to detail after detaaaail. The characters entire history can be shown in two paragraph, and you can show us more as the story goes along. You can also show other things besides character. It's easy. If the character is angry, you needn't tell us that their angry. We're not idiots. ( Besides, it's better to show)

Jon slammed the door behind him, walking toward the schoolbus with tears in his eyes. He was upset/mad/angry.

Oh ya think, you stupid mother*bleep*?

Things don't always need to be told. Just show us.

One flaw I noticed in the CW forum:

Anime stories. ( Excuse me while I vent some hot air, ahem)

STOP YOU MOTHER*BLEEP* WITH THESE* *BLEEP*ING ANI*BLEEP/MA*BLEEP* *BLEEP*

Please stop it. Please. Whenenever I see someone with an idea for an anime story,( and it's almost always like this)the story is story powered. It relies to much on the plot. Like ( not to insult you..but..) this.
or this.
Sadly, the second link's story made me laugh. Thats okay though, because the story was comical....yeah..

This site breaths and spews anime, but this is the CREATIVE WRITING FORUM. Do you guys want to be the best? Writing an anime story is like trying to shoot a basketball under the hoop and yelling" " YAY! I DID IT". I'm saying this because 99%( or all) of the anime-story writers we have in here are trying to write only anime, and don't take the time to seriously learn about a real story. I have to admit to everyone. *drinks some water* I used to write anime stories long ago. I used to look at books on writing and say: " Characterization" Whoooo, haaaard. I was lazy. It was so much easier to make a creative plot and throw some action in there. YAY! I was satisfied. Just to show you how pathetic I was. I like dragonball z and saw goku's teleportation technique. I said: " Wow, how cool would it be if a normal guy at a normal school had teleportation powers" So I uh..wrote..
an anime story about..
a guy named...uzio..that could like..teleport..and..he was in a normal school..IN JAPAN.( It has to be in japan, because japan is the ultimate place right, everything there is cool)

I'm ashamed, I'll go in a corner now.( It was many many years ago, thats behind me)

It's not as hard as you think. Learn some of the conventions of story writing. If you still want to write anime then fine. Just don't come on here with the cliche back-history stories. I HATE CRITIQUING THEM. I HATE IT! I HATE IT! LATELY ALL WE'VE HAD ARE ANIME STORIES...AND POETRY..( I'm starting to like it..but I can't critique poetry) Seriously, sometimes you look at some writers stories and just think: " FUCK YOU!! I can't critique this, you're doing everything wrong!"
We are writers.WRITERS.TELL EM WHAT THAT MEANS.


TONE AND OTHER THINGS

YOU PEOPLE DON'T EVEN TRY TO THINK ABOUT TONE DO YOU. TONE TONE TONE TONE TONE. What backs everything? ( Theres some force behind everything, esepecially words) EMOTIONS! Emotions back everything in a story. I've seen unbelievably terrible things said in some stories, but I feel nothing.

Bob had a samurai sword and was in japan. Bob died. ( That story belongs in the mt forums right now)

AHAHAHAHA!HE DID? GOOD FOR HIM.

HE'S DEAD!

This is a major problem in these forums. No Tone. No feeling. Thats why I'm always so f*bleep*ing bored when I read alot of peoples works. This is a problem I think we all need to recognize ( We need to educate these people) ( If you story sucks, atleast have feeling to it to start it off)

I think that tone has to have extra padding underneath. Story is imitation of life. If you saw something on News channel six about a young girl dying, you'd be:
" A young girl"

Now if you saw something on MT CW forum about a young girl dying.It'd be something like:

NEWU CHANURU ( However you say six in japanese) SIXU

I'm Kanbata Musashi. Theres been breaking news.
A six year old girl died with a samurai sword in her hand. She was so young.

Do any of you care?I certaintly don't.

This is imitation of life and people need reason for everything. Most importantly, the reason to care for what your telling them. Why do you feel why you feel. If someone in your family dies that you loved, why are you sad? You loved them. If you break up with someone you've been with for a long time, you're sad. Why? You loved him/her/ or her/him. Reality is extremely complex, and we'd be here for years explaining one thing, but stories are clips of reality. They are 1 percent of life, but we aim to imitate it using that 1 percent. Thats why you have to do the things you do. It's not enough to just say in a story( which is one percent of reality)
that someone broke up and you love them. You have to give us some sort of reason. Everything in story needs backing. Tone is partly important. For EVERY single thing in your story we need some sort of reason to care. EVERYTHING. The more complex your story, the more we need to care.

Jon's dog died.

I don't care.

Long time ago we had technology, but it was lost over time and we're less technologically advanced.( Sooner or later someones going to use this technology to rule the world...*bleep*)

I don't care.

He has a sword.

F*bleep* YOU!

Remember..in a story, for us to care about your story or even be interested. There are reasons.

I'm gone, I hope my random ranting helped someone.

Please use quote tags when referencing someone else's point. You confused me a great deal for several minutes.

Excellent point. Many beginning writers assume they have to reveal the entire crazy background story immediately, while revealing it slowly does a wonder for suspense.

I understand the type of stories you are talking about, but your terminology confuses me. There's no such thing as an 'anime story.' Anime is not limited to crazy, nonsensical ramblings. That's like saying all movies are about explosions. There's really no way to classify these stories other than 'really, really bad.' And clichéd. However, you make some good points. (Especially in tone.)

Not to be argumentative but I would personally add that 'under description' can also add much to the cumulative sucktitude of any piece.

Once, way back I had the opportunity to talk to <gratuitous name drop>William Gibson</gratuitous name drop> he told how his first experience reading a science fiction story turned him off the genre for a long time. His beef was that in the whole read the only line describing the main character was one mentioning that he was wearing silver boots.

If you read Gibson you can see he took this to heart. He often goes out of his way to describe clothing. In "Pattern Recognition" he uses it to set the atmosphere in a number of scenes.

So perhaps the rule isn't over or under description but description that's gratuitous. Segue to the question: "What makes description gratuitous?"

Here's my two-cents on the subject. Observe the following sentences:

"Chuck grabbed his jacket"

"Chuck grabbed his leather jacket"

"Chuck, that rebel grabbed his leather jacket to proof him from the cold"

I'd argue that the first is minimalist at best. All you get from it is the action that Chuck did. The description serves no purpose and becomes gratuitous by the fact that we can easily assume that chuck left the house in whatever apparel was appropriate. I can think of some exceptions to this but all of them have to do with previously established context.

The second gives us some more information which can be useful to communicate something subtile to the reader. For example, mentioning that the jacket was leather could be used to communicate the season/climate, if the reader knows it's summer it can illustrate Chucks' attachment to the jacket, or commitment to style or even social group - as in a team jacket, or gang colours - or in fact all the above. Ambiguity is a great mechanism to communicate multiple things at once.

The third is, to me clearly gratuitous and over described. The reader is being spoon fed the message the author wants to convey and like in real-life this becomes boring if not irritating.

Now the place I think writers make their mistake here is that there is a false perception that the reader needs to understand all the ideas that are in the authors head at the time the author is thinking them. In other words, just because the author is thinking "Chuck, needs his jacket because it's cold outside" when writing the sentence doesn't mean that the reader needs to reach that conclusion right then and there. In fact it's better if the information is revealed later, in a more experiential way. As any number of books on the subject would say: "Show don't tell".

I'd like to note that my Creative Writing teacher who impressed this axiom on me totally had a thing for mentioning brand names in literature. To her adding something like "Chuck grabbed his Pleather jacket" would make world of difference. Personally it sounds forced and tacky - almost as tacky as Pleather itself . So another good lesson is that there's always room to disagree with the experts.

Don't mean to criticize oxling, but a far better top 10 writing mistakes to avoid list can be found here:
holtuncensored.com

Oo, thanks for the link. And you're right, it is much better. It's an excellent link (bookmarked.)

11.using the same word more than once in at least 3 sentences.i hate that.alot.

(I, er, hope that worked. The html is not strong with this one).

Top ten reasons why the democracy of the web sux:

1. You have to (HAVE to) read everyone else's crappy posts. Oh the humanity.
2. Your internet boyfriend is actually a monkey.

Actually, that's all I got.

I like the textual composition above, sarkeizen. It's got a nice rhythm; it builds toward its climax. The last line sounds like a fusty high school principal, commenting metonymically on everything that is Chuck by reaming his habadashery habits.
I guess everyone could have lived without me posting this. My point is only that there's enough beauty out there for people to be a little less impatient...if a person isn't a good writer, he or she might be good at cooking, or mouth-to-mouth.
Of course, I'm completely new here and therefore don't know whereof I speak. Maybe I should erase this whole thing...*bites lip, raises eyebrow*