on Writers Helping Writers:

Why is it that some books get gobbled up by readers, and others don’t? It’s easy to get stuck in a revision cycle when you aren’t sure if a scene is working, so you rewrite it, and rewrite it again, and again, going by gut feel, and not knowing if you’re making your book better, or worse. If this has happened to you, you’re not alone.

Often, writers focus on “fixing” their writing by correcting spelling and grammar, or by trying to optimize sentence structure. And while all those things are important (you don’t want your reader tripping over errors), if you focus in on this too soon, you’ll run the risk of missing the bigger picture—Is your writing interesting?

Now, before you comment below to say that interesting is in the eye of the beholder, let me be specific. I can guarantee that the idea for your book is interesting, and that there are readers in the world that will agree with you. After all, you’ve spent hundreds, possibly thousands of hours on your writing already. You’re reading this article. You’re doing the work because your idea is good enough to keep you interested.

But if those beautiful ideas in your mind are falling flat on your pages, your reader will get bored. Luckily, it’s entirely fixable.

If you have the following four issues in your writing, it will stop readers from seeing what you’re hoping to say with your writing. Fix them if you want your book to make the maximum impact that it can.