I’m an Editor and These Are the 7 First-Draft Mistakes I See All the Time

7 common first draft mistakes in sci-fi & fantasy—and how to fix them to write a story agents and readers actually care about.

7 First Draft Mistakes That Kill Your Sci-Fi or Fantasy Novel’s Potential

These are the red flags that tell agents and editors they’re reading an amateur draft—and they’ll stop before page 10 if they see them.

You’d be shocked how many sci-fi and fantasy drafts land on my desk with these same problems—often from really promising writers. Let’s make sure yours doesn’t get stuck there.

Here are 7 of the most common first draft mistakes I see that kill a novel’s publishing potential. And I’ll show you how to avoid them so you can actually finish a draft that works.

Mistake #1: Withholding Too Much for the Sake of Mystery

One of the most common problems I see in first drafts—especially in science fiction and fantasy—is the impulse to create suspense by keeping the reader in the dark.

You hint at something dramatic, drop cryptic dialogue, or open on a moment of ominous mystery thinking it will spark curiosity. But instead of pulling the reader in, you’re losing them completely. There’s no setup of expectations, no anchor—no clarity about who they’re following, what’s happening, or why it matters.

This mistake shows up throughout drafts, but it’s an especially serious offender in the opening pages—when your reader hasn’t committed yet. If they don’t know who or what to care about quickly, they’ll be too lost to want to stick around to figure it out.

Brain Science Insight

Readers don’t get curious when they can’t get past confusion—they get curious when they understand enough to start asking deeper questions.

Not just the basics of what’s even going on. The brain craves patterns—then some delightful surprises, some riffs, on that pattern to keep it from feeling stale or boring. But the grounding in something familiar gives them something to work from.

If you withhold too much, there’s nothing for the reader’s mind to hook into for further, more engaging thought. 

So instead of being mysterious, your story just feels vague. And that’s a big reason drafts fall flat—even when your idea is strong.

Writers I’ve worked with on this mistake tell me they’re afraid of giving too much away. They want to save the information for a later reveal.

But what this tells me is that they’re actually afraid they can’t pull off something more than basic. Because their twist or shocking revelation is built on core information the reader needs to know—instead of seeding all the clues and need-to-know info with layered misdirection or emotionally meaningful framing that adds tension instead of hiding it.

If your story only works when the reader is confused, it doesn’t actually work. You’re not writing in suspense—you’re writing obscuring fog.

And that’s why the big reveal often falls flat.

Mini Fix Tip

If you want to build suspense and give your reveals earned payoff, you need grounding first. Let the reader know who they’re following, where they are, and what’s emotionally at stake.

They don’t need to know everything. But they do need to know enough to care.

Rule of thumb: If your point-of-view character knows something, your reader should too.

Obviously readers can’t know everything your character knows instantly. But what it does mean is that your POV character shouldn’t be cryptic just for the sake of mystery.

Readers experience the story through the lens of the POV character. So if they're actively hiding information from the reader, it creates distance and isn’t a good choice for the majority of stories.

In some cases, your character might be emotionally blocked, repressing a memory, or unable to articulate what’s wrong—and that can work, as long as the reader feels the tension of that internal struggle.

But if the only reason you’re withholding something is to “save the twist,” it’s almost always a sign that the story’s tension isn’t working yet.

However, the fix to giving too little away isn’t giving away everything or way too much, because that’s the next mistake.

Mistake #2: Overloading the Reader with Worldbuilding, Lore, or Backstory

This one is the opposite problem: giving too much—especially when it comes to worldbuilding, backstory, and lore.

I know you’ve heard this advice before: “Don’t info-dump.” Most writers have. But here’s the reality—despite trying to actively avoid infodumping, you’re probably still doing it, even if you don’t think you are.

Because when you’re doing it, you genuinely think the information isn’t a dump—it’s necessary.

This is especially true for sci-fi and fantasy writers. You’ve done all this deep work to create the inner workings of your world, your magic systems, the political conflicts, your character histories. You needed to know all of it to make your story feel real.

So it makes perfect sense that it’s hard to see how the reader can appreciate your story without that context to back it up—to fully understand what’s going on, to feel the weight of it all.

But here’s the hard truth: just because that information is necessary for you, doesn’t mean it is for your readers.

At least not in that scene and in that way—or even in the draft yet at all.

What I often see is writers trying to avoid info-dumps by breaking the information into smaller pieces, mixing it into the narrative voice, or having characters deliver it through dialogue. But if that information still isn’t anchored in the POV character’s immediate tension and what’s happening emotionally in the present scene, it’s still a dump. Just a dressed-up one.

Brain Science Insight

Readers process story as if they're living their own emotional memories of it. 

Their brain is pulling on their own emotional memories through your point-of-view character’s experience.

So if the character has no reason to care about the detail in that moment, the reader won’t either. Without emotional context, your brilliant worldbuilding is just noise.

Mini Fix Tip

To actually fix your infodumps, reveal your world through character experience.

• Let readers discover the rules of your magic system when your protagonist runs into a consequence.
• Let them feel the weight of backstory when it interrupts a current goal.
• Let your world be the obstacle, not the lecture.

Readers don’t need a primer to understand and get invested—they need tension. And the fastest way to break immersion is to teach your world like it’s a class instead of pulling the reader into it through someone they care about.

Mistake #3: Writing in a Try-Hard, Too-Formal Voice

A lot of first drafts I read—from really thoughtful, talented writers—suffer from a similar problem: the writing sounds like it’s trying way too hard to be “good.”

The vocabulary is elevated. The tone is stiff. Sentences are perfectly structured but emotionally flat. It reads more like an academic paper or a literary essay than a novel.

Most of the time, this comes from imposter syndrome. You don’t want your writing to feel “juvenile,” so you default to what you think polished writing should sound like. Or because you’re drawing on a historical style to match your equivalent time period. Or a more aloof mythical tone because you want your story to carry that expansiveness too. Something formal. Impressive. Sophisticated.

But that means you’re holding readers at a rigid distance.

Brain Science Insight

Immersion depends on emotional proximity.

Your reader is tracking the world and story through the emotional lens of your point-of-view character.

If the language is too detached, too polished, or too “above” the character’s actual state, the reader’s brain won’t register it as a lived experience. It stays abstract—and the story won’t feel real or emotionally resonant.

This happens in both narration and dialogue. And especially in speculative fiction—where readers are already decoding a new world—your voice is the bridge between unfamiliar concepts and felt experience.

If that bridge is cold or distant, the reader won’t cross it.

Mini Fix Tip

Loosen your grip on “perfect” prose and write the way your character thinks. Let the voice reflect their emotional state, worldview, and natural rhythm—especially in close third or first person.

That doesn’t mean sloppy—it means purposeful. You’re showing the world through someone who’s in it, not someone analyzing it from above.

Use sentence structure, rhythm, and word choice to echo the character’s mindset in the moment. Let the voice crack or get sharp or unravel when the emotion calls for it.

Voice isn’t about sounding smart—it’s about making the reader feel. And that only happens when you stop holding them at arm’s length.

Mistake #4: Using Too Many POV Characters

I know the impulse—especially in sci-fi and fantasy. You’ve got a sprawling world, layered conflicts, and a cast of compelling characters. So you want to show all sides of it. The solution seems obvious: give more of them a point of view. After all, it’s basically an expectation in the genre, right?

But what usually happens is this: instead of building a tighter narrative, the story branches out to an unwieldy degree. The threads get harder and harder to maintain and wrangle back together. The emotional core gets diluted and the pacing uneven. Your reader has a harder and harder time caring.

Multiple POVs can absolutely work, but only when they serve a focused, intentional purpose. In most early drafts, too many POVs show up not because the story needs them, but because the writer does.

Sometimes the writer isn’t fully sure who the story belongs to yet. But more often, it’s that they don’t yet feel confident showing character depth without getting inside that character’s head. It becomes a kind of overexplanation—a way to make sure readers don’t miss what’s important by just telling them directly through internal narration.

When you learn how to reveal motivation, tension, and subtext through interaction and viewpoint character perception, you can show emotional complexity without needing every character to be a narrator.

And there’s a reason this matters. Brain science tells us that we care about a story when we care about a character, right? And we do that through understanding a character—why they do what they do.

So naturally, readers need some time in a character’s POV. That doesn’t mean single POV is always best—but switching frequently or between too many character POVs, especially before that understanding is strong, breaks immersion along with the reason readers care. The brain has to reset, re-orient, and rebuild the connection. And if it keeps happening, that understanding—that reason to care—never forms deeply enough to keep a reader reading through the end.

Brain Science Insight

The brain forms emotional connections through focused perspective.

Each time the point of view shifts, the brain must recalibrate—build a new emotional model of a new character. That reset costs attention and weakens attachment.

Too many shifts too early—before the reader is invested—mean they never fully lock onto anyone. Instead of deepening immersion, you're disrupting it.

Readers stay engaged when they feel aligned with someone’s internal logic and emotional stakes—and that takes time within a single lens to develop.

Mini Fix Tip

Before adding or keeping a POV character, ask yourself:

• What does this viewpoint give the reader that they can’t get from the main lens?
• How does this perspective raise the emotional or thematic stakes?
• And is it really necessary—or is it covering for something you’re afraid you can’t show any other way?

Because ultimately, readers don’t need every perspective. They just need the one that makes them care, internally and emotionally carrying the main arc of the story.

Mistake #5: Prioritizing Plot Events Over Character Transformation

In a lot of early drafts, especially from plot-focused writers, the story is packed with action. Things happen—big, exciting things. There are betrayals, deaths, battles, discoveries. And yet… the story still feels flat.

That’s because the emotional journey isn’t keeping pace with the external one.

Brain science gives us a clue here: readers stay engaged not just because of what happens, but because of how it changes the character. The brain is always looking for cause and effect—especially emotional cause and effect.

If we can’t see how each plot event impacts the protagonist’s worldview, goals, or relationships, it feels disconnected—like a summary of things that happened, not a story we’re experiencing.

Writers often believe plot and character arc are separate: that you can map your twists and pacing beats, and then figure out the character's emotional journey. Maybe even like something tacked on at the end. But in reality, they’re best developed together because they rely on one another.

And when they don’t, the plot starts to feel episodic. The scenes are technically escalating—but the character isn’t changing in a core way that builds to the end. Or worse, they change suddenly near the end without enough buildup to make it feel earned.

Brain Science Insight

The brain is wired for cause and effect—especially emotional cause and effect.

It tracks not just what happens, but what that moment means to the person living it.

If we can’t feel how events are changing your character—how their beliefs, desires, or fears are being reshaped—then the story doesn’t register as growth.

And without growth, the story doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. The reader’s brain loses the thread of meaning that gives narrative its power.

Mini Fix Tip

Anchor your plot events to internal consequences. Better yet, make sure you’re tailoring your plot events so that they specifically push internal change.

• Every scene should show us not just what happens, but why the character cares.
• What did this event shift in the character’s belief system, emotional state, or sense of safety in the world?
• What choice did it force—or reveal?

Transformation is what gives a story its shape—and gives readers something to learn from, which is a key thing readers subconsciously seek in stories.

Without it, you’re not building toward a payoff. You’re just stringing together events.

Mistake #6: Skipping the Premise and Drafting Without a Clear Story Purpose

By the time most writers are frustrated with their draft, this is the mistake that’s sitting at the center of it: they started writing without a clear story premise.

And I get it—it’s exciting to chase the energy of a new idea. You want to start writing before the spark fades. But without a clear premise—and hear that also as a clear promise—your draft quickly runs out of focus.

Story decisions aren’t being held to a solid goal. The conflict gets diluted and motivations appear blurry. Stakes suffer too. And your story becomes a collection of cool ideas with no real objective.

Here’s the brain-based reason that matters: readers are constantly trying to orient themselves to what kind of story they’re in.

This is the expectations key where readers want promises fulfilled. They’re seeking certain things from the story at pretty regular intervals.

And this doesn’t just affect the reader—it affects you. Because if you don’t know what basic type of story you’re writing, the main conflict, and whether it’s all aiming to the same point together, you won’t know where your draft is working or not.

Brain Science Insight

Readers’ brains are constantly scanning for narrative orientation—what kind of story this is, what emotional arc to expect, and how to interpret events.

That orientation builds trust. It tells them how to track stakes, tension, and payoff.

Without a clear premise to signal direction and emotional weight, the brain struggles to predict or engage.

The story feels scattered, and reader investment drops—because they don’t know what kind of reward they’re reading toward.

Mini Fix Tip

Before you get too deep into your draft—or as soon as you realize you’re floundering—pause and clarify your premise. One to two sentences max:

• What does your protagonist want?
• What’s in the way?
• Why does it matter?

Bonus points if, within those sentences, you can hint at what your character’s internal tension is—what they need to learn.

I have a quick set of three lessons to walk you through crafting your novel’s guiding premise. You can grab this free mini Novel Premise Course HERE.

When you have that clarity, everything else gets easier. You’ll know what belongs, what doesn’t, and how to shape the story around a spine your reader can feel fulfilled in.

Mistake #7: Rejecting Structure in the Name of “Originality”

This last one is a mindset issue—and it’s one I see a lot, especially from writers who care deeply about their craft.

They want to tell a story that feels original, unexpected, or bold. So they avoid traditional story structure on purpose. They resist turning points. They downplay arcs. They actively resist anything that feels too “formulaic.”

And I get it. You don’t want to write something predictable. You don’t want your story to feel like a template with new names slapped in.

But that’s not going to be an issue: structure isn’t what makes a story feel cliché. Empty execution does.

And more importantly—structure isn’t boxing you in. It’s necessary for readability. Pacing. Escalation. Emotional payoff.

From a brain science perspective, structure works because it mirrors how we process and anticipate experiences. Readers are looking for tension that escalates, turning points that shift perspective, and endings that resolve the internal struggle of the protagonist.

When those elements aren’t there, the story feels off to readers, even when they can’t explain why.

And when writers reject structure entirely, they often end up writing toward an ending that doesn’t land—because it was never emotionally set up in the first place.

Brain Science Insight

Narrative structure mirrors how the brain naturally anticipates and interprets events.

Our minds expect a build-up of tension, a shift in understanding, and a resolution that delivers emotional closure.

When those beats are missing or mistimed, the story feels unsatisfying—even if the reader can’t explain why.

Structure isn’t a formula—it’s a cognitive pattern we’re wired to respond to.

Ignoring it doesn’t make your story more original. It just makes it harder for readers to feel anything at all.

Mini Fix Tip

Instead of seeing structure as a set of rules, treat it like scaffolding. A flexible frame that holds your story up while you build something ingenious on top of it.

The originality isn’t in whether you hit the turning points—it’s in how you hit them, and what they mean to your character and your reader.

Structure doesn’t limit your creativity. It gives it a shape strong enough to carry weight. They’re called “universal” for a reason!

The Fate of Your Story

Until you fix these too-common mistakes, your draft isn’t going anywhere. Not to agents, not to readers—and probably not even to “The End.”

So if you recognized yourself in any of these, well, you’re not alone. Most writers do. But that also means you’re likely making one of the biggest mistakes right where it matters most—in your first few pages. And no—it’s not just because of prologues!

Let me clue you into the reasons almost every sci-fi and fantasy draft falls apart by chapter three in the next article.

Categories: : creativity, novel drafting, novel planning, worldbuilding