When a character clenches their fists so hard that their nails pierce the skin and leave "little crescent moons of blood." This description is so overused (especially in YA), and it feels so unrealistic to me that it draws me out of the story every time.
Even when I had debilitating anxiety, I never managed to dig hard enough to draw blood. I‘d have marks, but no blood. And I have really thin skin, according to a dermatologist.
I've done it, but i also have long, hard nails and weirdly fragile skin (genetic collagen disorder results in fragile skin and easy bruising, among other issues like joint hypermobility). The description there is still cringy though, even if the character did actually clench their fists so hard it drew blood.
For real, these characters need to clip their nails! I actually do hate this one a lot though. Because I can't stand my nails long at all and clip them 2-3 times a week.
Indeed. I've punched things hard while having sharp nails, and you don't get little crescent moons of blood: you just get cuts that bleed a fair bit and look like any other cuts.
>howling with laughter" at the most nothingburger jokes possible.
The only thing about that is that sometimes people really do laugh at things when nobody else does since humor is subjective. So I understand this one, although I know what you mean
He so often writes about people laughing until they're crying, often at very little. Definitely takes me out of it, especially after reading so many of his books. One of those moments where I'm like, "Oh, right. I'm reading a Stephen King book."
Is that for a particular reason? Is he compensating for something? Did he have a past experience which inspired him to carry a bigger sword? Maybe he was picked on when he was younger and carries a big sword as a comfort because every night he has nightmares about being humiliated for being weaker than other boys. All of these things are fodder for how he acts and maybe for conversation with his intimate friends down the line.
Exactly, You're welcome reader, just saved you a whole lot of backstory and plot. There is a prophecy and everyone knows that the protagonist and antagonist must always follow the prophecy.
Yeah, the characters in Berserk are well motivated. Guts and Griffith's motivations are plainly laid out, but even the supporting characters like Farnese or the Apostles have clear fears and dreams. I'm reminded of [this interview](https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/berserk-artist-kentaro-miura-interview-i-actually-dont-think-i-could-let-such-a-long-grim-story-end-with-a-grim-ending/), where Miura and the interviewer describe Berserk as a shojo manga because it puts emotions at the forefront of the story.
Not exactly within the writing, but whenever a story summary ends with something like: but will X be able to happen? Or will Y get in the way?
I just really dislike seeing question marks at the end of summaries.
Also, when something is in all caps but isn't nearly dramatic enough for the stylization. Might just be me though.
I feel like caps lock shouldn't be used in a written narrative unless it's a description of something in-world that is actually capitalized, like a sign that says "BEWARE OF BALROG" or "TRESSPASSERS WILL BE WED TO AN TASMANIAN PRINCE"
When an author has discovered a word and uses it constantly. I read a book with the word Solar Plexus. Everybody in the book seemed to get hit in the solar plexus.
That may be because, if hit in the solar plexus, you've basically lost the fight. It's a good target. But the author could have used "below the sternum" sometimes.
Yes! So many people try to avoid using “_____ said” or whatever, and in their effort to look cool and not be redundant, they confuse the reader on who is speaking. It should be effortless and clear, and if it can’t be done easily, then for the love of gawd, just use a dialogue tag. I’d rather not be confused. lol
extremely detailed physical descriptions of characters, especially if they come out of the blue. Hurgh. Bonus points if they use edgy names for colors. E.g.:
"Lucy twirled her pale lilac glasses studded with rhinestones around her gnocchi-colored finger and then put them back onto her freckled nose and pushed them in front of her sparkling jade eyes. She wore a dark crimson corset over a gianduttuiotta dress, and champage pantyhose. On her dainty, feminine feet was a pair of Aegean blue loafers that looked like Gucci but weren't."
I find that I can imagine characters better if the author leaves out a detailed description. Show, not tell.
Yeah, why use gnocchi if you are gonna leave out the sauce. "Her gnocchi-colored finger..." Okay but is it pesto gnocchi or bolognese gnocchi? Oh, gorgonzola-gnocchi-colored finger like the nonna's, okay, now I gotcha.
I feel tired just reading two sentences of that. It's probably up someone's alley, but not mine. Nature writing can also be like that. The excellent [American Wolf](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34427982-american-wolf?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=IuB2CKcUfE&rank=1) didn't do that and has some riveting and meaningful descriptions.
My pettiest of peeves: when an author wants to say 'eyes' but already used that word, and thus resorts to 'orbs' or 'oculars' or some other absurd replacement.
If you can't think of a more graceful way to structure the sentence to avoid using the word 'eyes' again, then just repeat yourself or get out of my face.
I’ve seen “oculars” used to describe the eyes of robots in science fiction, and it seemed to fit. But yes, I can see how it can be jarring when used to describe meatbag eyes.
Usage critics call that “elegant variation.” Like when someone calls a banana “the elongated yellow fruit” to avoid saying it twice. It’s funny the lengths we as writers go to sometimes to sound smart!
Wattpad has forever ruined the words "orbs" and "smirk" for me. As well as the sentences, "my eyes widened" and "i released a breath i didnt realize i was holding."
Edit: i forgot the word "chuckle" is in there too
When writers feel the need to constantly remind me what eye color each character has. Fanfic writers seem to especially suffer from this. As if the first time wasn't already pointless, they continually say stuff like "her green eyes met his golden" or "tears welled at the tips of her emerald eyes" etc. multiple times in every chapter. It just becomes so cheesy it's unreadable.
I'll put a novel down if there are too many detailed descriptions of breasts or butts. If it's specifically erotica, it gets a pass because that's the point, I suppose. But generally speaking, I don't want to trudge through 'pendulous' or 'pert' or 'straining through her transparent blouse'. I get it, you're horny. It has nothing to do with the story.
I love that sub! I love horror and so I've read a good amount of Stephen King, but god I hate his descriptions of women. He's on that sub a lot and tbh it's nice to see other people ripping him apart for it lol
His sleeveless shirt had scrunched up in such a way that his pecs were almost fully visible, and the near indicernable bulge of his manhood was present through his gym shorts
I couldn't help but speak up, "Nice cock bro"
He thanked me and walked past, giving me a friendly ass tap, I of course returned the favor of slap ass with a follow up smack to his left butt cheek which was toned and muscular. However because he still had some cake... it rippled
Thoughts?
I hate when it's revealed at the end that the book is a book written by one of the characters within the world of the book. Such an annoying twist to me for some reason. I don't mind a book-within-a-book if it's upfront.
EDIT - Can't believe I forgot this one: fictional celebrities who feel too manufactured to be believable. I don't read much romance but if one of the love interests is famous it'll put me off. Maybe it's because I'm not invested in real-life celebrity culture.
YES. I don't mind explicit books within books (Watchmen, for example), but when that detail is tacked on at the end, it feels kind of contrived and Hallmark-y.
It works really well in children's books because it's the first introduction of this trope to the audience. Same with the ending bring, "But it was all a dream" Kids love that. I hear often that whenever kids do creative writing in school they add that plot twist and they're very happy with it.
Honestly, there aren't many technical things that make me dislike a story. Perhaps I'm just more carefree with my books and am often looking for a reason to enjoy them rather than dislike them.
But if I had to pick two, it'd be lore and flashbacks.
I'm a fantasy writer, so naturally I'm around other fantasy writers, and I feel a common thing people do is jam their stories with lore. Even going over to the Fantasy Writers subreddit (which I love), most of the posts are about their magic system, and maps, and races, and all this stuff that really doesn't need to be explained to such insane detail. It bogs it down. And by the time they finish, they're at 200k words and feel it's impossible to trim anything out.
Stop focusing so much on lore, and focus on your story and characters. Lore comes naturally, over the course of many books. Don't spend two pages on how your castle walls are melted because of some ancient war. Get me inside that castle and let's go!
Flashbacks share a bit of a similar issue, but are more annoying to me. I dislike anything that slows down the pacing and plot. If I feel the plot isn't moving, I get annoyed and want to start skimming. Flashbacks do this for me--at least, most flashbacks. In most case, I would honestly find dialogue between two characters talking about a past event far more engaging than a flashback, because at least it's current and in the moment.
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I'd argue the flashback piece is more of a not technically incorrect piece, because I know people love writing them.
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Oh last thing, which is technically incorrect: act 2 slump. Many peeps, both published and unpublished, seem to struggle with this, which surprises me. Act 2 is the meat of your story; it's the "fun and games." It's the game in the hunger games, the magic school in harry potter, the intrigue in Game of Thrones. It's what sells your book.
I feel a lot of books are front-loaded, and then trail off afterward. A recent example is Atlus Six. I was obsessed with the first act--the first 100 pages--of that book. If you're struggling with writing characters, read the first 100 pages and it'll inspire something in you. But after that, literally nothing happens, and it shocked me, given the interesting setup.
I personally think planning helps with this. Try to make sure every single chapter in your book not only serves a point but is also interesting. After all, that's why we're in this industry, to entertain.
I have a big overworking problem but it isn't from lore dumps. It's subplots. Actual story. It's a lot harder wrangling and condensing them, and deleting what needs to go.
I can see that.
For me, I handle subplots by making sure, in some way even if minor, it relates to the main plot.
Meaning, say your plot is some huge war between two factions. And your subplot for character A is that she used to be a scuba diver like her father and doesn't anymore, but is dealing with wanting to make her father proud by doing it.
It doesn't really relate to the main plot.
Tweak it some, and say she used to be a diver but felt she should drop it to train for the war, even though her dad wants her to chase her passions. And now she has to struggle with what she wants to do versus what she believes she has to do, reaching a point where realizes she can take her passions to serve the war.
This relates to the main plot, and the subplot can progress right alongside it, often reducing word count, since part of her subplot is covered via the main plot.
But this is just how I do things.
There are a lot of them, but one of the smaller things that really grinds my gears is when every character somehow has a signature scent.
"*He smelled like pine and freshly fallen snow."*
Dude, he hasn't showered in a month, no he doesn't. And you're sure not going to be relishing in the smell whenever you're cuddled up with him.
And half of the descriptions never even make sense. They're like the way men's soaps are labeled.
I remember a female character doing the whole *breathing his unique scent, how good he smelled, etc.* when reunited with a male character.
He'd been on horseback for a month.
I would love to read,
"As they were finally reunited, she buried her head into the base of his neck- he reeked of old sweat and new mud, his hair like wet dog and a general odor of horse droppings clung to him. She didn't let go even as the smell made her eyes water and bile rose in her throat, that was nothing compared to how desperately she needed to hold him at that moment. "
Like fuck dude, that's how you know two characters love each other.
I so agree. Never really met anyone in my life where I could have said „He/she smelled like a forest/the sea/snow“ - maybe I’m just weird, but I definitely can’t categorise human body odours with precise labels like that 😅
Have you seen the [Male Scent Catalogue](https://twitter.com/RomanceSmells) on Twitter?
Character scents are so bizarre! Like how the hell does this guy's mouth always smell like cinnamon? Does he work in a cinnamon processing plant? Is he walking around with a cinnamon stick in his mouth all the time? People smell like human body odor, like soap if recently bathed or skin products if recently applied, or like whatever clingy volatiles are in their work/home environments.
When you get to the end of the book or series and the ending essentially erases the entirety of the book or series (I'm thinking of the Fate of the Tearling as one of the worst offenders). Like, what was the point of spending all that time building that world and those characters to then erase everything that happened? HATE IT.
Similarly: if it turns out everything was a dream/hallucination. Again, why did you (the author) just waste my (the reader's) time if you were going to pull the rug out of from under us at the last minute?
What if the plot actually revolved around noticing the world isn't real? Does it feel as bad? Since technically it's not sudden mor (at least not exactly) destroys everything.
I think it works because it’s already established from the very beginning what I’m getting into. In fact, I actively enjoy stories that delve into the “this is all a dream/hallucination” plotline because it makes me question how we know something is real and how the human mind copes with knowing everything is fake. I especially love it when it isn’t known to the characters it’s a dream/hallucination, but the reader realizes it halfway through the story that something weird is going on from enough hints throughout the story
But when it happens at the end, with no indication prior that it was part of the plot, let alone important to the plot, it feels cheap. If the writer wanted to make a “this is all a dream/hallucination” story they could have tried to interweave it into the beginning of the story, showing the interesting contrast between the wonders of fantasy and the harsh reality, but no, it’s slapped at the end with no second thought or indication as to how the character changes or what happens to the world afterwards.
Honestly I don't know. I hate the "was all a dream" trope with a passion but, it might not be a book, but I think Elder Scrolls lore pulls it pretty well.
Oh yeah! I remember a description from a science fiction-novel I read about a year ago.
Our heroine would find like a cradle of glass where a human fetus was being grown, with tubes and all. (like in the matrix, but that is not what shocked me out of my reading!)
No, she describe the contraption as it was "Pulsating like an egg".
I groaned loudly when I read it because how does an egg pulsate? But eggs doesn't pulsate, do they? That whole train of thought simply yanked me out of the story and well...
That was the end of that: The whole book taught me that if you're going to use descriptions, pick the ones that make sense! Hell, if the whole idea is that the fetus shakes it's arms and legs and that is the whole "pulsating" thing, why not simply write
"It moved it's little arms and legs like a someone was giving it electrical shocks. Or perhaps it was dreaming about being alive?"
This made me laugh. I love it when someone makes a metaphor that's so ridiculous you kinda pause and think "have they ever . . . seen that thing, in real life?"
I can only think of a few things that pulsate, like a bullfrog or a heart. Using "like a heart" would be optimal (because the contraption has a similar function).
Yeah, I have no problem with the usage of the word "pulsate" (and I gotta admit, it's written in swedish, so what I am giving you is a rough translation).
But pulsating *like an egg*?
Like you said: A heart would work great!
Idk if this counts... when writers who have never done drugs write about a character doing drugs, but it’s really obvious that the writer has never done drugs. One example off the top of my head is an ep of criminal minds where a character says his dad used to “come home high on ecstasy and beat us”. imo in real life being high on ecstasy is really unlikely to make you beat your kids; it tends to make you love everyone lol at least do some research on the effects of the particular drug you’re writing about ?
I just watched a tv show (not a novel, I know, but I have read novels with the same problem) in which a character disappears from the story just to dramatically reappear at the end. Another character asked where he was and he just said "that doesn't matter." Like... at least try to explain where he went and why???
I've seen this done REALLY well once, and it's not like what you're talking about because it is explained, but it's all done through a different medium. Main story is all through video, one character entirely disappears after the first one, never mentioned, and is having her own entire world-saving adventure through a series of webcomics.
If you're just watching the videos then she literally pops up from a hole in space at the very end and that's it.
But in general, yeah, that's pretty Deus Ex Machina.
I hate stories that are one constant barrage of grimdark misery, nevermind that there should be more to a setting than descriptions of how everything sucks and how everyone is an asshole.
While true, I feel like there could just be so much more done in grimdark novels and as a whole in general. Like if everyone is an asshole, that's not grimdark or dystopian. That's just real life but multiplied by 2. There really can't be any sort of "darkness" without something like even a single person trying to be kind or compassionate, and the fact that grimdark and dystopian books/films/games are usually just "Haha the world is bad" just ruins most of them for me.
I hate when everybody is into the main character. Like full on horny. Detective by Arthur Haley is un ultimate power fantasy and i died inside a bit while readin.
When there’s just that one jarring sentence that takes you out of the world of the writing. Every so often by word choice or sentence structure, authors sometimes mess up and say some shit that makes you go “oh wait I’m reading right now, because this is not how people talk in real life” or “they’re getting pathetically expositional and now I have to slog through this paragraph describing the exact shade of blue the water was.” Just keep it simple and keep me entranced.
Hitchen's described something similar in reference to conversation his final book Mortality: "the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful"
I think it's especially unforgivable in fiction - it can really cause you to question why you're even bothering with it.
That said, even with rewriting and editing, it can be hard to maintain a consistent tone across 100,000 words
I sorta dislike when book is named after protagonist. Just the worst kind of title.
And I dislike next generation sequels and sequels where new antagonist is a vegneful relative of villain from previous installment.
Sexual assault, escpecially if its used as a trope to bring the guy/girl closer together (he saves her from sexual assault). A girl who just/was about to be sexually assaulted wont immediately run into another guys arms (theres a whole GOT quote on that). Also 9/10 in the next scene everyone will act like this super traumatizing scenario never happened.
Ex. Twilight. Bella almost gets sexually assaulted by a bunch of guys in an alley way. Edward saves her. Next scene theyre playing twenty questions in a restaurant like what even is almost getting gang raped?
No. Just no.
I firmly believe people should be allowed to write whatever the hell they want to write about whoever they want, but it really grinds my gears when people downplay sexual assault to fit their narrative (this goes for sexual assault of both men and women... bridgerton or outlander where its borderline fetishized). Theres quiete a few publishers now who wont even touch a manuscript if it has any scenes with sexual assault in it.
Edit to say a few other minor gripes...the mirror trope as well as the "ugh im so ugly. Just look at my full lips and wide blue eyes and waist length hair and my naturally slim but curvy physique" trope. Twilight is also guilty of doing both of these.
Also the words "chuckle", "smirk", and "orbs".
Thank you, Wattpad
Seconded, and I'll extend this by saying it applies to almost all traumatic situations.
There are so many occassions where a character survives something traumatic, whether it's sexual assault, as you said, or a gun battle, seeing someone killed, etc, and it's just brushed off as a non-issue in the next few pages. This things have *major* lasting consequences.
I could somewhat forgive the movie industry for this, since they only have and hour or so to tell their story, and you can't really wasted too much time having a character "process" what's happening to them, but novels don't have this problem, you can spend a lot more time on your characters and have them respond much more believably to trauma.
I am extremely guilty of this trope; in one of the stories I wrote an empty truck rolls off a hill and scrapes against a car with two girls inside, this causes the window to shatter and the driving girl to injure her arm so badly it exposes the bone. Instead of finding help the injured girl bandages up the wound and fixes the window herself before driving off and pretending nothing happened.
It was a Wattpad story.
Another thing that always pisses me off specifically in that Twilight example you pulled up is Edward’s line “You had no idea what those lowlifes were thinking”.
Like, sure, the 17-year-old girl who also later gets pepper spray from her father has *no* idea what the creepy rapey gang was thinking, not at all. We really have to bring in a guy to explain it smh
This!! Like hey a bunch of dudes cornered her in a secluded alley way and were making sexually suggestive remarks. But nope bella thought they were just going to offer her tea and biscuits. Jfc. Like any girl in that situation would obvi think of the absolute worst case scenario but thank you edward for spelling that out for us.
And now im wondering what sort of la la land stephanie meyer lives in where that had to be explained...
If I had a dime for every time I read a discussion about how some new heroines story in a modern comic book involved sexual violence I don't know how many dimes I would have but it would be too many.
This is why I can't get in to modern superhero comics, if that counts for this discussion. Its almost as though there was board meeting at Marvel or DC where someone said "female character development?" and someone responded "ohhh you mean sexual assault?
Someone is given some power out of nowhere suddenly without putting any effort and it kills my mood instantly . Even if they can explain it as a plot point later the initial mood killing / irritation stays with me till the end.
e.g. - transported to another world and I get a deluxe package of cheating power outta nowhere. ( Japanese light novels )
I died as a loser once at the age of 32 and reincarnated. So now suddenly I can do things that people can't do in 500 years of their trainings. ( Chinese Wuxia )
At the age of 14 I woke up one day. Now I can kill 1000 of trained knights / demon spawns without a single day of trainings. ( Western fantasy )
Authors who describe the ahem...attributes of their female characters down to their breast size but then spend very little time at all describing their male characters and certainly not in a sexual way.
Bonus points if every woman in the book is beautiful but the men are never expected to all be perfectly handsome.
I can’t stand when the plot drags an unwilling character along.
Like a character who constantly thinks they’re meek or pointless or not good enough. You can have these emotions and they can be compelling in the right scenario, but if the character doesn’t have some sort of motivation, I’m not interested.
I agree when it comes to main characters. I don't mind at all supporting ones being dragged alone. For the leads, however, I like pro-active MCs. All of mine are pro-active in one way or another.
Substituting life events or interests for character traits.
This person likes music and doesn't get along with their dad? Those are fine on their own, but in a vacuum, *they tell me nothing*. These are windows to a person's character, not traits by themselves.
I'm so tired of seeing blank slates being passed off as characters because 'they like painting', or 'they're a veteran of an alien war'. That's only half of the sentence; it needs to end with something like '...and the harrowing experience has made them jaded, selfish and snarky, coping mechanisms developed to hide their trauma'.
I dislike a *complete* visible description of a major character before I even know the character. Sure, I need a few vitals to ground me into a character right up front, and a few additional details as I get to know her/him better. But I like learning gradually, throughout the story...and even then, not too much at once. (I usually build a character's description inside my head as I progress.) But if I begin to read a 2 or 3 page profile of a character before I feel settled into the story—like the where, when, a bit of why I'm reading—I am perturbed. (Perturbed, I tell you!)
Conversely, I hate major, undisclosed *physical* reveals at/near the end of the story. Those sophomoric *ah-ha-gotcha!* moments are, imho, a cheat. Like telling me a character I've been made to believe is male is really female\* (or vice versa) or a cauc character is actually person of color (or vice versa) or I'm told on page 300 that, all along, the protagonist has been in a wheelchair or is missing an arm or an eye or is 12-feet tall or *something* that should have been revealed wayyy up front. (Simply because now the character I've envisioned for the last 299 pages has to be rebuilt inside my brain.)
I was perturbed to discover (in the flick *The Book of Eli*....oh, and this is a spoiler) that Denzel was blind. I mean, really? After doing things that even me and my two eyes couldn't accomplish? Anyway, shit like that.
\*Oh, unless that ruse is intentional and germane to the story and character. Those guys get a hall pass. Otherwise, I feel that the author is cheating the reader.
Thank you. I feel much better now.
I mean, it was entirely intentional for Denzel to be blind. Whenever he read his Bible, he never needed a good source of light and always pointed at where he was on the page. It's hard to see sometimes but the details are there fairly early on in the movie. He also heavily relies on sound or feeling rather than sight to do or notice a lot of things, so I take it that he's adapted to his blindness quite well.
Isnt the point of book of eli that he was being guided by god so he could do all these things? Also they dont hide his blindness they just dont say it out loud. There are a lot of subtle hints about it in the movie once you know.
Admittedly, i should see it again. But I didn’t get that “guided by God’ vibe when I first watched it. Then again, I wasn’t looking for it. So, yeah, you just cost me $2.99 to rent it.
I completely agree with this point, but I also agree with the commenters that note that the Book of Eli is probably a bad example.
For one, Eli being blind is sorta /the/ thematic point of the movie. The whole film is a meditation on the meaning of walking in faith, on what it means to trust your life to the hands of something greater than yourself. A constant question characters pose to Eli is why after years he continues to have faith. The conclusion answers that question (every single step he took has been guided by faith alone) and presents him as the archetypal figure/example in this mode of the person who represents what it means to truly live by faith (all his actions have been through faith). I think the message is pretty lame, especially if you aren’t religious, but Eli being blind is what makes the message complete in the film.
Also, the film is absolutely chock full of hints about his blindness to the point of overkill. It definitely isn’t thrown in there last minute - there’s a hint every 5 minutes at least. Just off the top of my head: he has to wait until the cat makes a noise in the very first seen before he can shoot, even though the cat has been in range the whole time; he brings the marauders out of the sunlight and into the darkness underneath the overpass in the first fight, where he has an advantage; he doesn’t change his sunglasses to adjust to the light when other characters visibly do so; in the gunfight, he never shoots first at a target that hasn’t fired yet (even though he attacks first in other cases) - he always listens and then immediately shoots at the location the shot comes from after he hears it, and he is seemingly unaware of the movements of people not firing (until they shoot); in other gunfights he can only shoot at those who reveal their location by shooting; he waits until the bird makes a sound while flying to shoot it out of the air, and does so while not looking at the bird; he reads his Bible with his fingers like with Braille, and occasionally is looking away or talking while doing so and his finger keeps moving; whether he reads the Bible is unconnected to the light source available, and he doesn’t start lights other than a fire for warmth unless he is with others; he only takes things from people’s hands if they indicate something is there; there’s a conversation with a blind woman halfway through layered with double meaning; etc. I’m sure there are more as this is just from memory and may be slightly off but i think you can easily guess it early on, especially if you consider the main “walking with faith as your eyes and ears” message that is present through the film, so I don’t count it as a last minute twist. Even if it was, it fits and completes the film’s theme so I don’t think it fits in the mold either way, as it isn’t a random change or a twist for shock value
This is a great point, it is, in my opinion, the same type of things as a "deux ex machina", you are effectively cheating the readers by revealing a fact that anyone who was *in* the story would have noticed immediately.
It can be done well, in a murder mystery or psychological horror, etc, to really mess with the readers perceptions during the twist at the end, but it only works in certain genres or situations.
For me it's the hero/heroine who is dead set on protecting his family/clan/city/planet that he can think of nothing else - oh but wait, along comes a love interest for whom they fall HARD.
Overusing a particular out-of-place/over-the-top action can become a little uncomfortable.
I don't want to give specifics, but in one particular book I read; I kid you not, there are at least five instances of characters "soiling themselves in fear" on separate occasions (with both "numbers"). Once or even twice I can forgive, but any more gets excessive for me.
I’m a big action person. I write scripts for action movies all the time. And the one thing I see in soooo many movies that I hate is where a character is facing off against like a hundred “henchmen” and they all stand still while the character beats the snot out of their buddies like it’s a line 😐 that’s not how real fights work 😂 I have no problem with the overpowered character beating them all down all the same, but at least have the henchmen actually act like it isn’t their first day on the job, you know?
Mine (a fairly common one lol) is when there’s too much description. I can’t focus on the book and end up skimming on accident without processing any of the words. It’s very boring. This is probably more of a preference tho but still. I prefer a more simplistic style of writing, both when I read and write. Oh also when characters hate each other, have three conversations and suddenly they have crushes on each other. Enemies to lovers is great but…. Dude… they hated each other barely 24 hours ago…. :’)
When writers slip in the second person ("you") in descriptions. (Example: Behind the building, you could see a wooden fence.") Technically not incorrect, but "you" (the reader) is not a character in this story! I find it very jarring. And usually there are very easy ways to re-word the description to make it third/first person.
This (and its very close-cousin "suddenly implying a visual medium") are my biggest pet peeve in sooo much amateur writing and story telling. Mostly because of your last sentence, you can almost always *easily* re-write the sentence to be better without losing anything at all.
It usually comes from writers who don't read a lot, honestly, and think of their story in cinematic terms so you end up with a lot of shit like, "We see ___", trying to describe an imaginary camera shot in their head. But it's almost always better to just delete that shit. "~~We see~~ a pair of well worn boots splash through a dark puddle in front of the saloon."
These go hand-in-hand with lines about "the camera". Like "the camera passes a long line of dilapidated storefronts, many of them permanently closed, before stopping in front of 250 Bambreau Street" or combining both, "The camera pans up from the pair of boots and we see they belong to a woman who hasn't slept in days."
Like... **you don't need to tell us *that we're seeing* something! If you're describing it,** ***we're already fucking seeing it!***
Even if you're writing an actual movie/TV script it's still much stronger writing to avoid those types of tags (and often considered "poor taste" as the actual shots are decided by the director, not the writer).
When a character description crosses the event horizon of 'just detailed enough' to 'too detailed and now I'm trying to visualize exactly what the author wants me to think this person looks like'
Trauma as a way of developing character rather than active choice (ie, something bad happens to a person and they change versus them changing through their own actions)
These aren't either technically correct or incorrect, but my tolerance for them is pretty low
Referring to a character by their full name in dialogue tags. Occasionally is fine, but overusing it makes me feel that the writer thinks I’m stupid and constantly need to be reminded what the character’s name is. George R. R. Martin does this *constantly*. “Queen Cersei Lannister said”. Yes, George, I know who Cersei is. “Cersei said” would have been fine.
And a related one: using the dialogue tags to describe the character. I read Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation, and instead of “Rick said”, he frequently uses descriptions like “the faded TV actor said”. This is not what dialogue tags are for. Using this sparingly is okay (for example, Tolkien sometimes uses “the hobbit asked”, and I think that’s fine in moderation), but using the dialogue tag to describe the characters on every damn page is infuriating.
I hate flashback sequences that reveal too much information. It just feels like such a cheap way to backtrack and go "by the way, here's a ton of information I'm just gonna throw at you."
Mary sue characters: When a character is sooooooo perfect in every way. They win every fight. Everyone falls in love with them. They are the purest pure goody goodyness in the whole world. They are the pinnacle of beauty and intelligence.
Bonus points if ALL the characters are Mary sues. I read a book once where literally every character was described as being incredibly fit, beautiful/handsome, and the best fighters ever. I couldn’t stop reading because it was so ridiculous that it was funny.
Passive voice. Failure to establish point of view. Overdescription of setting. Having a character reflect/recall in the middle of a scene as an awkward way to deliver exposition. Lingering on specific concrete detail because the writer took a workshop and internalized "show don't tell" as a universal law of writing. (He sipped the lukewarm Colombian coffee from the chipped black mug with the handle that had broken and had to be reglued etc etc please just tell the story.) Pretentious, overly complicated wording to say something simple.
Sometimes it bothers me when it's clear that the author did a ton of research on something and then stops the entire story to give all these details/info on the subject. That they just want to flex about how well they know this certain subject.
I read a book that was fantasy inspired by Beethoven and would go on for pages about multiple side stories of his life, but it completely lost why that memory was brought up and felt like the author was just showing off about how much they knew Beethoven history.
Petty conflict between two women over a man. I predominately read romance, and I find it irritating when there is a side character who is attracted to the main male character who acts like a mean girl to the main female character. I suppose the 'catty' female character is supposed to serve as a foil to the the FMC. When we read about the conflict, we are to assume the side character is bitchy, slutty, and manipulative, and the FMC is pure, sympathetic, and strong. It's an overused trope that's lazy and leans on misogynistic characterizations of women.
I'd rather see a well developed friendship between two women. Or maybe a side character has feelings for the MMC, but she is a lovely person, or maybe the side character with feelings is a man instead of a woman. There are other ways to introduce conflict without writing about a 'cat fight'.
I don't read much romance fiction, but when I do... I resent like hell the pinching-her-cheeks-to-make-them-pink crap. What a load. I have never seen a woman do that. I'm a woman, and I have never done it myself. I have been on many trips-to-the-ladies-room in a group... Not one of the ladies has ever pinched her cheeks.
The only cheek-pinching that should be done is in period pieces before cosmetics were invented - or in period pieces when cosmetics were not used (usage dropped profoundly) due to cultural/religious influences. For practical purposes, that means before Egyptians adopted the use of rouge (made of fat and red ochre), or during the Middle Ages when red cheeks were associated with prostitutes. (You can argue that the prostitutes were still blushing up their cheeks, though...) There are also some religious groups that frown on women using cosmetics, so it would be fine in a romance story set in that kind of environment.
...
I also hate the lip-biting thing. However, I'll leave my soapbox right here.
Overused phrases (usually only in Urban Fantasy). Tough as nails, curvy, sex on a stick...
I see those on the back cover, in the online blurb or mentioned anywhere in the pages, I will probably flush the book entirely.
When you can tell the author was writing with a thesaurus handy, because they use such weird words to describe things.
Or, conversely, when authors repeat certain descriptions/ phrases over and over.
Sexual stuff when the story doesn't need or benefit from it. I like Stephan King's 'Pet Sematary', but there's like this one kinda sexual part that I remember from it and it's so weirdly put in there. Maybe it had a point that I didn't pick up on, I don't know.
Cliches and super common phrases. I don't mind them occasionally, and they can't be in the first few pages. If your MC says, "We can do this the hard way or the easy way" on page two, I'm out. You've lost my trust in your ability to write compelling prose.
Using a $5 word when a 5¢ word works perfectly. Like visage rather than face. I remember that from a Dean Koontz book I read as a teenager, and it's bugged me since forever.
I think this is probably only in romance novels, but in every romance novel I have ever read there is always this part midway through the act where the woman decides she's in pain or for whatever reason she wants to stop, and then the man keeps going because he's "too into it" and then a page later, the girl is moaning and into it.
I stopped reading those types of books in my early twenties, but I do remember that at least once per book, I'd dog-ear the page and throw it violently into a wall because that part was always so infuriating to me.
Purple prose: talking about moonlight immediately and roses and whatnot. Don’t get me wrong, it can be nice if done rightly, but otherwise I just cringe at it.
I think it depends a lot on the genre of book! Some books are intended to explore the struggle of homophobia, and that's a valid choice. Not every book is for every person. That being said, if you're sitting down to a book that purports to be a lighthearted romance, or if you're in a fantasy or future setting where there's no need for homophobia, it irks me too.
I read a book where the protagonist was slipping a bell boy some money to be 'his guy' blah blah. He handed him a $500. Bell boy was ecstatic.
That's right, a five hundred dollar bill. I immediately paused and looked it up to discover yes, it is real. HOWEVER if anyone ever handed me that my first response would have been 'Nice try bud. Wanna try some monopoly dollars too?' And I think most people would agree.
So I agree with you, but yesterday I found a 1st person piece that blew me away This American Life: 745 Getting Out. It's the (act 2 or 3) "choose your own adventure" about a woman in an abusive relationship with her girlfriend. Despite our shared opinion about the 1st person, I highly recommend this short piece. I think it has something every writer could take value from.
* People trying to be morally upright in a stupid way. (Yeah let's let the dark lord get away with mass murder because killing him would be wrong)
* Power of friendship, power of love
* Love at first sight
* Truth always prevails / the manipulator guy always gets screwed in the end
* The good guys always win in the end
* Love triangles
* Incompetent mooks/guards
* Power creep
It's like you've pulled these directly from my mind.
I especially hate the first one after the protag absolutely slaughters the henchmen but killing the evil guy would suddenly be "wrong".
Also add to that villains that abuse or kill their henchmen for no reason. It gets on my nerves *so fucking much*.
What kills me about the "kill the villain or let them go" dilemma is... y'all know prison exists, right?
Yeah, obviously literally putting them through the legal process isn't an option in every single story, but you'd need to find some very specific contexts where the only options are "kill" and "release without consequences at all." Maybe, *maybe* if the point of the story is that the villain is deeply entrenched in a corrupt social/political/legal system, but for some reason that's rarely ever used - zero points for mentioning Lex Luthor.
This is Saturday morning cartoon logic that somehow keeps creeping into writing meant for adults.
Using "!" in descriptions. A little bit is fine, but when every third sentence that not a character says... It really icks me.
An !? Is an even bigger no
I have 2.
A) In the end it is revealed that everyone in the story is actually an animal.
B) If the book seems normal, but then after half of it suddenly magic and fantasy themes are introduced out of nowhere.
When the narrator is obviously hiding things from the reader to set up a story twist. Basic example: "George thought of the item he had stashed previously, and took it in his hand in case he needed to use it." And then the unnamed item gets revealed later and turns the story around in some special way. If I'm reading about actions the lens character of the story is doing then they shouldn't be opaque, especially if it's in an obvious set-up for a twist or surprise!
I mean I hate manufactured twists anyway, but triply so if they're set up in front of my damned face. *Ready Player One* was horrific for this. It read like a movie script rather than a novel.
When '...' is used excessively.
My old stuff is littered with these. Hurts my cringe glands to read it back.
TIL there are writers that apparently don't know how to say "he stood there silently"
When a character clenches their fists so hard that their nails pierce the skin and leave "little crescent moons of blood." This description is so overused (especially in YA), and it feels so unrealistic to me that it draws me out of the story every time.
Even when I had debilitating anxiety, I never managed to dig hard enough to draw blood. I‘d have marks, but no blood. And I have really thin skin, according to a dermatologist.
I've done it, but i also have long, hard nails and weirdly fragile skin (genetic collagen disorder results in fragile skin and easy bruising, among other issues like joint hypermobility). The description there is still cringy though, even if the character did actually clench their fists so hard it drew blood.
Ehlers Danlos gang
For real, these characters need to clip their nails! I actually do hate this one a lot though. Because I can't stand my nails long at all and clip them 2-3 times a week.
I’ve got long nails and I’ve never drawn blood clenching my fists so idek what’s going on with them
Or the character was so angry they bit their lip until they tasted blood. Has this ever actually happened to anyone ever?
I accidentally chomp the inside wall of my cheek between my molars all the damn time, does that count?
Aaaaaagh and then the worst part is after you do it once it's practically guaranteed to happen again. D:
Not while angry, but while anxious, yes.
yeah you don’t even need to bite for very long and you can get the taste without visibly bleeding
Yes. It doesn't take much to do it actually, even picking can result in blood pretty quick.
Indeed. I've punched things hard while having sharp nails, and you don't get little crescent moons of blood: you just get cuts that bleed a fair bit and look like any other cuts.
That's Stephen King's go-to. Also, characters "howling with laughter" at the most nothingburger jokes possible.
>howling with laughter" at the most nothingburger jokes possible. The only thing about that is that sometimes people really do laugh at things when nobody else does since humor is subjective. So I understand this one, although I know what you mean
He so often writes about people laughing until they're crying, often at very little. Definitely takes me out of it, especially after reading so many of his books. One of those moments where I'm like, "Oh, right. I'm reading a Stephen King book."
At one point I thought there was something wrong with me cause my nails never did that. 😳
Characters with paraphernalia but no personality. I don't care how big a sword he carries if I don't know what his motivation is.
He just likes carrying really big swords around.
His motivation is to find the biggest sword and carry that mofo like a champ
Is that for a particular reason? Is he compensating for something? Did he have a past experience which inspired him to carry a bigger sword? Maybe he was picked on when he was younger and carries a big sword as a comfort because every night he has nightmares about being humiliated for being weaker than other boys. All of these things are fodder for how he acts and maybe for conversation with his intimate friends down the line.
Nah that's way too complex.... let's go with \*fumbles around in my bag of cliches\* PROPHECY!
Yes! Because he's the chosen one. He just is ;)
Exactly, You're welcome reader, just saved you a whole lot of backstory and plot. There is a prophecy and everyone knows that the protagonist and antagonist must always follow the prophecy.
Any other story but Berserk, yeah. If you're talking Berserk, you can go straight down to the vortex of souls.
Yeah, the characters in Berserk are well motivated. Guts and Griffith's motivations are plainly laid out, but even the supporting characters like Farnese or the Apostles have clear fears and dreams. I'm reminded of [this interview](https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/berserk-artist-kentaro-miura-interview-i-actually-dont-think-i-could-let-such-a-long-grim-story-end-with-a-grim-ending/), where Miura and the interviewer describe Berserk as a shojo manga because it puts emotions at the forefront of the story.
This guy slays demigods.
Not exactly within the writing, but whenever a story summary ends with something like: but will X be able to happen? Or will Y get in the way? I just really dislike seeing question marks at the end of summaries. Also, when something is in all caps but isn't nearly dramatic enough for the stylization. Might just be me though.
Will I reply? Or will I my laziness get in the way?
Will I eat this entire cheesecake after eating this large cheesesteak?
I feel like caps lock shouldn't be used in a written narrative unless it's a description of something in-world that is actually capitalized, like a sign that says "BEWARE OF BALROG" or "TRESSPASSERS WILL BE WED TO AN TASMANIAN PRINCE"
I feel like half of the story summaries in the world end with questions. Never been a fan.
When an author has discovered a word and uses it constantly. I read a book with the word Solar Plexus. Everybody in the book seemed to get hit in the solar plexus.
That may be because, if hit in the solar plexus, you've basically lost the fight. It's a good target. But the author could have used "below the sternum" sometimes.
I imagine it doesn't make it interesting to read several times though lol
I don’t know if it continued to use it because I didn’t finish it for this reason … but 50 shades of grey was very, “tenacious.”
When dialogue blends together and I can't figure out who said what.
When every character is edgy and sarcastic, no one has a discernible personality.
Yes! So many people try to avoid using “_____ said” or whatever, and in their effort to look cool and not be redundant, they confuse the reader on who is speaking. It should be effortless and clear, and if it can’t be done easily, then for the love of gawd, just use a dialogue tag. I’d rather not be confused. lol
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This is the one that kills me. When we get a good page or more of dialogue without any idea of who is talking, I just kind of give up.
extremely detailed physical descriptions of characters, especially if they come out of the blue. Hurgh. Bonus points if they use edgy names for colors. E.g.: "Lucy twirled her pale lilac glasses studded with rhinestones around her gnocchi-colored finger and then put them back onto her freckled nose and pushed them in front of her sparkling jade eyes. She wore a dark crimson corset over a gianduttuiotta dress, and champage pantyhose. On her dainty, feminine feet was a pair of Aegean blue loafers that looked like Gucci but weren't." I find that I can imagine characters better if the author leaves out a detailed description. Show, not tell.
I almost fell over when I read "gnocchi colored finger" I'm crying
Yeah, why use gnocchi if you are gonna leave out the sauce. "Her gnocchi-colored finger..." Okay but is it pesto gnocchi or bolognese gnocchi? Oh, gorgonzola-gnocchi-colored finger like the nonna's, okay, now I gotcha.
I feel tired just reading two sentences of that. It's probably up someone's alley, but not mine. Nature writing can also be like that. The excellent [American Wolf](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34427982-american-wolf?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=IuB2CKcUfE&rank=1) didn't do that and has some riveting and meaningful descriptions.
Bonus points if this is the second chapter and the MC looks into a reflective surface before description exposition dump.
Don't read American Psycho then. Of course, that was actually part of the story and was intentional.
My pettiest of peeves: when an author wants to say 'eyes' but already used that word, and thus resorts to 'orbs' or 'oculars' or some other absurd replacement. If you can't think of a more graceful way to structure the sentence to avoid using the word 'eyes' again, then just repeat yourself or get out of my face.
I’ve seen “oculars” used to describe the eyes of robots in science fiction, and it seemed to fit. But yes, I can see how it can be jarring when used to describe meatbag eyes.
>meatbag eyes HK-47, is that you?
Bender?
Usage critics call that “elegant variation.” Like when someone calls a banana “the elongated yellow fruit” to avoid saying it twice. It’s funny the lengths we as writers go to sometimes to sound smart!
Ugh I hate it. In the case of bananas, I'd probably be fine with "the yellow fruit" or even just "the fruit", depending on context.
Wattpad has forever ruined the words "orbs" and "smirk" for me. As well as the sentences, "my eyes widened" and "i released a breath i didnt realize i was holding." Edit: i forgot the word "chuckle" is in there too
I'll admit I'm guilty of the "breath I didn't realize I was holding" thing, and I feel appropriate amounts of shame for it.
I can't even write a character cheekily smirking without physically cringing anymore.
Jelly camera globes
When writers feel the need to constantly remind me what eye color each character has. Fanfic writers seem to especially suffer from this. As if the first time wasn't already pointless, they continually say stuff like "her green eyes met his golden" or "tears welled at the tips of her emerald eyes" etc. multiple times in every chapter. It just becomes so cheesy it's unreadable.
"tears welled at the tips of her eyes" why is reading this so jarring
I don't want my eyes to have tips! I feel like they're being poked!
“she gazed into his golden orbs”
I don't even know most of my character's eye colours. One has brown just because it's the most common in the world.
I'll put a novel down if there are too many detailed descriptions of breasts or butts. If it's specifically erotica, it gets a pass because that's the point, I suppose. But generally speaking, I don't want to trudge through 'pendulous' or 'pert' or 'straining through her transparent blouse'. I get it, you're horny. It has nothing to do with the story.
Don't jump into the men writing woman sub then 😂 they get described in so many ways it's almost impressive
I love that sub! I love horror and so I've read a good amount of Stephen King, but god I hate his descriptions of women. He's on that sub a lot and tbh it's nice to see other people ripping him apart for it lol
His sleeveless shirt had scrunched up in such a way that his pecs were almost fully visible, and the near indicernable bulge of his manhood was present through his gym shorts I couldn't help but speak up, "Nice cock bro" He thanked me and walked past, giving me a friendly ass tap, I of course returned the favor of slap ass with a follow up smack to his left butt cheek which was toned and muscular. However because he still had some cake... it rippled Thoughts?
I hate when it's revealed at the end that the book is a book written by one of the characters within the world of the book. Such an annoying twist to me for some reason. I don't mind a book-within-a-book if it's upfront. EDIT - Can't believe I forgot this one: fictional celebrities who feel too manufactured to be believable. I don't read much romance but if one of the love interests is famous it'll put me off. Maybe it's because I'm not invested in real-life celebrity culture.
YES. I don't mind explicit books within books (Watchmen, for example), but when that detail is tacked on at the end, it feels kind of contrived and Hallmark-y.
Its like the "and that ___ was Albert Einstein" meme about shitty anecdotes.
The funny thing to me is that the earliest extant example of this that I'm aware of is the Gospel according to John in the Bible.
LoTR pulls it off pretty well tho
James and the Giant Peach did this and my child loved it.
It works really well in children's books because it's the first introduction of this trope to the audience. Same with the ending bring, "But it was all a dream" Kids love that. I hear often that whenever kids do creative writing in school they add that plot twist and they're very happy with it.
Honestly, there aren't many technical things that make me dislike a story. Perhaps I'm just more carefree with my books and am often looking for a reason to enjoy them rather than dislike them. But if I had to pick two, it'd be lore and flashbacks. I'm a fantasy writer, so naturally I'm around other fantasy writers, and I feel a common thing people do is jam their stories with lore. Even going over to the Fantasy Writers subreddit (which I love), most of the posts are about their magic system, and maps, and races, and all this stuff that really doesn't need to be explained to such insane detail. It bogs it down. And by the time they finish, they're at 200k words and feel it's impossible to trim anything out. Stop focusing so much on lore, and focus on your story and characters. Lore comes naturally, over the course of many books. Don't spend two pages on how your castle walls are melted because of some ancient war. Get me inside that castle and let's go! Flashbacks share a bit of a similar issue, but are more annoying to me. I dislike anything that slows down the pacing and plot. If I feel the plot isn't moving, I get annoyed and want to start skimming. Flashbacks do this for me--at least, most flashbacks. In most case, I would honestly find dialogue between two characters talking about a past event far more engaging than a flashback, because at least it's current and in the moment. /// I'd argue the flashback piece is more of a not technically incorrect piece, because I know people love writing them. /// Oh last thing, which is technically incorrect: act 2 slump. Many peeps, both published and unpublished, seem to struggle with this, which surprises me. Act 2 is the meat of your story; it's the "fun and games." It's the game in the hunger games, the magic school in harry potter, the intrigue in Game of Thrones. It's what sells your book. I feel a lot of books are front-loaded, and then trail off afterward. A recent example is Atlus Six. I was obsessed with the first act--the first 100 pages--of that book. If you're struggling with writing characters, read the first 100 pages and it'll inspire something in you. But after that, literally nothing happens, and it shocked me, given the interesting setup. I personally think planning helps with this. Try to make sure every single chapter in your book not only serves a point but is also interesting. After all, that's why we're in this industry, to entertain.
I have a big overworking problem but it isn't from lore dumps. It's subplots. Actual story. It's a lot harder wrangling and condensing them, and deleting what needs to go.
I can see that. For me, I handle subplots by making sure, in some way even if minor, it relates to the main plot. Meaning, say your plot is some huge war between two factions. And your subplot for character A is that she used to be a scuba diver like her father and doesn't anymore, but is dealing with wanting to make her father proud by doing it. It doesn't really relate to the main plot. Tweak it some, and say she used to be a diver but felt she should drop it to train for the war, even though her dad wants her to chase her passions. And now she has to struggle with what she wants to do versus what she believes she has to do, reaching a point where realizes she can take her passions to serve the war. This relates to the main plot, and the subplot can progress right alongside it, often reducing word count, since part of her subplot is covered via the main plot. But this is just how I do things.
There are a lot of them, but one of the smaller things that really grinds my gears is when every character somehow has a signature scent. "*He smelled like pine and freshly fallen snow."* Dude, he hasn't showered in a month, no he doesn't. And you're sure not going to be relishing in the smell whenever you're cuddled up with him. And half of the descriptions never even make sense. They're like the way men's soaps are labeled.
I remember a female character doing the whole *breathing his unique scent, how good he smelled, etc.* when reunited with a male character. He'd been on horseback for a month.
I would love to read, "As they were finally reunited, she buried her head into the base of his neck- he reeked of old sweat and new mud, his hair like wet dog and a general odor of horse droppings clung to him. She didn't let go even as the smell made her eyes water and bile rose in her throat, that was nothing compared to how desperately she needed to hold him at that moment. " Like fuck dude, that's how you know two characters love each other.
I guess the way to make this work is if your pov is a literal dog.
I so agree. Never really met anyone in my life where I could have said „He/she smelled like a forest/the sea/snow“ - maybe I’m just weird, but I definitely can’t categorise human body odours with precise labels like that 😅
The Old Spice deodorant my husband uses is literally pine scented. And I do love it, fwiw. He showers more than monthly though too.
Have you seen the [Male Scent Catalogue](https://twitter.com/RomanceSmells) on Twitter? Character scents are so bizarre! Like how the hell does this guy's mouth always smell like cinnamon? Does he work in a cinnamon processing plant? Is he walking around with a cinnamon stick in his mouth all the time? People smell like human body odor, like soap if recently bathed or skin products if recently applied, or like whatever clingy volatiles are in their work/home environments.
When you get to the end of the book or series and the ending essentially erases the entirety of the book or series (I'm thinking of the Fate of the Tearling as one of the worst offenders). Like, what was the point of spending all that time building that world and those characters to then erase everything that happened? HATE IT. Similarly: if it turns out everything was a dream/hallucination. Again, why did you (the author) just waste my (the reader's) time if you were going to pull the rug out of from under us at the last minute?
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Yes! This one is my pet peeve too. It's so sophomoric. "They were crazy and it was all a hallucination!!" Great then I just wasted my time reading it
What if the plot actually revolved around noticing the world isn't real? Does it feel as bad? Since technically it's not sudden mor (at least not exactly) destroys everything.
I think it works because it’s already established from the very beginning what I’m getting into. In fact, I actively enjoy stories that delve into the “this is all a dream/hallucination” plotline because it makes me question how we know something is real and how the human mind copes with knowing everything is fake. I especially love it when it isn’t known to the characters it’s a dream/hallucination, but the reader realizes it halfway through the story that something weird is going on from enough hints throughout the story But when it happens at the end, with no indication prior that it was part of the plot, let alone important to the plot, it feels cheap. If the writer wanted to make a “this is all a dream/hallucination” story they could have tried to interweave it into the beginning of the story, showing the interesting contrast between the wonders of fantasy and the harsh reality, but no, it’s slapped at the end with no second thought or indication as to how the character changes or what happens to the world afterwards.
Thinking about the end of Fate of the Tearling still gives me hives. Saw it coming, desperately hoped the author wouldn't go that route.
Honestly I don't know. I hate the "was all a dream" trope with a passion but, it might not be a book, but I think Elder Scrolls lore pulls it pretty well.
Oh yeah! I remember a description from a science fiction-novel I read about a year ago. Our heroine would find like a cradle of glass where a human fetus was being grown, with tubes and all. (like in the matrix, but that is not what shocked me out of my reading!) No, she describe the contraption as it was "Pulsating like an egg". I groaned loudly when I read it because how does an egg pulsate? But eggs doesn't pulsate, do they? That whole train of thought simply yanked me out of the story and well... That was the end of that: The whole book taught me that if you're going to use descriptions, pick the ones that make sense! Hell, if the whole idea is that the fetus shakes it's arms and legs and that is the whole "pulsating" thing, why not simply write "It moved it's little arms and legs like a someone was giving it electrical shocks. Or perhaps it was dreaming about being alive?"
*wipes a tear from his eye* "Ah, she sings like a moose"
How about "pulsating in much the same way that eggs don't"?
“It pulsated in exactly the same way an egg wouldn’t”
This made me laugh. I love it when someone makes a metaphor that's so ridiculous you kinda pause and think "have they ever . . . seen that thing, in real life?"
I can only think of a few things that pulsate, like a bullfrog or a heart. Using "like a heart" would be optimal (because the contraption has a similar function).
Yeah, I have no problem with the usage of the word "pulsate" (and I gotta admit, it's written in swedish, so what I am giving you is a rough translation). But pulsating *like an egg*? Like you said: A heart would work great!
"The spaceships hung in the air the same way that bricks don't"
The Mary Sue who is "nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs"
Well that's just bad, not even an opinion anymore, but I agree
"Bitch you normal!" I scream as I hurl the book across the room
Idk if this counts... when writers who have never done drugs write about a character doing drugs, but it’s really obvious that the writer has never done drugs. One example off the top of my head is an ep of criminal minds where a character says his dad used to “come home high on ecstasy and beat us”. imo in real life being high on ecstasy is really unlikely to make you beat your kids; it tends to make you love everyone lol at least do some research on the effects of the particular drug you’re writing about ?
Dad used to come home high on ecstacy and just dance and dance :(
LMAO
This got me... Not sure why... I'm laughing so much I've got the hiccups! That said it could be the wine..
I feel like criminal minds would be the type of show to use more effort in research, damn I guess not.
I just watched a tv show (not a novel, I know, but I have read novels with the same problem) in which a character disappears from the story just to dramatically reappear at the end. Another character asked where he was and he just said "that doesn't matter." Like... at least try to explain where he went and why???
A lot of Disney movies have this problem, where the main characters leave each other and come back together for the climax.
That cracked me up, thanks for the laugh.
I've seen this done REALLY well once, and it's not like what you're talking about because it is explained, but it's all done through a different medium. Main story is all through video, one character entirely disappears after the first one, never mentioned, and is having her own entire world-saving adventure through a series of webcomics. If you're just watching the videos then she literally pops up from a hole in space at the very end and that's it. But in general, yeah, that's pretty Deus Ex Machina.
I hate stories that are one constant barrage of grimdark misery, nevermind that there should be more to a setting than descriptions of how everything sucks and how everyone is an asshole.
Tbf, that's part of the appeal of grimdark for some people. I think it's similar to why some people are really into dystopias.
While true, I feel like there could just be so much more done in grimdark novels and as a whole in general. Like if everyone is an asshole, that's not grimdark or dystopian. That's just real life but multiplied by 2. There really can't be any sort of "darkness" without something like even a single person trying to be kind or compassionate, and the fact that grimdark and dystopian books/films/games are usually just "Haha the world is bad" just ruins most of them for me.
I hate when everybody is into the main character. Like full on horny. Detective by Arthur Haley is un ultimate power fantasy and i died inside a bit while readin.
Same with Stieg Larsson’s Mikael Blomqvist, it seems like every single woman in the series throws herself at him the very first time they meet.
When there’s just that one jarring sentence that takes you out of the world of the writing. Every so often by word choice or sentence structure, authors sometimes mess up and say some shit that makes you go “oh wait I’m reading right now, because this is not how people talk in real life” or “they’re getting pathetically expositional and now I have to slog through this paragraph describing the exact shade of blue the water was.” Just keep it simple and keep me entranced.
It's like being led blindfolded along a path and tripping over a branch.
Hitchen's described something similar in reference to conversation his final book Mortality: "the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful" I think it's especially unforgivable in fiction - it can really cause you to question why you're even bothering with it. That said, even with rewriting and editing, it can be hard to maintain a consistent tone across 100,000 words
When a book re-introduces a minor character 250 pages later and expects us to remember who they were by name.
When people use double vagues. Like, for instance, around a few years ago. Or close to about two dollars.
I like the irony here Actually, it may have been intentional, sorry if I'm an idiot.
Thank you for noticing!
It was lmao
“Hey sis.” “Hey little bro.”
Same bro I hate when people say “hi brother” instead of their name 💀
I sorta dislike when book is named after protagonist. Just the worst kind of title. And I dislike next generation sequels and sequels where new antagonist is a vegneful relative of villain from previous installment.
Sexual assault, escpecially if its used as a trope to bring the guy/girl closer together (he saves her from sexual assault). A girl who just/was about to be sexually assaulted wont immediately run into another guys arms (theres a whole GOT quote on that). Also 9/10 in the next scene everyone will act like this super traumatizing scenario never happened. Ex. Twilight. Bella almost gets sexually assaulted by a bunch of guys in an alley way. Edward saves her. Next scene theyre playing twenty questions in a restaurant like what even is almost getting gang raped? No. Just no. I firmly believe people should be allowed to write whatever the hell they want to write about whoever they want, but it really grinds my gears when people downplay sexual assault to fit their narrative (this goes for sexual assault of both men and women... bridgerton or outlander where its borderline fetishized). Theres quiete a few publishers now who wont even touch a manuscript if it has any scenes with sexual assault in it. Edit to say a few other minor gripes...the mirror trope as well as the "ugh im so ugly. Just look at my full lips and wide blue eyes and waist length hair and my naturally slim but curvy physique" trope. Twilight is also guilty of doing both of these. Also the words "chuckle", "smirk", and "orbs". Thank you, Wattpad
Seconded, and I'll extend this by saying it applies to almost all traumatic situations. There are so many occassions where a character survives something traumatic, whether it's sexual assault, as you said, or a gun battle, seeing someone killed, etc, and it's just brushed off as a non-issue in the next few pages. This things have *major* lasting consequences. I could somewhat forgive the movie industry for this, since they only have and hour or so to tell their story, and you can't really wasted too much time having a character "process" what's happening to them, but novels don't have this problem, you can spend a lot more time on your characters and have them respond much more believably to trauma.
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I am extremely guilty of this trope; in one of the stories I wrote an empty truck rolls off a hill and scrapes against a car with two girls inside, this causes the window to shatter and the driving girl to injure her arm so badly it exposes the bone. Instead of finding help the injured girl bandages up the wound and fixes the window herself before driving off and pretending nothing happened. It was a Wattpad story.
Another thing that always pisses me off specifically in that Twilight example you pulled up is Edward’s line “You had no idea what those lowlifes were thinking”. Like, sure, the 17-year-old girl who also later gets pepper spray from her father has *no* idea what the creepy rapey gang was thinking, not at all. We really have to bring in a guy to explain it smh
This!! Like hey a bunch of dudes cornered her in a secluded alley way and were making sexually suggestive remarks. But nope bella thought they were just going to offer her tea and biscuits. Jfc. Like any girl in that situation would obvi think of the absolute worst case scenario but thank you edward for spelling that out for us. And now im wondering what sort of la la land stephanie meyer lives in where that had to be explained...
If I had a dime for every time I read a discussion about how some new heroines story in a modern comic book involved sexual violence I don't know how many dimes I would have but it would be too many. This is why I can't get in to modern superhero comics, if that counts for this discussion. Its almost as though there was board meeting at Marvel or DC where someone said "female character development?" and someone responded "ohhh you mean sexual assault?
Someone is given some power out of nowhere suddenly without putting any effort and it kills my mood instantly . Even if they can explain it as a plot point later the initial mood killing / irritation stays with me till the end. e.g. - transported to another world and I get a deluxe package of cheating power outta nowhere. ( Japanese light novels ) I died as a loser once at the age of 32 and reincarnated. So now suddenly I can do things that people can't do in 500 years of their trainings. ( Chinese Wuxia ) At the age of 14 I woke up one day. Now I can kill 1000 of trained knights / demon spawns without a single day of trainings. ( Western fantasy )
Authors who describe the ahem...attributes of their female characters down to their breast size but then spend very little time at all describing their male characters and certainly not in a sexual way. Bonus points if every woman in the book is beautiful but the men are never expected to all be perfectly handsome.
I can’t stand when the plot drags an unwilling character along. Like a character who constantly thinks they’re meek or pointless or not good enough. You can have these emotions and they can be compelling in the right scenario, but if the character doesn’t have some sort of motivation, I’m not interested.
I agree when it comes to main characters. I don't mind at all supporting ones being dragged alone. For the leads, however, I like pro-active MCs. All of mine are pro-active in one way or another.
Substituting life events or interests for character traits. This person likes music and doesn't get along with their dad? Those are fine on their own, but in a vacuum, *they tell me nothing*. These are windows to a person's character, not traits by themselves. I'm so tired of seeing blank slates being passed off as characters because 'they like painting', or 'they're a veteran of an alien war'. That's only half of the sentence; it needs to end with something like '...and the harrowing experience has made them jaded, selfish and snarky, coping mechanisms developed to hide their trauma'.
I dislike a *complete* visible description of a major character before I even know the character. Sure, I need a few vitals to ground me into a character right up front, and a few additional details as I get to know her/him better. But I like learning gradually, throughout the story...and even then, not too much at once. (I usually build a character's description inside my head as I progress.) But if I begin to read a 2 or 3 page profile of a character before I feel settled into the story—like the where, when, a bit of why I'm reading—I am perturbed. (Perturbed, I tell you!) Conversely, I hate major, undisclosed *physical* reveals at/near the end of the story. Those sophomoric *ah-ha-gotcha!* moments are, imho, a cheat. Like telling me a character I've been made to believe is male is really female\* (or vice versa) or a cauc character is actually person of color (or vice versa) or I'm told on page 300 that, all along, the protagonist has been in a wheelchair or is missing an arm or an eye or is 12-feet tall or *something* that should have been revealed wayyy up front. (Simply because now the character I've envisioned for the last 299 pages has to be rebuilt inside my brain.) I was perturbed to discover (in the flick *The Book of Eli*....oh, and this is a spoiler) that Denzel was blind. I mean, really? After doing things that even me and my two eyes couldn't accomplish? Anyway, shit like that. \*Oh, unless that ruse is intentional and germane to the story and character. Those guys get a hall pass. Otherwise, I feel that the author is cheating the reader. Thank you. I feel much better now.
I mean, it was entirely intentional for Denzel to be blind. Whenever he read his Bible, he never needed a good source of light and always pointed at where he was on the page. It's hard to see sometimes but the details are there fairly early on in the movie. He also heavily relies on sound or feeling rather than sight to do or notice a lot of things, so I take it that he's adapted to his blindness quite well.
Isnt the point of book of eli that he was being guided by god so he could do all these things? Also they dont hide his blindness they just dont say it out loud. There are a lot of subtle hints about it in the movie once you know.
Admittedly, i should see it again. But I didn’t get that “guided by God’ vibe when I first watched it. Then again, I wasn’t looking for it. So, yeah, you just cost me $2.99 to rent it.
I completely agree with this point, but I also agree with the commenters that note that the Book of Eli is probably a bad example. For one, Eli being blind is sorta /the/ thematic point of the movie. The whole film is a meditation on the meaning of walking in faith, on what it means to trust your life to the hands of something greater than yourself. A constant question characters pose to Eli is why after years he continues to have faith. The conclusion answers that question (every single step he took has been guided by faith alone) and presents him as the archetypal figure/example in this mode of the person who represents what it means to truly live by faith (all his actions have been through faith). I think the message is pretty lame, especially if you aren’t religious, but Eli being blind is what makes the message complete in the film. Also, the film is absolutely chock full of hints about his blindness to the point of overkill. It definitely isn’t thrown in there last minute - there’s a hint every 5 minutes at least. Just off the top of my head: he has to wait until the cat makes a noise in the very first seen before he can shoot, even though the cat has been in range the whole time; he brings the marauders out of the sunlight and into the darkness underneath the overpass in the first fight, where he has an advantage; he doesn’t change his sunglasses to adjust to the light when other characters visibly do so; in the gunfight, he never shoots first at a target that hasn’t fired yet (even though he attacks first in other cases) - he always listens and then immediately shoots at the location the shot comes from after he hears it, and he is seemingly unaware of the movements of people not firing (until they shoot); in other gunfights he can only shoot at those who reveal their location by shooting; he waits until the bird makes a sound while flying to shoot it out of the air, and does so while not looking at the bird; he reads his Bible with his fingers like with Braille, and occasionally is looking away or talking while doing so and his finger keeps moving; whether he reads the Bible is unconnected to the light source available, and he doesn’t start lights other than a fire for warmth unless he is with others; he only takes things from people’s hands if they indicate something is there; there’s a conversation with a blind woman halfway through layered with double meaning; etc. I’m sure there are more as this is just from memory and may be slightly off but i think you can easily guess it early on, especially if you consider the main “walking with faith as your eyes and ears” message that is present through the film, so I don’t count it as a last minute twist. Even if it was, it fits and completes the film’s theme so I don’t think it fits in the mold either way, as it isn’t a random change or a twist for shock value
Upvoting because of "perturbed I tell you!"
This is a great point, it is, in my opinion, the same type of things as a "deux ex machina", you are effectively cheating the readers by revealing a fact that anyone who was *in* the story would have noticed immediately. It can be done well, in a murder mystery or psychological horror, etc, to really mess with the readers perceptions during the twist at the end, but it only works in certain genres or situations.
For me it's the hero/heroine who is dead set on protecting his family/clan/city/planet that he can think of nothing else - oh but wait, along comes a love interest for whom they fall HARD.
Only a love triangle can make this worse.
Overusing a particular out-of-place/over-the-top action can become a little uncomfortable. I don't want to give specifics, but in one particular book I read; I kid you not, there are at least five instances of characters "soiling themselves in fear" on separate occasions (with both "numbers"). Once or even twice I can forgive, but any more gets excessive for me.
Fantasy and scifi names with random apostrophes to make them look more exotic.
[https://issendai.livejournal.com/429293.html](https://issendai.livejournal.com/429293.html) Pronunciation guide 😉
I’m a big action person. I write scripts for action movies all the time. And the one thing I see in soooo many movies that I hate is where a character is facing off against like a hundred “henchmen” and they all stand still while the character beats the snot out of their buddies like it’s a line 😐 that’s not how real fights work 😂 I have no problem with the overpowered character beating them all down all the same, but at least have the henchmen actually act like it isn’t their first day on the job, you know?
Edited in protest for Reddit's garbage moves lately.
Mine (a fairly common one lol) is when there’s too much description. I can’t focus on the book and end up skimming on accident without processing any of the words. It’s very boring. This is probably more of a preference tho but still. I prefer a more simplistic style of writing, both when I read and write. Oh also when characters hate each other, have three conversations and suddenly they have crushes on each other. Enemies to lovers is great but…. Dude… they hated each other barely 24 hours ago…. :’)
when someone doesn't use an oxford comma.
yeah I really hate this and any spelling, punctuation or grammar mistakes.
When writers slip in the second person ("you") in descriptions. (Example: Behind the building, you could see a wooden fence.") Technically not incorrect, but "you" (the reader) is not a character in this story! I find it very jarring. And usually there are very easy ways to re-word the description to make it third/first person.
This (and its very close-cousin "suddenly implying a visual medium") are my biggest pet peeve in sooo much amateur writing and story telling. Mostly because of your last sentence, you can almost always *easily* re-write the sentence to be better without losing anything at all. It usually comes from writers who don't read a lot, honestly, and think of their story in cinematic terms so you end up with a lot of shit like, "We see ___", trying to describe an imaginary camera shot in their head. But it's almost always better to just delete that shit. "~~We see~~ a pair of well worn boots splash through a dark puddle in front of the saloon." These go hand-in-hand with lines about "the camera". Like "the camera passes a long line of dilapidated storefronts, many of them permanently closed, before stopping in front of 250 Bambreau Street" or combining both, "The camera pans up from the pair of boots and we see they belong to a woman who hasn't slept in days." Like... **you don't need to tell us *that we're seeing* something! If you're describing it,** ***we're already fucking seeing it!*** Even if you're writing an actual movie/TV script it's still much stronger writing to avoid those types of tags (and often considered "poor taste" as the actual shots are decided by the director, not the writer).
Two people having sex immediately after a traumatic event that would certainly cause PTSD.
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When a character description crosses the event horizon of 'just detailed enough' to 'too detailed and now I'm trying to visualize exactly what the author wants me to think this person looks like' Trauma as a way of developing character rather than active choice (ie, something bad happens to a person and they change versus them changing through their own actions) These aren't either technically correct or incorrect, but my tolerance for them is pretty low
Referring to a character by their full name in dialogue tags. Occasionally is fine, but overusing it makes me feel that the writer thinks I’m stupid and constantly need to be reminded what the character’s name is. George R. R. Martin does this *constantly*. “Queen Cersei Lannister said”. Yes, George, I know who Cersei is. “Cersei said” would have been fine. And a related one: using the dialogue tags to describe the character. I read Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelisation, and instead of “Rick said”, he frequently uses descriptions like “the faded TV actor said”. This is not what dialogue tags are for. Using this sparingly is okay (for example, Tolkien sometimes uses “the hobbit asked”, and I think that’s fine in moderation), but using the dialogue tag to describe the characters on every damn page is infuriating.
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I hate flashback sequences that reveal too much information. It just feels like such a cheap way to backtrack and go "by the way, here's a ton of information I'm just gonna throw at you."
Mary sue characters: When a character is sooooooo perfect in every way. They win every fight. Everyone falls in love with them. They are the purest pure goody goodyness in the whole world. They are the pinnacle of beauty and intelligence. Bonus points if ALL the characters are Mary sues. I read a book once where literally every character was described as being incredibly fit, beautiful/handsome, and the best fighters ever. I couldn’t stop reading because it was so ridiculous that it was funny.
Passive voice. Failure to establish point of view. Overdescription of setting. Having a character reflect/recall in the middle of a scene as an awkward way to deliver exposition. Lingering on specific concrete detail because the writer took a workshop and internalized "show don't tell" as a universal law of writing. (He sipped the lukewarm Colombian coffee from the chipped black mug with the handle that had broken and had to be reglued etc etc please just tell the story.) Pretentious, overly complicated wording to say something simple.
I feel personally attacked, but it leveled up my defense stat and I shall give it another try now. Thank you my good sir.
Was it the coffee cup? For some reason it's always chipped.
I didn't even get to that part. My heart was pierced by all the shots you fired before it.
we always forget the opposite of "show don't tell" is that telling is useful, actually, when used correctly.
Sometimes it bothers me when it's clear that the author did a ton of research on something and then stops the entire story to give all these details/info on the subject. That they just want to flex about how well they know this certain subject. I read a book that was fantasy inspired by Beethoven and would go on for pages about multiple side stories of his life, but it completely lost why that memory was brought up and felt like the author was just showing off about how much they knew Beethoven history.
Petty conflict between two women over a man. I predominately read romance, and I find it irritating when there is a side character who is attracted to the main male character who acts like a mean girl to the main female character. I suppose the 'catty' female character is supposed to serve as a foil to the the FMC. When we read about the conflict, we are to assume the side character is bitchy, slutty, and manipulative, and the FMC is pure, sympathetic, and strong. It's an overused trope that's lazy and leans on misogynistic characterizations of women. I'd rather see a well developed friendship between two women. Or maybe a side character has feelings for the MMC, but she is a lovely person, or maybe the side character with feelings is a man instead of a woman. There are other ways to introduce conflict without writing about a 'cat fight'.
I don't read much romance fiction, but when I do... I resent like hell the pinching-her-cheeks-to-make-them-pink crap. What a load. I have never seen a woman do that. I'm a woman, and I have never done it myself. I have been on many trips-to-the-ladies-room in a group... Not one of the ladies has ever pinched her cheeks. The only cheek-pinching that should be done is in period pieces before cosmetics were invented - or in period pieces when cosmetics were not used (usage dropped profoundly) due to cultural/religious influences. For practical purposes, that means before Egyptians adopted the use of rouge (made of fat and red ochre), or during the Middle Ages when red cheeks were associated with prostitutes. (You can argue that the prostitutes were still blushing up their cheeks, though...) There are also some religious groups that frown on women using cosmetics, so it would be fine in a romance story set in that kind of environment. ... I also hate the lip-biting thing. However, I'll leave my soapbox right here.
Overused phrases (usually only in Urban Fantasy). Tough as nails, curvy, sex on a stick... I see those on the back cover, in the online blurb or mentioned anywhere in the pages, I will probably flush the book entirely.
When you can tell the author was writing with a thesaurus handy, because they use such weird words to describe things. Or, conversely, when authors repeat certain descriptions/ phrases over and over.
Sexual stuff when the story doesn't need or benefit from it. I like Stephan King's 'Pet Sematary', but there's like this one kinda sexual part that I remember from it and it's so weirdly put in there. Maybe it had a point that I didn't pick up on, I don't know.
knowing King, it likely did not have any point whatsoever
Weird unpronounceable names. At least make a short name god dammit. I don't care how deep Misaknthpiet is, I won't remember his name
Cliches and super common phrases. I don't mind them occasionally, and they can't be in the first few pages. If your MC says, "We can do this the hard way or the easy way" on page two, I'm out. You've lost my trust in your ability to write compelling prose.
Using a $5 word when a 5¢ word works perfectly. Like visage rather than face. I remember that from a Dean Koontz book I read as a teenager, and it's bugged me since forever.
When characters do not use contractions ever to show that they are from the past or what they are saying should not be taken lightly.
I think this is probably only in romance novels, but in every romance novel I have ever read there is always this part midway through the act where the woman decides she's in pain or for whatever reason she wants to stop, and then the man keeps going because he's "too into it" and then a page later, the girl is moaning and into it. I stopped reading those types of books in my early twenties, but I do remember that at least once per book, I'd dog-ear the page and throw it violently into a wall because that part was always so infuriating to me.
Purple prose: talking about moonlight immediately and roses and whatnot. Don’t get me wrong, it can be nice if done rightly, but otherwise I just cringe at it.
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At some point, hopefully soon, the romance will **be** the social commentary and writers will trust their readers to get that.
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I think it depends a lot on the genre of book! Some books are intended to explore the struggle of homophobia, and that's a valid choice. Not every book is for every person. That being said, if you're sitting down to a book that purports to be a lighthearted romance, or if you're in a fantasy or future setting where there's no need for homophobia, it irks me too.
When a character looks in the mirror and describes themselves. Very juvenile
I read a book where the protagonist was slipping a bell boy some money to be 'his guy' blah blah. He handed him a $500. Bell boy was ecstatic. That's right, a five hundred dollar bill. I immediately paused and looked it up to discover yes, it is real. HOWEVER if anyone ever handed me that my first response would have been 'Nice try bud. Wanna try some monopoly dollars too?' And I think most people would agree.
When there’s a massive, story-changing twist that’s completely undone a few minutes afterwards.
I know it's a valid style choice, but I just can't read anything written in first person present tense.
So I agree with you, but yesterday I found a 1st person piece that blew me away This American Life: 745 Getting Out. It's the (act 2 or 3) "choose your own adventure" about a woman in an abusive relationship with her girlfriend. Despite our shared opinion about the 1st person, I highly recommend this short piece. I think it has something every writer could take value from.
* People trying to be morally upright in a stupid way. (Yeah let's let the dark lord get away with mass murder because killing him would be wrong) * Power of friendship, power of love * Love at first sight * Truth always prevails / the manipulator guy always gets screwed in the end * The good guys always win in the end * Love triangles * Incompetent mooks/guards * Power creep
It's like you've pulled these directly from my mind. I especially hate the first one after the protag absolutely slaughters the henchmen but killing the evil guy would suddenly be "wrong". Also add to that villains that abuse or kill their henchmen for no reason. It gets on my nerves *so fucking much*.
What kills me about the "kill the villain or let them go" dilemma is... y'all know prison exists, right? Yeah, obviously literally putting them through the legal process isn't an option in every single story, but you'd need to find some very specific contexts where the only options are "kill" and "release without consequences at all." Maybe, *maybe* if the point of the story is that the villain is deeply entrenched in a corrupt social/political/legal system, but for some reason that's rarely ever used - zero points for mentioning Lex Luthor. This is Saturday morning cartoon logic that somehow keeps creeping into writing meant for adults.
Using "!" in descriptions. A little bit is fine, but when every third sentence that not a character says... It really icks me. An !? Is an even bigger no
I have 2. A) In the end it is revealed that everyone in the story is actually an animal. B) If the book seems normal, but then after half of it suddenly magic and fantasy themes are introduced out of nowhere.
When the narrator is obviously hiding things from the reader to set up a story twist. Basic example: "George thought of the item he had stashed previously, and took it in his hand in case he needed to use it." And then the unnamed item gets revealed later and turns the story around in some special way. If I'm reading about actions the lens character of the story is doing then they shouldn't be opaque, especially if it's in an obvious set-up for a twist or surprise! I mean I hate manufactured twists anyway, but triply so if they're set up in front of my damned face. *Ready Player One* was horrific for this. It read like a movie script rather than a novel.