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#21
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Re: Your writing peeves
I can actually forgive a lot when I'm reading, but if I'm beta-reading I get a little harder to please. I especially dislike these, when used by an author to defend their work:
"But it's just fiction! It doesn't have to be realistic!" Well no, but a certain amount of realism is required to suspend disbelief. If I'm commenting on it, clearly your story is too silly or contrived to feel like it could actually happen. Fix it. "But it happened in real-life!" Yes, but either it's lost its context and doesn't read well, or it's something that you, at the time, thought was something that couldn't possibly have happened. You do not want to suspend your readers' disbelief by including moments like that. It doesn't make you look clever, it makes it look like you can't come up with something reasonable.
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Author of Scorpius Malfoy and the Goblin's Galleon Forum On Pottermore: FlooFirebolt4 |
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#22
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Re: Your writing peeves
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![]() I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14 My Graphics|Aftermath|Goodreads|My Blog I may disagree with you politically, religiously, and/or on Snape but that doesn't mean I dislike you. |
#23
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Re: Your writing peeves
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![]() What about anthropomorphism (whew, what a long word! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() However, if it extends to them having houses like we do, or wearing their favourite Sunday dresses to church, and using a knife and fork to eat, even if it should be logically impossible (e.g. elephants, cows) to do so, then I'm pulled so abruptly out of the story that I just stop reading right there and then. I'm not talking really young kids' books or nursery tales (e.g. the three pigs)--I'm more thinking books aimed at older readers (e.g. around 11 and up), young adults, and adults themselves.
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You who I called brother, How could have you come to hate me so? Is this what you wanted? Then let my heart be hardened, And never mind how high the cost may grow, This will still be so: I WILL NEVER LET YOUR PEOPLE GO. |
#24
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Re: Your writing peeves
I hate:
1. Chatspeak in any story unless it's used as a text message, e-mail, or chat conversation within the story. To me, that shows the poor quality of writing and shouldn't be used. 2. Improper grammar and punctuation. I've seen it a lot, and I hate it. I can understand if someone doesn't know English well and simply states that in their notes. However, people who come from the U.S. who write like that are just plain lazy. Seriously, I feel that the rules of English don't apply to anyone anymore, and that's sad.
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"It is our choices that show us who we truly are far more than our abilities." -Albus Dumbledore. |
#25
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Re: Your writing peeves
I don't know why I can't stand this, but I don't like it when the author has a character who is also an author. The book I'm specifically talking about, it felt that the author was belittling their character and the obstacles they were going through.
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![]() Thanks to my secret sigswitch maker, for the wonderful avatar and signature! ![]() Sig/avatar pictures by Cassandra Austen. |
#26
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Re: Your writing peeves
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While I understand the inherent informality of an e-mail, and can certainly see the value of the occasional "OMG," I find it shocking how many e-mails go out to customers/clients/superiors/vendors/etc. without the necessary level of professionalism. If you're sending an e-mail to a family member or friend, does formality really matter? Of course not, it would just end up sounding detached and impersonal.
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#27
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Re: Your writing peeves
Mary Sues, overdescription, and padding.
I also find it very annoying when writers try to tie too many things from a fictional universe together. Star Wars and Star Trek expanded universes for example, do this.
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#28
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Re: Your writing peeves
I never realized the eyes=orbs thing before but now that I think about it it is really annoying.
In general, pet peeves in writing for me include completely useless information such as every single item the character buys from the grocery store or puts on their sandwiches. I don't need to know whether it's a cheese sandwich with tukery and gherkins and pickles and mayonaise and horseradish and every other random item in that character's refrigerator, it's enough simply to say "Joe emerged from the shop with two heaping bags of groceries" or "he munched his sandwich thoughtfully." This is a recent pet peeve born of the Millenium triology - it's painfully obvious that author was a journalist and needed 1) a better editor and 2) more lessons in what actually needs to make it into his books. Unless the character is allergic to an ingredient in that sandwich or the sandwich contains poison, leave it out. Rambling extra information that is pointless and irrelevant to the story (that's above and beyond the contents of a sandwich). Again, a Millenium triology pet peeve. That guy really needed a better editor. Repetitive phrasing i.e. things different charactes say that are too similar to each other; an HP pet peeve only noticed after extensive rereading. For instance, when Professor Sprout says something like, "A very valuable substance, bubotuber pus" and Ron says "It'll change the world, caludron bottoms." (not exact quotes) Two characters using the exact same phrasing just irritates me. =^/ And it happens mutliple times in all seven books, these two aren't the only examples. In HP fanfiction my single biggest one is the lack of creativity in nicknames for Lily. Every other J/L fanfic author succombs to using "Lily Flower" as a nickname for Lily. First off, it's a painfully obvious variant of her name and not all that creative in the first place, secondly, it's way overused in the fandom and third, no one seems to have a desire to stop using it. If I start reading a fanfic and come across "Lily Flower" as a nickname for Lily I immediately stop reading the fanfiction; if the author isn't creative enough to come up with a unique nickname, what other fandom sterotypes are they not creative enough overcome? Another one is the lack of interesting plots in J/L fanfiction. Yes, I enjoy a fluffy romantic one-shot or a couple-chapter-long fic of how they fell in love, but romance fics with 37 chapters? Where's the drama? you already know how the story is going to end so unless there's an actual developed non-J/L plot I won't read anything longer than about 5-7 chapters long. Sterotyped characters in fanfiction. This ties back to the "Lily Flower" peeve. James as the bad boy who suddenly realizes that unless he fundamentally changes who he is he'll never win over the girl of his dreams. Lily as the beautiful but studious girl who does nothing but rag on James simply because she can. Or Lily being apart of a girl-marauder group who also goes out and breaks rules too but is so hypocritical that she still rails on James for doing exactly what she's doing. Or Lily as the secret Siren who enjoys toying with James's feelings for her making her appear as either a heartless b***h or a heartless s**t. C'mon, fandom! Dig a little deeper into these characters and pull out something unique! Overly unique minor character names. "Lily, James, Elphaba and Xander snuck down the corridor silently..." Hmm. I wonder which ones are the new characters? This extends to names that are experiencing a recent vogue such as Rosalie (which is a shame because I used this name is a fic way before I ever knew about twilight because I thought it was sweet and fit the character I was writing and now I won't use it out of pure in-vogue-overuse spite) =^( Also, odd or unusual names simply for the sake of using an odd or unusual name drives me crazy. C'mon, how many Elphabas are there in the world really? I would rather use a more unique 'muggle' name than name a character with some off-the-wall astronomical word just because it sounds cool unless this character is, say, a long dead wizard in the Black family who have a precedent for unusual celestial names. Ah... it's nice to get this stuff off my chest... =^D Quote:
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"I could have been in politics 'cause I've always been a big spender." ![]() Last edited by Goddess_Clio; February 14th, 2012 at 7:17 pm. |
#29
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Re: Your writing peeves
I will go with Goddess_Clio here.
I read a lot of HP fanfiction, but I am not a fan of few things: 1. Time travel fanfiction. Because the plot is always based on Hermione falling in love with Snape, Sirius or Lupin. Boring. The only one I found to be interesting is one that Hermione goes to a paralel universe where everything is upside down... In the Riddle Era, not in the Marauders Era. 2.I do read James/Lily fanfiction, but again, they are always the same... ![]() 3.And, of course, Snape/OC fanfictions. I'd love to see Snape finally happy and everything, but often the plot is boring, the OC is boring... Well, everything is boring. And Snape is suddenly hot. Uh... He is many things, but I doubt he is as hot as these fanfics describe him. In novels in general, my peeves are the same. I want action, I want to be surprised. How many novels I've read that the two main characters hate each other and end up in love...? So sometimes the authors aren't much creative and are completely predictable.I don't like that very much... And last, but not least, the over description of a character. "She had lips that looked like moist strawberries." bores me. And since when lips look like strawberries? ![]()
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Time is just a ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... Stuff. |
#30
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Re: Your writing peeves
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Quote:
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![]() I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14 My Graphics|Aftermath|Goodreads|My Blog I may disagree with you politically, religiously, and/or on Snape but that doesn't mean I dislike you. |
#31
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Re: Your writing peeves
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#32
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Re: Your writing peeves
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"Red lips" does the trick for me. They don't need to be strawberry, raspberry, huckleberry, or any other type of berry for me to understand their color. Spending too much time describing a character removes the ability for the reader to fill in the blanks and often the descriptors aren't relevant anyway. Is it important to the story that the character's lips are like moist strawberries? No? Than leave it out. Identifying the color of Lily's and Harry's eyes turned out to have significance in the story but at the same time JKR played off the reader's frustration in continuing to harp on that fact by having Harry himself become tired of having his eye color commented on. I thought that was a good way to reinforce the eye color situation while recognizing that it's been talked about a lot. I thought that was handled ver'//////////////////// (my kitty saying hello!) *very well ![]() (my kitty wants to be a writer too! I think he needs some typing lessons, personally) ![]()
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"I could have been in politics 'cause I've always been a big spender." ![]() |
#33
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Re: Your writing peeves
Novel inflation.
Your novel does not need to be 800 pages long. If you only have enough story for a 400 page novel for example, write a 400 page novel. Padding to inflate the size of the novel is incredibly annoying to me.
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![]() ![]() Last edited by AldeberanBlack; February 19th, 2012 at 12:45 pm. |
#34
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Re: Your writing peeves
That sadly is becoming more common. In part it has to do with cutbacks to editorial staff at publishers. More disturbing it has a lot to do with readers today equating the size of a book with "value". The bigger the book, the better the value for money.
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A patriot is someone who wants the best for his country, including the best laws and the best ideals. It's something other people should call you -- you shouldn't call yourself that. People who call themselves patriots are usually liars. -- Donald Woods You got what anybody gets . . . You got a lifetime. -- Death of the Endless |
#35
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Re: Your writing peeves
Maybe I don't read the right (or wrong?) books, but I'm not entirely sure what this phenomenon is, or how to detect it.
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#36
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Re: Your writing peeves
On the orbs as opposed to eyes thing: While it may get annoying if it's overused, I don't mind writers using it to convey eyes since one of the definitions of orbs is an eyeball. Yeah, we don't say it in real life, but in writing it actually conveys something different than just saying eyes all the time. So, I don't mind it that much.
I agree about the research thing though. I read a Ninja Turtles fan fic where Mikey become blind, and Donatello is sitting there like an idiot and speculates, "Maybe it'll go away." Yeah, right. When the retina detaches, there's no saving the sight. The exception is if it's a retinal tear and is caught early enough to have surgery. That's what happened to me. It just ticked me off, and I pointed this out to the author. I might read more of the story just to see if there's more inconsistencies with the writing. I also hate stories that have the same overall theme. Again, I point to the author I mentioned above who also makes Mikey seem like an emo crybaby. She has him in situations where he's either gay and the family doesn't accept him, depressed and he's going to kill himself, or anorexic. She makes all of the Turtles seem OOC, which really makes me upset and want to smack her. So, yeah, I have issues with this author. Big time.
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"It is our choices that show us who we truly are far more than our abilities." -Albus Dumbledore. |
#37
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Re: Your writing peeves
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The rest of the triology, especially book 3 (Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) suffers from padding to a lesser extent in that several page chunks here and there could have been removed or summarized in a paragraph and the reader wouldn't miss anything other than pages of boring, superfluous information we didn't need anyway. To me, "padding" is anything in a book that could be removed without causing major problems to the story or causing anything more than minor rewrites. The first 200 pages of Girl who Played with Fire are padding. The first 200 pages of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were not padding, they just moved at a snail's pace. (Sorry for continuing to harp on about the Millenium Triology, it just happens to be the last fiction book(s) I've read)
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"I could have been in politics 'cause I've always been a big spender." ![]() |
#38
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Re: Your writing peeves
So don't read her.
__________________
A patriot is someone who wants the best for his country, including the best laws and the best ideals. It's something other people should call you -- you shouldn't call yourself that. People who call themselves patriots are usually liars. -- Donald Woods You got what anybody gets . . . You got a lifetime. -- Death of the Endless |
#39
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Re: Your writing peeves
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![]() I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14 My Graphics|Aftermath|Goodreads|My Blog I may disagree with you politically, religiously, and/or on Snape but that doesn't mean I dislike you. |
#40
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Re: Your writing peeves
Yes, yes, and yes! Completely agree with this. Many books, especially in the teen section at the moment, are made as trilogies (or more) but they're so bloated with unnecessary scenes, flowery yet empty words, and they take ages to get to the point. I don't mind more than one book in a series at all but when the whole story could have been told in one or two books, this gets pretty annoying. The Hollow by Jessica Verday and it's two sequels come to mind.
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House: Ravenclaw
Animal: Snowy Owl Wand: 12", Hickory, Unicorn Hair, Steady Favourite Subject: Charms Quidditch Position: Keeper Patronus: Polar Bear Pottermore: Ravenclaw / 14 and 1/2'', Hornbeam, Unicorn Hair, Solid Last edited by Melissa_Potter; February 23rd, 2012 at 3:18 am. |
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