Bookish Pet Peeves I CANNOT STAND ❌ don't make these mistakes!

With a deep growl, Brenda extended to her full 15-foot stature, unhinged her jaw and readied her tail-spikes for battle. "I think you'll find I'm not like other girls!"

i love disgruntled Abbie! "I'm not like other girls" "YES YOU ARE!" 😡 cackling

I think fake tension is only OK if it works like this: ~ Set up fake expected fate as cliffhanger ~ Switch POV for a bit ~ Reveal fakeout... ~ IMMEDIATELY HAVE A WORSE FATE HAPPEN 'They swerved away from the deer in the road - into an oncomming truck'.

As a person with a disability (Autism) one of my biggest pet peeves is when disabled characters live their whole life for the sake of showing the disability, like if every second in our lives had something to do with the disability. I do teach a little about autism for people who want to know, I do fight for autism rights, but I have much more in life than autism: I like to draw, I like to create stories, I have internal conflicts that are not exclusively related to traits of autism or others' prejudice, I have goals and desires that can't be summed to "autism rights, autism acceptance and being resilient". I'd enjoy a lot to see more disabled characters with desires, fears, a misbelief and a goal not related to the disability. Disclaimer: It doesn't mean informative/activism stories are wrong or overdone, but other kinds of stories with disabled characters are underdone. (I'm not sure if underdone is supposed to be the opposite of overdone. English is not my mother tongue. Google only tells me "underdone" is used for food so correct me if there's a better word)

My biggest pet peeve is romance for the sake of romance, when a plot that does not need a romance by any means forces two characters with little to no romantic chemistry together, just for the sake of there being a romance. I'm looking at you, Marvel.

I'm generally on board with a lot of these, but the ones that are either coming from the assumption that all fiction should be easy to parse ("no fancy words!" "no complicated plots!") or that try to discourage people from writing their beloved story because "it's been done" seem like terrible advice to me. Every story has been done, and done to death. What hasn't been done is a particular writer telling a particular story. Which brings me to my biggest writing pet peeve: the so-called "invisible prose" style. I want to hear a writer's voice, more than anything else in a story. Writers (and editors) who deliberately file off their interesting edges and try to make one book sound like any other are stealing one of the greatest joys of fiction from their readers. When I read, say, Tanith Lee, I know that it's Tanith Lee. Frank Herbert sounds like nobody else. Invisible prose authors read like a product coming off an assembly line, packaged and sanitized for the reader's protection, carefully commoditized to efficiently while away the reader's time without leaving a mark. Just gone. Anyway, a lot of people read their books in ebook format. That makes looking up an unfamiliar word easier than ever. But even without that, a dictionary isn't a difficult thing to use. If you don't know a word, look it up!

One of my biggest pet peeves anymore in stories are love triangles--especially when the "third" character of the triangle is obviously just there to . . . well, make a love triangle possible, lol. A lot of times you can totally tell which of the two characters the author wants/intends for the MC to choose and the other character is just there to shoehorn in a romantic conflict of interest that wasn't necessary or needed.

I have a question, how do you know if the relationship of your two characters should become romantic, or if you are forcing unnecessary romance into a perfectly platonic friendship?

Thank You So Much for mentioning the glorification of toxic relationships! This trope has escalated lately and I find it really disturbing. It is almost always set up to be the woman who suffers, who has no agency, and the man whose toxic style of masculinity is glorified. Women should NOT be lead to believe that this is romantic, healthy, or appropriate for them in their real lives.

"Said." I came across someone - I forget who, but he was a published author - who's advice was "never use anything other than said in dialogue tags." His point was about how we fall into the thesaurus trap, where we try to use various synonyms to make dialogue tags seem more interesting, to the point that it stands out. Me, my aim is to minimize the use of dialogue tags. Like, I try to make the character's voices distinct enough from each other that an astute reader can tell who's speaking without needing to be told just by how the character talks. And then instead of dialogue tags, I try to have a specific character perform an action to help indicate tone and mood of the dialogue just before they speak, or sometimes replace the dialogue tag with the action. I don't know if I can say I've mastered this, but when it works, it works.

I have a point about the "flowery" prose. My personal method is to attribute it to a character who SPEAKS like that in character. If I've learned a fancy word or two in my own life that I want to use in my writing naturally, I find a character who might speak like that and might also communicate the message that the word is connected with. I try not to ever do it narratively out of character speech

Tbh, the description one is something I actually like. Scenery is important imo and it needs to be explored especially when writing fantasy.

I hate when writers go overboard with the creative dialogue tags... He interpolated, she proclaimed, he declared, and on and on... It also annoys me when psychical features are mentioned way too much. I just finished a book where the heroine's green eyes were mentioned in legit every scene.

The use of miscommunication as a substitute for plot 🤬 my #1. I feel like this is the plot of many a tv show: Henry and Lisa have FINALLY decided to be together. They decide their first date is going to be at the pool bc they met from lifeguarding together over the summer. They’re going to meet there, not because it makes sense, no, but because it means that just as Lisa is walking into the pool, she’ll see Henry, hovering over another girl. Lisa thinks they look romantic, like they’re practically moving in slow motion. Lisa recognizes her - it’s the new girl in town who just moved here from Los Angeles. Lisa stares in shock. She can’t conceive one single idea why her new boyfriend’s face might be so close to someone else’s face at the pool where they met... lifeguarding. At the place where they agreed to meet and where he was fully expecting to see her any minute now. Just moments before, however, Los Angelina - whom Lisa thinks Henry having a passionate, public snog with - was drowning in the pool, and Henry sprang to action when the lifeguard was slow to respond. In reality, he had been giving her CPR and Lisa caught the moment just as he was looking at her, glad that she was ok. He looks over his left shoulder for no reason at all, and sees Lisa standing there. Gawking. She starts to turn away. Lisa can’t believe it. Except for she does believe it, but she says “I can’t believe this” anyway. Henry was obviously making out with that girl who was new, cool, pretty and despite growing up in a part of the country with year round Beach weather, apparently doesn’t know how to swim. Henry gets up to chase after her, “LISA! WAIT!” The lifeguard on duty gives a loud but monotone “no running.” Henry catches up to her as she’s getting in her car. He catches the door before it closes. “Lisa...” he pants, he’s out of breath from running, so it’s gonna take a minute to get his sentence out. And the sentence he chooses is “if you would just let me explain, that isn’t what it looked like!” Lisa says “no, Henry. You told me that you were serious about this, about US.. and obviously, you just can’t help yourself.” “Lisa...” he gave all his breath to the drowning girl, so he’s struggling to breathe still. “You know it’s not like that” he says instead of SAYING I WAS GIVING HER CPR Lisa says “I thought I knew that. I don’t know what to think anymore.” She closes her door, puts her car in reverse. Henry shouts “Lisa! Wait! Just listen to me!” Doubly wasting our time because she can’t hear him, but even if she could, he’s somehow still not denying any of the absurd things she’s saying right now Henry spends the next week trying to woo her and somehow no one has managed to tell her that he was performing CPR until one day she meets up with her sassy friend, Eclipse, and Eclipse says “I heard Henry, like, saved somebody’s life last week. Can’t believe such a hot hero can be such hot garbage. It was that chick from Los Angeles.” “The girl from Los Angeles? That’s who I saw him making out with at the pool...” Aw, look, some of Lisa’s brain cells are connecting. “Wait, do you think he was just giving her CPR?” Oh, Eclipse, we had HIGHER STANDARDS FOR YOU BUT YOU WERE NO HELP. “Well I do now!!!” Lisa exclaims and calls Henry. “Why didn’t you tell me, Henry?” 🤬🤬🤬

Funny. In another podcast by a literature professor (John Thair) , he said that the word "said" is not as bad as people think it is. Because the word itself is so bland, that it merges into the prose and doesn't stand out as much as other alternatives would. Also, "sighed", "smiled", "gurgled", "growled", are all verbs which do not necessarily show a person speaking. A sigh is a distinctive sound. You cannot sigh, while at the same time, speaking. You either sigh before or after you speak. Also it might be confusing, if the tag changes every few sentences, even if you leave out a few tags. He said, he smiled, he cackled, he smirked. Just mention his playful demeanor once and then just go with "he said" until anything changes. It keeps your prose clean and does not necessarily make it look worse or stop the flow of your reader. As Abbie said - your brain fills out the blanks by itself. I hope I was able to get my point across. I am not a native speaker.

The miscommunication one is THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. It’s so incredibly frustrating. It being the entire plot drives me nuts

My biggest pet peeve is when a character gives a lecture to another character, which actually is the reader, on what the right opinions on a topic is. I can think myself, thank you.

I agree with all of these things! One of my biggest pet peeves is characters that are written to be super smug/snarky/arrogant/bitchy without any other balancing personality traits and everyone they meet automatically likes them and thinks they are amazing. On what planet?! I see this most often in the strong female character trope dominating literature nowadays, and in her arrogant, bossy male love interest with reality-defying good looks and vast amounts of power. But honestly, if you met someone like that in real life, you would probably hate them - at least until you got to know them, to understand their abrasive personality is a form of armor. You could appreciate who they are underneath all of that, but the snarky and arrogant personality would not be your favorite part of who they are as a person. So why are people writing characters that glorify these terrible personality traits and acting like they are so great? It's important to balance out those negative traits with positive ones, not just "impossibly good looks". Maybe that guy is incredibly arrogant, but he could also be genuinely funny. Maybe that girl is super snarky, but she could also constantly be doing kind things for others. And obviously revealing their good traits can be part of the journey so you don't have to come out the gate with it, but please, you have to give me something to make me root for the main characters. Don't just act like this smug and snarky chick can swoop in with all her arrogant swagger and cocky dialogue and never change, and I'm supposed to just like her because she's the main character. Don't pretend like this super hot guy can be an arrogant asshole and a possessive, domineering jerk who never changes and I'm supposed to fall in love with him because the main character inexplicably is. No thanks! You've got to give me something worth liking, even if it's just a glimpse of something good. Yes, everyone is different and is attracted to different things, but I think most people would agree that they don't enjoy being talked down to, berated, or mocked and they don't enjoy being made to feel insignificant. I don't think your characters would feel any different. So, it's good practice for any writer to imagine what it would be like to actually meet their characters. What would your first impression be? Would you want to be their friend? How would getting to know them change your perception of them? And use that to write interactions and thoughts that feel genuine, to develop your characters in a way that adds authenticity to their arc and gives them depth. Edit: I just want to add that I am personally super drawn to the smug, arrogant guys in books, movies, shows, and games. That is my go-to. I am automatically interested. The moment he appears on screen or page, I immediately sit up straighter. But that's the thing... If that's all there is to him, I lose interest fast because all he amounts to is, well, a jerk. But I also don't want him to lose all those negative traits either for the sake of making him more likeable, because they were what drew me to him in the first place. The promise of depth, of something more. So, I lose interest even faster when his personality pulls a 180. And this goes back to Abby's point about characters with inconsistent personalities. Don't change your character's personality, just reveal more of it as you go and find a balance. If you have nothing to reveal after that first impression, it's time to go back to your character profile and fill in more blanks.

I've seen so many authortubers do the 'toxic relationships bad' rant that its starting to become its own tired cliche, but kudos for mentioning that you CAN write about toxic relationships in a way that's good. I know its not everyone's cup of tea, but I love negative/tragic character arcs that serve as cautionary tales, as well as positive/empowering arcs about escaping abuse. In some less severe circumstances its also great to see characters working through their toxic dynamic and becoming healthier together. There's so many great ways to write about this subject so I appreciate the nuanced explanation here (as opposed to the usual "dont write bad relationships ever or else your book is bad and your writing is bad and you are bad")

My number one pet peeve is absolutely toxic romance. I'm happily married and have been for some time. It's so rare now to find satisfying romance stories, they all seem to talk about love from the perspective of infatuation or chemicals and it really grinds my gears.