Authors - Biggest Pet Peeves?

[mildlyaroused]

As writers we are usually pretty opinionated and pedantic. Sometimes I want to let off that steam and I'm sure others do too.

What are some of your biggest pet peeves in fiction?

This can be anything, erotic or not, micro or macro, objective or subjective. Fire away.

But: this is all in good faith. If someone mentions something you do in your own writing, it's not an attack. A lot of pet peeves are subjective. I am someone who writes fiction exclusively in the present tense (I know, I'm terrible, don't even look at me!) and I know that is probably a big turn off for a lot of people.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I'll start. This might not be my biggest, but recently and off the top of my head it's the one that comes to mind. Beware - this is an (informative) rant.

Over the top or incorrect dialogue tags.

I cannot stand when in dialogue every SINGLE dialogue tag is changed to some more specific verb - instead of just "saying" something, characters cry, shriek, argue, confess, joke, urge, bluster, accuse. If a character is confessing something we should KNOW that - we don't need to be told "they are confessing now." Same goes for jokes, urgings, accusations, etc.

In moderation, strong verbs can work well. They are sharp and set the tone of a character's speech. But authors are encouraged away from adverbs so much, and encouraged to find the right word so much, that their verb choice sometimes swamps their prose; it starts to read like a storybook designed to teach children vocabulary.

"Said" is the chef-d'oeuvre of dialogue tags. USE IT. In moderation, adverbs are your friends. USE THEM. Dialogue tags are often redundant due to narrative context and the physical actions characters perform. Don't be scared to DROP THEM.

Similarly, some verbs are NOT dialogue tags at all. Specifically actions that are separate from speech. You cannot smile a sentence. You can say a sentence and smile, but the smile does not form the words. Nor does a grin, or a giggle, or a wave.

Unless a verb specifically relates to the vibrating of vocal chords and thus the formation of speech, the dialogue does not belong to that verb. Put a period in or before the dialogue, not a comma.

"Okay." She smiled.
She smiled. "Okay."
"Okay," she smiled.
She smiled, "Okay."

If a dialogue tag does not immediately precede or follow a sentence, use a period and not a comma.

She leant across the table. "Someone might be listening."
She leant across the table, "Someone might be listening."
"Lower your voice." She leant across the table. "Someone might be listening."
"Lower your voice," She leant across the table, "Someone might be listening."

On top of that, if a line of dialogue has prose in the middle you only use commas when it is one sentence split up by prose. If the first clause of dialogue concludes a sentence, use a period before starting the second.

"Lower your voice," she said. "Someone might be listening."
"Lower your voice," she said, "Someone might be listening."
"Did you ever hear," he said, "about the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"
"Did you ever hear," he said. "About the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"

Is this excessive and pedantic? Yes, but that's why I made this thread.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

A lot of people seem to get really upset about adverbs to describe speech, but I've never had a problem with this. For me, it's just the author's style. I wonder if it's an American thing, as I've noticed US authors tend to prefer not to use adverbs, but maybe that's too sweeping.

"Oh God, fuck me," she moaned, desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me," she said. Moaning desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me." She moaned desperately.

I suppose one of my pet peeves is when people are too pedantic about punctuation placement, especially commas, and especially in speech. Firstly, characters don't always speak in perfectly punctuated ways:

"I mean, really it's, one of those things," he said.
"I mean, really, it's one of those things," he said.

And secondly, if you're reading the text aloud (or in your head), a comma signifies a pause. If I want a reader to pause, I'll put a comma in even if it's not strictly necessary. I'm not writing a newspaper article, after all.

He tossed and turned, in agony, begging, pleading for mercy.
He tossed and turned, in agony, begging and pleading for mercy.

 

[cababge]

The mentor says "go save yourself" while the stupid ass threat approaches like a snail. Come on guys

 

[mildlyaroused]

A lot of people seem to get really upset about adverbs to describe speech, but I've never had a problem with this. For me, it's just the author's style. I wonder if it's an American thing, as I've noticed US authors tend to prefer not to use adverbs, but maybe that's too sweeping.

"Oh God, fuck me," she moaned, desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me," she said. Moaning, desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me." She moaned desperately.

Yes, if it works it works! A matter of style.

I'll always favour:
"Stop it," she said angrily.

You won't catch me dead saying:
"Stop it," she huffed.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is this excessive and pedantic? Yes, but that's why I made this thread.

No, it's not excessive, nor pedantic. It's basic grammar, and people don't help themselves at all, if they don't get it right.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Nothing makes my eyes roll more than unicorns: characters whose only motivation is horniness. That is to say that the only reason for their horniness is the convenience of the writer to get them into bed. This is a plague on lit. There are countless stories containing characters that do nothing to turn each other on yet are just magically turned on anyways.

This is especially rampant in the common male fantasy where the guy wants the girl but for some flimsy reason (or even no given reason at all) never acts on his desire, but it just so happens that for no explanation whatsoever, the girl either just happens to be into him or the girl just decides "yeah, what the hell" and makes his day. Furthermore, once the girl begins putting the moves on him, the guy still does nothing to turn her on or return the favor of pleasuring her, but of course because he's such a good performer (very good at just laying there while she does all the heavy lifting), she'll cum gushing buckets regardless. Please just shoot me now.

It's not just in male one-way-street fantasies neither. You do see this in stories with couples where both characters are just inexplicably horny just act on some sudden unexplained impulse. Two married couples live next door. The wife of one and the husband of the other flirt over the back fence for years. Then one day out of the blue they just suddenly act on it. There is no significance as to why this particular day is chosen and neither of them ever thought that they would actually act on anything until this one random moment. Oh, magic! Fuck me sideways.

Secretary dreams of being dommed by her boss. Turns out that he actually is a Dom and one day he randomly decides to act, call her into his office, lock the door and bring out the restraints. Dreams magically come true. I'm gonna barf so bad, we might need to call a plumber.

An author's style or skills can do nothing to save such appalling plotting.

Motive, people. Learn some motive.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's not really a peeve, because as soon as I see it I'm out - but the first five-hundred words being an irrelevant, meaningless, turgid info dump. The opening that goes, "When I got back home for the summer break, to the town where I blah blah blah and blah blah blah." I simply do not care what you did before, just tell me what you're doing now.

 

[cababge]

It's not really a peeve, because as soon as I see it I'm out - but the first five-hundred words being an irrelevant, meaningless, turgid info dump. The opening that goes, "When I got back home for the summer break, to the town where I blah blah blah and blah blah blah." I simply do not care what you did before, just tell me what you're doing now.

This one does it too. Half a page of exposition about a character's history, their education, their extended family, their favourite holiday spots. Nobody cares about information until they care about the story.

 

[StillStunned]

A lot of people seem to get really upset about adverbs to describe speech, but I've never had a problem with this. For me, it's just the author's style. I wonder if it's an American thing, as I've noticed US authors tend to prefer not to use adverbs, but maybe that's too sweeping.

Recently I've listened to several audiobooks about writing and editing fiction, and they all go on about how bad adverbs are. They're all American, by the way.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Recently I've listened to several audiobooks about writing and editing fiction, and they all go on about how bad adverbs are. They're all American, by the way.

Stephen King said in his book about writing "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs." Say what you will about the man's writing, he is damn successful, so his style aligns pretty closely with popular American fiction. It's definitely the 'done thing' to cull them. My poor babies (affectionately holds adverbs to bosom).

 

[alohadave]

Stephen King said in his book about writing "I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs." Say what you will about the man's writing, he is damn successful, so his style aligns pretty closely with popular American fiction. It's definitely the 'done thing' to cull them. My poor babies (affectionately holds adverbs to bosom).

That should probably read:

"I believe the road to hell is paved with excessive adverbs."

Because he uses them himself.

IMO, On Writing should be viewed as memoir with his personal writing style examples mixed in, rather than a primer on grammar and writing.

 

[StillStunned]

"I fervently and passionately believe the road to hell is paved predominantly with excessively used adverbs."

 

[mildlyaroused]

IMO, On Writing should be viewed as memoir with his personal writing style examples mixed in, rather than a primer on grammar and writing.

Thanks for the exact quote, it's been a while since I read it. He's a cheeky man, phrasing it like that.

And to the above, I'd be inclined to agree.

Any books on writing ('On Writing' or otherwise) are in my eyes treasure, almost regardless of whose book it is. I don't like King's novels much but I still find his words invaluable. There is something very inspiring about hearing other authors talk about their craft and the nuances to their methods. It makes me feel slightly less lonely in this silly path of novel writing. It makes me excited to keep bashing that keyboard!

If you haven't read it before, I'd highly recommend Murakami's 'Novelist as a Vocation.'

 

[SimonDoom]

I completely agree about dialogue tags. To me, the habit of always seeking out replacements for "said" screams, "Amateur writer." There's nothing wrong with mixing up tag usage some, but generally it should be kept simple. Do your heavy lifting with the dialogue itself. If the dialogue is good, you won't need to gild the lily with fancy tags and adverbs.

Dialogue is the area where, IMO, amateur writers seem to get tripped up the most. Common problems:

1. Improper punctuation, especially comma use.
2. Overwrought use of synonyms for "said" and "asked."
3. Not enough dialogue. I think a story reads better if it doesn't have excessively long stretches without dialogue.
4. I don't know who is speaking because the author has an excessive aversion to the use of tags.
5. Not separating different bits of dialogue into separate paragraphs.
6. Dialogue that doesn't sound like something the character actually would say, given what we know about them.

 

[TheseLegs]

It was suggested to me recently that it was the overreliance on adverbs that constituted a weakness in writing, also citing Stephen King. Same with using a lot of different speech tags, leaning one way or the other is down to personal style. Taking out about two thirds of the adverbs from one of my books was around 500 words, and that's including a few places where I added a more detailed description to replace them.

My own biggest pet peeve in fiction is too much exposition. How much that is is down to taste, but my tolerance is pretty low. If the information is important to the story, it should come out on its own without a history lesson. To use Stephen King as an example again, I have enjoyed his books because they're imaginative, but he sometimes uses what I would call 'eye-glazing' detail.

 

[AchtungNight]

I have two issues I’d like to discuss. First, why is the magic of attraction a bad thing? It exists. To this day I’m not sure why my wife and I were into each other back in 2009 when we got together. But we were into each other, and we kept it working for nearly a decade. I long for that attraction from someone else today as I’m lonely, only on a higher level that has kept longer relationships going long and strong. If you’re not into a story’s characters, fine, but don’t shame them for having their fun. Who says they have to explain their lusts?

Second, why do you have to push your debauchery to a degrading level? Why is there so much emphasis on cuckoldry, excessive sluttiness, humiliation even to the level of enduring and endorsing nonconsensual unenjoyable sex? Selfishness is not always attractive, and there’s a reason why people hate the “my way or the highway” types, male or female. The idea that you have to deal in lies to be attractive, or put on excessive makeup or plastic surgery is equally revolting to me. Natural beauty exists and it’s far more attractive. Seek and appreciate it. And don’t be afraid to reject harmful ugliness either- in stories or in life.

 

[shakespeare_i_aint]

One of my peeves is anachronistic names. If you are a 60-year-old man writing a story about today's young people, don't name them "Tom," or "Nancy," or "Robert." Just take one minute and google the most popular birth names from that generation. It isn't difficult.

Overused story titles are another peeve. "Be Careful What You Wish For," is a wildly overused title for the cucks.

Also, another peeve is an author who comes up with a clever play on words for a story title and then writes a bad story to fit the title. I wish an example would spring to mind, but it hasn't.

 

[Biker_Faerie]

My biggest pet peeve is dog hair

 

[samhasstories]

I don't mind adverbs. I think as a piece of writing advice it's a good one - when revising it's good to take a look at those and see which ones can be cut to strengthen the prose. But some of them are doing some work.

A lot of things irk me when I'm reading, but many of them aren't absolutes, just things executed poorly. It's not so much that I dislike exposition, for example. I'd read a thousand pages of exposition if it's well-written and compelling. But a bland uninteresting infodump that takes me out of the action, not so much.

As a general rule, one of my pet peeves is a writer not trusting their writing or the reader enough. If a character is well-developed, their motivations are apparent based on their dialogue/actions. It's a common thing for me to be momentarily impressed at how subtly a writer establishes a character's interiority, just by a line of dialogue or a quick description of body language; and then a paragraph explicitly describing that interiority just takes me right out of it. It's tough thing to balance, and I'm sure I've been guilty of it myself. But the more a writer goes on in that way the more I just want to yell at the text, "I get it... move on!"

 

[SimonDoom]

Second, why do you have to push your debauchery to a degrading level? Why is there so much emphasis on cuckoldry, excessive sluttiness, humiliation even to the level of enduring and endorsing nonconsensual unenjoyable sex? Selfishness is not always attractive, and there’s a reason why people hate the “my way or the highway” types, male or female. The idea that you have to deal in lies to be attractive, or put on excessive makeup or plastic surgery is equally revolting to me. Natural beauty exists and it’s far more attractive. Seek and appreciate it. And don’t be afraid to reject harmful ugliness either- in stories or in life.

Some people find degradation sexy. You can't tell them they're wrong. I write stories that push the boundaries of behavior. Some readers don't like it or find it excessive, but many readers eat it up like candy. Some people like natural breasts, some like the bolt-on Double-D look. Different strokes for different folks. I write stories about women being sluts and I get women readers (they say they're women, anyway) writing to me that they wish they could be that character, or that they relate to that character.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Dialogue is the area where, IMO, amateur writers seem to get tripped up the most.

I agree with all you've said. Erotica can exacerbate this issue too!

Simply put, dirty talk is pretty fucking lame. It's a turn-on in the moment but ultimately it comes to incoherent horny ramblings. So it's very difficult to translate to the page.

You can't repeat the same arousing line to your partner 20 times in erotica, it just doesn't work the same. A lot of writers I think rely too much on lines to the effect of: "Are you fucking me good? Am I your little slut? Ooohhh just like that..." Yada yada YADA.

I'm no professional in erotica. But this sort of generalised dirty talk, to me at least, ends up as dead weight that I skim over. Some of it is expected and realistic. But in written sex scenes I think what works better is a few well-placed lines that highlight the naughtiness (or romance) of the specific scenario, and the characters' relationship to each other.

Horny dialogue is really hard (haha) to write.

'eye-glazing'

That's the right phrase for it. He is more talented than I, but I have skimmed whole pages of his before. Overindulgence gets worse as authors gain prominence too (a certain Joanne springs to mind).

Who says they have to explain their lusts?

I agree. Lust can be enough. Anyone who's lusted after someone knows that sometimes that's all there is to it. There's a certain beauty in that too, I think at least. The desire to be as physically close to someone as is possible just for the hell and thrill of it. It's seductive, empowering, and a whole lotta fun.

 

[TheseLegs]

characters whose only motivation is horniness.

The examples you use do sound a little overwrought, but I for one believe horniness can be a pretty powerful motivator. If two people like each other believably there isn't a reason they can't have sex believably. Maybe you consider it a weak story with no plot (my latest for the 750 challenge is an example) but some of us like the simple things.

 

[AchtungNight]

Some people find degradation sexy. You can't tell them they're wrong. I write stories that push the boundaries of behavior. Some readers don't like it or find it excessive, but many readers eat it up like candy. Some people like natural breasts, some like the bolt-on Double-D look. Different strokes for different folks. I write stories about women being sluts and I get women readers (they say they're women, anyway) writing to me that they wish they could be that character, or that they relate to that character.

If it works for you, great. But it doesn't work for me. I end up gacking at it every time. Same as if some edgy yellow-teethed lame freak covered in tattoos is triumphing over a cool hero for the sake of might. That's just... maybe I can't tell them they're wrong, but I can tell them it doesn't work for me and go looking for stories that do. Or write my own stories that they don't have to read.

 

[SimonDoom]

"Oh God, fuck me," she moaned, desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me," she said. Moaning desperately.
"Oh God, fuck me." She moaned desperately.

I'll offer why the usage of an adverb like this trips me up a bit--not a lot, but a bit. It's telling, not showing. What does it mean to moan "desperately"? What does a desperate moan sound like? Take out the word "desperately," and the other words fully convey the content and delivery of the dialogue, don't they? This is especially a problem if the passage is being narrated from the point of view of a character other than this woman, because the word "desperately" suggests that the narrator is delving into her state of mind, and another character wouldn't know that. If the passage IS being told from her POV, then you could write:

"Oh God, fuck me," she moaned, desperate.

In this case, "desperate" doesn't modify the verb "moaned," it modifies the pronoun "she," describing her state of mind. It still seems a bit unnecessary to me, but it makes more sense than the adverb.

It may partly be an American v. British thing. My impression is that American fiction style is more influenced by the principles of journalism, which values economy in writing but also a habit of being very careful and accurate about describing things available to the senses. The British sensibility may be more comfortable with luxuriating in the sound and feel of the words themselves without regard to their journalistic accuracy. That's just a tentative hypothesis.