Pet Writing Peeves

[SimonDoom]

I am a long time reader of this site who only recently started contributing stories. So I've had years of experience sifting through the things I do and don't like and figuring out which stylistic and grammatical tics in stories are most off-putting to me. I must say, when I started writing and submitting stories I found it much more difficult to live up to what I thought were my standards than I thought I would. I was embarrassed to find significant proofreading errors in my first story after I posted it.

I'm curious what grammatical or stylistic errors or habits other readers/authors here find most distracting or likely to make one downgrade a story?

Poor spelling is a big one for me. Another habit I notice is quite common and is very distracting to me is shifting tenses. It's fairly common on this site for authors to shift back and forth between present and past tense, e.g., "She peeled the skimpy dress off her luscious body. He grabs the dress and throws it to the floor." For some reason this really distracts me and affects my enjoyment of the story.

 

[JayG88]

I guess spelling is the most annoying, both as a reader and a writer on the site. I really try to edited mine and read each line over carefully, plus I use editors on the site but still a pesky one or two will slip through. I just hope then don't detract from my work and as a reader I try to not let them spoil my reading.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I'm curious what grammatical or stylistic errors or habits other readers/authors here find most distracting or likely to make one downgrade a story?

Poor spelling is a big one for me. Another habit I notice is quite common and is very distracting to me is shifting tenses. It's fairly common on this site for authors to shift back and forth between present and past tense, e.g., "She peeled the skimpy dress off her luscious body. He grabs the dress and throws it to the floor." For some reason this really distracts me and affects my enjoyment of the story.

When I write I tend to skip words. They're in my head but my fingers skip them. When I reread my brain fills them in for me, ever so helpfully. It's annoying.

I skimmed a story here recently and got annoyed when a paragraph contained a character's action, but someone else's dialog in tandem.

Mark pushed his hand through his thinning hair, and smiled. "You try wearing a bra that's too small", Adrienne said.

Ouch, my brain.

I've got one long story written in present tense and first person. It's hard. I catch myself slipping into past tense and it's annoying to fix that in English. You're right, get it wrong once and the whole page is ruined.

Misuse of adjectives. Your use of luscious in your example had me wincing. That sentence needs to be a lot longer and more descriptive, without any shortcuts like luscious.

Bad spelling. I just stop. Word checks spelling for free. Grammarly is free and spell-checks text boxes. There's just no excuse.

Use of cup sizes. I spend lots of time noticing women's breasts and to this day I can't tell a C from a D with any reliability. I know the omniscient narrator is omniscient and knows sizes down to the millimeter, but 36C doesn't really tell me much and I worry about what it meant to the author.

Welcome to writing. It is not, in fact, as easy as it looks.

 

[SimonDoom]

When I write I tend to skip words. They're in my head but my fingers skip them. When I reread my brain fills them in for me, ever so helpfully. It's annoying.

I skimmed a story here recently and got annoyed when a paragraph contained a character's action, but someone else's dialog in tandem.

Mark pushed his hand through his thinning hair, and smiled. "You try wearing a bra that's too small", Adrienne said.

Ouch, my brain.

I've got one long story written in present tense and first person. It's hard. I catch myself slipping into past tense and it's annoying to fix that in English. You're right, get it wrong once and the whole page is ruined.

Misuse of adjectives. Your use of luscious in your example had me wincing. That sentence needs to be a lot longer and more descriptive, without any shortcuts like luscious.

Bad spelling. I just stop. Word checks spelling for free. Grammarly is free and spell-checks text boxes. There's just no excuse.

Use of cup sizes. I spend lots of time noticing women's breasts and to this day I can't tell a C from a D with any reliability. I know the omniscient narrator is omniscient and knows sizes down to the millimeter, but 36C doesn't really tell me much and I worry about what it meant to the author.

Welcome to writing. It is not, in fact, as easy as it looks.

Sorry to make you wince, but I'm glad I could give you an example for your own peeve! That gave me a good chuckle. I wasn't trying to come up with something good, just something quick and short that made the point. But I'm glad I could help make another point, even if not intentionally.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have a similar problem to HandsInTheDark, I skip letters in a word. Most notably 'your' becomes 'you'. Pretty hard to spot, no matter how many times you read it.

I have found Grammarly to really help with that. Spelling too.

And my favorite thing to skip, comma's.

You can add Grammarly to Word. There is a free version and a pay to use version.

 

[TxRad]

Pet peeve?

People who expect perfection on a free website.

Ya gets what ya pay for.

 

[NotWise]

I don't read very much here unless I'm prompted to it by a conversion on the forums or by PM. Also, I think my reactions to stories as a writer are probably different from the reactions of a normal reader.

I can be knocked out of a story by any number of things that qualify as bad writing. My biggest problem is with purple prose, or even purple-ish prose. It seems common for new writers to get carried away with their descriptive ability. They describe details that add to the story only in their own minds and pile on unnecessary adverbs because it sounds hot, but it's not.

 

[8letters]

I'm curious what grammatical or stylistic errors or habits other readers/authors here find most distracting or likely to make one downgrade a story?

Too much narrative summary at the beginning of a story. The author tries to spell out every bit of background before the story starts. I get bored and move on.

Problems that I have when writing? I leave out "not" a lot. Changes the meaning of a sentence quite a bit. I'm just not a negative guy.

When I write, I'll type in homonyms. "I knew I should say know" instead of "I knew I should say no". "The move was rated hard and had a couple of hot sex scenes in it." I meant "R".

I used to toss in "really", "still" and "just" all the time. It really bothered me that I was still writing those words so much and I couldn't just stop. I've gotten better.

"There" and "That" are still problems. During my first draft, I'll have three there's in one paragraph. I try to keep at least a few paragraphs between each use of "there" and scrutinize each of "that".

 

[nikyc]

Overuse of adverbs, that's probably my biggest pet peeve. Those pesky -ly and -ily words that can be replaced by so much interesting stuff. They have their places, sure, but more often than not they're just used as lazy shortcuts.

... stared greedily.
... jumped happily.
... ate hungrily.
... fucked passionately.
... sucked deeply.
... looked sheepishly.

My biggest annoyance has to be the constant use of 'suddenly'. Although, it is likely I've swung too far on that one. I know that it has its uses but I still cringe every time I see it, even more so when I find myself using it.

 

[holliday1960]

Agreed! It's all annoying to me, especially when it's MY writing! LOL But, besides just poor spelling and obvious grammar mistakes, the one thing I find most annoying is when I'm reading and the author uses the same words in two back to back sentences.

For instance: 'He drove slowly down the road, looking for her house. He very slowly turned into her driveway.' (Alright, already! I get it! He's moving slowly!)

Ironically, when it comes to editors, I've found some edited stories with TONS of mistakes in all areas. I agree that as a self-editing author, that is bound to happen. I can forgive those easily. The brain just tends to make all the corrections without benefit of notifying you that it's doing it.

But, when fresh eyes with no expectation of what's being said can't filter out the mistakes, or at least most of them...that is highly annoying. Especially when the author gives credit to the editor in his or her foreword. SMH

 

[TxRad]

You want to catch those brain edits. Change the font, read the story backwards, change the background color. All of these make the brain look more closely. Read the story aloud. Anywhere you faulter is a problem.

 

[holliday1960]

You want to catch those brain edits. Change the font, read the story backwards, change the background color. All of these make the brain look more closely. Read the story aloud. Anywhere you faulter is a problem.

I've heard reading backwards improves editing, but my brain has enough difficulty with reading left to right! It gets downright nasty if I ask it to work backwards!

 

[TxRad]

I've heard reading backwards improves editing, but my brain has enough difficulty with reading left to right! It gets downright nasty if I ask it to work backwards!

So many things come to mind for a reply.

Backwards paragraph wise.

 

[holliday1960]

So many things come to mind for a reply.

Backwards paragraph wise.

Reverse Cowgirl doesn't count, Tex. Not in editing, anyway.

 

[TxRad]

Reverse Cowgirl doesn't count, Tex. Not in editing, anyway.

During reverse cowgirl, editing would be the last thing on my mind.

 

[holliday1960]

During reverse cowgirl, editing would be the last thing on my mind.

I'm polishing my spurs as we speak, big boy! You bring the ropes!

 

[laptopwriter]

As a writer...

I guess I'm more willing to overlook missing words, or using the wrong form of a word. I've done it myself dozens of times. Like the one guy said, the words are in my head so sometime even when I read my stuff I read the word even though it's not really there. I read and re-read my stuff 3 or 4 times before submitting and still make mistakes.

I guess my #1 pet peeve is a story with no ending. That's not a mistake, it's done on purpose. I hate wasting my time and I consider taking time to read a story only to get to the bottom and find it has no end, a complete and total waste of time.

Not far behind stories with no ending are stories with two characters talking within the same paragraph. Okay, most of us are relative amateurs on this site but that doesn't mean you shouldn't learn the basics.

I guess I have one more, although it doesn't frost my buttons like the other two. It's lazy writers. Writers who you know have the skill but don't bother taking the time and instead, just go through the motions. TX says it's a free site and you get what you pay for but from a writer's standpoint, I believe if you're going to do something, do it to the best of your ability or don't bother doing it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Tautological speech tags:

"I'm sad," she mourned.
"I hate this ride," he complained.
"You're beautiful," they complimented.

etc. etc. If it's already clear from the dialogue, don't say it again with a fancy speech tag.

 

[glynndah]

You want to catch those brain edits. Change the font, read the story backwards, change the background color. All of these make the brain look more closely. Read the story aloud. Anywhere you faulter is a problem.

Falter. Oops!

 

[HectorBidon]

You want to catch those brain edits. Change the font, read the story backwards, change the background color. All of these make the brain look more closely. Read the story aloud. Anywhere you faulter is a problem.

Or you can have the computer read it aloud. One way is to paste your text into Google Translate and then click the "Listen" icon at the bottom of the box. This is a pretty good way to catch missed words and punctuation, confusing syntax, repeated words, awkward phrasing, unnatural sounding dialog, and so on. (You can also, on the same page, instantly translate your masterpiece into Punjabi, although I think this option is more often used in the opposite direction.)

 

[TxRad]

Falter. Oops!

Another pair of eyes are always the greatest tool.

 

[Hypoxia]

Pet peeve?

People who expect perfection on a free website.

Ya gets what ya pay for.

Yup.

But my main peeves: work, and real-life distractions.

'Twould be better were I locked in a cellar and nourished with occasional tacos.

Then I might polish all my rough story fragments.

 

[KindofHere]

.............

 

[nikyc]

You want to catch those brain edits. Change the font, read the story backwards, change the background color. All of these make the brain look more closely. Read the story aloud. Anywhere you faulter is a problem.

Nothing like reading your latent masterpiece of perfection with the comic sans font.

It's a great technique though.

 

[RetroFan]

I have never liked stories written in the present tense rather than the past tense, i.e. 'Jane sees John standing waiting for a cab' rather than 'Jane saw John waiting for a cab'. I just find present tense writing pretentious and annoying.