Things you should maybe avoid

[forgotmyantidepressants]

There are writers, especially but not only in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, that post an entire chapter zero of background before starting the actual story. I blame RPG supplements. Some folks seem to have been trained to think you need to actually publish background rather than include it in the story itself.

Back when I GM'd RPGs, I'd limit the background to "You live in a fishing village, and all the player characters are teenagers just entering adulthood." Then, I'd reveal stuff like "A troll cave is north of the village" by having trolls raid them, and the elders explain to the PCs (who are heroes because they helped fend off the trolls).

Learning to work the fine details into a story is takes time. "Chapter zeros" and a lot of prolouges are just giant info dumps because the writer knows the reader needs to know the details, but doesn't know how to work them into to the story.

 

[dirk2024]

This topic meant for things you see in stories (your own or someone else's) that you think other writers should try not to do. Could be infelicitous words, usage mistakes, misleading typos, or anything else.

My first example is from a story on the New list. I'm not trying to mock the author, so I'm going to change a couple of words, but this is the gist.



No real person I've met would say, "... the local community college." They'd say, "I go to Devon County Community College."

Maybe worth mentioning that the community college never comes up in the story. It's in that little unnecessary pseudo-autobiography bit at the beginning

I'm not fond of the, "First person but not addressed to anyone" style, either, but that phrase in the very first line blew me right out of the story.

I'll bite.

Avoid using words like "infelicitous". Making a reader stop and go to a dictionary to find out what the word means takes them out of your story. Both "inappropriate" and "awkward" are fine words.

 

[dirk2024]

Probably best to avoid these openers as well: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," "It was a dark and stormy night," "Call me Ishmael," and "A journey is like marriage."

Damnit!

*crumples up a Word document and tosses it in the trash*

 

[dirk2024]

Things that will have me noping out of a story within the first few paragraphs:

Names that go overboard with AE, X, Y and TH, and above all apostrophes. If I can't pronounce it, I won't remember it, and I won't care about the character.

Amen to that!

Descriptions that provide information but no sense of atmosphere. You're writing fiction, not a history book or travelogue.

Sadly, I may still be struggling with this one.

 

[StillStunned]

Learning to work the fine details into a story is takes time. "Chapter zeros" and a lot of prolouges are just giant info dumps because the writer knows the reader needs to know the details, but doesn't know how to work them into to the story.

No, the writer *thinks* the reader needs to know the details. But the thing is, fictional worlds work perfectly well in fiction with barely any background. All the reader needs to know is anything that directly impacts the characters. The things that they see, touch and (this being Lit) fuck.

 

[SugarStorm]

"It was a dark and stormy night,"

I’m totally doing this one in my next story. I’m doing it out of spite, and you can’t stop me because I’m supposedly a grown-up!!

*runs away laughing hysterically*

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Unpronouncable names are terrible. Or when every character has a hip trendy name.
I tend to look at the social security list of most popular baby names, and the names like Robert and Cindy still dominate. They've been popular for a long time, and still are.

Have you checked the popularity of the name "Donald" in the United States lately?

I'll bite.

Avoid using words like "infelicitous". Making a reader stop and go to a dictionary to find out what the word means takes them out of your story. Both "inappropriate" and "awkward" are fine words.

Basic principle of writing: know your audience. In that sentence I was writing for an audience, not just of writers, but of writers interested in improving their craft. I doubt anyone was ... nonplussed.

 

[crookedletter]

No, the writer *thinks* the reader needs to know the details. But the thing is, fictional worlds work perfectly well in fiction with barely any background. All the reader needs to know is anything that directly impacts the characters. The things that they see, touch and (this being Lit) fuck.

Agreed, some world-building details can definitely fall under the "Kill your darlings" purview. You've done the work, fleshed out the world, decided what kind of political system runs it, what the currency exchanges are, what languages two neighboring countries use and how they differ. Now you have to ask: regardless of how pleased you are with all those details, how much does the reader actually need to know to inhabit this world? The answer is often less than a writer might be tempted to include.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

No, the writer *thinks* the reader needs to know the details. But the thing is, fictional worlds work perfectly well in fiction with barely any background. All the reader needs to know is anything that directly impacts the characters. The things that they see, touch and (this being Lit) fuck.

You don't think details add depth to a fictional world and its characters? Some of the info dumps I've read contain good information about a character that helps me understand them. But I'd rather find out about the gloomy mc's sad childhood through a line of dialog or behaviors than a lengthy exposition

 

[StillStunned]

You don't think details add depth to a fictional world and its characters?

I prefer descriptions that add a *sense* of depth. A random mention of a ruined temple, "from the Fourth Empire, probably destroyed during the centuries of conflict between the priesthoods". Or "a Free City, paying taxes and honour to none but the Emperor himself". Or "merchants from the Hard Coast, traders from the fertile heartlands, artisans from all the great cities and scholars from the Great Library".

No worldbuilding required, just a few words that bring the story to life in the reader's mind.

 

[Seurat]

"Hi, I'm Hector. I go to the local community college." I hadn't really been paying that much attention to the people seated in the circle of folding chairs until he did his introduction. He was attractive in a quirky, nerdy fashion, and there was something in the way he spoke that made me think I needed to remember who he was.

First thing I thought of when I read that was that it was some meeting held in the basement of the local church on a Tuesday night.

"It was a dark and stormy night, which would have been a really stupid way of thinking of things if it hadn't been for the fact that even the streetlights were submitting to the encroaching thunderclouds. The street James and his three roommates lived on was usually pretty well lit, but the flashes of cloud lightning eratically bleached the street white or left it in the dark aftermath as the yellowing lamps tried pathetically to compete."

Beginning of some long-forgotten start to an erotic horror story I have since abandoned. I'm not all that happy with it now, but the opening line mentioned reminded me that I had once attempted to use/abuse it.

 

[Seurat]

As for things you should avoid...

There is a recent writer that has irritated me to the point that I can't even look at his stories. They read like has taken five or six similar stories into an AI meat grinder and then publishes the result. Each paragraph is ten to twenty sentences long, building a wall of text that my mind no longer tries to assault.

Structure your story in digestible pieces. Break up descriptions with dialog or, if you aren't that type of writer, string cohesive sentences together in a single paragraph and then progress. Don't use paragraph stops simply because your sentence count is twenty.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

I prefer descriptions that add a *sense* of depth. A random mention of a ruined temple, "from the Fourth Empire, probably destroyed during the centuries of conflict between the priesthoods". Or "a Free City, paying taxes and honour to none but the Emperor himself". Or "merchants from the Hard Coast, traders from the fertile heartlands, artisans from all the great cities and scholars from the Great Library".

No worldbuilding required, just a few words that bring the story to life in the reader's mind.

I've read more Martin than Sanderson, but both of them have created incredibly "real" places with many languages, histories, cultures, etc. There are Wikipedia pages dedicated to his magic system. Fans knowing the math behind makes it more real to them.

Martin's characters in A Song Of Ice and Fire are so rich and deep (imo) because they have a culture, religion, creed, etc. that's important to them. I don't need to know the full story of Florian the Fool and Jonquil to understand Sansa Stark but her appreciation for a princess-getting-rescued-myth gives me incite into her character - she a naive girl who needs to put the fairy tales behind her and grow up, she's a romantic, whatever. Knowing about the Targaryn prophecy helps me understand character motivations.

Martin doesn't overload the reader with the fine details all at once. He works them into the story through the characters, making them them important to the reader. In my opinion this is depth. In a good way. Sanderson, too, even though he's not to my taste.

 

[SimonDoom]

It was a dark and stormy night. Sally Ann Mueller, sporting a 22 inch waist and 38 DD rocket-shaped breasts augmented by a much-lauded cosmetic surgeon from Beverly Hills four years earlier, stepped out her front door, nude, rain pelting her skin like pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun. She wasn't sure where she was going, but she knew what she wanted. Sluts, like mailmen, could not be deterred by rain.

 

[crookedletter]

It was a dark and stormy night. Sally Ann Mueller, sporting a 22 inch waist and 38 DD rocket-shaped breasts augmented by a much-lauded cosmetic surgeon from Beverly Hills four years earlier, stepped out her front door, nude, rain pelting her skin like pellets from a 12-gauge shotgun. She wasn't sure where she was going, but she knew what she wanted. Sluts, like mailmen, could not be deterred by rain.

Sometimes when you load up enough pitfalls and cliches it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I'd read the shit out of this story.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

Sometimes when you load up enough pitfalls and cliches it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. I'd read the shit out of this story.

There is such a thing as "so bad it's good".

 

[TheLobster]

Have you checked the popularity of the name "Donald" in the United States lately?

It's not in the top 200 for either this decade or the one prior. It does make it to #18 in the century list, though.

 

[RetroFan]

A lot of the examples on this thread remind me of the much maligned 'Madame Web' film from 2024 and criticisms of its dialogue, especially when Cassie Webb says 'He was in the Amazon with my Mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.'

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Agreed, some world-building details can definitely fall under the "Kill your darlings" purview. You've done the work, fleshed out the world, decided what kind of political system runs it, what the currency exchanges are, what languages two neighboring countries use and how they differ. Now you have to ask: regardless of how pleased you are with all those details, how much does the reader actually need to know to inhabit this world? The answer is often less than a writer might be tempted to include.

Definitely a kill your darlings situation.
It's easy to get caught up in the fun of world building and lose sight of what you're actually writing about.

 

[AG31]

This topic meant for things you see in stories (your own or someone else's) that you think other writers should try not to do. Could be infelicitous words, usage mistakes, misleading typos, or anything else.

My first example is from a story on the New list. I'm not trying to mock the author, so I'm going to change a couple of words, but this is the gist.



No real person I've met would say, "... the local community college." They'd say, "I go to Devon County Community College."

Maybe worth mentioning that the community college never comes up in the story. It's in that little unnecessary pseudo-autobiography bit at the beginning

I'm not fond of the, "First person but not addressed to anyone" style, either, but that phrase in the very first line blew me right out of the story.

Well, I think I might take issue here. If this is "First person but not addressed to anyone," then it's addressed to the reader, and if it doesn't come up again, it only serves to tell us his relative educational niche Edit: or their age. Thanks @Bazzle. No need to name the college for that purpose. "local community college" will do. If he was talking to an actual person, then yeah. You'd have a point.

 

[AG31]

In a yet-to-be-published series, one of the male characters is black, but I did not mention that fact until about halfway through the story. A beta-reader commented that this had thrown her out of the moment, which was a fair comment. Since then, I have tried to describe each character as early as possible.

I think your first approach is a salutary practice that has cropped up in the last five or ten years. We need to get to a place in our culture where we're not thrown when we don't know right away whether or not a person is black. It should be as incidental as hair color. It's skin color. A variation on this is to describe a person as having dark or very dark skin. No explanation about whether it's Latino dark or African dark. It's just dark.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Overuse of cute tricks in dialogue — something I tend to do. Lots of ums, uhs, ellipses, dropping letters, etc. I've cut back on it a decent amount, because if all the characters talk like that, it kinda loses some of its impact, which is to make dialogue distinct. I still use it a lot though, just not a hell of a lot

 

[AG31]

If I can't pronounce it, I won't remember it, and I won't care about the character.

Right. If they're going to give a character an ambiguous name, they should find a way to tell us how to pronounce it!!!!!

 

[AG31]

I'll bite.

Avoid using words like "infelicitous". Making a reader stop and go to a dictionary to find out what the word means takes them out of your story. Both "inappropriate" and "awkward" are fine words.

Lots of my favorite authors write using words that I find felicitous.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Well, I think I might take issue here. If this is "First person but not addressed to anyone," then it's addressed to the reader, and if it doesn't come up again, it only serves to tell us his relative educational niche Edit: or their age. Thanks @Bazzle. No need to name the college for that purpose. "local community college" will do. If he was talking to an actual person, then yeah. You'd have a point.

But it doesn’t necessarily tell you their age....
Plenty of people go to college later in life.
I had a guy in his 50s in one of my accounting classes in college. He was older than the Professor.