Things you should maybe avoid

[AG31]

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.

OK. But it does tell you something about his educational niche. And, if its a guy in his 50's, and the point is his age, he'd probably say, "even though I'm in my 50's." It would say something about his initiative. It would be interesting.

 

[MrPixel]

I had a guy in his 50s in one of my accounting classes in college. He was older than the Professor.

I was older than the professor in the orchestra conducting class I took by 20 years.

 

[RetroFan]

For the most part the writers on this site - including myself - are amateurs, writing our stories in the time around work and other commitments, often self-editing or writing in genres where we lack experience. It is understandable that things go wrong from time to time. But it is much harder to explain how such awful, cringe-inducing things end up in the final product of high-profile movies, TV shows and professionally published books when sighted by numerous people in the production stages.

For example, the now infamous line in 'The Rise of Skywalker' by Poe Dameron of 'Somehow, Palpatine returned.' This line was written by a professional screenwriter, and would have been sighted by editors, producers and directors before it was filmed, and then watched and reviewed in post production. Yet somehow in a movie with a huge production budget and in a franchise worth millions, this got past everyone and ended up in the final cut of the movie released to cinemas.

 

[Britva415]

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

Well, exactly.

A character doesn't need any more depth than the actual plot calls for. If there is a depthy detail that the plot requires, it will come out.

Depth doesn't matter if nothing happens which dredges it up.

 

[forgotmyantidepressants]

If there is a depthy detail that the plot requires, it will come out.

I agree. I just think it takes time for a writer to figure out where and when to sprinkle in the spicy details.

 

[Britva415]

If this is "First person but not addressed to anyone," then it's addressed to the reader

Except that sometimes it isn't. I have literally had AH authors say exactly that to me: It's not addressed to anyone. It's just a recording, which the author is omnisciently privy to, of the character's internal experience. The character isn't intentional about representing that experience to anyone else.

It's a situation where they either don't believe or don't want to admit that it really is a penthouse letter, but they don't want to do the mental exercise of letting the narrative show who the addressee is and why the narrator (the character) is addressing the story to them.

That is a separate matter from when it's the author addressing the reader while their intention is that the narrator addresses no one. The "stream-of-somebody-else's-consciousness" thing can be done, but it's not often done well.

 

[Britva415]

I prefer descriptions that add a *sense* of depth.

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

Very nice.

 

[MajorRewrite]

I’ve shared this before but it’s worth repeating. Definitely avoid ...

I used the term “dick snot” one time in my first story! I thought it was funny; readers did not. One commenter wrote:

”if you ever refer to ejaculate as 'dick snot' again I will hunt you down and take a sledgehammer to your keyboard”

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I’ve shared this before but it’s worth repeating. Definitely avoid ...

I used the term “dick snot” one time in my first story! I thought it was funny; readers did not. One commenter wrote:

”if you ever refer to ejaculate as 'dick snot' again I will hunt you down and take a sledgehammer to your keyboard”

Well, you definitely had an effect on your readers.

 

[Zootonius]

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.

An advantage of using an omniscient narrator. They can say "Hector started attending the local community college last fall." I use the trick to solve a couple things, like Lit's 18+ rule, I've set the age. And often in answering the question "why is Hector still living at home?"

 

[AG31]

Well, exactly.

A character doesn't need any more depth than the actual plot calls for. If there is a depthy detail that the plot requires, it will come out.

Depth doesn't matter if nothing happens which dredges it up.

I disagree. I want a book with characters that I want to spend time with. The plot is important, but not as important as the characters.

 

[Britva415]

I disagree. I want a book with characters that I want to spend time with. The plot is important, but not as important as the characters.

Sure, there is an extent to which it's a matter of taste. Characters who don't do anything, though, isn't a story.

A plot-characterized character can be very engrossing. A slice of life can characterize a character, too, but, speaking for myself, if I wanted to spend time with slices of life instead of with a story, I'd pick a different activity or art medium besides reading stories.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Damn. After only a month, I'm about 1500 words into my next WIP, and I just finished writing a scene where the FMC and MMC get cockblocked by their kid waking up in the middle of the night and asking for a drink of water. Time to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch.

Eh, that could work depending on what's surrounding it. If it's makeup sex or some kind of sex important to the plot, I'd probably keep reading to see if they get back to it.

 

[lc69hunter]

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 am using an experienced writer as an editor for the first time. These are the kind of things he is teaching me. I have already incorporated many changes and am working on the rest (between working at my real job).

 

[Stanfield2025]

Avoid info dumps. Especially in the opening paragraphs. It doesn't matter if it's a description of the really cool fantasy world you built or the tragic backstory of your main character. A little exposition here and there is honestly necessary at times, but when it starts to feel like a history lesson or a biography I typically close the tab.

I've seen a huge infodump done well, but it was in the tail end of the story and the whole story was structured around said infodump. I used the same method and it came out fine. But it's definitely not something I plan to do again.

 

[Stanfield2025]

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.

Yep. Not every worldbuilding element needs to be laundered into the story somehow.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

An advantage of using an omniscient narrator. They can say "Hector started attending the local community college last fall." I use the trick to solve a couple things, like Lit's 18+ rule, I've set the age. And often in answering the question "why is Hector still living at home?"

I attended community college at 16, though. (I hated high school so much, I found a loophole in the law and just switched to college.)

 

[EmilyMiller]

Making a reader stop and go to a dictionary to find out what the word means takes them out of your story.

A certain type of reader, I agree.

Other types (me included) squeal in delight at the opportunity to learn a new word. How hard is it - even on a phone, FFS - to highlight a word and hold your finger on it? These are little treasures to be discovered.

My stories tend to be more popular with the second group than the first.

I really clearly as a child reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and constantly looking up words and place names. I loved every second of it.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I disagree. I want a book with characters that I want to spend time with. The plot is important, but not as important as the characters.

To help with Britva's point, if one launders certain details into the story without those details being relevant, there's a good chance those details will come off as forced or inauthentic.

 

[FrancesScott]

That's right up there with, "When I went home for the summer vacation, yap yap yap, blah blah blah," and five hundred words of tedious and irrelevant info dump follow. I'm out of those stories even before the end of the first paragraph. There are worse beginnings, but not many.

When I came back from the East Coast in Spring, I felt that I wanted the World to be a simpler place. A safer place, away from the riotous emotional trauma that had left me with a heart that was in urgent need of reassembly. That is, assuming that all its pieces could even be located with any surety.

It was the first warm day, and the daffodils and crocuses were beginning to advertise their vibrant arrival. With the Sun bright in a flawless, azure sky, I'd determined to take a trip out to Mezny's. It wasn't far, and everyone who was anyone said that they made the best ice cream in the state. With the crystallIne lens of retrospection, there was also an, at the time barely acknowledged, element of revivifying my younger days. Quite simply, it had been one of my favorite things to do when growing up in the area.

 

[Britva415]

Yep. Not every worldbuilding element needs to be laundered into the story somehow.

I like the "laundering" idea. I agree that not every bit has to be, but, to me, every worldbuilding element that IS in the story somehow should be laundered into it. That's the "somehow." Not just spammed in a big, story-interrupting and unnecessary slab.

Huge amounts of illicit cash are dubious. A stream of legitimate-looking cash is not. Laundering is how it's made to look legitimate - as if it's there for a reason and serving a purpose other than just accumulating unlikely amounts of cash.

Laundering the world-building - I like the concept. One can generate a large amount of world-building, ideally in the form of notes, but to get it into the story, a bit at a time and for good reasons is my favorite method. Paced and justified.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I like the "laundering" idea. I agree that not every bit has to be, but, to me, every worldbuilding element that IS in the story somehow should be laundered into it. That's the "somehow." Not just spammed in a big, story-interrupting and unnecessary slab.

Huge amounts of illicit cash are dubious. A stream of legitimate-looking cash is not. Laundering is how it's made to look legitimate - as if it's there for a reason and serving a purpose other than just accumulating unlikely amounts of cash.

Laundering the world-building - I like the concept. One can generate a large amount of world-building, ideally in the form of notes, but to get it into the story, a bit at a time and for good reasons is my favorite method. Paced and justified.

Yep. I 100% agree with this. Fleshes out the concept of laundering worldbuilding well.

 

[Writer61]

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.

I agree in principle, but I think the problem is that in a story, some readers begin to build a mental image of the character, which needs to be rebuilt when it is later revealed that they are a dwarf, have a leg missing, whatever.

 

[AG31]

To help with Britva's point, if one launders certain details into the story without those details being relevant, there's a good chance those details will come off as forced or inauthentic.

The details can be relevant to your understanding of a character, not necessarily the plot.

 

[AG31]

Would someone explain "laundering" as it's being used in this thread? Is it a known term among authors?