# What Ticks You Off?



## DragonOfTheAerie

I'm really bored, and there hasn't been much discussion lately, so i'm going to try and get some angry ranting started. That's fun. (Friendly, tasteful angry ranting. Not the bad kind.) 

I want to know what ticks you off. Specifically, what's something writers do in fantasy stories (be it ideas, character development, writing style...anything that goes into a book) that you CAN'T STAND. Cliches you hate. Character types you're tired of seeing. Writing style gimmicks that make you want to pull your hair out. Trends that need to die, like, yesterday. Most of all, the expectations that have basically swallowed the entire genre in one gulp and no one dares to question. 

It's my theory that we all have this one thing that really, deeply bothers us, in the fantasy genre--and in fact it's part of why we write. I know that a lot of my motivation to write fantasy stories comes from the need to subvert the things that i can't stand in books i read. 

I'll get some things started:

-Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!) 

-Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...

-Main characters always being completely gorgeous and when they get scarred, it only makes them look cooler! Weird special eye/hair colors! Maybe this is just a YA problem, but in YA is is completely epidemic. It shouldn't be surprising, since teenagers are generally so obsessed with ideals of beauty. But all the same...Purple eyes? Gold eyes? Even green eyes shouldn't be as prevalent as they are, only 2% of the world's population has them. Also, not once have i read about a female character in a fantasy book having her face scarred. Fat characters, old characters--nonexistent (except the old mentor or the old healer/wise woman.) Disabled characters? They only exist to be disabled and smile weakly and create pity.

-Elves and dwarves! I know lots of you write about them, so no offense, but i just can't stand them. 

-People peppering their story with every mythical creature that exists, pulling them completely out of context! TvTropes calls this the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, and i LOATHE it. Every creature every dominant culture has ever made up, re-purposed and thrown together into one story. 

-"Strong female characters!" Basically everything the phrase "strong female character" encompasses drives me up a wall. In an effort to make female characters 'strong,' often they have no feelings, can beat up thirty guys at once, are seemingly unable to love or care for anyone, and say rude and snarky things all the time. The alternative seems to be weak, weepy females ready to melt onto the bronzed pectoral muscles of the nearest guy. Our ideas of strength (and women) are screwed up. 

Come on, join in. Ranting is good for the soul.


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## FifthView

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> -Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...



Hah that's a good one.  Do you know what I think it is?  People have been hammered over the head so hard, so often, that they are supposed to show not tell.  Can't say, "He was happy."  So the faux-show:  "His eyes lit up with happiness."  (With the added bonus of an active verb.)

Well okay, eyes are the windows to the soul, right?  I think I have seen anger, happiness, sadness in eyes, lots of times.  But maybe it's just a shortcut in the way this is sometimes used.  Truth is, I've never been bothered by it, that I can remember.


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## skip.knox

The eyes thing doesn't bother me either. We don't just read eyes, we read the entire person. It's the little muscles around the eyes, the set of the mouth, the angle of the head, the posture of the body, all of that feeds into it, but humans naturally focus on the eyes. So the whole of the read gets compressed into "his eyes smoldered" or whatever. Ain't no thang.

I confess I find little to rant about in writing. That's not to say there aren't things that put me off; it's just that my reaction is much, much worse than getting angry. I close the book.


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## FifthView

Ok, I'll add my own.

When some lower level brute or bad guy—a jailer, a henchman of the villain, a thug on the street, an enemy soldier—having gained the advantage (usually as captor) is shown to be bad by making crude sex-related threats.  What he'll do to the MC.  How he'll do it.  With slobbers and licking his lips and a half-sneer, half-smile and a meaningful look—he's someone who will probably do it given the time and opportunity.


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## Ireth

*coughs nervously, as I am guilty of a few of the things Dragon hates*

What I can't stand is:

- People being described in the third person with awkward descriptors rather than their name or pronoun, during sections from said character's POV. Ex. "Aimhirghin raised his pipes to his lips with a sigh and played a summoning tune; the blond Fae prince was craving company."

- Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.

- People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?

- People being able to stand and walk on prosthesis immediately after amputation (yes, I'm looking at you, How to Train Your Dragon movie!). That stuff takes TIME.

- The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).

- Races / species that are homogenously evil.

- The idea that if a woman enjoys feminine things like dresses, she can't be badass. And vice-versa.

- Female MCs whose only "flaw" is being clumsy.

That's all I can think of for now... there may be more in the future.


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## Snowpoint

Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I couldn't  read past that.

I also hate elves and dwarves as fantasy races. Elves are just pretty humans, dwarves are just short humans. Everyone tries to put their own spin on these guys when they should just make something new.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

-Characters whose only flaw is having a short temper. A temper is to the Gary Stu (alternatively named the Marty Stu) as clumsiness is the Mary Sue.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Snowpoint said:


> Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I could read past that.
> 
> I also hate elves and dwarves as fantasy races. Elves are just pretty humans, dwarves are just short humans. Everyone tries to put their own spin on these guys when they should just make something new.



Hey, my book contains slavery *sniff* 

The inclusion of slavery in societies is pretty realistic, actually, since it existed in some form in practically every major civilization. What bothers me is when "good" civilizations don't have slavery and other civilizations do to show that they're "bad" and "evil."


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## Snowpoint

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Hey, my book contains slavery *sniff*
> 
> The inclusion of slavery in societies is pretty realistic, actually, since it existed in some form in practically every major civilization. What bothers me is when "good" civilizations don't have slavery and other civilizations do to show that they're "bad" and "evil."



The part that makes it bad is when all the white characters turn to the audience to tell me that they hate slavery.


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## FifthView

In some of the fantasy m/m books I've read, there's the use of slavery and/or torture of one of the romantic duo to create a sort of helpless-needs-rescuing dynamic, amped up x100, and the other partner in a near hysteria trying to rescue him.   I've quickly grown to hate this common plot point.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Ireth said:


> *coughs nervously, as I am guilty of a few of the things Dragon hates*
> 
> What I can't stand is:
> 
> - People being described in the third person with awkward descriptors rather than their name or pronoun, during sections from said character's POV. Ex. "Aimhirghin raised his pipes to his lips with a sigh and played a summoning tune; the blond Fae prince was craving company."
> 
> - Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.
> 
> - People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?
> 
> - People being able to stand and walk on prosthesis immediately after amputation (yes, I'm looking at you, How to Train Your Dragon movie!). That stuff takes TIME.
> 
> - The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).
> 
> - Races / species that are homogenously evil.
> 
> - The idea that if a woman enjoys feminine things like dresses, she can't be badass. And vice-versa.
> 
> - Female MCs whose only "flaw" is being clumsy.
> 
> That's all I can think of for now... there may be more in the future.



I agree with you on every point here, so don't feel bad  

The races/species being homogenously evil--this is so the MC's can fight and be badass and fulfill the reader's hero fantasies without bringing up moral conflict or any of the reality of war and killing. Just laziness, really. 

DONT DISS HTTYD IT IS PERFECT AND TOOTHLESS IS MY BABY okay you have a point here. This makes me think of another: 

-Heroes healing from wounds supernaturally quickly without any lasting effects from the injury! I hate reading about characters getting serious, life-threatening wounds, getting arrows pulled out of them, getting stabbed in the shoulder...and then they heal in like a week and are just the same as before. It seems to me that with medieval technology levels wounds might never heal properly. I've read books where a character gets a wound and a week later it's like the wound was never there. Even a minor cut takes a week to fully heal.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

Snowpoint said:


> The part that makes it bad is when all the white characters turn to the audience to tell me that they hate slavery.



Oh. I hate that one. 

-Main characters having modern viewpoints on things like slavery, even if no one around them does!


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## glutton

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> -"Strong female characters!" Basically everything the phrase "strong female character" encompasses drives me up a wall. In an effort to make female characters 'strong,' often they have no feelings, can beat up thirty guys at once, are seemingly unable to love or care for anyone, and say rude and snarky things all the time.



Mine tend to be able to beat up thirty guys at once, but I don't like the overused no feelings/rude and snarky stereotype. It often makes them come off as insecure tryhards trying to come off as tough instead of badasses who are truly confident in themselves.


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## skip.knox

The objections so far are almost all about plot devices. DragonOfTheAerie (whose monker significantly collapses to DOTA) started out talking about specific writing devices.

I have yet to read any book written in the present tense that did not drive me nuts, nor could I find any reason, earthly or unearthly, why it could not have been done better in past tense.

I can accept first person, but if that's combined with present tense, the author has exactly one strike left. They usually take a called third strike by page ten.

Stories in which the author decides arbitrary, non-phonetic spelling, coupled with the flagrant abuse of punctuation, is the sweet spot of originality. On my tombstone it will be written, "he died from a surfeit of hyphens"

Stories in which the author decides to play Fun with Dialog Tags. This includes the bizarre sub-species that uses no dialog tags whatsoever. I don't mind you want to be clever, just don't do it in my fantasy novel. If I want e e cummings, I know where to find him. toujours gai, archie

Harshest of all is this: beautiful language. I long for it. I pay cash money for it. But its tricksy, it is. Get it right and you sweep me off my feet. Get it wrong and you drop me on my head. And I cannot for the life of me explain how to do the one or avoid the other.


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## FifthView

There are some exceptions, but as a rule:

I hate extended dream/delusion/psychic voyage sequences.

I hate extended flashbacks.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

-Basically all flashbacks longer than 2-3 sentences! The ones that are pages long that come right at the beginning make me want to set the book on fire.


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## Garren Jacobsen

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Oh. I hate that one.
> 
> -Main characters having modern viewpoints on things like slavery, even if no one around them does!



Ah, but there are many examples of people in the real world that were, shall we say, advanced for their time on views like slavery, Alexander Hamilton springs immediately to mind and he was very much in the minority.

In any event, I hate it, hate it, when an MC flagrantly violates the law in front of like all the witnesses and there is no repurcussions for him. No bad opinions, no arrests, no warrants, nothing. It drives me up a wall.

The other thing I hate is when something is set in the real world and the person just blows it on their research. (No dear hypothetical book that is not how a gun works).

Finally, and this is big for me, ham fisted reference that doesn't fit within the world. (Looking at you Inheritance with your raxacoriphalipatorious bs.)


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## glutton

My personal peeve would be female characters (often the secondary 'lead' after a male MC) who are introduced as being awesome, but then fall to the wayside and lose relevance.


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## La Volpe

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> -Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)



Well, I don't think there are that many that focus solely on European culture anymore these days. But it's not like fantasy based on other cultures are more original. All ideas are already taken. It's what we do with them that matters, no?



> -Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...



Eh, no. The eyes are one of the most important parts in reading emotion. In fact, you can read off emotions pretty accurately based on the eyes. The eyelids moving, the eyebrows, pupil dilation etc. If I could pick only one spot to look at to judge emotion, I'd choose the eyes. It's not about colour changing (I don't think I've ever seen anyone mention that in a book).



Ireth said:


> - Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.



While this is pretty annoying to read about, it's pretty realistic too. People do really stupid things when they're in love.



> - People always slicing open their palms when they need blood for a ritual. Palms have a crap-ton of nerve endings and the skin, muscle and bone are constantly stretching, moving, pulling. That's just a recipe for pain and hindrance. Why not pick something like the back of one's arm instead?



Agreed. Slicing your palm is not a smart move.



> - The idea that a character having any form of disability automatically equates to "this character is helpless". A disability should by all means impact how the character acts or sees the world, but they should have strengths in other areas (and not simply magical powers that negate the disability altogether).



A few people mentioned this, but I don't think I've ever read that in a fantasy novel before. Am I just reading the wrong (right?) ones?



> - Races / species that are homogenously evil.



Evil is a subjective term. One person's evil is another person's good. Ergo, a race of orcs might seem evil to humans, but they probably don't think of themselves as evil. So having the entire race (on average, since I'm sure there'll be outliers) be seen as evil by the protagonists isn't all that far-fetched. In fact, it's pretty natural. A very different culture will have very different values etc.



Snowpoint said:


> Slavery. I hate reading about it in Fantasy Books. Slavery is Bad, I already agree with you. You have nothing new or interesting to say on the topic. Just stop. I put down Mistborn after page 7 because of this. May memory of this maybe different from reality, but from my POV the MC says to a slave "Have you ever tried *not* being a slave." I couldn't  read past that.



Slavery/oppression of a class is probably one of the most common occurrences in the history of mankind. It'd be pretty weird for a culture not to have any history of slavery or oppression. And most fantasy books are set in the age where such things are more common (i.e. widespread poverty, frequent battles and wars between countries, and conquests).



Devouring Wolf said:


> -Happy enslaved creatures. I love a good dragon riding story, but I can't stand it when dragons willing become the servants of humans. No, having a dragon get to choose who will be their rider does not make it any better. Try replacing "dragon" with "slave" and "rider" with "master" you'll see why its so screwed up. Dragon's are awesome creatures, they shouldn't willingly give up their personal agency.



Are we talking about intelligent creatures here? Or normal, run-of-the-mill creatures? In the case of regular creatures/animals, it's pretty common, especially if they have a pack mentality, that they might thrive on having a hierarchy. E.g. a dog is happier when it has an alpha in the pack telling it what to do. And a human can take that spot. But even without this, taming is a pretty refined and effective art, especially if years of breeding has domesticated said creature.

If we're talking intelligent creatures, there is still a pretty good chance that it would go without too many hassles, specifically if the creatures are trained like this from birth. They don't know any better. Though I'd expect a larger margin of rebellion, depending on how much freedom they're allowed.


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## AElisabet

I agree with a lot that has already been said, but here is my take on some of the most common "peeves" that I share with others:

*European Based Fantasy*:  Honestly, I love a _good_ European based setting, one that really understands what drives European mythologies and/or the medieval world, or that puts an interesting spin on it.  Tolkien, GRRM, and Naomi Novik's recent novel _Uprooted_ I think are all examples of this.  I don't think I could ever get sick of European based fantasy.

On the other hand, I get really agitated at _poorly_ done European based settings.  Just using a vaguely medieval setting for the backdrop of swords and castles without any respect, exploration, or new insight into the sources peeves me.  

And two sub-peeves are poorly done pseudo-norse/viking settings and superficial "Churches".  These things can be done well, but often they are not.

*So-Called 'Strong Female Characters'*:  I love great, complex female characters, of all kinds.  But rejecting dresses, marriage, babies, and girly things does not automatically equal strength.  Some of the bravest things I have ever done include getting married and having children.  Love requires strength and courage. 

While I love a well written warrior woman like Brienne of Tarth, I hate rejecting "girl things" and/or family life as a cheap shorthand for "strength" in a female character.


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## valiant12

> -Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)
> 
> -Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! .
> 
> -Main characters always being completely gorgeous and when they get scarred, it only makes them look cooler!
> 
> -Elves and dwarves! I know lots of you write about them, so no offense, but i just can't stand them.
> 
> -People peppering their story with every mythical creature that exists, pulling them completely out of context!
> 
> -"Strong female characters!" Basically everything the phrase "strong female character" encompasses drives me up a wall. In an effort to make female characters 'strong,' often they have no feelings, can beat up thirty guys at once, are seemingly unable to love or care for anyone, and say rude and snarky things all the time.



Im gilty of all of these with the exception of MC's sexy scars and "Strong female characters!".

What I dislike ?



> - Characters pining after love interests who are CLEARLY bad/dangerous for them (*cough*BellaSwan*cough*) even when they are told such in no uncertain terms.



This. Unfortunately it is somewhat realistic. 

Also  I don't like Adults Are Useless - TV Tropes

I don't like races where everybody is good and benevolent and beautiful and peacefull.

I don't like pre industrial societies living on their own planet and having supposedly unique culture having the same beauty standards as 21 century earth.


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## Russ

Got a lot of them.

Explanation points cheese me off.

95% of prologues.

Farm boys who are the chosen one and become great sword fighters very quickly.

Villains who talk too much.  

Fiction that is too comforting.

Could go on and on...


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## Ireth

Russ said:


> Fiction that is too comforting.



What do you mean by this?


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## Holoman

I don't have many things that annoy me in fiction, but these are a few.

- Boring things happening with no conflict, especially at the start of stories. You need to be cleverer and find a better way to let me know how things were before and get me straight into the action

- Rape. Having the villain rape someone just makes me cringe, it always comes across as contrived to me

- Characters that you _know_ are powerful enough to do something, but for some weak reason they "cant", until of course things get so bad that they finally relent and use their super dangerous power.

- Typos - I'm amazed how many I find, can't remember the last time I read a book without one

Other than that, I'm pretty forgiving. I don't mind tropes and stuff.


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## Peat

People who complain about tropes and cliches  Okay, sure, they're not in the actual books, but I swear I read more people complaining about the cliches than I do the actual cliche...

Hmm.

Fiction That Is Dark For the Sake of Being Dark -

In the words of Le Guin:

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” 


Not a lot of time for the use of present tense either.


I very much dislike books that try to do too much too quickly. 95% of the time that an author has big action scenes or discusses big setting things before establishing their characters, I put the book down.



I don't really have many dislikes. As long as the author has a decent voice, decent characters and a decent story, I don't really care what else they do. If they don't have those things, nothing on earth will save them. And I believe its possible for something to be completely unrealistic and remain interesting, or something I've seen a thousand times and still remain interesting. Maybe I'm very forgiving.



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> -Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)



Getting other cultures right is very, very hard and getting them wrong gets you criticised, with reason. Its not as simple as going "Balls to NW Europe" - not that borrowing heavily from other cultures is all that original these days anyway.


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## Russ

Ireth said:


> What do you mean by this?



I don't enjoy fiction that is just there to support or reinforce the status quo.  I think fiction should push a reader to think about things, to reconsider aspects of themselves, their culture or their society.  Good fiction can be transformational or at least have the power to make you a little bit uncomfortable about something that matters.


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## FifthView

—Short, random scenes thrown in only to show some aspect of a character. (Somewhat rare.  But a recent download from Amazon, of an indie naturally, had this.  Early in the book, the scenes cover only a few minutes of the narrative—just enough to show the MC grumbling about something or to have the MC react in a particular way to something.  Then it's skip to the next scene with the MC, which probably occurs less than an hour later in the narrative, where some new aspect will be shown.  It's a kind of stuttering; there's no flow in the narrative and actually no sequels to those scenes.)

—Long passages printed in italics.  I'm talking, 2+ pages.  The longer, the worse.

—Starting an excessive number of sentences with conjunctions, presumably in an effort to heighten tension and/or to make what's being described seem stark or of Great Significance™.

—Anachronistic language.

—Characters in a fantasy milieu who speak in the modern idiom.  Basic, plain English is fine.  But don't tell me that another character is a "dork."  (See above re: anachronistic language.)

—Long lists during description.  Okay, I remember the poet Auden mentioning in an essay somewhere that he liked that sort of thing.  But I don't.  GRRM's lists of banners and houses present led to glazing over of the eyes and skimming forward for me.


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## Caged Maiden

Sorry I haven't read all the posts fully, but I wanted to put mine in before we moved on. I promise to come back and read them all fully.

*Inconsistency/ Character 180**
I read a book a couple years ago for our MS book club, and the thing I HATED about it was that the MC was a pillaging, raping, murderer...which I was okay with...and then he saw a beautiful woman and became obsessed with her and how "different" she was. Okay, I'll buy that she was pretty, or a princess, and therefore an attractive mate for societal reasons, maybe. But what I will not buy is that a character who wantonly commits acts of violence (especially sexual violence against nameless random women), is somehow interested in loving a demure girl because he thinks she's cute. Either make the character consistently immoral, or tone that shit down and make him a lover. What a mess. I didn't buy the next book because I knew it was going to have a messed up romance in it that would redeem him in some way? OMG, falling in love doesn't pull a creepy dude back from the dark side. HA!


*You are your career, nothing more
*Another thing I hate is characters defined by a single circumstance Say, their race (like the inherently evil orc, for example), or the mercenary soldier who must obviously be a gruff brute and abuser...because that's how all mercenaries are, right? OMG! No! Don't define a character based on a single stereotype. Make them unique! Sure, make him/ her a mercenary...but think about WHY they became such. Did they have a talent that made them perfect for the job though they didn't particularly want to do it? Did they get dragged into their career (any career...insert herbalist, priest, or anything short of a hereditary title like KING here, because they're all equally offensive if it's ALL the character's about)? Did they strive for the chosen career against the odds of their success? I think all characters need to have a good background, a reason to have become who they are. The reader doesn't necessarily need to know all the WHYs of it all, but the writer should understand the background so they can more convincingly write the present circumstances.


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## FifthView

Caged Maiden said:


> OMG, falling in love doesn't pull a creepy dude back from the dark side. HA!



+10 for this.

Usually, "love" is just another occasion for the creepiness and will even compound it or turn creepiness into true evil.  I put quotes around the word because it's debatable whether the love is actual love.

However, a person can change.  It just takes a lot of work.  (My usual go-to inspiration, the one that always pops immediately to mind, is the slave trader in the movie _The Mission_.)


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## Miskatonic

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm really bored, and there hasn't been much discussion lately, so i'm going to try and get some angry ranting started. That's fun. (Friendly, tasteful angry ranting. Not the bad kind.)
> 
> I want to know what ticks you off. Specifically, what's something writers do in fantasy stories (be it ideas, character development, writing style...anything that goes into a book) that you CAN'T STAND. Cliches you hate. Character types you're tired of seeing. Writing style gimmicks that make you want to pull your hair out. Trends that need to die, like, yesterday. Most of all, the expectations that have basically swallowed the entire genre in one gulp and no one dares to question.
> 
> It's my theory that we all have this one thing that really, deeply bothers us, in the fantasy genre--and in fact it's part of why we write. I know that a lot of my motivation to write fantasy stories comes from the need to subvert the things that i can't stand in books i read.
> 
> I'll get some things started:
> 
> -Fantasy being all European based and about white people! (and when it's not, a thin veneer of another culture is painted on to give it this aura of spice and exoticism, instead of actually trying to step outside the culture you're part of and, i don't know, BE ORIGINAL?!)



You know what ticks me off? Ignorant and idiotic comments like this.


----------



## Ireth

Miskatonic said:


> You know what ticks me off? Ignorant and idiotic comments like this.



Why not just post examples of non-European-based fantasy that you find appealing or well-done, rather than slinging insults at the OP?


----------



## FifthView

Comments can't be idiotic; only, people.  So it's _ad hominem_.  BUT I thought it was a joke in line with the topic, kinda meta.



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm really bored, and there hasn't been much discussion lately, so i'm going to try and get some angry ranting started.



Hope so, I guess.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Miskatonic said:


> You know what ticks me off? Ignorant and idiotic comments like this.



Hurling insults automatically discredits any point you might be able to make. :/


----------



## FifthView

So maybe "this" refers to itself....?  I don't know.


----------



## FifthView

—Unintended ambiguity.

—Heavy-handed obscurity (to represent something mystical, Deep™, and so forth)

[Just to return to topic....]


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

FifthView said:


> So maybe "this" refers to itself....?  I don't know.



if so, shouldn't have used quote (and cut off part of the OP to highlight a particular part)


----------



## Aspasia

Ireth said:


> Why not just post examples of non-European-based fantasy that you find appealing or well-done, rather than slinging insults at the OP?



I haven't been following the thread, but this comment caught my eye. Is there interest in starting a thread for rec'ing/discussing diverse fantasy novels? If so I'd be more than happy to start it & drown you all in recs  I spend the vast majority of my time online discussing diversity in literature. I don't enjoy debates so I usually stay out of those kinds of discussions here. But I'd be more than happy to run a rec & friendly discussion thread. 

On-topic, I sometimes get annoyed with how easily everyone trusts one another in fantasy. Were I an average young farmboy, I'd be super suspicious of the random old dude claiming I need to run away with him from my entire community because I'm the only one that can save the world from a formless, vague evil. Maybe this is why I like low fantasy better than high fantasy at most times--thieves and assassins are rarely so trusting of one another!


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Aspasia said:


> I haven't been following the thread, but this comment caught my eye. Is there interest in starting a thread for rec'ing/discussing diverse fantasy novels? If so I'd be more than happy to start it & drown you all in recs  I spend the vast majority of my time online discussing diversity in literature. I don't enjoy debates so I usually stay out of those kinds of discussions here. But I'd be more than happy to run a rec & friendly discussion thread.



Sure, that sounds great! I would be more than happy to participate. I have plenty of thoughts to share.


----------



## Peat

I'd still hold that borrowing/taking wholesale from other cultures is not original and that the glibness of the comment ill-serves just what a sensitive subject it is.

I'd also add that there's a fair number of European cultures that have been far, far less drawn upon for inspiration than a goodly number of non-European cultures. Lumping everything together serves no one well.



FifthView said:


> Comments can't be idiotic; only, people.



Huh?


----------



## Creed

Peat said:


> I'd also add that there's a fair number of European cultures that have been far, far less drawn upon for inspiration than a goodly number of non-European cultures.



Totally agree. I would love it if Eastern Europe fueled more ideas for mainstream fantasy: it's such a vibrant and diverse region of the world. And of course, that is precisely because of its massive history of interacting with different cultures. So take Russia and Bosnia and Georgia as examples of what real-life cultural fusions can look like, and see if our own worlds can form something so interesting. Doesn't really cover the "white people" comment (nor would I necessarily want it to, and besides, any writer worth their salt can figure out a way to fit diversity in a setting if they so desire).

One of my biggest pet peeves includes the "child genius." Makes reading the beginning of books like _The Name of the Wind_ a little difficult for me, especially when the child genius who learns magic super quick suddenly forgets it when it's useful.

I also get thrown off when a POV switch happens and it's not marked by a page break. _The Twilight Reign_ series is guilty of that.

Speaking of which.. That series also suffers from a huge pet peeve of mine: badass syndrome. Every character is amazing. They can dual wield swords, heft massive axes, and use magic powerful enough to kill gods. There's one character who isn't a badass, and she dies.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

And if in hard POV it can say more about that character's interpretation of another. This is one that doesn't bug me.

One of many pet peeves: italicized words for emphasis. Hate it, hate it, hate it. 



FifthView said:


> Hah that's a good one.  Do you know what I think it is?  People have been hammered over the head so hard, so often, that they are supposed to show not tell.  Can't say, "He was happy."  So the faux-show:  "His eyes lit up with happiness."  (With the added bonus of an active verb.)
> 
> Well okay, eyes are the windows to the soul, right?  I think I have seen anger, happiness, sadness in eyes, lots of times.  But maybe it's just a shortcut in the way this is sometimes used.  Truth is, I've never been bothered by it, that I can remember.


----------



## Ireth

Demesnedenoir said:


> One of many pet peeves: italicized words for emphasis. Hate it, hate it, hate it.



Doesn't bother me at all. How would you advise people emphasize their words otherwise? It's not always immediately obvious from sheer context.


----------



## Alile

Aspasia said:


> Were I an average young farmboy, I'd be super suspicious of the random old dude claiming I need to run away with him from my entire community because I'm the only one that can save the world from a formless, vague evil!


Hahaha, you read my mind! It's been done again and again.



> OMG, falling in love doesn't pull a creepy dude back from the dark side. HA!


So true.

Another thing is experiencing things like just crossing a river on foot, the ice cold water, also the all too well known danger of lighting a fire. Other examples are "I survived three years out on this mountain in snow, wearing only a hoodie" and then comes the longest description of the hoodie, not how on earth it's possible. (Arena 1, by Morgan Rice, do not read it, in the same chapter she amongst other improbabilities claims she has been feeding herself and her younger sister for three years mainly by fishing, and still doesn't know anything about how to fish, or how to prepare it or cook it. After three years? Okay...)

To go on, it's really very difficult to walk in a forest! It's so tiring! Why is that never mentioned?

And it really, really hurts to be cut by a knife. To cut yourself in the palm is incredibly stupid unless you are a vampire and will heal immediatly. Next to our eyes I guess we use our hands the most, it's really rather crippling to be cut in the hand or on the fingers. After all my kitchen experiences, I know... Knife cuts really hurts. Pain is not ever well described.

Another thing is how people fight, and how they are barely bruised. "He shrugged it off". If you hit someone so hard on the cheek that they fall over, they could actually be permanently paralyzed by the ear and cheek area and might never regain sensation there. Yes, that's actually happened.


----------



## Peat

Creed said:


> Speaking of which.. That series also suffers from a huge pet peeve of mine: badass syndrome. Every character is amazing. They can dual wield swords, heft massive axes, and use magic powerful enough to kill gods. There's one character who isn't a badass, and she dies.



Conversely, this reminds me of a peeve of mine - no particular series here, just in general - and that's insufficiently imaginative badassery. Once we've had maaaagic in ten thousand sorcerous ways, there's not a whole lot left.

Where's the semi-divine warriors who can leap castle walls with a single bound or have the strength of a dead giant? Forget huge axes, how about swords that are actually bigger than them, or swordsmen who go around fighting with branches to make it interesting. Martial Artists who can kill with a shout, or breathe in and inflate themselves to twice their normal size, or chase down enemy horsemen.

Or even just people who are badass in their mentality without being talented warriors, magicians or thieves.

This could extend to the whole fantasy genre tbh. We have several millennia of history, religion, story and conspiracy to mine for ideas. Our characters can fight commies, can fight Nazis, can fight the British Empire, fight in the Reconquista, fight the Great Khan, or saber tooth tigers in the stone age - either the real thing, or something based upon them. They can be sentient swords, or noble Kirin bearing a great ruler to battle, or a sick Phoenix recounting their life to the peasant children helping to gain wood for the fire that will allow them to regain their health. They could be the builder erecting some great wonder, or the seven year old private eye that works for Santa working out whether kids are naughty or nice.

And on and on and on. So many things.

And yet 80-90pc of fantasy is human thieves, warriors and mages engaged in epic theological wars based in a vague pastiche of a thousand years of North-West European history with a healthy dollop of Arabia and the Far East thrown in. Italy becomes an honourable member of NW Europe for the purpose of this. D&D writ large.

I'm not complaining too loud - I'm certainly not about to change it - but it is all a bit giggle-worthy.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

If your prose doesn't make its point without this trick... Simple, you don't. Period. To me, it's like a screenplay giving direction to the director or to the actor. Mind you, I won't stop reading because of italicized words if they are very few (Sanderson pushes my tolerance... hard), but I still hate them. Generally speaking, italicized words for emphasis are as lame and intrusive as ALL CAPS. 



Ireth said:


> Doesn't bother me at all. How would you advise people emphasize their words otherwise? It's not always immediately obvious from sheer context.


----------



## Ban

The Chosen one being some young angsty teenager who is somehow good at everything and liked by everyone.

Surprisingly many characters like that out there. Might also be why I hated young adult fiction even as a 12 year old.


----------



## glutton

Peat said:


> Where's the semi-divine warriors who can leap castle walls with a single bound or have the strength of a dead giant? Forget huge axes, how about swords that are actually bigger than them, or swordsmen who go around fighting with branches to make it interesting. Martial Artists who can kill with a shout, or breathe in and inflate themselves to twice their normal size, or chase down enemy horsemen.



I have pretty close to that, my more over-the-top heroines have feats like taking down Godzilla-sized monsters solo with nonmagical weapons, deflecting gatling gun fire with a weapon, tanking automatic gunfire from mechas, smashing said mechas with again melee weapons, walking off being bathed in stone melting dragonfire, drenched in acid, skyscraper-height falls, city-shaking explosions, and being impaled in countless ways, resisting Dark Lord-level magic and possession with sheer willpower (like one carrying around the soul of the 'evil emperor' inside herself and mostly keeping him under control... after she killed him), cleaving apart ancient mystical artifacts with mundane blades, powering through barriers strong enough to keep a minor deity at bay, and on and on lol. One of them wields a hammer with a solid steel head bigger than her torso, another a 5' long 20 lb one handed sword with an alchemically strengthened lead core; the second of those almost chases down a fleeing chariot while having two giant weapons stuck through her torso... etc. One is the protector of a herd of sauropods she befriended from a predator of sauropods lol. And they have human rivals who can match them so they're not the only ones on that level.

And they aren't powered by magic although some of them can cast spells but that tends to be secondary to their physical prowess, which is only explained as being due to a combination of training, talent and uhhh one could infer super-estrogen/testosterone in the case of males XD


----------



## skip.knox

I agree with Demesnedenoir about italics and will go further, on two points. One, using typography to create emphasis is a parlor trick. Every writer should learn to write without using a single typographic trick, exclamation points included. Once the disciplined has been learned, then the writer will be allowed to use whatever she or he wishes, for by that time the writer will have little need of the device. 

Two, the italic font already has a typographic function in prose. It signifies internal dialog. So using it for emphasis is simply incorrect.


----------



## Ireth

skip.knox said:


> I agree with Demesnedenoir about italics and will go further, on two points. One, using typography to create emphasis is a parlor trick. Every writer should learn to write without using a single typographic trick, exclamation points included. Once the disciplined has been learned, then the writer will be allowed to use whatever she or he wishes, for by that time the writer will have little need of the device.



No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

I suspect this means outside of quotes. !'s in the prose itself, much like ?'s, can be frowned upon, but I think some of this depends on POV also, as well as target age. In the book self-editing for writers, the ? & ! (if I recall correctly) are listed as things an agent/editor might glance at as an indicator of writing to pass on. This does not include quotes... except! Even when quoting you wouldn't want to use too many !'s! Overuse turns them into pointless marks! In the prose, !'s can be eliminated completely (or at the minimum mostly so) while ?'s may be rewritten as observations that naturally raise the question.

In general, these won't bug me as much as italics, unless overused. But they are often an indicator of a writer with habits I won't care for. Italics for emphasis will bug me first time, every time.



Ireth said:


> No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.


----------



## emmarowene

Okay, I have a big thing. I'm not sure how to name it, really, but it's something I still see in popular fantasy today (though I think we're moving away from it). I call it the dudebro's fantasy MC. I just recently read a book by a popular fantasy author (no naming names) where, in just the *first chapter*, the main character singlehandedly defeated fifteen goblins, stole a treasure chest full of gold from a prince (which...don't tell me that wouldn't be too heavy to carry away in a pinch), and then seduced the prince's wife (I believe the phrases "swoon" and "heaving breasts" were used). Usually it's better disguised than this, but there are SO MANY fantasy books with this infallible main character.


----------



## valiant12

> I call it the dudebro's fantasy MC. ...........



I don't see nothing wrong with writing for primarily male demographic.


----------



## Holoman

Demesnedenoir said:


> I suspect this means outside of quotes. !'s in the prose itself, much like ?'s, can be frowned upon, but I think some of this depends on POV also, as well as target age. In the book self-editing for writers, the ? & ! (if I recall correctly) are listed as things an agent/editor might glance at as an indicator of writing to pass on. This does not include quotes... except! Even when quoting you wouldn't want to use too many !'s! Overuse turns them into pointless marks! In the prose, !'s can be eliminated completely (or at the minimum mostly so) while ?'s may be rewritten as observations that naturally raise the question.
> 
> In general, these won't bug me as much as italics, unless overused. But they are often an indicator of a writer with habits I won't care for. Italics for emphasis will bug me first time, every time.



Wait, you shouldn't use question marks in prose? Even for thoughts?


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Thoughts are inner monologue quotes, question marks are necessary where they're necessary. The trick is, a lot of narrator voice questions can be better expressed, IMO, through a rearrangement of prose. As with so many things it depends a great deal on execution and rate of use. 



Holoman said:


> Wait, you shouldn't use question marks in prose? Even for thoughts?


----------



## Russ

Ireth said:


> No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.



I think they should be used very rarely indeed.  They can become a crutch and there overuse on social media etc makes them even more troublesome to me.  I think there only real use is basically for a person expressing some sudden surprise where you cannot make the context and writing do that work for you.

Many writers I respect deeply say this about the issue "Exclamation points are great.  Every book should have one."


----------



## glutton

I take cues for my style from manga, comics and video games more than actual novels so I use super simple prose and exclamation points in my dialogue wherever they would be seen in those mediums. As clear and in your face as possible lol.


----------



## FifthView

Exclamation points and italics for emphasis don't bother me at all.  In some sub-genres and styles.  In others, they'd seem out of place.

I have difficulty remembering specific occasions when I cringed at their use.  This is probably because, for the most part, the books I've read seemed to stick to what I said in the paragraph above.  On the other hand, perhaps this means that the use of exclamation points and italics for emphasis _automatically_ forces a book into that category of "in some sub-genres and styles," so I didn't notice anything being out of whack!

Stress in the above paragraph intended.

Incidentally, this argument of visual vs content cues pops up a lot in the formalist vs free verse debate in poetry.  Well, it pops up when a certain subset of formalists deride free verse with the incorrect notion that line breaks in free verse are merely visual in nature.  

Has anyone else watched _Night Watch_?  I mean the Russian movie, not something on GoT.  The subtitled version has English subtitles in red letters that move, bleed, grow etc.  I always thought that was an excellent choice for that movie.


----------



## skip.knox

Ireth said:


> No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.



Yes, really. The exercise is to learn to write without them. Then you can use them judiciously.


----------



## skip.knox

Let me put into other words the point I was trying to make about exclamation points. The issue is less about the use of the punctuation itself and more about learning to strengthen one's prose. If one leans excessively on punctuation, or on fonts for that matter, to achieve an effect, one is using them instead of using words. This necessarily means the author is not stretching. Learn to write without those for a while. Then, when you do use them, they will be tools rather than crutches.


----------



## Holoman

I'd agree with exclamation marks in prose, but surely if the dialogue needs it then you have to use it. I don't know how you can manage an entire novel with only one exclamation mark if you have several instances of characters shouting. To rewrite it so people never shout _just_ to avoid using exclamation marks doesn't make sense to me.


----------



## Steerpike

Holoman said:


> I'd agree with exclamation marks in prose, but surely if the dialogue needs it then you have to use it. I don't know how you can manage an entire novel with only one exclamation mark if you have several instances of characters shouting. To rewrite it so people never shout _just_ to avoid using exclamation marks doesn't make sense to me.



You could use a tag or other means of conveying that they're shouting, so an exclamation mark wouldn't be strictly needed even though it would probably be the simpler approach.


----------



## La Volpe

Steerpike said:


> You could use a tag or other means of conveying that they're shouting, so an exclamation mark wouldn't be strictly needed even though it would probably be the simpler approach.



But... why would you want to? That's like making sure that none of your dialogue contains the letter "m". I'm sure it's possible, but what do you gain? An exclamation mark (and a question mark(!)) is a valid punctuation mark. Why go out of your way to avoid using it?


----------



## Steerpike

La Volpe said:


> But... why would you want to? That's like making sure that none of your dialogue contains the letter "m". I'm sure it's possible, but what do you gain? An exclamation mark (and a question mark(!)) is a valid punctuation mark. Why go out of your way to avoid using it?



I didn't say you would. Quite the opposite. Just countering the idea that you have to use them if characters are shouting, or else rewrite so they're not shouting.


----------



## Holoman

Steerpike said:


> You could use a tag or other means of conveying that they're shouting, so an exclamation mark wouldn't be strictly needed even though it would probably be the simpler approach.



Yeah, but I think you're brain notes the exclamation mark before you've even read the text, so you read it as shouting. Whereas if you rely on the tag alone, the reader only finds out they were shouting after they've read it.

So like:

"Get off," he shouted.

"Get off!" he shouted.

I prefer the second tbh as I would see the exclamation mark as I was reading Get off.

And then you've got the "don't use dialogue tags" crowd. I think no matter what you write, there will always be _that guy_ that has a problem with it


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

No matter what you do, someone's going to have a problem with it. 

Personally, I don't see the point in not using exclamation marks in dialogue. Why would you not want to? Do they degrade the dialogue in any way?


----------



## Demesnedenoir

"Get off!" 

That would be my preference, considering the limited info being worked with.

"one per book" is obviously an exaggeration... for most writers. In the literary crowd there might be examples of this, but even then, as part of quotes most people are going to blow by them. I mean heck, McCarthy doesn't use quotes. If you want an ! to count, use less, much like an F-bomb being more effective when used once in a book compared to every third word as in some movies. If your book is peaceful and quiet, happy dogs playing in the park with their happy owners, and the cute bunnies are frolicking and handing out candy... a single punch can seem as violent (or more so) than another soldier dying in a heap of dead on the battle field. 

The real point is not to overuse. In genre fiction, I tend to think most rules get thrown out when it comes to dialogue... use them adverbs if you like, use passives if you like, use the ! & ?, but don't over do it. The key to dialogue is making it sound real, while not being real, in the end if you achieve that, exclamation marks here and there aren't going to matter a lick.

There is also a difference between these two punctuations. One is more-or-less required to denote a question, lack of a ? can be off putting. The ! is not required. In screenwriting, there is a lot of advice to not use the !, because it essentially gives "direction" to the actor. In general, how somebody says something in that medium is left to the actor/director to decide. Fiction is different, but the advice tends to be not to over do it.

Like most things in writing, its a soft rule, designed more to limit the use of things rather than eliminate them... see King's hatred of -ly adverb and the fact he still uses them.


----------



## Steerpike

I agree with what you are all saying, above. I wouldn't eliminate the use of exclamation marks, or try to impose an artificial limit of one per book. Use them where they are needed and where they will be most effective at communicating the story in the way you envision it. 

I think restrictive advice like that around exclamation marks is directed more toward novices who use such punctuation as a crutch to prop up or emphasize ineffective language. However, rather than stating an absolute (or exaggerated) rule, I think it is better just to accurately explain the situation to novices. 

But, as with admonitions like "show don't tell," it is easier to repeat rote advice than to look at a writer's usage and think about what is effective and what isn't, and why.


----------



## Russ

Holoman said:


> Yeah, but I think you're brain notes the exclamation mark before you've even read the text, so you read it as shouting. Whereas if you rely on the tag alone, the reader only finds out they were shouting after they've read it.
> 
> So like:
> 
> "Get off," he shouted.
> 
> "Get off!" he shouted.
> 
> I prefer the second tbh as I would see the exclamation mark as I was reading Get off.
> 
> And then you've got the "don't use dialogue tags" crowd. I think no matter what you write, there will always be _that guy_ that has a problem with it



For me it is not really a case of "that guy" that suggests the use of exclamation points as being far too overdone and something that should be done sparingly, it is the case of a number of top writers, writing instructors and editors giving that advice to me (and others).

I have an approach to writing "rules" that I think is pretty functional.  When I am writing, and I am really sure about something (like I am really, amazingly dog-gone positive that a piece of dialogue needs an exclamation point) than I do that.  If I am unsure about something, or luke warm about it, I often consider and follow advise from a writer or writing craft instructor that I respect or even the conventional wisdom.

Here is a good discussion of the point between two top writers.  Steve has the edge with me due to the fact that he has edited some of the top writers in the world and many top writers seek out his advice and editing in addition to what they get from their publisher. Both, of course, suggest using exclamation points sparingly and cautiously in prose.

http://anthonyfranzebooks.com/wp-co...llins-Suspense_Magazine_August_2014_Issue.pdf


----------



## Chessie

Steerpike said:


> I agree with what you are all saying, above. I wouldn't eliminate the use of exclamation marks, or try to impose an artificial limit of one per book. Use them where they are needed and where they will be most effective at communicating the story in the way you envision it.
> 
> I think restrictive advice like that around exclamation marks is directed more toward novices who use such punctuation as a crutch to prop up or emphasize ineffective language. However, rather than stating an absolute (or exaggerated) rule, I think it is better just to accurately explain the situation to novices.
> 
> But, as with admonitions like "show don't tell,"_* it is easier to repeat rote advice than to look at a writer's usage and think about what is effective and what isn't, and why.*_


So very true. I agree with you that these things are typically meant to be guidelines, not hard rules. I still use () ; -- ... all the time but it has surely taken me a long time to figure out _where_ to use them properly (the italics is for Des ). Although I agree with Russ about the ! because I find them truly annoying, I use them, too. Like, 1-2 per book maybe. 

The way I see it is this: my husband is a mechanic and he has two huge toolboxes full of wrenches and other gadgets he uses to work on semi-trucks. Me...I have the entire English language & grammar at my disposal. He uses his tools to work, and I use my tools to work. He wouldn't exclude any of those tools from his box. If there's something he needs, he's going to use it. I see writing in the same way. If I want to italicize a word, then I'm going to do it. Etc.

The bad part is when a writer becomes lazy and uses repetition. I read one book ages ago that started out really well, then towards the middle the author started using "as". Constantly. It was lazy writing and it irritated me enough to put the book down forever. So we can use all the tools in our box so long as we don't overdo it, and exclamation marks are easy to notice so therefore easy to overdo, too, I think.


----------



## Steerpike

Every tool is, and should be, available for use to an author. This includes telling, use of adverbs, punctuation, passive voice, and the like. The trick is simply knowing when and how to use them.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Steerpike said:


> Every tool is, and should be, available for use to an author. This includes telling, use of adverbs, punctuation, passive voice, and the like. The trick is simply knowing when and how to use them.



THIS. 

This perfectly explains it.


----------



## Reaver

steerpike said:


> every tool is, and should be, available for use to an author. This includes telling, use of adverbs, punctuation, passive voice, and the like. The trick is simply knowing when and how to use them.




((Sound of mic hitting the stage.))


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

What about italicizing characters' thoughts?


----------



## Russ

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> What about italicizing characters' thoughts?



Personally I do it.

Different editors and publishers allow it, or not.  This is a broad variety in the traditional publishing field.


----------



## Steerpike

Russ said:


> Personally I do it.
> 
> Different editors and publishers allow it, or not.  This is a broad variety in the traditional publishing field.



Yep. I don't do it, but lots of writers do, particular in SF/F and Horror.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

If it's direct thoughts, I'm cool with _that_. Only italics I dislike are for _emphasis_. 



DragonOfTheAerie said:


> What about italicizing characters' thoughts?


----------



## La Volpe

Demesnedenoir said:


> If it's direct thoughts, I'm cool with _that_. Only italics I dislike are for _emphasis_.



Do you mean that you _never_ (sorry, couldn't resist) want to see italics for emphasis? Or you don't want to see it overused? I.e. are there situations in which italics for emphasis would be acceptable?


----------



## Holoman

Demesnedenoir said:


> If it's direct thoughts, I'm cool with _that_. Only italics I dislike are for _emphasis_.



It's interesting, because on another forum I read a lot of people saying they hated italics for direct thought but were ok for emphasis 

Sometimes though, the emphasis can change the interpretation of the sentence. I think I'm guilty of overusing it though


----------



## Peat

To state a really obvious one here, but...

Dislikable Protagonists. Nothing ruins a book like a dislikable protagonist.


----------



## Steerpike

Oh, I don't know, I can think of some great books with thoroughly dislikeable protagonists. For fantasy, Ian Graham's Monument, where the protagonist has no real redeeming features or anything to make one like him. 

In Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert is at least witty and engaging, but he's a thoroughly disgusting human being. 

I have other examples, but those two come to mind first.


----------



## Gurkhal

To me its predictability (is that a word?) and boring main characters.

When I can predict what will happen and heroes generally pull victories out fo their asses that puts me off, and so does boring main characters. A hero can be as good, nice and righteous as he wants. But if he, or she, is boring I will not care for that character.

And when I think about it, the same goes for a boring struggle. If the heroes walks from one triumph to another I will throw away my book. The heroes should struggle, bleed, cry and lose things they value forever before they can reach victory, and look back on a hard struggle knowing it was something they had to struggle for. A struggle in which nothing was sacrificed is in my eyes boring and uninteresting.


----------



## FifthView

Demesnedenoir said:


> If it's direct thoughts, I'm cool with _that_. Only italics I dislike are for _emphasis_.



But how do you _really_ feel when you encounter it?

For me, I think—this is only from solid memory of a handful of experiences plus some other dimly remembered cases—emphasis with italics introduces the feeling of a) authorial or narrator intervention and possibly b) a bit of humor.

Maybe this is why I usually think of YA and humorous novels when I try to remember specific examples of italics being used for emphasis—although, I think that other types of writing that are in first person can do it without seeming humorous.  (The narrator intervenes, yes, but has been doing so all along after all.)

In comments _here_, I'm not in the least bothered by such emphasis.  You see what I did there?  That's authorial intervention.  There's a person behind that choice to emphasize.   I mean, why choose to emphasize that particular word and no other?  (I mean, why choose to emphasize _that_ particular word and no other?)  See what I mean?

Anyway, that's the feeling I get.

RE: humor.  I've encountered frequent emphasis in humorous or light novels, and there's this sense of ha, ha, the writer and I are in on the joke together.  So it's the same thing, an awareness of the author being present, a co-conspirator.  But even in novels that are not intended to be humorous as a whole, sometimes only a particular character is meant to arouse a feeling of hilarity.  The character is meant to be mocked, laughed at.*  For instance, the hysterical or over-emotional character:

"What do you mean by _that_?" she shrieked.​
When I encounter this, I feel that same ha, ha shared with the author or the nameless narrator.  If I'm immersed in the story, I may not have a conscious sense of a hand behind the writing.  But if I examine how it makes me feel, I _do_.

*Edit, afterthought: Perhaps it's not always the character, per se, but the character's situation or predicament that is intended to arouse this feeling.


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## Demesnedenoir

In fiction, I never like it, but it would take an overuse to keep me from reading. This would also depend some on what words are being stressed. Okay! So, let's take a look at someone guaranteed to poorly use italics for emphasis, IMO, but I am not picking on Mr. Sanderson, because I promised to never do that again. I pull up the first book of his that shows on Amazon, check the sample, and there we go, page 1 of the Prologue!

"_That_ was unprecedented."

Really? As if the word, one of a whole three words in a sentence, and the last sentence in a paragraph no less, needs emphasis? Is it the worst ever? No, but still obnoxious to my brain. So let's move on, all the way to the top of page 2...

"...which quite distinctly pointed _toward_ the sphere lamp on the wall nearby."

Now, of these the most forgivable is this _toward_ as it emphasizes something incongruous with nature... so, I get this one. It points out to someone who might be skimming the first pages of the book to see if they want to buy it, that something is up.

Now mind you I am probably different than some folks, italicizing a single word makes me slow and amplify the word in my head, it breaks me from the read with its emphasis. That annoys the crap out of me. 

Same page, father is italicized... wah! Enough already! But I will torture myself with one more:

"another land, another time, another... _something_."

Really? Not only is this the final word of a sentence and paragraph he feels the need to italicize it? Come on.

I know what he's doing (or at least think I do, but then he tends to do this a lot with different characters... so, I may be giving him too much credit for the character voice) and I hate it. Now I must add, that in some print books the italics are less distinct and easier to just "read over" than digital or larger print versions. So, this does get kind of funky in my brain, LOL. But if they had a valid reason, ok, I'll suffer. Simply put, most do not have a good enough reason to exist.






La Volpe said:


> Do you mean that you _never_ (sorry, couldn't resist) want to see italics for emphasis? Or you don't want to see it overused? I.e. are there situations in which italics for emphasis would be acceptable?


----------



## FifthView

Demesnedenoir said:


> I know what he's doing (or at least think I do, but then he tends to do this a lot with different characters... so, I may be giving him too much credit for the character voice) and I hate it.



Yeah I suppose that's it.  In a tight 3rd POV, trying to interject that character voice; or rather, letting that character voice intervene in the natural flow.  So beyond the humorous uses, this is introducing ambiguity, indecision, uncertainty, and so forth.  It shows the character becoming "hung up" on a particular idea, turning it around in his head.

If one isn't sufficiently immersed, then there might be a feeling that the author is stepping between reader and narrative, although this might depend on the reader.


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## Steerpike

Only time I use italics in writing is for emphasis, and even that rarely happens. I have to really want to offset a word or give it a certain inflection. I don't remember every using them in dialogue, and I don't use them for internal monologue.


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## DragonOfTheAerie

There are some things you would only do in dialogue. When you write in the first person, as I often do, some of those things can carry over into the narration, because it's the character's voice.


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## Peat

Steerpike said:


> Oh, I don't know, I can think of some great books with thoroughly dislikeable protagonists. For fantasy, Ian Graham's Monument, where the protagonist has no real redeeming features or anything to make one like him.
> 
> In Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert is at least witty and engaging, but he's a thoroughly disgusting human being.
> 
> I have other examples, but those two come to mind first.



There is a reasonable chance I would not find them great books.

Bear in mind that I think the Flashman books are fantastic. A character can be pretty immoral yet still register as a like for me - although not utterly immoral. Better witty and engaging than dull and worthy. 

I can read a book with boring protagonists though. Protagonists I actively dislike kill it for me.


----------



## Steerpike

Peat said:


> I can read a book with boring protagonists though. Protagonists I actively dislike kill it for me.



Yes, I think it is all going to come down to a personal reaction. When you lead with "stating the obvious," the implication to me seemed to be that everyone should know/agree with the idea that protagonists have to be likeable. But there are a number of books where they aren't. Monument was well-received, and Lolita of course regularly appears on lists of best novels. When it comes to dislikeable protagonists, I think there are some readers who simply won't go for it, which is fine, but there are plenty who will provided the book is well done and the author manages to pull it off. Pulling it off seems to me to be harder than if one has a likeable protagonist.


----------



## Peat

Steerpike said:


> Yes, I think it is all going to come down to a personal reaction. When you lead with "stating the obvious," the implication to me seemed to be that everyone should know/agree with the idea that protagonists have to be likeable. But there are a number of books where they aren't. Monument was well-received, and Lolita of course regularly appears on lists of best novels. When it comes to dislikeable protagonists, I think there are some readers who simply won't go for it, which is fine, but there are plenty who will provided the book is well done and the author manages to pull it off. Pulling it off seems to me to be harder than if one has a likeable protagonist.



Aye. This is incredibly subjective. Both in that everyone likes and dislikes different things, and in that people have a different threshold of how much they can put up with things they dislike, and in that we possibly mean different things by dislikable. 

By dislike, I mean think they're a waste of ink that the author would be better off killing on the next page. I do think I'm stating the obvious to say that if a reader finds themselves feeling that way about a protagonist, that will ruin the book. Doesn't mean authors shouldn't write books with protagonists people may dislike - the completely likeable character doesn't exist in any case.

Also I didn't meant that implication. I'd argue that it is possible for a protagonist to be neither one nor t'other - say a character who's too reprehensible to be likeable but too interesting to be dislikable. I'd suggest that often, the nastier a protagonist is, the more likely they are to be sufficiently interesting to escape being dislikable. Truly dislikable protagonists, in my book, tend to be more annoying than anything else. Maybe I should have said annoying to begin with.


----------



## Steerpike

Yeah, Peat, I think that is generally the case. In almost all examples I can think of, it is. The aforementioned Humbert Humbert being a prime example. Monument pushes closest to that line that I've seen. The protagonist, Ballas, is a drunken, belligerent, and not particularly intelligent jackass. There were more than a few times where if someone had just killed him, I would actually have been happy about it. But I found the book as a whole to be quite good. That's about the best example I can find of such a protagonist who isn't even really very interesting. Every other example I can think of, Lolita, Thomas Covenant, and a handful of others, there is a lot of interest built around the protagonist, and in the case of Lolita, where this vile person is actually the first-person narrator, it is sheer wit, word-play, and a somewhat morbid fascination that carries the reader through the work (in other words, he's interesting). Great book


----------



## caters

Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?

In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"

This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.

And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".


----------



## SaltyDog

Ok, finally decided to add my two cents to the jumble, lol.

What really ticks me off is random character killings, though I do it myself.  Can't be helped, though as the reader it annoys me.  Writer, I enjoy it.

Crappy made up languages.

Oh and terrible chapter endings.  Like as an example, one chapter of a book ended with such a sudden stop that it wasn't even a cliff hanger, more like the writer had been told to stop there and continue with the next chapter.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

caters said:


> Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?
> 
> In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"
> 
> This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.
> 
> And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".



I don't think it's wise to completely eliminate any option that's available to you in writing; there's a time and place for everything, including swearing (and passive and adverbs and telling not showing)...however, it seems easy to use swearing as a cheap substitute for intensity in dialogue. 

Also, you can have your characters swear without actually using swear words, i.e. "He swore/cursed," "he hurled profanity at so-and-so's retreating form..." 

But, I'm not sure it's *always* possible to avoid swearing since in real life people do swear.


----------



## SaltyDog

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I don't think it's wise to completely eliminate any option that's available to you in writing; there's a time and place for everything, including swearing (and passive and adverbs and telling not showing)...however, it seems easy to use swearing as a cheap substitute for intensity in dialogue.
> 
> Also, you can have your characters swear without actually using swear words, i.e. "He swore/cursed," "he hurled profanity at so-and-so's retreating form..."
> 
> But, I'm not sure it's *always* possible to avoid swearing since in real life people do swear.





Very true, you can try playing around with your own curse words, ones not as strong as our normal ones, but ones that d convey the same message.

Me?  I use curse words.  Bloody, Damn, bastard.  Nothing like the fbomb, or sbomb, that's a little too strong for me.


----------



## SaltyDog

caters said:


> Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?
> 
> In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"
> 
> This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.
> 
> And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".



If your targeting a younger age, your method works and is fine.  Older?  I would say curse words are an important part of life and the stories.


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## Steerpike

I disagree that one conveys the same message with or without profanity. It may be a similar message, but it's not the same one. This reminds me of the case of Cohen V. California, during the time of the Viet Nam war, where a man was convicted of wearing a shirt that said F*** THE DRAFT. STOP THE WAR. He could have used any number of words apart from the f-word, but didn't. The U.S. Supreme Court, in considering the case, noted the following:

"_Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact, because it is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force."
_
In other words, the Court recognized that the inclusion of profanity conveyed something different than the lack of it. Something perhaps related, but not at all the SAME message.


----------



## psychotick

Hi,

For me the number one detractor is poor plotting. Plots that make me go - what the bloody hell did he do that for?! Recently I watched two series that fell flat in part because of this.

The first was a superhero series - Powers - which was otherwise excellent but which fell apart because of an utterly unecessary climax. In essence one of the antiheroes of the book, a guy who could teleport anywhere, with someones head in his hands if he liked making his ability truely deadly, wants to kill the big bad Wolf in his jail cell. Problem is the cell has a power draining device in it, which would mean he could teleport in but then be trapped. So he has to create this entire elaborate plan to break into the prison, cut the power etc and then finally kill Wolf. The truly appalling mistake in logic is that he could simply teleport into the cell with a weapon - say a shotgun, and of course a mask so he can't be identified, blow Wolf's head off, shoot out the power draining device and then leave. It'd take five seconds! Of course it'd ruin the story's climax where Wolf escapes because of what they do and then terrorises the city with mass murder etc. But that seems like a poor reason for someone not to do what is utterly simple and effective.

The second was in the series The Magicians - which sadly had a whole lot of other problems with it which I'll try not to dwell on. But the ridiculous was captured in a battle scene where our hero wizards battled bad wizards, and of course they were at a disadvantage because they hadn't practised their battle magic. So at one point one of them pulls out a gun and shoots the bad guy, and makes this snippy speech about it, which is actually fine. It could almost have been Indie on the bridge with the sword swinging nutter and had me laughing out loud. But unfortunately it wasn't.

Why wasn't it? Because the writers decided they didn't want typical spoken spells, and instead magic was performed by series of complicated finger twirling exercises. - I can live with that. It's actually interesting. But the one thing it also is is slow. Pulling out a gun and shooting some is much, much faster. So the scene makes me wonder, why the bloody hell weren't they all using guns! It's the smart thing to do. It doesn't matter how powerful your magic is, if it takes you ten seconds to cast a spell after endless amounts of finger twirling - it's absolutely useless in battle. I mean the effects may look cool on tv - but what the hell else is the battle magic useful for. Pack a damned gun and shoot the baddies. The baddies of course should be doing the same. Anything else is simply stupid.

Writers need to think about their world builds and characters. Put themselves in their character's shoes, and then think to themselves, is this logical? Is it smart? Or does my character have to do something completely stupid in order to make the plot work - in which case you have to alter things so that there's actually a reason they have to do stupid.

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

SaltyDog said:


> Very true, you can try playing around with your own curse words, ones not as strong as our normal ones, but ones that d convey the same message.
> 
> Me?  I use curse words.  Bloody, Damn, bastard.  Nothing like the fbomb, or sbomb, that's a little too strong for me.



I probably wouldn't use anything stronger than "hell" or "damn" in all but a small few cases. But, since this is a fantasy world with no contact with earth or earth languages, that opens up a whole new dimension of issues...


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## DragonOfTheAerie

I *am* kinda struggling with how to write a character of mine who is a complete potty mouth without swearing too much...

He's a narrator, too.


----------



## Deleted member 4265

I hate really long post coitus scenes where the characters just kind of stare lovingly into each others eyes and inner monologue about how great it was. I'm not a huge fan of sex scenes in general because I don't read that kind of fantasy, but if it was so great that you had to spend two whole pages reminiscing, I would rather read about them actually having sex. At least then something is happening.

It also really annoys me when I'm reading a book and somewhere towards the middle or the end, I'm given new information about the character's physical appearance. I don't mind if characters are only vaguely described, but if you're planning to tell me a character's blond and has a mustache please do so before I've got a solid mental picture formed in my head otherwise it can get confusing.


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## SaltyDog

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I *am* kinda struggling with how to write a character of mine who is a complete potty mouth without swearing too much...
> 
> He's a narrator, too.



Well... have you tried creating your own curse words up that imply the same message?  I use scum of the sea, which really works.  For sea goers at least.  Pickled lambs tongue, blood and ashes work as well.  I don't use blood and ashes though, sounds too much like Wheel of Time.

I don't know, I just use the old fashioned ones really.  A story I'm reading now curses about every other sentence, wasn't expecting that when I first started reading it!  Lol


----------



## Guy

Devouring Wolf said:


> It also really annoys me when I'm reading a book and somewhere towards the middle or the end, I'm given new information about the character's physical appearance. I don't mind if characters are only vaguely described, but if you're planning to tell me a character's blond and has a mustache please do so before I've got a solid mental picture formed in my head otherwise it can get confusing.


Oh, that's a big one for me, too. 

Probably my biggest pet peeve in the fantasy genre is names that do not conform to any known rules of phonetics, so I have no clue how to pronounce them. A subset of that is when the author names a character something like Tutschmucketellieson, then follows it with, "But everyone calls me Tut." Why not just name him Tut in the first place? Another subset is apostrophes in the middle of a name. That just bugs me for some reason.

Writers who feel like the only way they can show their badass character is a badass is to have them use some god-awful complicated martial arts. The really good fighters don't screw around with flashy moves and complicated techniques. They do what works, and simpler is usually better. Performing an Olympic gymnastics routine in the middle of a fight while using double flails that are on fire might look cool, but it's going to get you clobbered. A subset of this is authors who cling to the notion that swords weighed twenty pounds, armor was so heavy you couldn't get up if you fell over, and all those stubborn misconceptions.

What ticks me off? Man, I could write a book...


----------



## TheKillerBs

Guy said:


> Another subset is apostrophes in the middle of a name. That just bugs me for some reason.



I just assume those are glottal stops


----------



## Peat

Guy said:


> Probably my biggest pet peeve in the fantasy genre is names that do not conform to any known rules of phonetics, so I have no clue how to pronounce them. A subset of that is when the author names a character something like Tutschmucketellieson, then follows it with, "But everyone calls me Tut." Why not just name him Tut in the first place? Another subset is apostrophes in the middle of a name. That just bugs me for some reason.



See, I actually like it when authors give characters a given name and a nickname. That's realistic to me, its fun.


edit: Having examined the last page I must add that, while I rarely use it myself, I love swearing. Love it. One of these days I'll let myself go and be as sweary as I want. Plus, it adds a lovely range of possible granularity. If one character tells someone to eff off, another tells someone to **** off, and the third says **** the **** off, you start seeing differences between the characters. Are there other ways of doing it? Sure. But its a good way.


----------



## Guy

TheKillerBs said:


> I just assume those are glottal stops


I know. There's just something about it that annoys me. I've no idea why. It just does.


----------



## glutton

Guy said:


> A subset of this is authors who cling to the notion that swords weighed twenty pounds



Real life swords didn't weigh twenty pounds, but the ones of superhuman epic heroes who chop up kaiju sized monsters without using magic might... XD


----------



## SaltyDog

Peat said:


> See, I actually like it when authors give characters a given name and a nickname. That's realistic to me, its fun.
> 
> 
> edit: Having examined the last page I must add that, while I rarely use it myself, I love swearing. Love it. One of these days I'll let myself go and be as sweary as I want. Plus, it adds a lovely range of possible granularity. If one character tells someone to eff off, another tells someone to **** off, and the third says **** the **** off, you start seeing differences between the characters. Are there other ways of doing it? Sure. But its a good way.



I need to try that, just let go lol.


----------



## valiant12

> Well... have you tried creating your own curse words up that imply the same message? I use scum of the sea, which really works. For sea goers at least. Pickled lambs tongue, blood and ashes work as well. I don't use blood and ashes though, sounds too much like Wheel of Time.



Made up swear words are annoying. It only works if the character is alien\non-human , who speak english\common , but swear in his native tongue.


----------



## psychotick

Hi Guy,

Just as a sort of follow up to one of your posts. In my latest I have a character by the name of Doctor Carmichael Simons. His ship calls him Carmichael every time. The Police Detective chasing his case down refers to him as Doctor Simons for most of the book. And yet to him in all his inner monologue etc he thinks of himself as Carm. My thought is that this emulates real life. I don't use my titles in day to day life, and I expect my family and friends to call me Greg, not Gregory. But if I was in court say I would be appalled if the various lawyers etc called me Greg.

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## Guy

psychotick said:


> Hi Guy,
> 
> Just as a sort of follow up to one of your posts. In my latest I have a character by the name of Doctor Carmichael Simons. His ship calls him Carmichael every time. The Police Detective chasing his case down refers to him as Doctor Simons for most of the book. And yet to him in all his inner monologue etc he thinks of himself as Carm. My thought is that this emulates real life. I don't use my titles in day to day life, and I expect my family and friends to call me Greg, not Gregory. But if I was in court say I would be appalled if the various lawyers etc called me Greg.
> 
> Cheers, Greg.


The only time the shortened name bugs me is when it's used because the character's real name is so long and difficult. The author comes up with such a polysyllabic monstrosity of a name even he doesn't want to keep typing the whole thing out and goes with a nickname. To me it makes more sense to just make the nickname the real name from the get-go. The one time it didn't bother me was when it was a plot device - the villain had to say the protagonist's name three times to cast a spell on her, but because her name was so long and difficult, said villain was unable to finish saying it before the protagonist got close enough to kill him. I got a chuckle out of that. Rumplestilskin would be another example.


----------



## Guy

glutton said:


> Real life swords didn't weigh twenty pounds, but the ones of superhuman epic heroes who chop up kaiju sized monsters without using magic might... XD



Exceptions to every rule, of course.  In the tales I've read, Thor's hammer was so heavy even he needed special equipment to use it. Another would be when a person of slight build picks up a long sword for the first time. To them, it might very well seem heavy.


----------



## Ireth

Thought of another thing that ticks me off. When people use "fire" as a verb for shooting a bow or crossbow (and not flaming arrows/bolts, either). That term was invented for _firearms_. "Loose" or "release" is much better, IMO. It's especially jarring in universes where there ARE no guns/cannons/etc.


----------



## Guy

Ireth said:


> Thought of another thing that ticks me off. When people use "fire" as a verb for shooting a bow or crossbow (and not flaming arrows/bolts, either). That term was invented for _firearms_. "Loose" or "release" is much better, IMO. It's especially jarring in universes where there ARE no guns/cannons/etc.



That's one of mine, too.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

While I agree with "Fire!" for arrows being off, it's a strange and slippery slope that language provides in fantasy settings. "okay" is bad because it's a new word, but earth is also bad because it's an old word that new usage of denotes the planet, rather the original meaning of soil... And if you consider your book to be a translation of a fantasy language... oh higgly piggly, I see a white rabbit.


----------



## FifthView

Demesnedenoir said:


> And if you consider your book to be a translation of a fantasy language... oh higgly piggly, I see a white rabbit.



I'm not a fan of using the "translation defense."

But on the other hand, I don't speak any fantasy languages.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Won't see too many written in Old English these days either, sure I read Chaucer in its original, but how sticky do folks want to get?
I prefer not see these words myself, but I'm not sure the logic is all that great, if one were to take things in these directions with less obvious words, LOL.




FifthView said:


> I'm not a fan of using the "translation defense."
> 
> But on the other hand, I don't speak any fantasy languages.


----------



## Malik

Well, as the resident realism nazi, you can imagine my deal-breakers:

- Crossworlds/portal fantasies with no language barrier. This makes me seriously ****in' crazy.

- Handwaves of serious medical issues where the author has taken no time to even do a modicum of research. 

I just read the first few pages of a spy thriller where the MC wakes up, hanging upside down, staring at a dried pool of his own blood on the floor (okay, first off, you're not looking over your head when you're hanging upside down -- you have to crane your neck -- but let's let that slide) and then gets turned right-side-up and let down. Then, after being unconscious for two days, he stands up and has a normal conversation with his captors in another language, sticking to his cover story, before unleashing freedom all over the room and escaping. Which is a shame, because I like the author personally, but holy shitballs, he needs to spend a few days in a medically-induced coma and then spaz around the room drooling for a couple of weeks trying to remember how the **** his feet work.

- Swords as lightsabers.

- Bad swordsmanship. See previous entry.

- Magic with no repercussions.

- Maps that don't tell us anything other than in what direction the countries lie.

- Lost princes. Someone find the goddamned prince, already.

- "Heroes" who rack up body counts that would land them at the Hague. Bonus points if it's okay because the deceased were "just soldiers" or "only orcs." Elitist, racist crap.


----------



## Lunaairis

I don't really hate anything, and there are always exceptions but I'll add to this.

*- characters with a tragic past that don't learn from or use the powers they gained from their past.*
The biggest example I can think of at the moment is Jack from Mass Effect 2 who was abducted by a certain medical company who did what all medical company's do experiment on children and turned her into the worlds most powerful/ most dangerous magic user ever seen.  After escaping and killing many people with her powers, she became a space bandit/mercenary and traveled the stars.  Apparently her 'super amazing magical abilities' weren't strong enough though, cause she was eventually captured and imprisoned. Only to have her guards (GASP) rape her, before sealing her in cryostasis.  

You have amazing magical abilities. How the heck can't you deal with a group of puny human guards? I think a better story would have had you track down her raider gang and try to convince her that there is good money in saving the universe. Rather then this stupid revenge quest, they ended up giving us. 

*- "Medieval" epic fantasy. *
 I like to see worlds where you don't actually follow any of those big things like Kings,Queens, adventurers that used to be farmers and instead follow... I don't know Thranduil's tailor who's trying to pay their rent in Northern Mirkwood. But some ass adventurers are killing all the silk weaving spiders. So now they gotta convince some of his elf buds to go into business together and start up a Middle-Earth equivalent of old navy or something. You think I'm joking, But really there is so many everyday stories that can be told on a fantasy backdrop that would be amazing. Not to mention characters! Like what about a magic carpet taxi driver, a hydrokinetic plumber, a courier who has to deal with dragons burning down all the towns he has mail to deliver to. So many possibilities guys!

I have one more, and I know there was a thread up previously about it. But I didn't get a chance to put any input into it, so here. 

*- Fantasy worlds in which there are no mentions of religion or any sort of belief system. *
 Your people don't need to have some big organized church, or even worship any sorts of gods. They only need to believe that something is true to the state of existence.  If in a fantasy world where there aren't many telescopes and people don't travel much. There is no reason for them to think the planet revolves around the sun. They are totally justified in believing that the planet below their feet is the center of the universe.  That the sun(s) and moon(s) are born every morning and die in a perceived under-earthly-fire every evening. That the stars are their ancestors. That they themselves are gods living in an existence they created, and when they sleep they dream up a new existence. So that once they take the big sleep they will live in their next existence. 
 Regardless if any of these things are actually true. Its a major part of the human experience to seek answers, tell stories, and create signs that show you are part of the same "family". Not every belief will use all three options but people will do these things.  Even the humble high-five can be considered a religious sign of acceptance in the modern era.   

You can have characters that believe all these things to be hogwash. But the people around them should still have festivals, and celebrations supporting their beliefs. Some of these festivals can even be left overs from older religious beliefs with a touch of the newer beliefs/practices, like halloween is.  If your MC is atheist that's no reason to not at least mention that, " That the monk's were at prayer during this time of day, leaving the courtyard empty."
 I am just always surprised that a lot of fantasy doesn't even do that.


----------



## Malik

- Armies that meet in massive organized battles but never drill.

- Plots and subplots with no thought to the follow-on effects (either from the characters in their ideas, or from the author)

- Any race as comic relief at their own expense a la Gimli in the LOTR movies (I know this is about books, but a lot of new authors draw their inspiration from movies). The Kender in Dragonlance were a fantastic example of how to do racial comic relief right.

- Authors who draw their inspiration from movies.

- "For all intensive purposes." I just saw this again, today.

- Anything written with no subtext. If I want concrete writing with no imagery, I'll listen to popular country music.

- Horses as motorcycles.

- Evil characters who are evil because they're evil. Bonus points if they wear black.

- "Gray morality" in grimdark settings where everybody is a shitbag in some circumstance. You are not GRRM; he's been doing it for 25 years and he knows what he's doing and it's _still_ getting old. Write something else. (That said, Bronn is the greatest gray character in modern fantasy. It may never be done better.) Find another philosophical angle and go nuts.

- ****in' vampires.


----------



## Ireth

Malik said:


> - Crossworlds/portal fantasies with no language barrier. This makes me seriously ****in' crazy.



Heheh. I have fun playing with this. Sometimes I have portal fantasy where both sides speak the same language because the people in World 2 (eg. Faerie) were originally from world 1 (eg. Earth), and there is still some back-and-forth between the two, enough that the people of Faerie are (mostly) able to keep up with (a few) evolving languages on Earth. And sometimes I have magical translation in effect, which is pointed out with dialogue like, "How strange, the words you speak don't match the way your lips are moving." "Well, neither do yours." "...Let's leave off trying to explain this for now and just accept that we can communicate."



Malik said:


> - "Heroes" who rack up body counts that would land them at the Hague. Bonus points if it's okay because the deceased were "just soldiers" or "only orcs." Elitist, racist crap.



I try to avoid this trope too. In my main WIP the secondary MC is forced to kill in self-defense, and expresses remorse about it (doubly so when he learns that the woman he killed did not even have the hope of an afterlife, due to the nature of Fae souls differing from human souls). The primary MC also kills someone in self-defense, crying and apologizing as she does so.


----------



## Malik

Ireth said:


> Heheh. I have fun playing with this. Sometimes I have portal fantasy where both sides speak the same language because the people in World 2 (eg. Faerie) were originally from world 1 (eg. Earth), and there is still some back-and-forth between the two, enough that the people of Faerie are (mostly) able to keep up with (a few) evolving languages on Earth. And sometimes I have magical translation in effect, which is pointed out with dialogue like, "How strange, the words you speak don't match the way your lips are moving." "Well, neither do yours." "...Let's leave off trying to explain this for now and just accept that we can communicate."


I'm cool with this. You're at least acknowledging that the situation exists. I explain it in my second book that one reason the characters are able to pick the language up so fast is that originally we came from their world, and while the languages are different, the concepts are the same. (I'm a linguistic structuralist at heart; I believe our ideas shape our languages, and you have to understand how a culture thinks before you can understand how they speak. I did this backwards when I built the  Faerie conlang, which gave me a whole new insight as to their thought processes.) The MC learns this as he's trying -- and failing -- to learn Faerie. The elves think differently than we do and it's reflected in their language. He can't wrap his head around their concepts, so he speaks their language like a little kid no matter how hard he tries.



Ireth said:


> I try to avoid this trope too. In my main WIP the secondary MC is forced to kill in self-defense, and expresses remorse about it (doubly so when he learns that the woman he killed did not even have the hope of an afterlife, due to the nature of Fae souls differing from human souls). The primary MC also kills someone in self-defense, crying and apologizing as she does so.



My MC spends half of the first book trying not to kill anybody; he killed someone on Earth, and while he was acquitted in court, he was crucified in the tabloids and the evening news, which destroyed his career and ruined his life even though



Spoiler: BIG SPOILER



we learn it was self-defense and accidental. Which, if I did it right, makes it even worse and drives home the golden spike of the subtext that we have lost all concept of the utility of violence.


 Because of this, he has a tendency to hesitate, and he tries to end things less-than-lethally. (Insert further polemic subtexts about the increasing obsolescence of the warrior caste in modern society and ruminations on the utility of force, but, well, yeah.) Of course, at the climax, he finally yanks the throttles back and . . . well, read it and see.


----------



## Peat

Malik said:


> The Kender in Dragonlance were a fantastic example of how to do racial comic relief right.



I think you're the first people I've ever met with anything positive to say about Kender.


----------



## Malik

Peat said:


> I think you're the first people I've ever met with anything positive to say about Kender.



I thought Tasslehoff Burrfoot was brilliant. He seemed to me like a way to do and say some of the things that the authors couldn't have a "legitimate" character get away with. I also remember reading about Kender in _Dragon_ Magazine; the article was hilarious. At least, in my memory as a teenager.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

I seem to recall that article... but way too long ago, LOL. I have no idea what I would think of Kender now, loved Tasslehoff then, think he inspired a few characters friends played in college, D&D days. I'd fear to read those books again.



Malik said:


> I thought Tasslehoff Burrfoot was brilliant. He seemed to me like a way to do and say some of the things that the authors couldn't have a "legitimate" character get away with. I also remember reading about Kender in _Dragon_ Magazine; the article was hilarious. At least, in my memory as a teenager.


----------



## Peat

Each to their own... just don't say that on a D&D forum. Or do, if you like watching explosions


----------



## Guy

Malik said:


> - ****in' vampires.


Yeah, that's another one of my biggies.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

The problem with vampires isn't vampires (I don't want to offend the real bloodsuckers out there, most of them in politics, and who might run the IRS... good folks one and all, please don't audit me) it's how pathetically written they are.


----------



## Reaver

Demesnedenoir said:


> The problem with vampires isn't vampires (I don't want to offend the real bloodsuckers out there, most of them in politics, and who might run the IRS... good folks one and all, please don't audit me) it's how pathetically written they are.



Agreed but with Anne Rice and Tanith Lee being the exception.


----------



## Malik

Writers who don't take the time to step back from their story and see what the really interesting part is; who think that the story they want to tell is the story that needs telling. Included with this are secondary characters who would have made a much better main character because the story was way cooler from their POV.

Great example, from the vampire genre:


----------



## Guy

That would've been _so_ much better.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Anne Rice only wrote one good vampire book... and that's arguable, heh heh. No idea on Tanith Lee, but between the names of those authors you can make my name, so there must be something good about them, LOL.



Reaver said:


> Agreed but with Anne Rice and Tanith Lee being the exception.


----------



## Ireth

Another thing that irks me: Couples whose names are so similar it sounds contrived. Eg. Victor and Victoria in _Corpse Bride_.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Aside from making me think they are both Julie Andrews, I think this would again come down to execution for me. Of course it's contrived, it's a novel... and I've met couples with name issues... Don & Dawn, if you want to talk about freaking confusing. And I once dated a woman named Leah and I am Lee, if that had gone on... oh dear. But people tend to end up having fun with it.



Ireth said:


> Another thing that irks me: Couples whose names are so similar it sounds contrived. Eg. Victor and Victoria in _Corpse Bride_.


----------



## Ragnar

> Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...



 I get what you mean here. While I haven't seen anyone's eyes actually change, I've had people tell me one when I got really really mad about something, more then one person said my eyes turned red. Yea, it sounds crazy. I didn't look at my eyes, but that's what they said..  I have seen peoples eyes light up, as in happiness or delight. But I think it was their whole face expressing happiness more so then just their eyes. Usually when I've seen it it's in women, because I don't tend to look at guys eyes, or their faces closely 

 What gets under my skin is obviously pushing some sort of propaganda through their stories. Taking something and using the topical "facts" to back up a conclusion that's not even their own, it's something that's pushed. I've seen people do this as a way to add content to their stories and when it's obvious that they didn't bother to really think about the issue, it annoys the crap out of me  

 I kind of know what you mean about elves and dwarves. I used to play D&D, so I'm used to other races. But when they just use human characters attributes and demeanor, it's annoying. To me elves and dwarves are quite foreign. Unless one is raised around humans, they are likely to be really foreign and not have the same viewpoint or goals as human characters. I'd use the word "alien" because their difference, their actions and goals should be very different from human characters. That's just my thought.

 I also agree with hat you said about people that put so many different creatures in one area. They pack them in like sardines!


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Ragnar said:


> What gets under my skin is obviously pushing some sort of propaganda through their stories. Taking something and using the topical "facts" to back up a conclusion that's not even their own, it's something that's pushed. I've seen people do this as a way to add content to their stories and when it's obvious that they didn't bother to really think about the issue, it annoys the crap out of me



Along with the propaganda... it's almost a hand in hand thing, is the straw man argument. Bad enough having to put up with politicians and their straw man arguments, when they hit fiction and run 100k words it's a real gagger. Fitting in with these, they tend to anyhow, are razor crisp archetypes.


----------



## Lunaairis

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> -Being able to tell how a character is feeling by their eyes! I. HATE. THIS. SO. MUCH. "I saw the pain in his eyes." "Anger flashed through his eyes." "His eyes lit up with happiness." "His eyes darkened." "The look in his eyes told everything." I have NEVER seen a person's eyes actually change color based on their emotions. Neither have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen *insert emotion here* 'in' them. What is that even supposed to mean? What is it supposed to look like? I have seen characters conjecture about how a character is feeling and then make life-changing decisions based upon it JUST BY LOOKING INTO THEIR EYES. Do a person's eyes actually show emotion? I typically read people's emotions based on their voice and body language. I mean, my eyes look greenish when i've been crying, so i guess there i something to be said about it, but...



Are any of you who don't see emotion in eyes perhaps autistic? I know my little brother is, and he struggles with reading peoples facial emotions due to the minuet details that can be seen in the muscles around the eyes, and not making the connection that those little details play into expression.

Try reading these expressions;








As for your eye's changing color. Normally what is meant is that the white of the eye may become pink/redish, when a person is being overly emotional. regardless if they are happy, sad or sacred. 

(answers)

Surprise
Happyness
fear
anger


----------



## psychotick

Hi,

Oooh, I'll give it a try! (From the top.)

1 - Help! I'm Julie Andrews, get me out of here!
2 - Hell no Julie! I'm Victor and you're staying!
3 - Victor don't be a buzz kill, Take some more cammomile tea. (Victoria)
4 - Damn - the voices are back!!! (me)

(Oh dear - I may be autistic!)

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## A.J.

I often take issue with characters, or group traveling together, that have no job or trade. They are just "adventurers." Some writers have done this well, but it's only because they provide proper backstory on the characters past, home, or reason for their nomadic way of life. Without it, you're really just reading an RPG.


----------



## Peat

A.J. said:


> I often take issue with characters, or group traveling together, that have no job or trade. They are just "adventurers." Some writers have done this well, but it's only because they provide proper backstory on the characters past, home, or reason for their nomadic way of life. Without it, you're really just reading an RPG.



I actually just discovered this ticks me off as well. Hell, just having a character refer to themselves as an adventurer annoys me, even if it actually make sense.

In fact, anything that makes them sound like someone's unashamed D&D murderhobo.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

I have no problem with eyes mentioned in fiction and reading emotions. Some people are extremely good at this, others clearly aren't. But, using shorthand for facial expressions, including eyes, is just fine with me.  



Lunaairis said:


> Are any of you who don't see emotion in eyes perhaps autistic? I know my little brother is, and he struggles with reading peoples facial emotions due to the minuet details that can be seen in the muscles around the eyes, and not making the connection that those little details play into expression.
> 
> Try reading these expressions;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As for your eye's changing color. Normally what is meant is that the white of the eye may become pink/redish, when a person is being overly emotional. regardless if they are happy, sad or sacred.
> 
> (answers)
> 
> Surprise
> Happyness
> fear
> anger


----------



## Demesnedenoir

I can see this as a potential issue, but I've never encountered it myself. 



A.J. said:


> I often take issue with characters, or group traveling together, that have no job or trade. They are just "adventurers." Some writers have done this well, but it's only because they provide proper backstory on the characters past, home, or reason for their nomadic way of life. Without it, you're really just reading an RPG.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

A.J. said:


> I often take issue with characters, or group traveling together, that have no job or trade. They are just "adventurers." Some writers have done this well, but it's only because they provide proper backstory on the characters past, home, or reason for their nomadic way of life. Without it, you're really just reading an RPG.



I think the idea behind this is that they're outlaws who make a living looting and stealing stuff...but yes, it would make you wonder if the author was just writing about he and his friends' RPG adventures...


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Lunaairis said:


> Are any of you who don't see emotion in eyes perhaps autistic? I know my little brother is, and he struggles with reading peoples facial emotions due to the minuet details that can be seen in the muscles around the eyes, and not making the connection that those little details play into expression.
> 
> Try reading these expressions;
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As for your eye's changing color. Normally what is meant is that the white of the eye may become pink/redish, when a person is being overly emotional. regardless if they are happy, sad or sacred.
> 
> (answers)
> 
> Surprise
> Happyness
> fear
> anger



Funny you should ask...

I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum, although pretty high functioning. A couple years ago I was at a sleepover party and one of my friends decided to "diagnose" me with Aspergers...It hadn't even occurred to me before, but the more I read up on it the more I found I really identified with the experiences of people on the spectrum.

Never been diagnosed thus far. Not like there's a point in it. 

As for the eye test, the first and last are pretty obvious what they're supposed to be, but the middle two I wouldn't be able to tell without the rest of the face. 

Maybe the reason this bothers me is that I can't read eyes...


----------



## La Volpe

Peat said:


> I actually just discovered this ticks me off as well. Hell, just having a character refer to themselves as an adventurer annoys me, even if it actually make sense.
> 
> In fact, anything that makes them sound like someone's unashamed D&D murderhobo.



I'd expect an "adventurer" is simply another word for drifter. I.e. someone who doesn't have a home and travels around doing odd jobs that may or may not include killing things.


----------



## Ragnar

A.J. said:


> I often take issue with characters, or group traveling together, that have no job or trade. They are just "adventurers." Some writers have done this well, but it's only because they provide proper backstory on the characters past, home, or reason for their nomadic way of life. Without it, you're really just reading an RPG.



 I totally agree. It's fine if they allow the characters to fail when trying to do common survival tasks, like building a shelter, hunting etc...  But when they are experts despite having no skills, it's annoying! Characters that become masters at combat without ever holding a sword or other weapon. Pretty much anything that stretches reality (without a basis for it in the story) is a turn off to me.


----------



## Peat

La Volpe said:


> I'd expect an "adventurer" is simply another word for drifter. I.e. someone who doesn't have a home and travels around doing odd jobs that may or may not include killing things.



Regardless of why they use it, its a word choice that annoys me. I nearly put down a book yesterday because of it and tbh it might be part of why I'm not going to finish it.


----------



## Lunaairis

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> ...I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum, although pretty high functioning...
> 
> As for the eye test, the first and last are pretty obvious what they're supposed to be, but the middle two I wouldn't be able to tell without the rest of the face. ...





My brother is on the lower end of the high functioning autistic spectrum. You can have a conversation with him, but if things get emotional he's clueless. He can't read expressions and has trouble knowing when to stop in a social environment. He's also really unfocused unless we are talking about computers. At which point he's brilliant. 


Oh another thing I should have brought up with eyes, are a thing called *micro expressions*. 
  Micro expressions are very brief facial expressions, lasting only a fraction of a second. They occur when a person either deliberately or unconsciously conceals a feeling. Often seen in the way the eyelids close around the eye as well as brow's and lip twitches.

Lets say someone is angry that you didn't like their cooking, but then you bring up that it tastes like socks. Turns out that person doesn't want you to know that they made a broth from socks for it.  

The person expressions might go from:
  Anger, flash to realization (which is a mix of surprise and fear for most people. For this example, realization is a quick widening of the eyelids so that more white of the eye can be seen), then go full stop into disgust ( Squinting of the eyes, furrowed brow, upper lip rises. All because you learned their secret).  


This becomes very important for a perceptive character, as they should be reading/ picking this up.  Its why lines like "...a smile the eyes forgot." reveals that the person isn't happy at all but just faking it.


----------



## skip.knox

Some small defense for the word adventurer: the word adventure merely means to attempt. For this reason, ad hoc merchant companies sometimes called themselves an Adventure, or simply Venture. We still use "venture capitalist" as a term. The phrase "knight errant" is actually quite close to saying "knight adventurer."

So, while I readily grant that in poorly-done fantasies the word "adventurer" means little more than "a character I rolled up last night," going back to the historical roots of the term, and explaining it deftly, could provide the reader an interesting perspective on both the character and the vocation.


----------



## Reaver

skip.knox said:


> Some small defense for the word adventurer: the word adventure merely means to attempt. For this reason, ad hoc merchant companies sometimes called themselves an Adventure, or simply Venture. We still use "venture capitalist" as a term. The phrase "knight errant" is actually quite close to saying "knight adventurer."
> 
> So, while I readily grant that in poorly-done fantasies the word "adventurer" means little more than "a character I rolled up last night," going back to the historical roots of the term, and explaining it deftly, could provide the reader an interesting perspective on both the character and the vocation.



Thank you! I couldn't agree more. I'm a fan of the whole knight errant/wandering paladin/traveling hero archetype going around slaying monsters and righting wrongs.

Yes it's a total trope and has been done since before the days of Homer ( I love The Iliad and The Odyssey) but damned if I don't enjoy writing those kinds of stories.


----------



## FifthView

Or a story about venture capitalists sucked through a portal into a world where they'll have to get their hands dirty—I mean literally dirty?


----------



## Reaver

Malik said:


> I would love to see a story about fantasy adventurers who are bankrolled by someone. Just once. The way that modern-day archaeologists or treasure-hunters are.  So many opportunities for overlapping storylines, double-crosses, intrigue . . .



How about mercenaries? Certainly they could be considered adventurers and depending on the context, they could even be considered as the good guys.


----------



## Malik

Reaver said:


> How about mercenaries? Certainly they could be considered adventurers and depending on the context, they could even be considered as the good guys.



I have a place for this in a subplot. I went exactly where you did with it, and I'm already hammering out the flowchart.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Mercenaries, criminals, treasure hunters...all could be "adventurers." "Adventuring" could have a lot of definitions and contexts. Would a wandering explorer and scientist documenting magical creatures be considered an adventurer? What about an unemployed wizard that goes about doing odd jobs like killing goblins and dragons to make a living?


----------



## FifthView

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Mercenaries, criminals, treasure hunters...all could be "adventurers." "Adventuring" could have a lot of definitions and contexts. Would a wandering explorer and scientist documenting magical creatures be considered an adventurer? What about an unemployed wizard that goes about doing odd jobs like killing goblins and dragons to make a living?



I think the idea, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" could apply to many activities and describe the motives and personalities for a wide range of characters.


----------



## Reaver

FifthView said:


> I think the idea, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" could apply to many activities and describe the motives and personalities for a wide range of characters.



Exactly. That's why I don't understand why some people don't like the term adventurer. But hey, every opinion is subjective.


----------



## skip.knox

FifthView said:


> Or a story about venture capitalists sucked through a portal into a world where they'll have to get their hands dirty—I mean literally dirty?



Well, medieval merchants were sometimes called _pied-poudre_--literally, dusty foot.


----------



## skip.knox

*heh* I love the image of a wizard--perhaps disgraced and expelled from his order, perhaps just down on his luck--going around doing stuff that's beneath him just to make ends meet.

Actually, come to think of it, that was exactly Schmendrick. Curse you Peter S. Beagle!


----------



## Xitra_Blud

I'm a rather picky reader, I must admit, but I think that if there is anything that makes me put a book down the fastest is uninteresting characters. I always say this in my writers group, "If I don't care about the character, I don't care about the story." That's not to say that characters have to be over the top, lots of quirks, and all that, but I don't like boring, uninteresting characters. That's not even to say it has to be a character that I can relate to or even root for. Of course it depends on what you are trying to achieve with the story, but the character can be someone whose motives I don't really agree with. I just want a character that makes me want to keep reading about them and their journey, whatever that journey may be. Characters I'm having a hard time getting to know or I don't have the desire to get to know. Characterization is really important to me.


----------



## Heliotrope

Have I posted the single tear here yet? 

I hate the god damned single tear. I don't care if the single tear pricks, stings or drips, get it out if your manuscript.

"A single tear (insert verb here) down her cheek" and Helio threw the book across the room.


----------



## Ireth

Heliotrope said:


> Have I posted the single tear here yet?
> 
> I hate the god damned single tear. I don't care if the single tear pricks, stings or drips, get it out if your manuscript.
> 
> "A single tear (insert verb here) down her cheek" and Helio threw the book across the room.



What if it was something like, "A single tear fell down her cheek, but it was only the first of many"? (Hypothetical example, I have not to my knowledge ever used this cliche in fiction.)


----------



## Heliotrope

Nope. I would still puke a little in my mouth.


----------



## psychotick

Hi,

How about: "A single tear rolled down her cheek - followed by her eyeball!"

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## Chessie

I remember the single tear conversation with Helio. Was it both Desdemenoir & I who watched movies that same week/read books that featured the single tear and we reported it back to Helio? LOL I hadn't ever noticed it before.

A couple more things for this thread: typos on the first page of a book, shallow characters, boring dialogue, and making up dialogue tags. Because using a verb as a dialogue tag is a no-no.


----------



## Russ

But the single tear has such a great heritage...


----------



## FifthView

_A single tear crawled up her face until it reached her one good eye, whereupon it burrowed into the spongy matter humming "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as it ate._​


----------



## glutton

A single tear escaped her eye, but then evaporated before the hot aura of her rage which swept over the battlefield. Friend and foe alike stared at the short princess who clenched her fist so tight, blood ran from where her nails dug into her palm. 'I have no time to cry until every last one of you is dead.' She charged the demon army faster than most could follow with her seven foot sword in hand, breaking instantly through the heavily armored front line and carving a gap a hundred yards into its ranks. The house-sized king of fiends shrank back in fear as she reached him. 'But I won't save you for last. Back to hell with you, and tell the mad gods when you see them, they're next.'

-original segment not from an actual work. Baeforce empress!


----------



## Heliotrope

You guys are awesome. I love how this turned into a prompt thread.


----------



## Steerpike

Rupert stood in line, nervously fingering the $1.57 in change that jangled in his pocket. Half price day at the pastry shop was a Mecca to his gastronomical soul, sweet molecules of sugar and cinnamon, yeast and flour swirling around him like old friends returning from holiday. He breathed the air deeply, took into the deepest part of himself the promise of flavor held by the warm gust that rattled through his chest and filled his lungs. He breathed, and he played with his change, and he waited.

It was when there were only three people in front of him that dread set in, when he noticed the last cinnamon roll perched in its basket behind the clerk, a siren of smell instead of song. This dread was replaced by fear and disappointment as the clerk took that last roll gently, almost reverently, and swaddled it in the plastic bag of the customer in front of him. A single tear congealed in Rupert's eye, heavy at the edge of his lids like icing hanging precariously at the edge of a pastry. As he stepped forward, the tear dislodged, frosting a line down his cheek that shimmered in the glow of the overhead lighting. When the clerk asked for his order his breath hitched, then he forced out: "One plain donut please."


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## Heliotrope

Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?


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## Steerpike

Heliotrope said:


> Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?



Don't bring up bad memories!


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## FifthView

Heliotrope said:


> Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?



So was I.  But best not to ask.


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## Chessie

_A single tear etched its way down Heliotrope's cheek; a glossy pearl holding painful memories of a literary faux pas that ruined her life._


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## Garren Jacobsen

All this single tear hate. This is the best use of the single tear, period.

[video=youtube_share;qXf4fkerLwc]https://youtu.be/qXf4fkerLwc[/video]


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