Honestly I'd love an author who in all their books no matter the series, has the narrator refer to the "American flag with it's 49 stars". And let their fans squabble about which state isn't included
Having a romantic couple break up or avoid getting together over a misunderstanding. (For obvious reasons.)
Bringing characters back from the dead. (I just don't personally enjoy working with sci-fi or magic systems that permit resurrection.)
Anything to do with the magical "innocence" of childhood (or virginity). I very much dislike when people draw an arbitrary line and say "but once they lost that innocence/stopped being a child/grew up, they couldn't see or remember how the magic worked anymore". Blechhh. (Edit: grammar)
Re: point 3.
There's a flipped version of this that I actually like. In His Dark Materials, where the 'loss of innocence' is actually presented as a positive thing that is being repressed/controlled. And the citadel world where teenagers start to see those shadow figures that eventually suck out their soul when they reach adulthood.
"Dear Cynthia, you've been so distant lately! Why?"
"Yes, Harold, I have. I suppose I needed to step aside and give you time with your new girlfriend, Mildred. I saw you kiss and hug her at the cotillion."
"Of course, silly goose. Mildred is my SISTER!"
"Oh Harold! I'm such a fool."
"It's understandable, sweets. It's just a trope unskilled writers use called 'the big misunderstanding'."
"Oh fiddledeedee. Well played, sir."
Oh I HATE the “magic disappears when you get older.” I’m also not fond of “magic leaves the world” at the end of the story. I love LOTR, but it’s not something I’ll do in regards to that.
My #1 rule with magic is that if the only way you can get magic is by being born with it, then you need to acknowledge that racism works fundamentally differently in your universe. When a certain subset of the population can break the laws of physics, they are superior beings. When someone in the real world calls a population subhuman, they are objectively incorrect. But when some people can do things like flying or living to be 250 years old, well, the standards of what it means to be human and less than human change. Any bigot is guilty of, at worst, misapplying that mindset to different factors.
I’ve never understood why so many fantasy novels use oppressed or oppressive born magic users in a racism allegory when it has so much more in common with ableism
Well, the most straightforward one would be someone who can’t use magic in a society where everyone else can, and they keep getting like stuck on the fourth floor of building because they can’t fly, or people keep assuming they’re stupid just because they can’t do a basic summoning or whatever. Which has definitely been done. I’m just surprised it’s not more common.
One of the reasons I love the His Dark Materials trilogy is that it very clearly says that yes, kids and adults are different. And how marvellous it is to become an adult! Children are full of potential, but adults are honed blades, masters of their crafts. Both are great and the world is great and having a body with which to experience the world and love is also great! \*Including romance and sex\*!
To be honest, the HDM series was what originally gave me this distaste. HOWEVER, I read them when I was a young teenager, and thus basically a child myself. At the time, I did not appreciate any message of "yes, childhood is over, but ADULTHOOD is BETTER! No, really!" As a child, all I took away was that due to something out of Lyra's control (time and aging) she suddenly lost a wonderful skill she had (the ability to read the alethiometer) for seemingly no good reason, and now she was stuck having to learn it again, only more difficult this time.
I also very much did not like that their daemons "settled" and that once they crossed that puberty line, suddenly they were no longer capable of changing as people. (Which is what the settling of daemons directly implied - correct me if I'm wrong.) I still dislike the implication that adults just magically "settle" into who they are.
Basically if just seemed like growing up only robbed you of potential instead of providing more, but again, that was my read as a child. Children have a hard time imagining some future good that comes from upsetting change. All they know at the time is that something familiar and special is now lost. Being promised that the loss they're experiencing isn't bad and that actually what comes next is better just doesn't feel true, and it won't until they've grown.
(I guess it also really never sold me on the great allure of romance and sex, because 1) the thought of two 13 year olds getting it on was gross to read at the time, and still seems gross, and 2) I turned out to be super aro-ace, and no part of me was intrigued by the idea of either one. Let's just say mileage is definitely variable! haha)
I guess my main point on the subject, though (completely separate from HDM) is the idea that there is some definite line between childhood and adulthood at all. That there is some point of no return, a hard divide between the two states of being. That's the thing I really object to. It's never felt true for me. (Edit: grammar)
I wrote a fantasy play where the main character had the power of resurrection. The amount of headaches committing to that choice gave me... never again. How do you create tension when any character can be theoretically revived with a snap of the fingers? In a civil war?
I swear I spent more time panicking over how to create emotional stakes than actually writing
Maybe by having that power have some sort of drawback. They can bring people back but only once and when they die, that person will lose their soul and can't go to the afterlife (assuming your setting has one).
Or when they bring someone back, they lose a part of themselves (e.g. memories, body parts, feelings...).
Yeah the entire story then revolved around my MC dealing with the consequences of her abilities, the fame it brought, every political group vying for control over her fate, being stretched too thin; there was also an equilibrium thrown out of balance, I.e. take from the void and the world itself starts to collapse and magic dies out...
It got really eldritch horror by the end, where she was essentially a gatekeeper of the cycle of life for some underground cosmic beings, and her role was more to keep the cycle in balance than ress anyone who had a stroke or took an arrow to the skull. Lol
Pushing Daisies was about that. It had certain restrictions; can resurrect them once and if you touch them after that, they die instantly and permanently.
You have to balance it and either establish the balance before it's used or as a dramatic function in and of itself. For example, a form of resurrection that can raise those killed by injuries but not disease, or one that uses a cosmic bargain: you can trade *which* life goes to the Grim Reaper, but someone will be going, even if not the person who earned death. Or in some cases, you can only tell Death, "take someone else," and Ol' Grim gets his pick.
This was a central source of drama in *The Night Angel Trilogy.* The Night Angel experiences resurrective immortality, which the outgoing one describes as a curse. He learns after a few resurrections that whenever he comes back, fate will conspire to see someone he knows die in the very near future, with no way for him to know who it will be until it happens.
As someone who loves sci-fi and fantasy, my rule for resurrection is that it needs to have limitations that are clearly stated earlier in the series. For example, a time mage can resurrect someone killed by sudden injury but not someone succumbing to cancer after a years-long battle with it. If you think a character might need to come back, leave some ambiguity in the circumstances of their death, like the body never being recovered (or revealed to be a false one).
Beyond that, *let stories have stakes.* Sometimes characters will die.
Bending to public will.
My story is mine and will unfold the way it is meant to.
It will and does have things that some people will hate, but so does life. A story that tries to cater to everyone will ultimately destroy itself and be relegated to the dusty corners of history no matter how enthralling a story it started as.
Right. If I write a novel without romance (which I am), I'm not going to add it just because it "sells." Maybe life doesn't have to be romance-focused all the time (not saying it is).
1. Writing a pretty character that doesn’t think she’s pretty.
2. Basing a plot on a misunderstanding. This makes me put the book down.
3. Making a character inherently bad or good. I’m writing fantasy but it’s very focused on characters. I want to write something that feels real.
Number 3 is so real for me all of a sudden. I had a side character who was supposed to be very nearly perfect, and I despised writing her. She felt so bland. I had to sit back and spend some time with her to understand where her flaws naturally belonged, and simply allow her to have those flaws. I'm much happier with her now, and looking forward to rewriting the "scenes" she took part in prior to having flaws. She feels so much more real, and I kind of love her now. 😅 I'm not sure if *I* just wasn't meant to write "perfect," or if "perfect" is lame no matter who writes it, but I really appreciate my new, flawed character.
Honestly, I feel the same. Perfect is too unrealistic. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, with more talent could make that near-perfect character work, but when her only downside was other people's false opinions/assumptions, it didn't work for me. She had to have true, personal flaws to work. She still plays a very "good" role, but giving her the depth that imperfection provided took her from "the character I hate so much, I wish I could cut, but she's too valuable to plot progression" to a character I'm actually excited to write about. Which, hopefully, will also translate to a character that others would like to read about one day.
I have no issue with a character being insecure. However making a point of writing about it constantly while 3 other characters crush on/gush over the MC is very annoying to me personally. Two good examples of this are Twilight and The Grisha trilogy.
I understanding the misunderstanding trope is played out, but it's partly based on reality. People misunderstand each other all the time. Seem like there is a way to do it well.
I feel all of these, but admittedly sometimes misunderstanding tropes can be funny/entertaining. I’m just not the kind of writer who can make them work in my own stories lol
I have a story with a plot based on a misunderstanding. A group of men are sent to stop a nuclear missile launch, but end up late because they flipped the digits on their time of arrival.
1. I get why someone wouldn’t want to do this but insecurity is disconnected from how attractive people actually are, plus beauty is subjective and can mean a lot of different things to different people and cultures.
2. I agree that this generally isn’t a good idea but it can be done.
3. This can work but it needs specific characters to foil off of. Ozai in avatar is the closest thing to inherently evil I’ve ever seen but he works because there are two other more interesting antagonists, azula and zuko, that do most of the episode to episode villainy and because he is there to test Aangs belief that killing is never the right thing to do.
All of these, 1 messed up a lot of girls’ self esteems because they thought it would be best to not think of themselves as pretty because all these beautiful, admirable characters didn’t think they were and there’s no way in feeding into that. Characters can think they’re undesirable for other reasons that inform the world, character, or situation better, but that specific trope is one I avoid.
Two and three I can 100% get behind, but even the most attractive people I know are very quick to find some stupid little flaw with themselves. Like I think they know that other people find them pretty, they just are too humble/ insecure to fully appreciate how attractive they are...
I do agree though, it's certainly not the most exciting character trait, and it absolutely could be overdone. Like in many romances, which absolutely overdo it. But in moderation, it's absolutely realism in fiction.
I don't say never when it comes to writing, but I have guidelines I follow.
1. No gratuitous slurs or swearing.
2. Dialog has to serve a purpose. It moves the story forward, reveals character, the nature of a relationship, and serves as a conflict thermostat. If I can't make my dialog do any of these things, I cut it.
3. Be conscious of minor characters and the purpose they serve.
4. Let friends argue, give bad advice, and call each other out. Let main characters be flawed and make mistakes. Let antagonists have a good side.
5. Know the backstory of your characters, but remember most of it won't appear in print.
Your rule 5 is my golden rule in writing. I know my characters inside and out. I did personality tests to get a handle on who they are and how they react in certain situations. But it doesn't all get to be in the story. It's for me, so I don't make them do something out of character. Plus it makes the character feel more real to me.
>Know the backstory of your characters, but remember most of it won't appear in print.
Can I just change this so that it's know your world. Anything at any point could happen. It's like being a DM and your players start doing a side quest that you didn't even plan for.
Yes, so irritating. I don't know what's worse, when someone isn't given the chance to explain their supposed "mistake", or when they can't explain because it's "too difficult" and the other person "wouldn't understand" them. I get that people have issues and are often bad at communicating and that this is probably crucial to the character's personality, but for my own taste, I'd rather have my characters be difficult in other ways. Like be secretly murderers or sth.
PS I assumed you meant relationships, not bands.
Cliffhanger endings. It's one thing for things to not fully resolve at every end or hint at the direction of future books, but a novel should tell a complete story, rather than cut off right at a key moment to be purposefully unsatisfying.
This is IMO a cheap & cynical ploy to get readers to buy the next one when an author should be confident enough in the characters and world they have built that they have faith in their readership to want to hang around and spend more time with them on merit rather than bait.
It's also a lot to ask of your audience to summon back up the exact way they felt when the last book ended and now here is the continuation several months or years later. It is clunky and lame to have to recall feeling on the edge of your seat when the moment has long passed.
This is an underrated response.
Even if a book is clearly marked as being the first in a set/series, which it isn't always, I feel cheated if a novel ends on a cliffhanger.
Unresolved main plot is fine - the Fellowship did not simply walk into Mordor - but ending a book with a new conflict and leaving it unresolved feels like a broken promise.
Although, Tolkien wrote *The Lord of the Rings* as a single work. The publisher broke it into three books because it was too long to publish as a single volume. So technically, that isn't a cliffhanger. But it may feel like it to a lot of people, since we think of it as a trilogy.
Yeah, harems as a setting for historical fiction are way different than "harem" romances intended as wish-fulfillment for the target audience.
[edit because I used the word "intended" once too many]
Absolutely rampant in romance these days (looking at you, Sarah J Maas). Especially popular with Gen Z, which seems so paradoxical to me.
For context: I also write romance.
I’m writing something right now that does this - only to show that it is toxic and that someone abusive can be very charming and lovable. That’s how they get you to care about them.
Do you mind seeing this in stories when the writer is subverting that particular trope? (This is my attempt at market research lol.)
The degree to which so many women readers love reading about toxic abusive creeps is something I will never understand. The moment I sense a book is going to be like that, it's an immediate DNF for me.
No fridging. I'll kill people, but I'll never create someone whose whole role in a story is to die so someone else can be provoked or inspired by it.
Which is not to say that that never works. John Wick's puppy is a great example. But I generally find it kind of lame.
Man, I'd kill off a character because it's wednesday, I gotta be honest. If it works as a mechanic, they're now worth more to me dead than alive.
Kind of how Michael Jackson's people must have felt in his later life.
You’re the author of you create someone and they die in the story they were created to die. I kill characters off and that causes other characters to develop. I do have the rule that when I make a character even knowing they will die I give them a whole backstory and a whole version of future events if they had lived, so I know that I’m ending a person not a prop
There is SA in my novel, but i will never describe exactly what happens, and mke it graphic. It's there, it explains things and is like a symptom of what's going on in my world, but no need to give details.
I struggle with that one because it can be a fine line. I focus on the person’s recovery and how they’re treated in the aftermath as a way to show how they should be.
I get that. Actually that's why I specifically added "for drama" at the end because so often when we see it used its just to illustrate how vile a villain is or sympathetic a victim is.
Personally I'll never write about it for any reason just because I have absolutely no interest in writing about lol
I won't write sexual violence. Not because I don't think it's valid, or even sometimes necessary in a story, but because those aren't the kind of stories I want to tell and pushing it in there wouldn't help anything. Plus, my audience can read knowing there's not going to be a surprise rape in the middle of the book, so that's nice.
It seems based on what I see in these writing subs people almost always treat it like a cliche or just an attempt to make a story "edgy." Not that people say it's invalid...most of the time.
Kinda disheartening when I really wanted to add it for a real reason, in that there's very little of it that fits my perspective. Only really found a couple that even get close.
Totally get that. It is disheartening that a lot of writers see a very real thing that happens to people as just "edginess". I've read some fantastic work that features sexual violence, and taking it out wouldn't improve the story at all. I just won't put it in my stories, mainly because I feel like I'm not the person to tell those stories, partially because those aren't the stories I want to tell.
Describe sex as it's happening.
A character can remember and make reference to some good times. A character can have an afterglow of the passionate night before. A character can lead another to their bedroom...
But I'm really not interested in giving a play-by-play of a sexual experience.
Using "childlike" at all when describing the female lead/love interest, who is supposed to be part of a sex scene in the book. It's a major turn off for me every time.
As both a writer and an artist, I have learned to detest AI. It lacks the human element for one thing. Second, it makes these insanely idealized, dare I say, creations that people are beginning to expect the same in reality. The average person has a difficult time noticing the difference between human and AI art/writing. But if we, as creatives, refuse to fall into that trap, maybe we can still rise above it. Even if we have to claw our way there.
AI is just the latest thing that has come along that is supposed to ChAnGe EvErYtHiNg that would end up changing shit.
Like VR was supposed to revolutionize gaming, and people used it for a week or so, then lost interest.
Like 3D was supposed to take over the movie and television industry and ended up being a novelty.
Like wearable tech is/was supposed to have everyone walking around with obnoxious goggles that enable their wearers to access the internet during every boring facet of their lives. People showed mild interest for a few minutes and decided they didn't want to pay four grand to play Candy Crush while taking a walk.
I think society 100 years from now will find people still reading books and newspapers and creating things without the use of tech. And no one will be wearing stupid goggles or accessing the internet through implanted brain-chips. People will always want to be connected to nature and to each other, and they do that by interacting with one another and consuming real art.
/soapbox
I like your take but as someone who went to poverty because parents didn't wanted to update themselves, I can't agree with you.
My father was an illustrator, and someday on this ver past time, lames arts and artists were snitching up the publishing scene, and he said, "never ever this will be as good as hand painted". What happened some years later? We got into starving, no more jobs, because every publishing house was accepting digital art which was less than 1/3 of the price and time over his unapologetic ass. I even motivated he to follow along, because the talent was there, but he refused to digitalise his process. Still repeats the same saying to these days, is he wrong? Quite not. Hand made illustrations are awesome, but the world has moved on and this has a time and place.
This personal history is what I remember every time an artist refuses to upgrade itself to the market.
Funny thing, I'm a software developer (my "day job"). I became interested in AI back in the 1980s and even developed a small expert system once, although it turned out not to be very useful. I'm not an expert in neural networks--which are at the core of most AI today--but I know more about them than the average person.
Given all that, you might think I'd be an AI champion. I'm actually pretty ambivalent. It's not going away. It's being integrated into more and more things. You'll be using it eventually without even knowing you're using it. If you use Grammarly or certain other grammar checkers, you're already using AI.
But myself, I can't think of a single reason I'd use it as a part of my writing toolkit. I tried a few prompts on ChatGPT 3.5 and the results, while well-formed, ranged from bad to hilariously bad. And you can't use the later and better versions without paying for them. But bottom line, even if it gave reliably good results, what would I use it for? Nothing, as far as I know.
I've heard that a lot of editors say the rising use of AI in writing has made their jobs a lot worse, because writers (probably mostly in the nonfiction realm) are submitting stuff generated by AI without doing independent fact-checking. AI gets a lot of facts wrong. Large Language Models are designed to get language right, not to be domain experts. They will happily spit out well-formatted lies as readily as facts. So editors have to do the fact-checking before they can publish a piece. They pretty much hate it.
OOH ooh, okay my turn.
Tropes of innocence with men or women in sex.
Fetish fulfillment with my story/telegraphing my fetishes.
Seeking to follow a trope, rather than let it come/not come naturally.
Writing characters with sexual/ gender orientation in mind if it doesn't impact with their character or personality. Including overly straight people.
When I was in my 20s and teen years I promised I would never put gratuitous sex in my stories, especially kinky stuff. It would always weird me out reading it. Turns out that's what I'm good at. Teenage me would be appalled at my writing.
I've been told that yes, my worlds and stories are interesting and all, but it's the smut that's *really* good.
I... I don't know how to feel about that.
Since I'm a romance writer, the trope of innocent, naive women who's never even heard of sex or romance and needs a man to explain it to her. 🙄
I really, really hate reading books that disparage women being open about sex and refuse to show women engaging with it or enjoying it for their own sake.
Or equating virginity with helplessness and naïveté about everything that happens in the world. Jesus Christ, 1952 called and wants their trope back.
Edit: left out a whole word
I have a virgin MC. It's clear she’s a virgin but I have yet to write the word virgin or virginity in the entire book nor has she referred to herself as a virgin, and the love interest hasn’t mentioned it at all. It just is and I like it that way. Muahahaha!
I can literally never write about pregnancy, I have no experience about it which makes it feel weird to write about. People could easily start attack someone just for making the SLIGHTEST mistakes.
Writing about pregnancy with no experience is easy.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
“Hello Doctor. I am pregnant.” The woman said.
“Yes. I see.” The doctor said. “Let’s make you unpregnant.”
“Ok”, said the woman.
The doctor lifted up the woman’s hospital gown. “You might feel a little pressure”, he said.
“My body is ready”, said the woman.
The doctor tickled the pregnant belly that was beaming with new life. After a few minutes of silent tickles, the doctor chuckled. “Alright, this is where the fun begins.”
He pulled a chair next to the table of sterile tools. He first stepped onto the chair then stepped onto the table of surgical tools, carelessly stepping all over the no longer sterile equipment with his size 12 Reebok Shaq Victory Pumps. All white shoes with white laces, to match his white surgical outfit of course. The right shoe had a noticeable blood stain near the toe, its origin is unknown to the doctor’s colleagues, he prefers to keep it that way for the sake of his medical license. He reached down to pump up both shoes simultaneously. One pump. Two pumps. Three pumps. Four pumps. Five pumps. Six pumps. Six. Six pumps ahahaha.
“WITH THE MIGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS, I COMMAND YOU TO BE BIRTHED!”
The doctor leapt off the table. In his descent, he delivered a flawless People’s Elbow to the woman’s bulging belly. The woman let out a moan of satisfaction with a hint of orgasm.
After a few seconds of quiet queefing, a light shot out from the dark depths of the woman’s vagina. A tiny pair of baby hands reached out grabbing the vagina’s rim. With his 6 inch pythons, the baby lifted himself out of his vagina home and into the post 9/11 world.
As everybody knows, newly born babies must be checked to ensure they are breathing.
“Baby, are you breathing?” asked the doctor.
“Yes”, replied the baby.
The doctor nodded with approval. He then turned to the woman. “That’ll be $50 cash.”
The woman handed the doctor $51. “Keep the change!”
The doctor shook the woman’s hand and the baby’s hand, then watched on as the woman and the baby walked out of the hospital.
Sorry but this is stupid. I don't like the idea of avoiding to write about things you haven't personally experienced. Instead use these opportunities to do research and learn about the topics.
Don't be afraid of cancel culture, fight it head on.
I'm working with dark fantasy/horror. Both use that particular vehicle way too much and it's usually cheap, or worse, exploitative.
I do think it isn't without its place though... Just not in my writing... And I wish it was used more deliberately and carefully when used at all.
Torture resulting in actionable intelligence. It doesn't work that way. Torture makes you say what you think will make the torture stop. Don't believe me? Ask the CIA, they say the same. In fiction, torture is often portrayed as a hero who knows what the torturer wants to know, holding out against increasing duress. In a realistic setting, the victim won't know, or will give it up but the torturer won't believe them, or will make something plausible up, anything to make it stop.
Portraying it this way in fiction gives people unrealistic expectations of what torture, sorry, "enhanced interrogation," accomplishes in the course of shitting on everything decent in this world. Torture is only effective for making someone suffer or coercing a confession that doesn't need to be factually true.
Yeah, never use “Zestful”.
> When I was in the eighth grade, I happened upon a paperback novel by Murray Leinster, a science fiction pulp writer who did most of his work during the forties and fifties, when magazines like Amazing Stories paid a penny a word. I had read other books by Mr. Leinster, enough to know that the quality of his writing was uneven. This particular tale, which was about mining in the asteroid belt, was one of his less successful efforts. Only that’s too kind. It was terrible, actually, a story populated by paper-thin characters and driven by outlandish plot developments. Worst of all (or so it seemed to me at the time), Leinster had fallen in love with the word zestful. Characters watched the approach of ore-bearing asteroids with zestful smiles. Characters sat down to supper aboard their mining ship with zestful anticipation. Near the end of the book, the hero swept the large-breasted, blonde heroine into a zestful embrace. For me, it was the literary equivalent of a smallpox vaccination: I have never, so far as I know, used the word zestful in a novel or a story. God willing, I never will.
Stephen King - On Writing
My hope is that my fiction never 'preaches.'
I hope that people learn from my stories by doing their own critical thinking and grasp the *point* of my works without my ever having to say "don't do this" or "do that." My job isn't to tell people that I know best; my job is to impart experiences so that people can develop their own takeaways. If I do that job well, I can trust my readers to gain familiarity and insight into situations and address those situations themselves.
I don't have all the answers for everything (no one does) so instead of saying "this thing is bad and you should do this about it" I try to help people understand a problem from the inside and deal with it in the best way they can based on what they learned from experiencing that problem in one of my stories.
A quick read through of the top comments reveals three main threads-
1. Refusal of cliches
2. Rejection of the problematic
3. Sex is icky and to be banished to the outer darkness where Morgoth waits for Dagor Dagorath
Sex scenes are hard to write and for some part of the audience, hard to read. I find myself doing character development during the scene, or ruining the mood by having animals or pets interrupt hilariously. Simple sex is better done than described. 😁
Allow modern sensibilities/ethical norms to intrude into the headspace, actions, or beliefs of characters unless they are appropriate for the character and the milieu.
After reading all of these comments, one thing is clear:
You guys should read more literature.
Except the never-kill-the-dog person. They know what's up.
I will never write the line "X let out the breath they didn't know they were holding".
I will also never include a plot where everything could be easily cleared up by two characters simply talking to each other.
Write a story that doesn't have a HEA.
My logic: The world is shitty enough, I read stories to escape from the shit show that is life. I don't want to leave readers distraught. Even if something bad happens iny stories, people will always find a way to push through or overcome...to get to their HEA
I've got a few of these:
Sexual assault is a hard no. Not as backstory, not as a threat, definitely not on page. I don't care if it's "unrealistic" - I'm a fantasy author, that ship has sailed.
Speaking of fantasy: giant spiders. I have a friend with terrible arachnophobia and I want to write something she can read.
"Return of the True King"-type stories. They may be a classic of the genre, but I'm not a fan of the message that some people are just born better than others.
I have a decent list of similar guidelines for my writing (eg: magic can cause the main conflict but it can't solve it) because I've found I work better with constraints.
I get the dry heaves when I read explicit sex scenes of any kind, so my ability to do it well would be minimal, so I’m afraid I’ll just have to allude to the act of love in the most refrained way possible. Tolkein was never chaster.
Trying not to use words that repeat itself.
"She would go to the store, and most likely than not, she would have someone with her."
There's no reason to use she twice, so instead, I'll try and reshape the sentence without using she again.
"She would go to the store, more likely than not, with a friend. Someone close to her."
Preach or teach.
I strive to produce immoral stories without a message of any kind. If you learned something from my stories: please drink excessively and hit yourself over the head with a cudgel to forget.
Info dump exposition.
When I read a fantasy novel, I don’t care how a tiny village is founded. It’s boring to read.
My writing style can be very curt for this exact reason, to the point that I’ve been criticized for not giving enough details THATS how much I avoid info dumping and exposition
for me it's the expected ends and expected flow, well everything can be expected but it's not easy to expect stuff, while on the other hand look at movies showing you a male and female who are the main characters and then they fall in love, common i don't have to be Sherlock to expect that, give me another key, make me wonder why tf am i reading this, i want you to make me wonder what will happen in the next chapter of the book, well it's sad that we lost a little part of this excitement because movies and tv shows took over-excitement, and so on
Overuse of figurative language. The best way to ruin a story is to stuff it so full of metaphors that it's almost impossible to tell what's actually going on.
Write characters that can only communicate or info dump when eating. So many bad writers can't come up with a reason why these characters should be working together and talking to each other, so they force them to be together through meals.
Graphic, on-screen sexual assault. We can allude to it. We can draw a veil over it. We can have it attempted and then (violently) interrupted/foiled. But in this house we don't spend three pages banging on that drum.
I will admit I write a lot of trauma stories that have included SA and even rarely r*, but more so because I've experienced it. Things I however won't write.
1.kids in relationships (feels icky to me.)
2. A Jojo Bizarre part 6 ending (I'm not going to create a whole story just to say the world ends the end.)
3. Make someone entirely evil just because. (I can have maybe one very Evil character, but even they did something good at some point in their life)
4. Male pregnancies. (Not my fruit, but everyone has their own tastes.)
5. Only give constant trauma to a character. (They need to live a little.)
6. Describe a Kermit rooftop scene in full detail. (Being a bit discreet in my wording, but I don't know if it's okay to write the actual word for that. But too much trauma for that.)
7. Destroy a characters marriage over them 'coming home late.' (It drives me up the walls when I see people do this, and then end being they now understand each other and will get married again.)
8. Not research something. (I don't care if it's worse than my search 'what happens to human muscle tissue when it's put into citric acid and vinegar.' Researching is better than lying and making it up on the spot.)
There's more that I haven't labeled, but those are my top.
Have characters do stupid things.
This is true for all genres. I don't like reading or writing about characters who do stupid things. I love characters who do the rational smart thing but then it ends up blowing up in the faces.
Undeveloped/plot object characters, especially women. If a character is worth naming, they’re worth treating as a real, whole person who’s more than just a role in the plot.
There are very few reasons to write a story that doesn’t pass the bechdel test. Unless your story is set entirely within a monastery or a deserted island, there should be women acting like real people and not accessories to men.
Never revive a dead character. It's so tempting sometimes. These lil guys are my babies, and while I sometimes need to kill one off for the story, I never really want them to stay dead. But then, there is no trope that I hate more than fake-out deaths. It completely kills all tension no matter what, or sometimes kind of breaks promises made to the audience, not to mention potential plot holes, inconsistencies, and cracks in the theme it might create. I just can't do it! 😖
Those jokes that are like "look look I'm funny look". Like when a character lists things and one item on the list is super ridiculous and a character is like "Sorry, did you just say *ridiculous item*?!" Things like that are overused and cheap. I could let subverting these jokes pass, though.
Also as another person said, I always hated "loss of innocence". In my experience, learning the truth of the world is the best thing that ever happened. Ignorance is not true bliss because it isn't safe, is my philosophy.
Generalize intelligence.
A lot of "smart" characters in media are good at anything that requires a brain, capable of quickly picking up entire disciplines of study. In reality while a certain aptitude is helpful, most complex fields are filled with very "smart" people who applied those smarts for years to get good at one specific subset of one field.
Sex scenes. I tried to write one once just to see if I could and I felt so uncomfortable that I didn’t even finish the scene, deleted the draft and vowed not to write again on principle.
It was all a dream I absolutely despise this trope. Never never never.
I used to read Word Up! magazine Salt-N-Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine
Hangin’ pictures on my wall. Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr Magic, Marley Mall.
Sippin' on Private Stock
I did this to annoy my English teacher all the time at school at the end of a really ending short story. But I never use it anymore.
99% of writers quit right before they successfully create a satisfying "and then they woke up" conclusion
Get published
Haha if I wanted to get published I'd first have to finish writing a novel.
If this isn’t the most accurate comment here 😭
Writing: the one hobby whose hobbyists don’t do.
Recognise Missouri.
I'll be cold, dead in the ground before I use a 50 star flag.
Right? Eastern Kansas sucks, why make it its own state.
Mo’ like Misery amiright
Hello, I live in Missouri and find this absolutely hilarious
Honestly I'd love an author who in all their books no matter the series, has the narrator refer to the "American flag with it's 49 stars". And let their fans squabble about which state isn't included
This joke is too smart for me.
finish a draft, apparently
😂😂😂😂 this made me howl lmfao
Having a romantic couple break up or avoid getting together over a misunderstanding. (For obvious reasons.) Bringing characters back from the dead. (I just don't personally enjoy working with sci-fi or magic systems that permit resurrection.) Anything to do with the magical "innocence" of childhood (or virginity). I very much dislike when people draw an arbitrary line and say "but once they lost that innocence/stopped being a child/grew up, they couldn't see or remember how the magic worked anymore". Blechhh. (Edit: grammar)
Re: point 3. There's a flipped version of this that I actually like. In His Dark Materials, where the 'loss of innocence' is actually presented as a positive thing that is being repressed/controlled. And the citadel world where teenagers start to see those shadow figures that eventually suck out their soul when they reach adulthood.
Though there's also the ending where >! Lyra forgets how to read the Alethiometer and has to learn it, this time by putting in time and effort. !<
This struck me as a very on-the-nose analogy for language acquisition, in which context I rather liked it.
very unrelated but omg I LOVED his dark materials such a good book
"Dear Cynthia, you've been so distant lately! Why?" "Yes, Harold, I have. I suppose I needed to step aside and give you time with your new girlfriend, Mildred. I saw you kiss and hug her at the cotillion." "Of course, silly goose. Mildred is my SISTER!" "Oh Harold! I'm such a fool." "It's understandable, sweets. It's just a trope unskilled writers use called 'the big misunderstanding'." "Oh fiddledeedee. Well played, sir."
This made me laugh and tear my hair out at the same time. Well played.
I need more now. Where does fiddledeedee lead?
Oh I HATE the “magic disappears when you get older.” I’m also not fond of “magic leaves the world” at the end of the story. I love LOTR, but it’s not something I’ll do in regards to that.
In DODO, magic disappeared in the 1800s when one day a lot of people photographed the sun
My #1 rule with magic is that if the only way you can get magic is by being born with it, then you need to acknowledge that racism works fundamentally differently in your universe. When a certain subset of the population can break the laws of physics, they are superior beings. When someone in the real world calls a population subhuman, they are objectively incorrect. But when some people can do things like flying or living to be 250 years old, well, the standards of what it means to be human and less than human change. Any bigot is guilty of, at worst, misapplying that mindset to different factors.
I’ve never understood why so many fantasy novels use oppressed or oppressive born magic users in a racism allegory when it has so much more in common with ableism
Ooh, I kinda like this. Could you maybe expand on what the ableism allegory would look like?
Well, the most straightforward one would be someone who can’t use magic in a society where everyone else can, and they keep getting like stuck on the fourth floor of building because they can’t fly, or people keep assuming they’re stupid just because they can’t do a basic summoning or whatever. Which has definitely been done. I’m just surprised it’s not more common.
One of the reasons I love the His Dark Materials trilogy is that it very clearly says that yes, kids and adults are different. And how marvellous it is to become an adult! Children are full of potential, but adults are honed blades, masters of their crafts. Both are great and the world is great and having a body with which to experience the world and love is also great! \*Including romance and sex\*!
To be honest, the HDM series was what originally gave me this distaste. HOWEVER, I read them when I was a young teenager, and thus basically a child myself. At the time, I did not appreciate any message of "yes, childhood is over, but ADULTHOOD is BETTER! No, really!" As a child, all I took away was that due to something out of Lyra's control (time and aging) she suddenly lost a wonderful skill she had (the ability to read the alethiometer) for seemingly no good reason, and now she was stuck having to learn it again, only more difficult this time. I also very much did not like that their daemons "settled" and that once they crossed that puberty line, suddenly they were no longer capable of changing as people. (Which is what the settling of daemons directly implied - correct me if I'm wrong.) I still dislike the implication that adults just magically "settle" into who they are. Basically if just seemed like growing up only robbed you of potential instead of providing more, but again, that was my read as a child. Children have a hard time imagining some future good that comes from upsetting change. All they know at the time is that something familiar and special is now lost. Being promised that the loss they're experiencing isn't bad and that actually what comes next is better just doesn't feel true, and it won't until they've grown. (I guess it also really never sold me on the great allure of romance and sex, because 1) the thought of two 13 year olds getting it on was gross to read at the time, and still seems gross, and 2) I turned out to be super aro-ace, and no part of me was intrigued by the idea of either one. Let's just say mileage is definitely variable! haha) I guess my main point on the subject, though (completely separate from HDM) is the idea that there is some definite line between childhood and adulthood at all. That there is some point of no return, a hard divide between the two states of being. That's the thing I really object to. It's never felt true for me. (Edit: grammar)
I wrote a fantasy play where the main character had the power of resurrection. The amount of headaches committing to that choice gave me... never again. How do you create tension when any character can be theoretically revived with a snap of the fingers? In a civil war? I swear I spent more time panicking over how to create emotional stakes than actually writing
Maybe by having that power have some sort of drawback. They can bring people back but only once and when they die, that person will lose their soul and can't go to the afterlife (assuming your setting has one). Or when they bring someone back, they lose a part of themselves (e.g. memories, body parts, feelings...).
Yeah the entire story then revolved around my MC dealing with the consequences of her abilities, the fame it brought, every political group vying for control over her fate, being stretched too thin; there was also an equilibrium thrown out of balance, I.e. take from the void and the world itself starts to collapse and magic dies out... It got really eldritch horror by the end, where she was essentially a gatekeeper of the cycle of life for some underground cosmic beings, and her role was more to keep the cycle in balance than ress anyone who had a stroke or took an arrow to the skull. Lol
>Or when they bring someone back, they lose a part of themselves (e.g. memories, body parts, feelings...). Or part of their own lifespan.
Pushing Daisies was about that. It had certain restrictions; can resurrect them once and if you touch them after that, they die instantly and permanently.
You have to balance it and either establish the balance before it's used or as a dramatic function in and of itself. For example, a form of resurrection that can raise those killed by injuries but not disease, or one that uses a cosmic bargain: you can trade *which* life goes to the Grim Reaper, but someone will be going, even if not the person who earned death. Or in some cases, you can only tell Death, "take someone else," and Ol' Grim gets his pick. This was a central source of drama in *The Night Angel Trilogy.* The Night Angel experiences resurrective immortality, which the outgoing one describes as a curse. He learns after a few resurrections that whenever he comes back, fate will conspire to see someone he knows die in the very near future, with no way for him to know who it will be until it happens.
As someone who loves sci-fi and fantasy, my rule for resurrection is that it needs to have limitations that are clearly stated earlier in the series. For example, a time mage can resurrect someone killed by sudden injury but not someone succumbing to cancer after a years-long battle with it. If you think a character might need to come back, leave some ambiguity in the circumstances of their death, like the body never being recovered (or revealed to be a false one). Beyond that, *let stories have stakes.* Sometimes characters will die.
Bending to public will. My story is mine and will unfold the way it is meant to. It will and does have things that some people will hate, but so does life. A story that tries to cater to everyone will ultimately destroy itself and be relegated to the dusty corners of history no matter how enthralling a story it started as.
How dare you do a thing I don't like! Change it immediatly, or I will tell Twitter!
Book bans=free marketing. Do your thing.
This is definitely me.
Right. If I write a novel without romance (which I am), I'm not going to add it just because it "sells." Maybe life doesn't have to be romance-focused all the time (not saying it is).
Coming back from the dead - if you're dead you're dead! I've seen it too many times and it makes the story lose all meaning to my mind.
Laughs in Supernatural
Laughs in Daniel Jackson from StarGate SG-1
Laughs in Pet Sematary
Same here. In my setting I'm writing, there isn't even an afterlife. Dead is dead.
1. Writing a pretty character that doesn’t think she’s pretty. 2. Basing a plot on a misunderstanding. This makes me put the book down. 3. Making a character inherently bad or good. I’m writing fantasy but it’s very focused on characters. I want to write something that feels real.
Number 3 is so real for me all of a sudden. I had a side character who was supposed to be very nearly perfect, and I despised writing her. She felt so bland. I had to sit back and spend some time with her to understand where her flaws naturally belonged, and simply allow her to have those flaws. I'm much happier with her now, and looking forward to rewriting the "scenes" she took part in prior to having flaws. She feels so much more real, and I kind of love her now. 😅 I'm not sure if *I* just wasn't meant to write "perfect," or if "perfect" is lame no matter who writes it, but I really appreciate my new, flawed character.
Naw perfect is lame. Nobody is perfect in real life. Even evil people can justify their doings - mental illness, trauma, revenge, etc.
Honestly, I feel the same. Perfect is too unrealistic. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, with more talent could make that near-perfect character work, but when her only downside was other people's false opinions/assumptions, it didn't work for me. She had to have true, personal flaws to work. She still plays a very "good" role, but giving her the depth that imperfection provided took her from "the character I hate so much, I wish I could cut, but she's too valuable to plot progression" to a character I'm actually excited to write about. Which, hopefully, will also translate to a character that others would like to read about one day.
I know so many people who are pretty but don’t know it. It’s common in real life so I don’t mind using it in my writing.
I have no issue with a character being insecure. However making a point of writing about it constantly while 3 other characters crush on/gush over the MC is very annoying to me personally. Two good examples of this are Twilight and The Grisha trilogy.
Excellent point.
I understanding the misunderstanding trope is played out, but it's partly based on reality. People misunderstand each other all the time. Seem like there is a way to do it well.
I feel all of these, but admittedly sometimes misunderstanding tropes can be funny/entertaining. I’m just not the kind of writer who can make them work in my own stories lol
I think misunderstanding works wonderfully with comedy 😄
I have a story with a plot based on a misunderstanding. A group of men are sent to stop a nuclear missile launch, but end up late because they flipped the digits on their time of arrival.
1. I get why someone wouldn’t want to do this but insecurity is disconnected from how attractive people actually are, plus beauty is subjective and can mean a lot of different things to different people and cultures. 2. I agree that this generally isn’t a good idea but it can be done. 3. This can work but it needs specific characters to foil off of. Ozai in avatar is the closest thing to inherently evil I’ve ever seen but he works because there are two other more interesting antagonists, azula and zuko, that do most of the episode to episode villainy and because he is there to test Aangs belief that killing is never the right thing to do.
All of these, 1 messed up a lot of girls’ self esteems because they thought it would be best to not think of themselves as pretty because all these beautiful, admirable characters didn’t think they were and there’s no way in feeding into that. Characters can think they’re undesirable for other reasons that inform the world, character, or situation better, but that specific trope is one I avoid.
Two and three I can 100% get behind, but even the most attractive people I know are very quick to find some stupid little flaw with themselves. Like I think they know that other people find them pretty, they just are too humble/ insecure to fully appreciate how attractive they are... I do agree though, it's certainly not the most exciting character trait, and it absolutely could be overdone. Like in many romances, which absolutely overdo it. But in moderation, it's absolutely realism in fiction.
I don't say never when it comes to writing, but I have guidelines I follow. 1. No gratuitous slurs or swearing. 2. Dialog has to serve a purpose. It moves the story forward, reveals character, the nature of a relationship, and serves as a conflict thermostat. If I can't make my dialog do any of these things, I cut it. 3. Be conscious of minor characters and the purpose they serve. 4. Let friends argue, give bad advice, and call each other out. Let main characters be flawed and make mistakes. Let antagonists have a good side. 5. Know the backstory of your characters, but remember most of it won't appear in print.
Your rule 5 is my golden rule in writing. I know my characters inside and out. I did personality tests to get a handle on who they are and how they react in certain situations. But it doesn't all get to be in the story. It's for me, so I don't make them do something out of character. Plus it makes the character feel more real to me.
This is how lore is created.
>Know the backstory of your characters, but remember most of it won't appear in print. Can I just change this so that it's know your world. Anything at any point could happen. It's like being a DM and your players start doing a side quest that you didn't even plan for.
No random break-ups near the end just for the sake of a reunion!
Yes, so irritating. I don't know what's worse, when someone isn't given the chance to explain their supposed "mistake", or when they can't explain because it's "too difficult" and the other person "wouldn't understand" them. I get that people have issues and are often bad at communicating and that this is probably crucial to the character's personality, but for my own taste, I'd rather have my characters be difficult in other ways. Like be secretly murderers or sth. PS I assumed you meant relationships, not bands.
Write something I wouldn't want to read.
Cliffhanger endings. It's one thing for things to not fully resolve at every end or hint at the direction of future books, but a novel should tell a complete story, rather than cut off right at a key moment to be purposefully unsatisfying. This is IMO a cheap & cynical ploy to get readers to buy the next one when an author should be confident enough in the characters and world they have built that they have faith in their readership to want to hang around and spend more time with them on merit rather than bait. It's also a lot to ask of your audience to summon back up the exact way they felt when the last book ended and now here is the continuation several months or years later. It is clunky and lame to have to recall feeling on the edge of your seat when the moment has long passed.
This is an underrated response. Even if a book is clearly marked as being the first in a set/series, which it isn't always, I feel cheated if a novel ends on a cliffhanger. Unresolved main plot is fine - the Fellowship did not simply walk into Mordor - but ending a book with a new conflict and leaving it unresolved feels like a broken promise.
Although, Tolkien wrote *The Lord of the Rings* as a single work. The publisher broke it into three books because it was too long to publish as a single volume. So technically, that isn't a cliffhanger. But it may feel like it to a lot of people, since we think of it as a trilogy.
This exactly. It’s frustrating and manipulative and yet somehow common practice.
Harems. I just can't stand it.
I hate those, both harems and reverse harems. But if it was an organized harem like in imperial China or the Ottoman harem with rankings, I’d love it.
Yeah, harems as a setting for historical fiction are way different than "harem" romances intended as wish-fulfillment for the target audience. [edit because I used the word "intended" once too many]
Glamourizing toxic relations
Absolutely rampant in romance these days (looking at you, Sarah J Maas). Especially popular with Gen Z, which seems so paradoxical to me. For context: I also write romance.
Colleen Hoover comes to mind, I’m under the opinion she should turn to horror or just darker stuff. Like all of the relationships are just creepy
I’m writing something right now that does this - only to show that it is toxic and that someone abusive can be very charming and lovable. That’s how they get you to care about them. Do you mind seeing this in stories when the writer is subverting that particular trope? (This is my attempt at market research lol.)
I dont mind this because it is not glamourizing, it is in fact how most toxic relationships start
The degree to which so many women readers love reading about toxic abusive creeps is something I will never understand. The moment I sense a book is going to be like that, it's an immediate DNF for me.
No fridging. I'll kill people, but I'll never create someone whose whole role in a story is to die so someone else can be provoked or inspired by it. Which is not to say that that never works. John Wick's puppy is a great example. But I generally find it kind of lame.
Oh that's a good one. It's really hard to care about the girlfriend who only gets like 3 lines total.
Man, I'd kill off a character because it's wednesday, I gotta be honest. If it works as a mechanic, they're now worth more to me dead than alive. Kind of how Michael Jackson's people must have felt in his later life.
>Kind of how Michael Jackson's people must have felt in his later life. Daaaaayyyuuummm
Oh yeah, this is a good point. Like even when I know I want x character(s) to die, their death has to be more than a prop.
You’re the author of you create someone and they die in the story they were created to die. I kill characters off and that causes other characters to develop. I do have the rule that when I make a character even knowing they will die I give them a whole backstory and a whole version of future events if they had lived, so I know that I’m ending a person not a prop
I enjoy creating the sweetest characters just to kill them off
None of them are sweeter than John Wick's puppy
Be boring. That's it.
What a boring answer. >!/j!<
SA for the sake of drama
There is SA in my novel, but i will never describe exactly what happens, and mke it graphic. It's there, it explains things and is like a symptom of what's going on in my world, but no need to give details.
I struggle with that one because it can be a fine line. I focus on the person’s recovery and how they’re treated in the aftermath as a way to show how they should be.
I get that. Actually that's why I specifically added "for drama" at the end because so often when we see it used its just to illustrate how vile a villain is or sympathetic a victim is. Personally I'll never write about it for any reason just because I have absolutely no interest in writing about lol
Kill the dog
What if the dog is a shapeshifting alien? (The Thing)
I won't write sexual violence. Not because I don't think it's valid, or even sometimes necessary in a story, but because those aren't the kind of stories I want to tell and pushing it in there wouldn't help anything. Plus, my audience can read knowing there's not going to be a surprise rape in the middle of the book, so that's nice.
It seems based on what I see in these writing subs people almost always treat it like a cliche or just an attempt to make a story "edgy." Not that people say it's invalid...most of the time. Kinda disheartening when I really wanted to add it for a real reason, in that there's very little of it that fits my perspective. Only really found a couple that even get close.
Totally get that. It is disheartening that a lot of writers see a very real thing that happens to people as just "edginess". I've read some fantastic work that features sexual violence, and taking it out wouldn't improve the story at all. I just won't put it in my stories, mainly because I feel like I'm not the person to tell those stories, partially because those aren't the stories I want to tell.
Girl being forced to marry a man who is not only a bad person but is an abuser by her otherwise loving parents
Describe sex as it's happening. A character can remember and make reference to some good times. A character can have an afterglow of the passionate night before. A character can lead another to their bedroom... But I'm really not interested in giving a play-by-play of a sexual experience.
Vowing never to do something is way too much like double-dog daring myself to do it. Anything might happen.
Using “childlike” when writing a sex scene.
Wtf?! Who does that??
Ewww. Writers do that?
See r/menwritingwomen if you want to hate Stephen King
Using "childlike" at all when describing the female lead/love interest, who is supposed to be part of a sex scene in the book. It's a major turn off for me every time.
Especially “childlike innocence” 🤢
Finish writing the first paragraph of my rough draft.
the only real one here
Use AI.
As both a writer and an artist, I have learned to detest AI. It lacks the human element for one thing. Second, it makes these insanely idealized, dare I say, creations that people are beginning to expect the same in reality. The average person has a difficult time noticing the difference between human and AI art/writing. But if we, as creatives, refuse to fall into that trap, maybe we can still rise above it. Even if we have to claw our way there.
AI is just the latest thing that has come along that is supposed to ChAnGe EvErYtHiNg that would end up changing shit. Like VR was supposed to revolutionize gaming, and people used it for a week or so, then lost interest. Like 3D was supposed to take over the movie and television industry and ended up being a novelty. Like wearable tech is/was supposed to have everyone walking around with obnoxious goggles that enable their wearers to access the internet during every boring facet of their lives. People showed mild interest for a few minutes and decided they didn't want to pay four grand to play Candy Crush while taking a walk. I think society 100 years from now will find people still reading books and newspapers and creating things without the use of tech. And no one will be wearing stupid goggles or accessing the internet through implanted brain-chips. People will always want to be connected to nature and to each other, and they do that by interacting with one another and consuming real art. /soapbox
I like your take but as someone who went to poverty because parents didn't wanted to update themselves, I can't agree with you. My father was an illustrator, and someday on this ver past time, lames arts and artists were snitching up the publishing scene, and he said, "never ever this will be as good as hand painted". What happened some years later? We got into starving, no more jobs, because every publishing house was accepting digital art which was less than 1/3 of the price and time over his unapologetic ass. I even motivated he to follow along, because the talent was there, but he refused to digitalise his process. Still repeats the same saying to these days, is he wrong? Quite not. Hand made illustrations are awesome, but the world has moved on and this has a time and place. This personal history is what I remember every time an artist refuses to upgrade itself to the market.
Funny thing, I'm a software developer (my "day job"). I became interested in AI back in the 1980s and even developed a small expert system once, although it turned out not to be very useful. I'm not an expert in neural networks--which are at the core of most AI today--but I know more about them than the average person. Given all that, you might think I'd be an AI champion. I'm actually pretty ambivalent. It's not going away. It's being integrated into more and more things. You'll be using it eventually without even knowing you're using it. If you use Grammarly or certain other grammar checkers, you're already using AI. But myself, I can't think of a single reason I'd use it as a part of my writing toolkit. I tried a few prompts on ChatGPT 3.5 and the results, while well-formed, ranged from bad to hilariously bad. And you can't use the later and better versions without paying for them. But bottom line, even if it gave reliably good results, what would I use it for? Nothing, as far as I know. I've heard that a lot of editors say the rising use of AI in writing has made their jobs a lot worse, because writers (probably mostly in the nonfiction realm) are submitting stuff generated by AI without doing independent fact-checking. AI gets a lot of facts wrong. Large Language Models are designed to get language right, not to be domain experts. They will happily spit out well-formatted lies as readily as facts. So editors have to do the fact-checking before they can publish a piece. They pretty much hate it.
OOH ooh, okay my turn. Tropes of innocence with men or women in sex. Fetish fulfillment with my story/telegraphing my fetishes. Seeking to follow a trope, rather than let it come/not come naturally. Writing characters with sexual/ gender orientation in mind if it doesn't impact with their character or personality. Including overly straight people.
When I was in my 20s and teen years I promised I would never put gratuitous sex in my stories, especially kinky stuff. It would always weird me out reading it. Turns out that's what I'm good at. Teenage me would be appalled at my writing.
I've been told that yes, my worlds and stories are interesting and all, but it's the smut that's *really* good. I... I don't know how to feel about that.
Since I'm a romance writer, the trope of innocent, naive women who's never even heard of sex or romance and needs a man to explain it to her. 🙄 I really, really hate reading books that disparage women being open about sex and refuse to show women engaging with it or enjoying it for their own sake.
Or equating virginity with helplessness and naïveté about everything that happens in the world. Jesus Christ, 1952 called and wants their trope back. Edit: left out a whole word
I have a virgin MC. It's clear she’s a virgin but I have yet to write the word virgin or virginity in the entire book nor has she referred to herself as a virgin, and the love interest hasn’t mentioned it at all. It just is and I like it that way. Muahahaha!
I can literally never write about pregnancy, I have no experience about it which makes it feel weird to write about. People could easily start attack someone just for making the SLIGHTEST mistakes.
Writing about pregnancy with no experience is easy. - - - - - - - - - - - - “Hello Doctor. I am pregnant.” The woman said. “Yes. I see.” The doctor said. “Let’s make you unpregnant.” “Ok”, said the woman. The doctor lifted up the woman’s hospital gown. “You might feel a little pressure”, he said. “My body is ready”, said the woman. The doctor tickled the pregnant belly that was beaming with new life. After a few minutes of silent tickles, the doctor chuckled. “Alright, this is where the fun begins.” He pulled a chair next to the table of sterile tools. He first stepped onto the chair then stepped onto the table of surgical tools, carelessly stepping all over the no longer sterile equipment with his size 12 Reebok Shaq Victory Pumps. All white shoes with white laces, to match his white surgical outfit of course. The right shoe had a noticeable blood stain near the toe, its origin is unknown to the doctor’s colleagues, he prefers to keep it that way for the sake of his medical license. He reached down to pump up both shoes simultaneously. One pump. Two pumps. Three pumps. Four pumps. Five pumps. Six pumps. Six. Six pumps ahahaha. “WITH THE MIGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS, I COMMAND YOU TO BE BIRTHED!” The doctor leapt off the table. In his descent, he delivered a flawless People’s Elbow to the woman’s bulging belly. The woman let out a moan of satisfaction with a hint of orgasm. After a few seconds of quiet queefing, a light shot out from the dark depths of the woman’s vagina. A tiny pair of baby hands reached out grabbing the vagina’s rim. With his 6 inch pythons, the baby lifted himself out of his vagina home and into the post 9/11 world. As everybody knows, newly born babies must be checked to ensure they are breathing. “Baby, are you breathing?” asked the doctor. “Yes”, replied the baby. The doctor nodded with approval. He then turned to the woman. “That’ll be $50 cash.” The woman handed the doctor $51. “Keep the change!” The doctor shook the woman’s hand and the baby’s hand, then watched on as the woman and the baby walked out of the hospital.
Thanks for making my day 💀
This is amazing
That's what beta readers are for. And every pregnancy is so different that you could say a huge range of things and all have it be correct, honestly.
Sorry but this is stupid. I don't like the idea of avoiding to write about things you haven't personally experienced. Instead use these opportunities to do research and learn about the topics. Don't be afraid of cancel culture, fight it head on.
So your writing is exclusively autobiographical?
SA. Not my story to tell.
Doesn't that apply to most crimes and many life experiences? No one has experienced death but most writers write about it.
This. Even if it was, I don’t see it ever being *necessary* for the kind of stories I want to write anyway.
I'm working with dark fantasy/horror. Both use that particular vehicle way too much and it's usually cheap, or worse, exploitative. I do think it isn't without its place though... Just not in my writing... And I wish it was used more deliberately and carefully when used at all.
South Africa?
Have the narrator/main character be a writer.
Torture resulting in actionable intelligence. It doesn't work that way. Torture makes you say what you think will make the torture stop. Don't believe me? Ask the CIA, they say the same. In fiction, torture is often portrayed as a hero who knows what the torturer wants to know, holding out against increasing duress. In a realistic setting, the victim won't know, or will give it up but the torturer won't believe them, or will make something plausible up, anything to make it stop. Portraying it this way in fiction gives people unrealistic expectations of what torture, sorry, "enhanced interrogation," accomplishes in the course of shitting on everything decent in this world. Torture is only effective for making someone suffer or coercing a confession that doesn't need to be factually true.
Yeah, never use “Zestful”. > When I was in the eighth grade, I happened upon a paperback novel by Murray Leinster, a science fiction pulp writer who did most of his work during the forties and fifties, when magazines like Amazing Stories paid a penny a word. I had read other books by Mr. Leinster, enough to know that the quality of his writing was uneven. This particular tale, which was about mining in the asteroid belt, was one of his less successful efforts. Only that’s too kind. It was terrible, actually, a story populated by paper-thin characters and driven by outlandish plot developments. Worst of all (or so it seemed to me at the time), Leinster had fallen in love with the word zestful. Characters watched the approach of ore-bearing asteroids with zestful smiles. Characters sat down to supper aboard their mining ship with zestful anticipation. Near the end of the book, the hero swept the large-breasted, blonde heroine into a zestful embrace. For me, it was the literary equivalent of a smallpox vaccination: I have never, so far as I know, used the word zestful in a novel or a story. God willing, I never will. Stephen King - On Writing
A love triangle, it's the killer of stories and very annoying
My hope is that my fiction never 'preaches.' I hope that people learn from my stories by doing their own critical thinking and grasp the *point* of my works without my ever having to say "don't do this" or "do that." My job isn't to tell people that I know best; my job is to impart experiences so that people can develop their own takeaways. If I do that job well, I can trust my readers to gain familiarity and insight into situations and address those situations themselves. I don't have all the answers for everything (no one does) so instead of saying "this thing is bad and you should do this about it" I try to help people understand a problem from the inside and deal with it in the best way they can based on what they learned from experiencing that problem in one of my stories.
Lore dumping. Not on my watch.
A quick read through of the top comments reveals three main threads- 1. Refusal of cliches 2. Rejection of the problematic 3. Sex is icky and to be banished to the outer darkness where Morgoth waits for Dagor Dagorath
ironically, if you consciously did all three of those you'd probably end up making your first million within a year lmao
Sex scenes are hard to write and for some part of the audience, hard to read. I find myself doing character development during the scene, or ruining the mood by having animals or pets interrupt hilariously. Simple sex is better done than described. 😁
Allow modern sensibilities/ethical norms to intrude into the headspace, actions, or beliefs of characters unless they are appropriate for the character and the milieu.
It's surprising to me how hard that is sometimes.
Objectify women.
love triangles i hate them so much
After reading all of these comments, one thing is clear: You guys should read more literature. Except the never-kill-the-dog person. They know what's up.
Finish it, apparently.
I will never write the line "X let out the breath they didn't know they were holding". I will also never include a plot where everything could be easily cleared up by two characters simply talking to each other.
What's wrong with that line in particular...? Kinda specific.
Senseless killing. I refuse to treat combat as mere “action”.
Female character who's backbone and determination stems from abuse she suffered.
Write a story that doesn't have a HEA. My logic: The world is shitty enough, I read stories to escape from the shit show that is life. I don't want to leave readers distraught. Even if something bad happens iny stories, people will always find a way to push through or overcome...to get to their HEA
I've got a few of these: Sexual assault is a hard no. Not as backstory, not as a threat, definitely not on page. I don't care if it's "unrealistic" - I'm a fantasy author, that ship has sailed. Speaking of fantasy: giant spiders. I have a friend with terrible arachnophobia and I want to write something she can read. "Return of the True King"-type stories. They may be a classic of the genre, but I'm not a fan of the message that some people are just born better than others. I have a decent list of similar guidelines for my writing (eg: magic can cause the main conflict but it can't solve it) because I've found I work better with constraints.
I get the dry heaves when I read explicit sex scenes of any kind, so my ability to do it well would be minimal, so I’m afraid I’ll just have to allude to the act of love in the most refrained way possible. Tolkein was never chaster.
Imho implied sex scenes work perfectly fine, but I’m super biased and hate reading them as well so take that as you will.
Use rape in any context. See: Outlander.
Trying not to use words that repeat itself. "She would go to the store, and most likely than not, she would have someone with her." There's no reason to use she twice, so instead, I'll try and reshape the sentence without using she again. "She would go to the store, more likely than not, with a friend. Someone close to her."
I will never write about killing or abusing cats, no sex scenes and no OTT romance
Why just cats
to make room for all the dog abuse they want to write
Preach or teach. I strive to produce immoral stories without a message of any kind. If you learned something from my stories: please drink excessively and hit yourself over the head with a cudgel to forget.
I can’t remember if it was Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer that Mark Twain expressed similar sentiments in the foreword
Portray one sex/gender as incompetent, unintelligent, evil, bad, or otherwise negative.
Please do your best to become CEO of Netflix.
I'm pretty sure my skin would melt like the bad guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark if I set foot in a Netflix office
Write a story about writing. I find stories about being a writer or some kind of creative to be self-indulgent
For my fantasy writing, never to have magical cures for real-world illnesses or disabilities.
Info dump exposition. When I read a fantasy novel, I don’t care how a tiny village is founded. It’s boring to read. My writing style can be very curt for this exact reason, to the point that I’ve been criticized for not giving enough details THATS how much I avoid info dumping and exposition
for me it's the expected ends and expected flow, well everything can be expected but it's not easy to expect stuff, while on the other hand look at movies showing you a male and female who are the main characters and then they fall in love, common i don't have to be Sherlock to expect that, give me another key, make me wonder why tf am i reading this, i want you to make me wonder what will happen in the next chapter of the book, well it's sad that we lost a little part of this excitement because movies and tv shows took over-excitement, and so on
Overuse of figurative language. The best way to ruin a story is to stuff it so full of metaphors that it's almost impossible to tell what's actually going on.
Write characters that can only communicate or info dump when eating. So many bad writers can't come up with a reason why these characters should be working together and talking to each other, so they force them to be together through meals.
People eat, people generally talk while doing it. Doesn’t sound very forced. This is a strange pet peeve
Mistreating or killing dogs. I can never stand it when a dog gets hurt or killed in a story.
Explicit rape scenes and vampire females that grow their virginity back.
Graphic, on-screen sexual assault. We can allude to it. We can draw a veil over it. We can have it attempted and then (violently) interrupted/foiled. But in this house we don't spend three pages banging on that drum.
Kill any animals. If the dog/cat/godfish is introduced, it will survive.
Ridiculous height difference or “whiny female protagonist and her ‘brooding’ male love interest”
write something like "they engaged in a beautiful dance with their swords" because its extremely cringe
Is that for a fight scene or a sex scene?
Yes
Making characters grin. I don't know why that word bugs me.
I will admit I write a lot of trauma stories that have included SA and even rarely r*, but more so because I've experienced it. Things I however won't write. 1.kids in relationships (feels icky to me.) 2. A Jojo Bizarre part 6 ending (I'm not going to create a whole story just to say the world ends the end.) 3. Make someone entirely evil just because. (I can have maybe one very Evil character, but even they did something good at some point in their life) 4. Male pregnancies. (Not my fruit, but everyone has their own tastes.) 5. Only give constant trauma to a character. (They need to live a little.) 6. Describe a Kermit rooftop scene in full detail. (Being a bit discreet in my wording, but I don't know if it's okay to write the actual word for that. But too much trauma for that.) 7. Destroy a characters marriage over them 'coming home late.' (It drives me up the walls when I see people do this, and then end being they now understand each other and will get married again.) 8. Not research something. (I don't care if it's worse than my search 'what happens to human muscle tissue when it's put into citric acid and vinegar.' Researching is better than lying and making it up on the spot.) There's more that I haven't labeled, but those are my top.
Have characters do stupid things. This is true for all genres. I don't like reading or writing about characters who do stupid things. I love characters who do the rational smart thing but then it ends up blowing up in the faces.
I’ve apparently, though subconsciously, vowed to never complete the last quarter of a novel.
Undeveloped/plot object characters, especially women. If a character is worth naming, they’re worth treating as a real, whole person who’s more than just a role in the plot.
There are very few reasons to write a story that doesn’t pass the bechdel test. Unless your story is set entirely within a monastery or a deserted island, there should be women acting like real people and not accessories to men.
Never revive a dead character. It's so tempting sometimes. These lil guys are my babies, and while I sometimes need to kill one off for the story, I never really want them to stay dead. But then, there is no trope that I hate more than fake-out deaths. It completely kills all tension no matter what, or sometimes kind of breaks promises made to the audience, not to mention potential plot holes, inconsistencies, and cracks in the theme it might create. I just can't do it! 😖
Those jokes that are like "look look I'm funny look". Like when a character lists things and one item on the list is super ridiculous and a character is like "Sorry, did you just say *ridiculous item*?!" Things like that are overused and cheap. I could let subverting these jokes pass, though. Also as another person said, I always hated "loss of innocence". In my experience, learning the truth of the world is the best thing that ever happened. Ignorance is not true bliss because it isn't safe, is my philosophy.
USING CAPS AND MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS WHEN CONTEXT AND PHRASING COULDVE MADE IT PERFECTLY CLEAR THAT SOMEONE WAS RAISING THEIR VOICE!!!!!
Generalize intelligence. A lot of "smart" characters in media are good at anything that requires a brain, capable of quickly picking up entire disciplines of study. In reality while a certain aptitude is helpful, most complex fields are filled with very "smart" people who applied those smarts for years to get good at one specific subset of one field.
Take anyone's advice here.
Sex scenes. I tried to write one once just to see if I could and I felt so uncomfortable that I didn’t even finish the scene, deleted the draft and vowed not to write again on principle.
Time travel