Things I Don't Like in Stories (Part Two!!!)

Read part one here.

1). Romanticizing Self-Harm/Depression.
- - - Though there are some people out there, such as myself, who are sad because they're alone, only in very rare cases will someone like this contract clinical depression and begin harming themselves. If you date someone who's depressed and magically think they're going to be happy, you know what you can do? Fuck off. Someone with depression isn't going to magically become un-depressed if you date them, nor will it make them stop hurting themselves. No matter how beautifully you pull it off, I will lose all like for the story if you romanticize self-harm/depression. (Though, there is a commonly confused thing where the story is merely showing how self-harm effects the people who love the individual. I'm actually okay with this and encourage it).

2). Authors Note: "OMG OMG GOM!!!! COMMENT PLZ PLEASE COMMENT!!! COMMENT AND SUB PLS!"
- - - I will literally make it a priority to not comment. If I want to comment, I'll comment. If I want to subscribe, I'll do so. I'm not going to do it just because you tell me to.

3). Every character is so attractive.
- - - No. No, no, no. This is basically contributing to the whole "beauty standard" thing everyone just hates so much. I understand how hard this is to avoid doing, I do it a lot, but try to make some main character unattractive or a different kind of attractive. An example is in John Green's Paper Towns how the narrator describes Margo's appearance as not exactly hot, but not easily forgettable (or something like that). In my story The Shadow Hunters I have the main character's love interest beautiful, yes, but she has blue hair, pale skin, and all this stuff that pretty much goes against society, which isn't a bad or a good thing. Try to make your character fall in love with something other than looks, though. Sexual attraction at first sight exists. Love at first sight doesn't.

4). Death Used to Further Plot.
- - - As an avid reader, writer, and enjoyer of death within a plot, I hate seeing a death thrown into the middle of a story as an author's attempt to get some emotion in there. If a death doesn't need to happen, don't make it so. Don't make it seem forced. And make sure, pleASE, that the characters have appropriate reactions to the death. If your beloved mother died, I don't think you'd just brush it off. In the first draft of my story The Risen I decided, "Hey, won't it be cool to kill off 4 characters?" and did so. Though this did help me get words onto paper for NaNoWriMo, the deaths made a shit ton of plotholes and really raised some questions that weren't answered by the end of the novel. Don't do this. This is bad.

5). "Something's wrong" Said James fearfully.

"I feel it too" answered Bea, they exchanged a glance.
(stolen from shep)
- - - THIS ANGERS ME SO MUCH. LEARN TO USE PROPER PUNCTUATION, PLEASE. LEARN TO WRITE DIALOGUE OR I SWEAR ON ME MUM I'LL CLICK BACK AS FAST AS I AM ABLE TO

6). Lack of Insight.
- - - Like, if I'm reading a story, and the character goes about the whole plot without learning a life lesson, without having any insight to life, without even any meaningful theme, then I will grow so weary of that story by the time I finish it. I used to do this--I used to write without having anything insightful in my writing. But now, I'm trying to incorporate some of it. An example is in my story The Shadow Hunters, where it goes:
“Well, boys,” Blue announced our arrival, climbing onto one of the fallen beams. It was one of those picture-perfect moments you only thought happened in movies: the light hit her just right; she stood tall, clapping the dust off of her hands. She looked like a leader, towering over the collapsed haven that had once been safe. That was what life was full of—once-beens. And right now, in this moment, Blue had once been a teenager. She had once been a follower; she had once been an underling. Now, she was a leader. “Let’s clean this shit up.”.

and that's all folks part 3 maybe soon??