Things You Don't Like in Stories

I'm okay with describing the character's outfit once, because you get a sense in their style, but I'm not okay with describing their outfit in every freaking chapter. Okay, cool, she dresses like a rocker, STOP IT!

The nerdy gay stereotype gets with the closeted jock stereotype like cn u not pls no stop

Product placement. No one cares whether Jane's drinking Coca-Cola or just supermarket-brand soda. Same with bands (can't you just say "metal" in place of "Opeth"?) and brands (I'm looking at you, Abercrombie).

herobrine.:

Why's everyone's characters either gay, straight or bi? There's other sexualities out there.

I can't speak for all writers, but I write about what I know and if I were to explore an asexual character or other characters I know I'd totally butcher it, even if I had researched it. I would just feel like my version wouldn't measure up to what I have never seen irl.

Also, I've never met someone who was something other than gay, bi or straight (that I know of). I learned the other terms of people who are not the common (types? Sorry, I'm completely blanking on the word here ) about a year ago on Mibba.

That's just my two cents.

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This is beyond petty but in fan-fiction when people use gifs or pictures of celebrities from a few years ago, so it looks like the author is writing about their younger selves instead of their current age - especially when they are writing about the celebrity's current age. Drives me mental.

swell:

I can't speak for all writers, but I write about what I know and if I were to explore an asexual character or other characters I know I'd totally buther it, even if I had researched it. I would just feel like my version wouldn't measure up to what I have never seen irl.

Also, I've never met someone who was something other than gay, bi or straight (that I know of). I learned the other terms of people who are not the common (types? Sorry, I'm completely blanking on the word here ) about a year ago on Mibba.

That's just my two cents.

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(Although I completely understand that it's hard for people to write certain sexualities/lack thereof, and I respect that) But, just because you've never met one doesn't mean they don't exist or deserve representation?

@ caves of steel.
That's true. I just personally forget that they do exist because they're not common sexualities (at least, where I live).

I can't stand writing that's so over dramatic.

@ herobrine. I don't treat sexuality as a big deal in most of my stories. I'm disenchanted with bigots so I don't award them much space in my stories. Realistic or not, it's not going to much help my non-het romance unless they're directly facing that opposition or are activists.

@ ptvjaime
Yours is a great view of sexuality in general. It's just a thing, like whether someone likes grapes or not, it's not something big and important. Most of my characters are asexual

When authors mention a fact about a character in their summary (such as a characteristic or a problem in their life), but it's barely evident in the actual story.

flashbacks, especially when they are like

flashback
[blahblahblah...written in italics]
/end of flashback



Please guys don't do this.

when the boys are the strong characters....

women can be too.

@ SmilingScarlet
Most of my stories have strong female characters, or characters that become strong throughout the course of the story. I cannot stand weak female characters so all of them are fairly strong, haha. I tried to write a weak character and she ended up being strong. I can't win

@ swell
Kudos for your women coming out BAMF-y in the end anyway! I tried to make one of my characters weak, she took a life of her own and was all 'da fuq you doin'? I ain't no damsel in distress!'

When authors try to be intriguing by making parts of their story vague, but they end up being either way too vague (so much that you really have no idea what's going on) or they do it for so long you just lose interest.

Side/supporting characters with no backstory.
No more of this 'good friend' out of nowhere that nobody knows anything about helping out the main character.
Like, it doesn't have to be mentioned 24/7 but if you write them a backstory in your own planning, they'll seem more real. Not just a pawn to push your character forward and then be discarded.
Flesh-less characters in general, I guess.

Yet in saying that, too much backstory - especially for main characters. Especially when it's just bad things over and over again. I get it that sometimes the character needs to have had many bad things happen to them, but if it's not useful later on in the story or it's used to make a character 'cliche-depressed' or cliche-loner/outcast, it's most of the time not needed??

When all band fics have cheating involved, I'm guilty of this but I've since stopped that noise.

When a story moves way to fast.

When whole song lyrics have been copy/pasted.

When I read a story and most of the characters are flat, it drives me insane. Like what happened to the complexity of writing? Why write if all you're going to do is be lazy and not give your characters a round solid background? Also I don't like reading stories where the writer mentions every single little thing like, "She got up to shower." Like let the readers assume she showered and skip to the next freaking scene. Also a lot of writers don't read their work out loud so when someone else is reading it, it sounds like they didn't read it out loud. Does that make sense? Seriously, read your work out loud, if it sounds funny when you read it like this then it's going to sound funny to the reader as well.

I think backstory is boring most of the time because not many writers know how to do it correctly. We all can't be as good as J.K Rowling or Cassandra Clare when it comes to giving backstory but I think something I have learned from reading so many books is that backstory can be spread out throughout the storyline. You don't have to put all your eggs in one basket, why not leave a crumb to keep the reader hungry huh?

Another thing I notice that writers do and I also do this, is that they submit their first draft without really going over it and then going over it again. I get it, eagerness takes over and we are just so excited we started a story and possibly ended one so we forget to edit. Please don't forget to edit, I have just recently started going back to my stories to edit them because I missed a lot of mistakes and I need to fix a lot of things.

I also hate when people don't come back to their writing. Like even if your old story sucked, it's going to teach you how you've grown as a writer and that can be used to assist you today. Also if you leave a story alone for awhile and come back then you would be surprised at how many ideas come to you and you may even change things that you originally thought were great!

I am also not a fan of the song lyrics thing but if it's a couple lines and adds to the plot of the story then great but if not then I'm not really all in that. I used to be but since I've grown in the last year or so I've noticed a lot of my old writing has a lot of the things I hate in it. You'll be surprised at how many of us have exactly what we are complaining about in parts of our writing of the present or even the past.