Things You Don't Like in Stories

All the bloody chuckling characters do. Like:

"Sorry I'm late!" the student said, bursting into the room.

"It's alright," the teacher chuckled.

Why the hell are they chuckling?? I'm always finding characters chuckling in the strangest situations, and while it'd be okay if they were that type of character, they aren't and it's more than one character in the same story that chuckles over the smallest, stupidest or strangest reason.

All this is very true!! But nobody mentioned the eye rolling. I've read stories where a character will literally roll their eyes every damn sentence! Who does that in real life??? Nobody!!!

A physical description of the main female character that reads like her Tinder profile. "5'7'', sea-green eyes, soft and lightly tanned skin, with a pretty average but nice chest..."
Right. Because the first thing we, the readers, want to do when we're here to read a well-composed and engrossing little yarn with engaging characters is to think about this new character sexually. I mean, maybe that's the purpose of the story...
But not all literature is like that.

Dubious sexual consent. If the heroine and her love interest have sex despite the heroine's consent being questionable, I won't exactly enjoy reading the sex scene. An example of this can be found in "Grave Witch" by Kalayna Price. I like the books so I'm willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but with the heroine being blind and rescinding consent before she and the love interest have sex, I was pretty uncomfortable reading it.

Stalking is love trope. I didn't dislike Hush, Hush, per se, but some parts of the book infuriated me. Patch was a goddamned creep, the heroine's friends were useless, the adults were useless, and this caused me to struggle to finish it. Honestly I really liked the ending, and I think this book could have been really good if--as I said before--Patch wasn't a goddamned creep.

Slow pacing with nothing going on and coming across as nothing but filler with a tiny bit of plot at the end. Sometimes when I'm reading a book I can't help but feel like the author is just writing...stuff...without really having a plot in mind or knowing where it's going until the very end. Most recently Days of Blood and Starlight has given me this feeling, which sucks because the first book in the series was so good. It seems like the author didn't intend for the series to be a trilogy and was stuck on the second book, just writing fluff and filler.

No speech tags. I don't want to go back and re-read a conversation so I can remember who is talking. It's annoying.

A romance between two characters that is just based on good looks and sex. I like the True Blood books, don't get me wrong, but they're a good example of this since it seems like all Sookie and Bill have in common is that they think the other is pretty and they like fucking. There doesn't really seem to be any actual chemistry or connection between them beyond looks. For me this can make a relationship between characters very unbelievable. When I read a romance, I want to believe that the love between them is real.

Werewolves. Twilight and Teen Wolf ruined werewolves for me. I also hate that in books about werewolves, it seems like the women in the pack aren't respected.

Fate dictating true love. I feel like this takes the choice out of the heroine's hands (it's always the heroine who is the mate that is being sought after).

Werewolves vs Vampires. I didn't mind it when Underworld made it a thing, but Twilight ruined this for me as well.

I often hate it when the writer/author establishes early on that the two main characters that meet first are going to fall in love, and then decide to throw in multiple suitors for the couple without any reason, except to make things interesting. Like I need to know why Sally is getting all these boys falling over her after she met Bob and started falling for him. Like why all of a sudden is she popular with the guys? Or why is Bob all of sudden popular with all the girls when he was established as an outcast/loner type character. Of course, I'm not ragging Twilight (the Edward/Bella/Jacob triangle fits this a bit) because I haven't read the books yet (still halfway through the first one). I've read this one book series, posted on fictiopress, that's supposed to be a series of stories about the ups and downs of a couple in love, from when they first meet to they get married or something, and the author keeps throwing suitors at the characters left and right...

I kinda don't like love triangles, but if written correctly, they can be good. As long as the characters are written well, and the love triangle fits into the overall plot without detracting the story, then I'm fine with them.

When people use the term love wand or love hole in place of more proper and mature terms for the genitalia.

@ Moonlight Fairy Hina
Love hole I have never seen that in smut but goddamn I hope to come across it one day if only to give me a laugh

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Slightly OT but when a story has an interesting summary but the story itself is cliche and boring.

I'm also sick of reading stories where the main guy is a hot douche but it's okay because he's hot. Like it's no worries that he pinned the main female character to the wall where the character doesn't like it, he gets away with it because he's hot. I mainly see this on Wattpad, though

@ swell
I've seen it on writing sites where spelling and grammar error filled stories get nothing but praises (Wattpad and Fanfiction.net are just two sites).

I agree with the interesting story summaries, but actual story being boring and cliche. And on the hot guy getting away with being a douche. I don't care how hot a guy or even a girl character is, no one would ever get away with doing stuff like that in real life.

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I just thought of another thing I don't like in stories. When people write a kidnapping romance story where the female character is kidnapped and held hostage for one night and during that night, she automatically falls in love with her captor and forgives him because he's also hot... ...That's highly unsettling. No one falls in love in the course of 24 hours. I mean maybe two people can get to know each other better during 24 hours, but not fall in love that quickly.

I also hate seeing mental illnesses and various disorders (eating disorders especially) being treated like a character flaw or personality trait, and all the characters constantly thinking about suicide and cutting until they meet some hot dude and then they're suddenly cured.

I agree with just about everything previously mentioned & the points about depicting mental illness reminded me of a story I recently read about two mentally ill people "curing" each other. That makes me really uncomfortable because that's now how mental illness works and is often an unhealthy expectation and a volatile combination. I think stories in which two mentally ill people fall in love or even just find comfort/friendship with each other can be done well, but it's rather tricky and most of the stories I find tend to miss the mark.

Cheye13:

I agree with just about everything previously mentioned & the points about depicting mental illness reminded me of a story I recently read about two mentally ill people "curing" each other. That makes me really uncomfortable because that's now how mental illness works and is often an unhealthy expectation and a volatile combination. I think stories in which two mentally ill people fall in love or even just find comfort/friendship with each other can be done well, but it's rather tricky and most of the stories I find tend to miss the mark.

This! Or just having people 'get over' mental illness at all by some 'normal' person helping them out.

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I don't know if I've mentioned this before, and I'm going to point out that it's not just on sites like this that I see this. I see this fucking everywhere. Especially 'professional' writing. However, I'm thinking of it right now, so here we go.

Why is always the last thing a character has said to a loved one before that loved one dies always something hostile and/or 'I hate you'? Like, why the hell is it never just something sweet or even something completely meaningless? I get that it's easy drama for your character, but chances are you're more likely to say 'remember to take out the trash' as the last thing you stay to someone than you are to say 'I hate you'.

When authors don't know when to end a story/series. I've seen this happen so many times, when they just keep writing and writing when the story finished a while back. Writing for the sake of it is not productive or respectful to the characters - tell their story but don't kill it by not knowing when to acknowledge that it's over.

emma xcx:

And when the main charater girl has a ridiculous name "euthanasiana" or something.

THIS! Every single time a I see a character with a name like that all I can think of is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way.

I also can't stand a character that doesn't have a single flaw. It's so boring.

If I see another summary where the words "and read as MarySue's life gets turned upsidown" appear I'm going to scream

It's not enough to put me totally off a story unless it gets really out of hand, is too heavy handed or otherwise negatively impacts the quality of the story, but I still really dislike when author's turn their characters into mouthpieces for their personal beliefs or otherwise turn their stories into one big Author Tract.
Like it's one thing to use your writing to make a point, but it's another thing entirely to be obnoxiously preachy, especially if the quality of your storytelling suffers for it!

When characters say they're from a specific country but they get the culture / language completely wrong. IN AUSTRALIA WE DON'T CALL EVERYONE SHEILA SO STOP SAYING SHEILA IN EVERY BLOODY SENTENCE

It irks me when a story is inconsistent with how it refers to its characters in the narration. Like it doesn't bother me in terms of dialogue because different characters will call a character different things sometimes, but the narration being inconsistent, like there's usually no good reason for that. Like if you've established a certain name for a character don't randomly call them by another name. Be consistent, y'know.

I hate when people make their characters seem absolutely perfect or like try way too hard to make them seem cool. I also dislike when writing in the POV of the main character they describe themselves the way other people would describe that person or they make the beauty standards to normative or dare I say, all the characters I see are white.

ALSO unrealistic se scenes. Not all sex you will have with one partner or multiple partners will be comfortable even if you're not a virgin! And not all female bodied people will have an orgasm from penetration only! Plus, a lot of people write first time sex as 'painful but then a burst of pleasure washed over me' #unreal.

When fanfic writers write fanfics based on books or TV shows that are canon compliance but get all the characters from the show wrong. It seems like the author is too lazy to observe the characters before writing them.

The amount of times I've come across this sentence is beyond me. The author has already established that the character is hungry by the dialogue, there is absolutely no need to then tack on an emphasis of such a menial thing. It just bothers me so much because it's useless narrative that just throws me off and is just so common in stories.

Whispering. All the bloody whispering.
More specifically, I dislike when dialogue is tagged as whispering when like you know it was really just said in a low voice or quietly. Like there's a difference in talking quietly and actually whispering and 90% of the time I highly doubt your character actually whispered what they just said.
Also, like who whispers that much really?
But like as trivial as it is, that really just irks me so much.

Does anyone else just hate the number of stories out there that are based first on romance and then on plot? It's something my best friend and I have talked about before, especially with how stupid the romance can get sometimes. Sometimes it comes across to me as if the author took two characters and forced them together, giving them absolutely no reason to actually like each other, much less love each other. Sometimes I see love triangles that don't serve any purpose except to create drama with a couple, and sometimes it feels like they take away the meaning of the character except that they have to be part of a couple.

No, I'm not harping on all romance because yes, I write romance as well. But for me, it's secondary to the plot of the story unless it's intertwined with the plot itself. Oh, and I just thought of another thing. Why is it that every teen book I read has to have a romance where the girl has never dated before, never had sex before, but suddenly she falls for this one guy, and it's this dude forever? Unless there's a love triangle plot, of course. Okay, I could possibly understand a little if the person didn't date because they couldn't find anyone they just liked and thought they could work with or something along those lines. I have a character like that, actually (though I also have a character who started the game pretty early as well). But the girls always come across as those who no one ever asks out, and then suddenly the hottest guy in the world walks in and bam. It's settled. Does anyone else have problems with any of this, or is it just me?