What are things that annoy you in reading fictions?

[Tiffany Brick 3]

Musical Fanzine

Things that annoy me in fiction that I see ALL THE TIME:
arrow Overly-romanticized objects (stars, petals, oceans, etc.) being used to describe parts of the body (e.g. eyes as "infinite pools" or lips as "soft petals" wink
arrow The "badass female" stock character. She can be alright if she's well-developed and used effectively in the story, but far too often I see her just thrown in to try to make the story look cool and edgy and in the end it's just a violent revamp of ******** Disney Snow White. Or it's the standard love triangle with neurotic tough-girl, long-time male friend, and recent male acquaintance who she connects with but is afraid of opening up to.
arrow Deus ex machina. I don't think I need to explain why this one annoys me.
arrow Info dumps
arrow Repetition/redundancy
arrow Anything where the writer is obviously trying too hard
arrow Wish fics. Like if the author is absolutely identical to the main character and it's obvious that they're just writing themselves in some bizarre romance/action/whatever situation. It's lazy and boring.
arrow The standard "mysteriousdramakid" stock. Usually a girl but sometimes a boy. They ride in out of seemingly nowhere and their whole character is just one long tirade of being mysterious, dark, dramatic, knowing, and alluring. And then the writer throws a smack cliche to try to justify the character...just no.
arrow The "contest prize" character. Think Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World except done without irony and in an attempt at telling a serious story. Usually appears in a romance/romantic comedy set in a high school or a college, where Protagonist has a crush on "Contest Prize" (some unattainable beauty of a sort, like the most popular guy at school or the girl who's already dating a rich, athletic, popular handsome hunk o' man) and goes about trying to prove him/herself to the love interest through whatever whacky shenanigans possible. They are almost always one-dimensional and never experience any development throughout the story, save for suddenly falling in love with the main character in the end.

Gosh
I love everything you wrote.
It's precise

[I am The Compendium]

Musical Fanzine

Things that annoy me in fiction that I see ALL THE TIME:
arrow Overly-romanticized objects (stars, petals, oceans, etc.) being used to describe parts of the body (e.g. eyes as "infinite pools" or lips as "soft petals" wink
arrow The "badass female" stock character. She can be alright if she's well-developed and used effectively in the story, but far too often I see her just thrown in to try to make the story look cool and edgy and in the end it's just a violent revamp of ******** Disney Snow White. Or it's the standard love triangle with neurotic tough-girl, long-time male friend, and recent male acquaintance who she connects with but is afraid of opening up to.
arrow Deus ex machina. I don't think I need to explain why this one annoys me.
arrow Info dumps
arrow Repetition/redundancy
arrow Anything where the writer is obviously trying too hard
arrow Wish fics. Like if the author is absolutely identical to the main character and it's obvious that they're just writing themselves in some bizarre romance/action/whatever situation. It's lazy and boring.
arrow The standard "mysteriousdramakid" stock. Usually a girl but sometimes a boy. They ride in out of seemingly nowhere and their whole character is just one long tirade of being mysterious, dark, dramatic, knowing, and alluring. And then the writer throws a smack cliche to try to justify the character...just no.
arrow The "contest prize" character. Think Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World except done without irony and in an attempt at telling a serious story. Usually appears in a romance/romantic comedy set in a high school or a college, where Protagonist has a crush on "Contest Prize" (some unattainable beauty of a sort, like the most popular guy at school or the girl who's already dating a rich, athletic, popular handsome hunk o' man) and goes about trying to prove him/herself to the love interest through whatever whacky shenanigans possible. They are almost always one-dimensional and never experience any development throughout the story, save for suddenly falling in love with the main character in the end.

I can get behind infodumps (if the author writers them well and usually they're short or at least dramatic), and maybe redundancy if it's a joke.

Other than that, lets add useless characters and overabundance of contrivance.

[Yanueh]

Little Kitty -anon-

Yanueh

Telling me what I think about their character. EG, You think that she looks absolutely precious.

that sounds...very much annoying.. I never actually come across the first example (or second one) so I really I believe that people actually do that.. Like seriously? Telling the reader that she's precious? Because from the description, I wouldn't think she's precious at all. Just plain annoying to tell the truth.

A lot of roleplayers do this kind of thing, trying to command the perceptions of the other player or the other player's character. In fiction, it translates more into describing how the character looks, and then sticking an absolute adjective onto it - eg, "she looked absolutely precious" rather than "you think she looks absolutely precious."

...Moving onto another thing that bugs me: wardrobe obsession. No, writers, you don't have to give readers a full-on description of your character's wardrobe every time you turn around - only when it's actually relevant to the plot. And yes, linking to Polyvore pictures every time you turn around counts as wardrobe obsession, too.

[theramblinggirl]

Characters with no depth or little to no character. Worlds that are hardly developed or set up. Characters that seem way too perfect and are loved by people who honestly shouldn't love them. A really bland voice from the writer.

Just like... a lack of imagination and creativity really. Something that is badly written but that has an interesting world, unique plot, or lovable and creative characters is much more likely to catch my interest than something that is beautifully written but with bland characters, overused tropes, and an unimaginative world.

I harp on Divergent a lot for this, because the world is hardly ever described or built, there's little knowledge or justification for the system they have, and the lead girl hardly has much character at all. When she does finally start to display character, it doesn't feel like we're getting to know her, it feels like actions forced on a person who is hardly existent in the first place. Twilight was also guilty of this, but at least the actions the two dimensional characters had were pretty consistent. Smeyer's crime was more of thinking her characters were something they weren't, rather than just plain bland characters.

Basically bad characters can ******** up your story so REALLY DEVELOP THEM. Make sure they're not one note tropes.

[TeenyTinyCookiesOfDoom]

theramblinggirl

1. Characters with no depth or little to no character.
2. Worlds that are hardly developed or set up.
3. Characters that seem way too perfect and are loved by people who honestly shouldn't love them.
4. A really bland voice from the writer.

Sorry...

I skipped most of your quote redface
Have some bacon as my apology.
yum_bacon yum_bacon yum_bacon

Basically bad characters can ******** up your story so REALLY DEVELOP THEM. Make sure they're not one note tropes.

THIS

But wait! There's more!

emotion_facepalm

5. Ppl hu r 2 lazy 2 ryt prperly
6. Tarreble spehleng or bad grammar
7. "Oh, we just met a few days ago? Wanna f.u.c.k emotion_hug ?" Teen fiction.
8. Especially fan fiction: "I HATE (insert band/person/fictional character here)." Suddenly these two meet up, then, "OMG I LOVE (insert band/person/fictional character here)."

[theramblinggirl]

TeenyTinyCookiesOfDoom

Ahaha, no worries. I ramble a lot, thus the name. I think I just like to hear myself talk sometimes ^^;

You got the basic idea though.

[Red the Alien]

theramblinggirl

Characters with no depth or little to no character. Worlds that are hardly developed or set up. Characters that seem way too perfect and are loved by people who honestly shouldn't love them. A really bland voice from the writer.

Just like... a lack of imagination and creativity really. Something that is badly written but that has an interesting world, unique plot, or lovable and creative characters is much more likely to catch my interest than something that is beautifully written but with bland characters, overused tropes, and an unimaginative world.

I harp on Divergent a lot for this, because the world is hardly ever described or built, there's little knowledge or justification for the system they have, and the lead girl hardly has much character at all. When she does finally start to display character, it doesn't feel like we're getting to know her, it feels like actions forced on a person who is hardly existent in the first place. Twilight was also guilty of this, but at least the actions the two dimensional characters had were pretty consistent. Smeyer's crime was more of thinking her characters were something they weren't, rather than just plain bland characters.

Basically bad characters can ******** up your story so REALLY DEVELOP THEM. Make sure they're not one note tropes.

Oh my god, THANK YOU!!!! All of my friends go on and on about how amazing Divergent is, and I just feel like, "********, Divergent reads to me like a movie where a bunch of screenwriters took turns writing bits about the 2 main characters without ever talking to each other or reviewing each other's work, so they never got the characters' personalities straight." Tris and Four ruined what could have been a good book for me. Their characters make no sense, their romance just seems forced, and all around I felt like Divergent could have been an interesting premise if ******** Veronica Roth could figure out how to write consistent and well-developed characters. In the first book, Tris and Four are both one-dimensional, and Four in particular is inconsistent and all around makes no sense. Then in later books Roth attempted to make them three-dimensional and if anything made it worse. Tris's character was a ******** of contradictions and inconsistencies, and Four was even worse. After that, not only were they still one-dimensional, they made no ******** sense. Then in the third book it seemed like she was trying to remedy this by having Four narrate half of the book. What the ********? His romance with Tris makes even LESS sense. All of what my friends said about how deep and believable the characters were made me feel like pulling out my ******** hair. They made no sense, were one-dimensional, and were all-out horribly developed. It made me sad because Veronica Roth's writing style is actually fairly engaging and the concept could have turned out really well if it weren't for the shitty characters she attempted to execute it with!

I admit, occasionally I'll have a character make a choice that seems against their nature. The difference? THERE'S ALWAYS A REASON FOR THAT CHOICE THAT IS CONSISTENT WITH THEIR CHARACTER AND THE SURROUNDING STORY. There's a difference between the author knowing why the character made that choice and revealing it to the readers later, and the author just throwing in some on-the-fly excuse later for the character's actions to attempt to make it more "believable" to the reader. If you don't know your characters, your writing will show it--even if the character is meant to be mysterious and unknowable, YOU, as the author, have to know the character, or else it will show in your writing that you don't know the person you're writing about. And then you wind up with Tris and Four.

EDIT: Sorry, kinda went off on a rant there. It's just...so many of my friends go on about how amazing Divergent is, and it's rare that I encounter someone else who sees the problems with it that I do.

[Red the Alien]

Brodie Asturias

Musical Fanzine

arrow The "badass female" stock character. She can be alright if she's well-developed and used effectively in the story, but far too often I see her just thrown in to try to make the story look cool and edgy and in the end it's just a violent revamp of ******** Disney Snow White. Or it's the standard love triangle with neurotic tough-girl, long-time male friend, and recent male acquaintance who she connects with but is afraid of opening up to.

Oh no, I am guilty! That said, I rolled a dice to determine pairings and the threesome was the outcome of me not putting enough limiting factors on the dice roll. Then I just though, "the Hell with it!" and I'm writing it anyway.

(this is from a while ago but kinda just responding now)

I guess I should clear it up...sometimes the triangle can work. But it pisses me off when you see the "badass female" stock and the author tries to make the character round (and not an overused trope) by making her "vulnerable" with the love triangle. It's a cop-out of genuine character development and I just keep seeing how it happens the same way all the time. Every time I see it I'm like "alright, I see where this is going." She'll be conflicted but ultimately she'll always choose the recent acquaintance and it'll be symbolic of her moving on from her troubled childhood in some way. It's a lazy way out of trying to show real character development in tough-girl without the use of the plot-device-romance.

If you actually execute it well it could be great. But I just haven't seen it well done before. Prove me wrong, please, in saying it can't be done.

[The Phoenix Rises Again]

Lots of build up of plot potential while the character do more or less nothing and then the whole story just ends.

[Brodie Asturias]

Musical Fanzine

Brodie Asturias

Musical Fanzine

arrow The "badass female" stock character. She can be alright if she's well-developed and used effectively in the story, but far too often I see her just thrown in to try to make the story look cool and edgy and in the end it's just a violent revamp of ******** Disney Snow White. Or it's the standard love triangle with neurotic tough-girl, long-time male friend, and recent male acquaintance who she connects with but is afraid of opening up to.

Oh no, I am guilty! That said, I rolled a dice to determine pairings and the threesome was the outcome of me not putting enough limiting factors on the dice roll. Then I just though, "the Hell with it!" and I'm writing it anyway.

(this is from a while ago but kinda just responding now)

I guess I should clear it up...sometimes the triangle can work. But it pisses me off when you see the "badass female" stock and the author tries to make the character round (and not an overused trope) by making her "vulnerable" with the love triangle. It's a cop-out of genuine character development and I just keep seeing how it happens the same way all the time. Every time I see it I'm like "alright, I see where this is going." She'll be conflicted but ultimately she'll always choose the recent acquaintance and it'll be symbolic of her moving on from her troubled childhood in some way. It's a lazy way out of trying to show real character development in tough-girl without the use of the plot-device-romance.

If you actually execute it well it could be great. But I just haven't seen it well done before. Prove me wrong, please, in saying it can't be done.

Ah, in my story the two blokes ended up hooking up too and then it turned into a mutual threesome. Triangle resolved.

[theramblinggirl]

Musical Fanzine

No worries about the rant, I agree with everything you said. Well, save for the other books which I've not yet bothered to read and don't think I'm going to. >>;

Man I just wish GOOD female authors could get as rich and famous as the bad ones are these days...

[Red the Alien]

theramblinggirl

Musical Fanzine

No worries about the rant, I agree with everything you said. Well, save for the other books which I've not yet bothered to read and don't think I'm going to. >>;

Man I just wish GOOD female authors could get as rich and famous as the bad ones are these days...

Amen to that.