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My Biggest Pet Peeves In Books–#MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge, Week 22

Simply Romance Posted on by

Pet Peeves

I’m taking off my writerly green eyeshades today

and putting on my Reader crown (because Readers rule!) to talk about this week’s topic, Pet Peeves in Books. This is a dangerous topic for an author because People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones.

DISCLAIMER

For authors reading this post: don’t let anything I say here interfere with your voice or confound your muse. If your readers like your voice and your stories, you’re doing it right!

So…drumroll…

My biggest pet peeve in books can be summarized in one phrase:

Too much of a good thing

Some examples:

A character whose eyes are “laughing” through the entire book.

The same sex act repeated almost verbatim more than once (three times in the book I’m thinking of), as well as sex scenes that go on and on as if the author is writing them to a word or page count.

These three examples come from very successful New York Times Bestselling authors, so, obviously, they should ignore me and go on doing what they’re doing. Never let good editing interfere with sales.

But, I do have this one thing, my biggest, too much of a good thing, pet peeve:

“Fresh” writing. Yowza, you know what that is, right? Cliches are boring, and you’ve got to twist them. Only, carried to the extreme, the whole freshness thing itself becomes cliched. Some authors are twisting and turning and doing acrobatics two or three times in every sentence and it’s just…too much, at least for this reader. Please, just zing me with a beautiful image once every page or two, and extra points if you make me laugh.

Second disclaimer:

I make all these mistakes, and then some. Probably some that are identified in the other MFRW authors’ posts today. Use the links below to hop along and see what they get peevish about as readers.

 

Images: Wikimedia, eyeshade and crown; Depositphotos, junk food

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Comments

My Biggest Pet Peeves In Books–#MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge, Week 22 — 9 Comments

  1. Oh yes. Yes. This one’s definitely on my list of pet peeves as a reader, as well. That’s not to say I haven’t made the mistakes myself, of course.No matter how hard you try, some things will get past you–but you’ve got to try. I absolutely agree that forced “fresh” isn’t actually fresh at all.

  2. I have to agree that forced “fresh” can be very annoying, esp. when taken to extremes. Wish I’d thought to put up a disclaimer on my post. As you say, we all make mistakes and people in glass houses, etc.

  3. OMG yes the marathon sex scenes. Like wow, how long can they really keep that up? I’m sitting at my computer thinking all my guys are ‘minute men’ in comparison because, really how is it humanly possible?

    The same ones cut and pasted almost are boring too. I admit, writing the sex scenes aren’t the easiest for me and I’m glad I don’t write erotica because I could never keep up. I suffer from a terrible case of performance anxiety when writing the scenes. LOL

    • Yes, those scenes are difficult to write. First you have to knock your mother (or whoever stands in for her) off your shoulder, and then deal with your evil self-critic!

      I’m heading off for a weekend celebrating my wedding anniversary, but I’ll check in as I can on everyone’s posts!

  4. I find that it’s much easier to see these mistakes (eg ‘overly fresh writing’) in others’ writing than in my own. Sigh.

  5. That’s so true, Ed. That’s one of the reasons I like to judge contests. I always learn something from reading other people’s work.

  6. The Find and Replace feature on Word is a wonderful thing. It helps you see that your heroine’s eyes were laughing 835 times in one book. I absolutely make those mistakes in the first draft, but I sure try to change them in the edits!

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