Posts in the "Pet Peeves in Writing" Category

• Of Peeves and Pervs

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  What are my pet peeves? Gee…where do I begin?

  Well, first of all I hate the expression “pet peeves” because it sounds like the kind of cutesy society-page folderol that Sinclair Lewis mocked in his novel Babbitt.  (Speaking of which, I just read the interesting factoid that Tolkien may have been making reference to Babbitt when he came up with The Hobbit.  Digression!)

  As to further petty peevishness, this is one of those things where it’s probably wise to smile and keep quiet, because who really wants to hear complaints about how tough it is to be a published author?  It’s like listening to celebrities whine about how hard it is to be rich and beautiful and famous—Yeah, yeah, why don’t you try getting a real job and then tell me about how tough your life is.

  Hey, I guess that’s my second pet peeve:  Why am I not rich and famous?  After all, I have six published novels—I oughta be a millionaire!  I should have a personal trainer and a publicist!  I should live in a mansion, not this crap shack!  Find me someone in charge, I want to register a complaint!  Hello?  Hello?  Damn.

  Clearly in order for that to happen my books need to sell more, lots more, which brings me to my third pet peeve:  What the hell is wrong with you people?  Don’t you know a work of genius when you see one?  I have a theory about this, which is that my books are just too damn brilliant.  Ahhh yes, it all makes sense now.  People hate what they don’t understand—look what they did to Galileo!  I’m ahead of my time, that’s my problem.  No doubt fame and fortune will come after I’m dead, which sucks because then it’ll be almost impossible for me to enjoy it.

  Then again, maybe I’m just a dinosaur.  Maybe my books are too weird, too offensive to ever hit the big time.  That’s my fourth pet peeve: readers who see genre novels as the last bastion of safe, wholesome, family-friendly entertainment, and are appalled when an author like myself betrays that trust.  Why do I do it?  Because one thing I loved about books as a kid was their often shocking frankness compared to the banality of television and most mainstream movies.  Books could show you things no other medium could…at least not without an X rating.  These days there are more and more junior Ayatollahs out there trashing any novel that dares to depict sex, swearing, or whatever other common everyday occurrence they deem sordid.   That’s a real shame, because to treat ordinary sexuality as something taboo is not only silly but perverse.

  My last pet peeve:  People who abuse the term “info-dump.”  I’m reminded of the emperor in Amadeus complaining of Mozart’s “too many notes,” or of the students in Holden Caulfield’s composition class gleefully screaming, “Digression!”  What the heck does “info-dump” even mean?  It’s a vague and purely subjective concept–one man’s “info-dump” is another man’s fascinating factoid.  Many of my favorite books have long tracts of exposition—think of Dune, Lord of the Rings, I Claudius, Moby Dick, or the works of Proust, Dickens, Tolstoy, Vonnegut—in fact, just about every great author in history.  Seeing major works of fiction (not that I’m speaking of my own work—okay, I am) subjected to this kind of bean-counting is like witnessing the show trials of the Khmer Rouge. It’s a travesty.

  Wow, now I feel really bad.

  Thanks for reading!

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• 5 Expletive-Laced Rants That Will Surely Offend Someone

  Pet Peeves in Writing
  

  A picture of me dancing around the vaguely amused author David Anthony Durham, offered as a means to brighten your mood just before bringing it down again with my negativity.

  Pet Peeves? Of the authorial/writerly sort, I assume?

  (Yes, I know the topic to the right very clearly reads “Pet Peeves in Writing,” but I only saw this after I’d finished writing/shitting this post. I’m pretty sure the email I received just specified “Pet Peeves” as the topic, but it’s entirely possible that I purposely misread it so that I could be allowed to complain about authors. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which scenario is true.)

  Oh, now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and given me—literally and figuratively—the worst topic you could’ve given me. Why is it the worst? Because now I feel justified going on a rant. That’s bad for me, but even worse for you: I’m just awful when I get this kind of podium. You’re gonna hate it.

  I’d like to not get into it, but I’m powerless, perfectly powerless, to stop myself. But I will restrict myself to five.

  What? Only five!

  Yes, only five. Otherwise I might burst into flame.

  Anyway, I hope you like swearing. Here goes:

  #

  1. When authors conflate their identities as “fated artists” in order to separate themselves from “normals.”

  Ugh. I absolutely hate this. Is it not enough to be published; you have to go around constantly telling everyone how you were born to be a writer?

  I mean, seriously: Fuck. Off.

  A writer is not an extra-special sort of creature fated to the pure act of storytelling. No, he or she is merely a person who is compelled to sit down and write, and maybe thereafter edit and submit. Sure, perhaps some people are born with greater intelligence, or, I don’t know, “narrative drive,” but that’s not a direct path to Author.

  What irks me immensely is how authors use this self-designation (knowingly or not) to separate themselves from all the shlubs who don’t write. “Oh, yeah, I was born to do this,” basically means, “Oh, yeah, and you weren’t, dipshit.” It’s the classic way for a self-conscious wannabe-artist motherfucker to legitimize herself or himself.

  On that note…

  #

  2. When authors use semi-mystical terms to describe their process.

  I bet you’ve heard an author say something stupid like this: “I didn’t intend to create the character of Klak-Tiku’Manis in Pegasus Kings of Unicorn Hill. My characters spoke through me and demanded his creation.”

  Gag me with a goddamn spoon. Seriously.

  You are not the Oracle of Delphi, Mr. or Ms. Author. Unless you literally believe yourself to be channeling some arcane/supernatural force when you write—in which case I’ll just shake my head in atheistic wonder—you are simply responding to your own still small voice in your head that all of us respond to without being entirely aware. Call these the urgings of the unconscious mind if you want, but don’t act as if you are being led by creations of your own, uh, creation.

  But anyway, why do I hate this so much? Well, largely for the same reason that I hate the previous pet peeve: using semi-mystical terms is another way authors separate themselves from non-writers (or from other, less enlightened, authors).

  At first, it may seem that saying your characters speak through you is a modest position: “I am but a humble vessel.” But I think that’s bullshit. Saying you’re a vessel is the same as saying you are communicating on a higher level than others—that you are the bearer of special knowledge—that some force is demanding that you, oh-so-special-you, need continue being a Writer.

  Shut the hell up. You’re an embarrassment to people who do the hard work of writing without using stupid and falsely humble (not to mention irrational) explanations to prop themselves up.

  #

  3. When authors tell other folks how to write “properly.”

  Okay, first off: advice is fine. If people seek it, by all means give it. Same goes for if you write a book and people buy it—clearly, they want what advice you have to offer.

  The operative words above are, “seek,” “give,” and “offer.” Unless advice is sought after, don’t give it. If you have advice to offer, by all means offer it as opposed to throwing it in the other person’s face.

  

  Yes. This is my impressed face. Your advice was THAT good.

  A little story to illustrate why it drives me nuts when a person doesn’t understand these distinctions: I’ve got a very good writer friend, a person whose company I really enjoy (and still enjoy, regardless of this one hiccup). A couple years ago, she was still working on a book—a book she’d been working on for some years—while I had recently completed my first draft of No Return. This minor disparity did not stop her from often advising me about how to write more often and at greater length. She insisted that my writing would be better if I just let go of the inner critic and wrote, putting the editing off until later.

  Now, I didn’t tell her how greatly this annoyed me because—well, what would’ve been the point? Perhaps she was right, and that my writing would improve dramatically if I switched up my approach. But… I had just finished my first novel, largely to my satisfaction (and eventual sale), while she still continued to struggle with hers. Though I wouldn’t usually let this fact influence my judgment of her (I mean, hey, I didn’t complete any of my writing projects for the first 25 years of my life! Who’m I to judge someone else for not being finished with something?), in this context it simply exacerbated my annoyance.

  I mean, who was she to tell me my process wasn’t working as well as it could? And over and over again, ad nauseum!

  Hopefully, it’s clear why that situation annoyed me, but there’s a deeper reason beyond the delivery (and the timing of the delivery) why such advice grinds my gears. It’s because giving the advice presumes that there is a proper way to write, when obviously—demonstrably—there isn’t. I know a great many people will say that it “works better this way,” but there are a great many people who produce wonderful (and mediocre and awful) work in another way entirely.

  #

  4. When (male; often fantasy) authors can’t write female characters.

  Jesus. Seriously? Because a character has a vagina you’re writing skills fall out of your butt?

  It’s a fucking person, for fuck’s sake—not an alien.

  Writing a woman need not require any special contortions or anything. Okay, it might involve being aware of your own prejudices and how they infect your writing, but becoming aware of your own prejudices is all part of becoming an adult.

  Oh— What? You can become an adult and still be a complete and utterly obvious bigot (and still get published)…?

  #

  5. When (male; often fantasy) authors can’t write female characters, and oh-by-the-way rape them over and over again in their fiction. (Yeah, this is an old pet peeve of many authors and readers, but it still happens all the time.)

  Once more—and with real feeling, this time—seriously? What you are if you do this is a piece of shit mixed with bloody snot. What you are is a gross little manchild who can’t conceive of developing a female character without the trauma of rape in her past. You are an uncreative bigot, and you’ve probably got genital warts.

  And don’t start with the realism shit, idiot. You’ve got dragons flying all over the place and people throwing purple thunderbolts, so clearly you’re not that interested in realism. No, what you are interested in is the realism of rape. You need to make sure you portray your society as actively, rapishly, rapetastic.

  Because why?

  Oh, I don’t know, because you’ve utterly failed to look inside yourself and excise those ugly, misogynistic little bits? Because you’ve managed perfectly to internalize without interrogation the privilege you were born to? Because you’re just shit at life?

  Yeah, those reasons.

  Now, please don’t get me wrong; there are valid reasons to put a rape scene or several in a story. But a pattern of doing so without a compelling—and compassionate—reason marks you as venereal slime.

  #

  Okay, I’d better actually stop at five like I vowed to, because my clothes are beginning to smoke. Hopefully, I’ve not offended anyone too much with my language or my ridiculously strident pronouncements. I spoke with great certainty about people’s intentions, and obviously I can’t read those.

  Still, I’m not wrong. (This is how a reasonable person thinks, right?)

  See you next week, xox and all that!

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• Glengarry Lou and the Daddy Issues Monologues

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  I hear a lot of complaints from people I know who want to read fantasy, but either don’t dig the migration of the genre onto the mean streets of the big city or are just repeatedly disappointed by urban fantasy novels they pick up. If they’re people who actually read urban fantasy, their complaints are often about formulaic covers featuring a malnourished bustier-clad cerulean-eyed brunette with a samurai sword looking over her shoulder, Celtic knot/Katakana characters tattooed on the small of her back. They reflect a paint-by-numbers approach to the genre.

  Since I consider urban fantasy, in a broad sense, to be (God help me!) my very favorite genre, I figure I should pick on it. You only hurt the ones you love…right?

  I find that since the genre started to rise in popularity in the ’90s, it’s succumbed to a very strange series of impulses. As the genre has seemed to replace romance per se as the genre most explicitly marketed to women, the urban fantasy genre has migrated into a place of formula blandness that, frankly, I find more bland than the 180-page Silhouette Va-Va-Va-Vooms, the Death Takes a Bus Transfer Ba-da-Bings, the Murder in a Country Cottage Cream-and-Sugars, and the zillion-page Earth-rumbling tomes of Tolkien-For-Dinner-Again?

  Urban fantasy too often succumbs to the worst aspects of the romance genre (a genre I respect but don’t write), the worst aspects of the detective genre (a genre I like, grudgingly), and the worst aspects of the fantasy genre (which I like, sort of). There are a hell of a lot of damn good female detective writers out there, and a hell of a lot of damn good female fantasy writers out there, so why are there so many paint-by-numbers books in urban fantasy, when I know lots of quality female writers who are going hungry?

  Here’s what I find frustrating about too much of the urban fantasy genre (no names…srsly, I’m talking about no one I know, or at least no one who likes me very much): (more…)

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• Another Loosely Related Anecdote to Our Assigned Topic

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  I like anecdotes. Here’s one:

  A very long time ago (1991), I studied poetry at Bennington College with a man by the name of D___ G____ (name redacted to protect the innocent guy). He later went on to become the head of the _____ _____ for the ____. He was a poetry and language badass – a speaker of five languages, translating poetry from Italian and crap like that. I don’t think he liked me very much. Often he’d select my poem – when we were NOT doing open workshopping – and eviscerate it in front of the whole class. He was a prick, honestly. But in his defense, I was a total idiot in 1991, just 20 years old and convinced I knew more than any one else. Really insufferable. (Don’t start, okay? Yeah, I know I’ve left myself wide open.). (more…)

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• Reading Under The Influence

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  I would love to read lying in a hammock some place scenic and not face-meltingly hot like Texas, possibly getting wafted with a  palm frond (or similar wafting-type device) by my favorite cabana Spouse.  However, it’s far more likely that I am reading:

  • Under my desk at work while eating something that probably wasn’t food until the fast food industry got hold of it.
  • While cooking dinner over a hot stove with a rugrat dangling from each arm.
  • At the end of a long day, pausing every ten minutes to scream at aforementioned rugrats to go to sleep and let me have five frickin’ seconds of peace.
  • Holed up in my room at a convention with a bottle of cheap wine when I really ought to be out on the scene being fabulous and interesting.

  Basically, I am ridiculously busy and I don’t mind, but it means I can’t devote my whole brain to reading these days.  I suspect that my situation is similar to the demographic heavy reader (women of a certain age who live in the ‘burbs) so I try to take note of what annoys me in a book.   I’m not the poster girl for normal, but I can pass for one on occasion.  I used to have pet peeves.  Now I have working parameters.  Here’s three plus a freebie:

  (more…)

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• How Writing Deadens the Reader’s Mind

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  My biggest pet peeve? That I’ve lost that sense of adventure that I got while reading as a teen. I can hardly read a story now where I don’t see the author typing on the other side of the page. I know, I know, that’s not really what the topic is about, but it’s still rather annoying. It’s also a common refrain among authors. As we learn more how stories work, we’re more apt to notice things that can knock us right out of a story.

  And if it’s this way for us, imagine how it is for editors. They read way more stories than I do, and they see all the nasty roots that reach up and trip the young writer all too often. They’re attuned to those things so keenly that (I imagine) they have to work overtime just to stay in some stories that they feel show promise.

  The moral of the story, I suppose, is to remove all those exposed roots before handing the story to the editor. Easier said than done, I know.

  (more…)

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• Petting Peeves

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  I’m late posting. Sorry. I’ve been writing — which is a good thing — and I’m on a tight deadline — which isn’t fun but it’s still a good thing. Anyway, I don’t much like complaining about bad writing in public. It comes off as if the person complaining is somehow perfect or superior. No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes — it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it. Also, every genre has its tropes. What would never be considered good writing in one genre can (and is) considered the standard in another. To each their own, you know? Anyway, here are my three.

  Nothing will bounce me out of a story faster than ye old Mary Sue/Larry Stu. It just comes off as juvenile author wish-fulfillment. It’s especially annoying if everyone feels the character in question is sexually attractive, even when it’s been made clear they are average or plain. Also, stories where absolutely everyone appearing in the narrative is physically perfect. That’s just not reality. (It’s also my least favorite thing about modern films. It seems there are no character actors any more.) I’ll lump the “special snowflake” into this category too — that is, the person around whom the universe revolves and/or would fall apart without. Yuck. I never even liked it when Frank Herbert did it in Dune. (Yes, I like that book, but I generally skip the last part because the messiah routine makes me want to barf.) Even Buffy needed the Scoobies, bats and ghouls. That’s what kicked ass about Buffy.

  Bad humor. Ask any actor. Drama is dead easy. Comedy is hard. Comedy requires a sense of timing and tension. (That is, tension between the expected and the unexpected.) This is particularly true of prose. Don’t let your characters laugh at their own jokes. If they laugh, not only does it release the tension for the reader, it looks like the character is gouging the reader in the side and saying, “Look! That’s funny!” Usually, it isn’t. It’s even more so when the character repeatedly elbows the reader. Meh.

  Movie dialog in prose. Film dialog uses specific patterns because films have two hours or less to establish characters, plot, conflict and setting/time. Otherwise, viewers are confused. (Which is why you end up with “As you know, Bob, the meteor is only a day away from crushing the planet, and the world is in chaos!” It’s okay to do that within a film. It’s very not okay in prose.) Listen to how real people speak. How often do you hear someone repeat the other person’s name if there are only two people in a room? Bet you’ll discover the number is zero.

  Well, those are my three, what are yours?

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• My Top Three Storykillers

  Pet Peeves in Writing

  My biggest pet peeve in writing? Right now it’s this one chapter of The Tainted City (sequel to The Whitefire Crossing) that I’ve written about five different ways and I’m still not happy with it. But! That’s not the point of this topic, so I shall move on – much as I am with The Tainted City. (Always better to come back later to the offending chapter with fresh eyes, rather than get sucked into a morass of perfectionism and stall out.)

  Much as I love writing, I have to admit it’s got one downside: the more I write, the more picky I get over the books I read for fun. Things that once might’ve inspired a brief annoyed sigh while reading now jar me right out of the story, sometimes irrevocably. A shame, because a forgiving reader is a happier reader, with a much wider pool of potential books to enjoy.

  Pet peeves are funny things: what drives me crazy as a reader might not ping your radar at all. Thank goodness for that – it’s such a relief as an author to know how idiosyncratic questions of taste and style really are. Just because one reader (or agent or editor) doesn’t like your work, it doesn’t mean the next will feel the same.

  And story is king over all: even now I’ve gotten over-sensitive to craft/style, I’ll keep reading past every single one of my pet peeves if the author is a good enough storyteller. (It’s just that the bar for “good enough storyteller” keeps getting higher for me every year, darn it.)

  So what bugs the heck out of me these days when I read books? For what it’s worth, here are the top three things that throw me out of a story: (more…)

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• Ari Marmell on Tropes, Cliches, Stereotypes, and Traditions: A Field Guide

  Guest Post

  Ari Marmell is a fantasy and horror novelist of both original and tie-in fiction, as well as a freelance writer for role-playing games. For those of you who are paying attention, yes, his newest novel, The Goblin Corps, makes substantial use of the tropes of traditional fantasy. This was both deliberate and integral, and Ari will happily feed anyone who says otherwise to the kobolds.

  I am, even as I type this, currently taking a break from the daily grind—which, in this case, is defined as producing word count for my novel-in-progress. Said break was not so much deliberate or willing as it was enforced by the fact that I appear to have written myself into a corner. The fact that I’m a diehard outliner is supposed to prevent this sort of thing, dang it!

  But, uh, that’s not really the sort of “pet peeve in writing” you came here to read about, is it?

  Yep, “pet peeves in writing” is the topic for this week’s Night Bazaar blog entries, and I’ve been invited to participate. And while I’m told I was welcome to come up with my own subject, using a pre-assigned topic requires substantially less mental effort.

  It also happens to be something I’m actually interested in talking about, so we all got lucky this time around. (more…)

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