![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
What cliché(s) do you hate above all others? What example of lazy plagiarism is guaranteed to send the book you’re reading flying out the nearest window? What recycled copout has compelled you to seek a refund from an author, in person?
I’d like to compile a poll of ten or so of the most egregious pills that authors hope readers will swallow, so we can vote for the Mother of All Clichés. But there’s no fun in me just picking clichés at random. I don’t read all that widely, outside of DSM-IV and Watchtower magazine, so I’m not familiar with the worst offenders in every genre.
Send me an email (seanlindsay@hotmail.com) nominating the clichés that make you wonder if the author has read anything in the genre at all. They can be words, phrases, characters or plot elements, and you can nominate as many as you like. (You can post a comment if you’re paranoid about email.)
I’ll pick the best (and by that I mean worst, or the ones I can make funny) and create a poll in the coming days.
Once voting is over, I’ll tell you the cliché I hate most.
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The young inexperienced male character (orphan, farm boy, hobbit, serving boy) is forced to leave the only home he has known (farm, castle, country inn) because his existance has been discovered by the bad guy (evil overlord, evil second banana, evil figure from prophesy previously throught to be a myth).
A disgraced female investigator/detective discovers the existence of a hitherto unknown serial killer (insert disgusting copious details of hacking, hewing, dismemberment, etc.) who has a connection to her former life, hidden past, thus making her the next victim, all while having perfect sex with several suspicious suspects.
In a fantasy, giving everyone and every place two or more names. Suggested reason to stop writing: If you write fantasy and you think that you need to give everyone, everyplace, and everything more than one name, you need to stop writing.
“I will get you!”
“No, you won’t!!”
“Oh yes I will.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
and the phrase “Fuck a booty cop.”
Alien names (and this qualifies in science fiction and fantasy) that consist solely of consonants and apostrophes. Unless the character in question uses a whoopie cushion as a dictation machine, in which case it’s barely tolerable due to its incredible silliness.
I am wholly tired of characters tugging and smoothing their clothes so the writer can sneak in some description.
Unless that brown suede skirt she paid a fortune for at Saks is covered with blood and brain matter figure I really don’t care.
Anyone have a character tucking a strand of (insert color here) hair behind her ears? Stop writing and buy some hair gel and a comb.
And I hate, really HATE eyes that float, dart, and otherwise whiz around like formation stunt planes rather than staying in their sockets.
Also: (insert color here) gaze.
“She looked up into his blue gaze.”
What is that– something lurking under a kilt?
The gorgeous, willing girl who exists for the hero to bed when nothing more important is going on.
She used to be quite dumb (like Bond’s Russian blonde in ‘From Russia with Love’) but these days she is likely to come tricked out with a PHD or an area of expertise of her own.
Authors, funnily enough all male, seem to believe this makes her into a real character, as well as giving the hero added status for having a girlfriend with brains as well as beauty.
Grrr.
I’m tired of trilogies. Just write a story without worrying about how many books it will be.
“A dangerous game of cat and mouse” – overused by every genre. If the best action you can come up with is a chase scene, you aren’t creative enough to write.
The “dinosaur” renegade cop (about to retire) who breaks all the rules (despite being yelled at/threatened with suspension by his angry boss) to bring in the bad guy “at any cost”. Most of the “cost” being damage to police vehicles and market stalls in Chinatown.
Oh yeah, and every Australian urban drama/comedy about “ordinary people” that celebrates mediocrity via a tired set of cultural cringe cliches. Working Dog, I’m looking at you!
Cliche: “Slush Pile.” Can’t we writers come up with more creative alternatives?
“When I was a child …” openers in popular, usually women-authored, fiction. “When I was a child, I wondered around the meadows behind our house wearing a skirt on my head, pretending I was a nun.” How special she was! How intricate was her childlike mind! Usually she has a bad relationship with her mother, another delightfully batty female who could have “been a contendah” back in her day (or whatever the female version of “coulda been a contendah” is). What will this narrator’s wicked downfall be, caused no doubt by those in her life (especially a man or two) who do not realize her special greatness?
My particular irk is something that undoubtedly turns up more often in older fics (like, 20 years back or so): the female protagonist who can reef, hand and steer (or whatever traditionally-male skill set applies to the story) but, as we are *always* informed at painful length, cannot manage any of the traditionally-female skill sets (can’t cook, can’t sew, handless at knitting, etc., etc.).
Jeez, your feminist agenda is showing. Shut the fuck up about how horrible it was to be the only girl in Cowtown High who didn’t like high heels and tell the story already.
The “Individual Voice” has given up the ghost, as has momwhothinkstoomuch. Two down.