The Writing Pet Peeves

Everyone has pet peeves. Things they find particularly aggravating to encounter in their mundane lives. Readers and consumers of entertainment tend to have many. I am no exception.

I have developed, in my time since graduating university and setting my path on becoming an author, many pet peeves I find irksome.

Usually typos and punctuation are not one of them. I am not especially good at catching either of those mistakes, and with the market becoming international more and more day by day, I find that words that used to be “wrong” are quite often times “correct” within the context of the country the manuscript was composed in. The difference in British vs. American spelling is phenomenal, and I rather prefer the British spelling, though I was raised American.

With that in mind, I do find myself suffering difficulties in reading novels anymore. I have spent the last several years of my life writing novels and editing them, and editing them, and editing them. As such, now when I peer into the pages of other authors and find everything that I have been told to edit out, I find it difficult to take the material seriously.

With that information in mind, allow me to introduce to you, my personal pet peeves. These are in the category of “Chapel dislikes these things. Your opinion on any one specific issue is entirely valid and please disregard if you find it stringent and useless drivel. Also, for the most part, this deals within the lexicon and grammatics of Young Adult, New Adult, and Adult fictional material. I realize Picture Books, Elementary and Middle Grade books require the repetitive utilization of some of these words for concise understanding by individuals yet to fully comprehend the depth of a piece intended for an audience five times their age.”

With that disclaimer in mind, let’s look at what I tend to ctrl+f out of my manuscript AFTER I’ve finished writing the story. I say after with the express intent that writing a first draft should not be hogtied by means of training yourself out of writing the issues. That tends to lead to writer’s block, and is not worth worrying about.

First and foremost on my list of things to do upon entering the last period on my manuscript is to close the lid, walk away, make some tea, and take a bath. Many authors and editors will tell you to leave it sit for at least six months. Forget the story elements such that when you revisit the script, certain things you will have forgotten and be able to analyse with new eyes. I am complete rubbish at doing this. I tend to turn around the next day and start massacring the thing.

Ctrl + F

There are many online resource lists of words one should consider removing from a manuscript upon finishing it. These are not written in stone lists. They might be standardized practice for certain publishing houses and should be analysed with that contingent in mind if you wish to go through obtaining an agent and landing a book deal with the Big 5. For me, I try to go through the lists so that my self-published books are clean, tight, and within the same parameters. When I run into these words in traditionally published books and beta manuscripts I will tend to ditch the book and start red marking the manuscript pretty hard – hence why I make every effort not to beta read someone else’s precious life project.

I tend to keep this list as a sticky note next to my monitor once I’m in editing mode. If I run into these words within dialogue, I will work out how necessary it is to leave in for the character’s personality. If it’s within the rest of the script outside of dialogue, I will try to eliminate it by way of restructuring the sentence or paragraph. Sometimes the word must be kept though. To me, it should be rare and infrequent.

JustShouldCouldWouldWasWereHadHaveSuddenlyVeryReallyThatAnd ThenThenbreathed, sighed (I do this too much)begin/began/beginninglooked, blinked, glanced (one of my worst problems)-ly words. (This one I will ctrl + f “ly” and read through what it yields. Actually, Totally, Literally, etc.)rathersome – what, how, thing, one, body, etc.Dialogue tags. If you are a stringent believer in said/asked being the only existing dialogue tags, then use it sparingly and add in action. Otherwise, mix up the dialogue so that you learn the character’s mannerisms and communication skills. Having an entire block of one line dialogue between one or more characters of: “abc” x said. “def?” y asked, is tiring to readers and comes across as juvenile to me. This is where disclaimer comes in for Picture Books, Elementary, and Middle Grade books. I have found this said/ask structure prevalent, so it must be some type of industry standard and is where I will make an acception, though it pains me to read out loud for any length of time.quite – this one is fun to play with for Victorian era writing, but otherwise noisome.directional words and action words in relation to an understood movement: I nodded my head up and down. This can be switched to : I nodded. Or I stood up on tip toes. This can be switched to: I stood on tip toes, or I stretched to reach xyz, etc.feel, felt, could feel, had felt…please for the love of all that is holy delete these from your vocabulary and invest in emotion and sensation descriptors. If necessary, use sparingly, like once in every other project. *grossed out shivers* (and I’m horrible at writing feel/felt into a script so I can move on and come back to it at the end of a project to adjust for atmosphere)not and never : please use sparingly. Running into paragraph after paragraph of pronoun did not, pronoun would not, pronoun could not…OLD. FAST. – I speak from having read a book where for an entire chapter the traditionally published author referred to their character at length purely through not sentences. It came off negative and repetitive.Speaking of repetition. If an broad word outside of articles and pronouns is used more than once in a paragraph, maybe consult a thesaurus.

Let’s call this rant done for the day. I can get into plot tropes a different day.

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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