What Ticks You Off?

[Ireth]

Have I posted the single tear here yet?

I hate the god damned single tear. I don't care if the single tear pricks, stings or drips, get it out if your manuscript.

"A single tear (insert verb here) down her cheek" and Helio threw the book across the room.

What if it was something like, "A single tear fell down her cheek, but it was only the first of many"? (Hypothetical example, I have not to my knowledge ever used this cliche in fiction.)

 

[Heliotrope]

Nope. I would still puke a little in my mouth.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

How about: "A single tear rolled down her cheek - followed by her eyeball!"

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Chessie]

I remember the single tear conversation with Helio. Was it both Desdemenoir & I who watched movies that same week/read books that featured the single tear and we reported it back to Helio? LOL I hadn't ever noticed it before.

A couple more things for this thread: typos on the first page of a book, shallow characters, boring dialogue, and making up dialogue tags. Because using a verb as a dialogue tag is a no-no.

 

[Russ]

But the single tear has such a great heritage...

 

[FifthView]

A single tear crawled up her face until it reached her one good eye, whereupon it burrowed into the spongy matter humming "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as it ate.​

 

[glutton]

A single tear escaped her eye, but then evaporated before the hot aura of her rage which swept over the battlefield. Friend and foe alike stared at the short princess who clenched her fist so tight, blood ran from where her nails dug into her palm. 'I have no time to cry until every last one of you is dead.' She charged the demon army faster than most could follow with her seven foot sword in hand, breaking instantly through the heavily armored front line and carving a gap a hundred yards into its ranks. The house-sized king of fiends shrank back in fear as she reached him. 'But I won't save you for last. Back to hell with you, and tell the mad gods when you see them, they're next.'

-original segment not from an actual work. Baeforce empress!

 

[Heliotrope]

You guys are awesome. I love how this turned into a prompt thread.

 

[Steerpike]

Rupert stood in line, nervously fingering the $1.57 in change that jangled in his pocket. Half price day at the pastry shop was a Mecca to his gastronomical soul, sweet molecules of sugar and cinnamon, yeast and flour swirling around him like old friends returning from holiday. He breathed the air deeply, took into the deepest part of himself the promise of flavor held by the warm gust that rattled through his chest and filled his lungs. He breathed, and he played with his change, and he waited.

It was when there were only three people in front of him that dread set in, when he noticed the last cinnamon roll perched in its basket behind the clerk, a siren of smell instead of song. This dread was replaced by fear and disappointment as the clerk took that last roll gently, almost reverently, and swaddled it in the plastic bag of the customer in front of him. A single tear congealed in Rupert's eye, heavy at the edge of his lids like icing hanging precariously at the edge of a pastry. As he stepped forward, the tear dislodged, frosting a line down his cheek that shimmered in the glow of the overhead lighting. When the clerk asked for his order his breath hitched, then he forced out: "One plain donut please."

 

[Heliotrope]

Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?

 

[Steerpike]

Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?

Don't bring up bad memories!

 

[FifthView]

Why do I get the sense you are writing from experience here?

So was I. But best not to ask.

 

[Chessie]

A single tear etched its way down Heliotrope's cheek; a glossy pearl holding painful memories of a literary faux pas that ruined her life.

 

[Brian Scott Allen]

All this single tear hate. This is the best use of the single tear, period.

[video=youtube_share;qXf4fkerLwc]https://youtu.be/qXf4fkerLwc[/video]