What Ticks You Off?

[Creed]

I'd also add that there's a fair number of European cultures that have been far, far less drawn upon for inspiration than a goodly number of non-European cultures.

Totally agree. I would love it if Eastern Europe fueled more ideas for mainstream fantasy: it's such a vibrant and diverse region of the world. And of course, that is precisely because of its massive history of interacting with different cultures. So take Russia and Bosnia and Georgia as examples of what real-life cultural fusions can look like, and see if our own worlds can form something so interesting. Doesn't really cover the "white people" comment (nor would I necessarily want it to, and besides, any writer worth their salt can figure out a way to fit diversity in a setting if they so desire).

One of my biggest pet peeves includes the "child genius." Makes reading the beginning of books like The Name of the Wind a little difficult for me, especially when the child genius who learns magic super quick suddenly forgets it when it's useful.

I also get thrown off when a POV switch happens and it's not marked by a page break. The Twilight Reign series is guilty of that.

Speaking of which.. That series also suffers from a huge pet peeve of mine: badass syndrome. Every character is amazing. They can dual wield swords, heft massive axes, and use magic powerful enough to kill gods. There's one character who isn't a badass, and she dies.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

And if in hard POV it can say more about that character's interpretation of another. This is one that doesn't bug me.

One of many pet peeves: italicized words for emphasis. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Hah that's a good one. Do you know what I think it is? People have been hammered over the head so hard, so often, that they are supposed to show not tell. Can't say, "He was happy." So the faux-show: "His eyes lit up with happiness." (With the added bonus of an active verb.)

Well okay, eyes are the windows to the soul, right? I think I have seen anger, happiness, sadness in eyes, lots of times. But maybe it's just a shortcut in the way this is sometimes used. Truth is, I've never been bothered by it, that I can remember.

 

[Ireth]

One of many pet peeves: italicized words for emphasis. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Doesn't bother me at all. How would you advise people emphasize their words otherwise? It's not always immediately obvious from sheer context.

 

[Alile]

Were I an average young farmboy, I'd be super suspicious of the random old dude claiming I need to run away with him from my entire community because I'm the only one that can save the world from a formless, vague evil!

Hahaha, you read my mind! It's been done again and again.

OMG, falling in love doesn't pull a creepy dude back from the dark side. HA!

So true.

Another thing is experiencing things like just crossing a river on foot, the ice cold water, also the all too well known danger of lighting a fire. Other examples are "I survived three years out on this mountain in snow, wearing only a hoodie" and then comes the longest description of the hoodie, not how on earth it's possible. (Arena 1, by Morgan Rice, do not read it, in the same chapter she amongst other improbabilities claims she has been feeding herself and her younger sister for three years mainly by fishing, and still doesn't know anything about how to fish, or how to prepare it or cook it. After three years? Okay...)

To go on, it's really very difficult to walk in a forest! It's so tiring! Why is that never mentioned?

And it really, really hurts to be cut by a knife. To cut yourself in the palm is incredibly stupid unless you are a vampire and will heal immediatly. Next to our eyes I guess we use our hands the most, it's really rather crippling to be cut in the hand or on the fingers. After all my kitchen experiences, I know... Knife cuts really hurts. Pain is not ever well described.

Another thing is how people fight, and how they are barely bruised. "He shrugged it off". If you hit someone so hard on the cheek that they fall over, they could actually be permanently paralyzed by the ear and cheek area and might never regain sensation there. Yes, that's actually happened.

 

[Peat]

Speaking of which.. That series also suffers from a huge pet peeve of mine: badass syndrome. Every character is amazing. They can dual wield swords, heft massive axes, and use magic powerful enough to kill gods. There's one character who isn't a badass, and she dies.

Conversely, this reminds me of a peeve of mine - no particular series here, just in general - and that's insufficiently imaginative badassery. Once we've had maaaagic in ten thousand sorcerous ways, there's not a whole lot left.

Where's the semi-divine warriors who can leap castle walls with a single bound or have the strength of a dead giant? Forget huge axes, how about swords that are actually bigger than them, or swordsmen who go around fighting with branches to make it interesting. Martial Artists who can kill with a shout, or breathe in and inflate themselves to twice their normal size, or chase down enemy horsemen.

Or even just people who are badass in their mentality without being talented warriors, magicians or thieves.

This could extend to the whole fantasy genre tbh. We have several millennia of history, religion, story and conspiracy to mine for ideas. Our characters can fight commies, can fight Nazis, can fight the British Empire, fight in the Reconquista, fight the Great Khan, or saber tooth tigers in the stone age - either the real thing, or something based upon them. They can be sentient swords, or noble Kirin bearing a great ruler to battle, or a sick Phoenix recounting their life to the peasant children helping to gain wood for the fire that will allow them to regain their health. They could be the builder erecting some great wonder, or the seven year old private eye that works for Santa working out whether kids are naughty or nice.

And on and on and on. So many things.

And yet 80-90pc of fantasy is human thieves, warriors and mages engaged in epic theological wars based in a vague pastiche of a thousand years of North-West European history with a healthy dollop of Arabia and the Far East thrown in. Italy becomes an honourable member of NW Europe for the purpose of this. D&D writ large.

I'm not complaining too loud - I'm certainly not about to change it - but it is all a bit giggle-worthy.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

If your prose doesn't make its point without this trick... Simple, you don't. Period. To me, it's like a screenplay giving direction to the director or to the actor. Mind you, I won't stop reading because of italicized words if they are very few (Sanderson pushes my tolerance... hard), but I still hate them. Generally speaking, italicized words for emphasis are as lame and intrusive as ALL CAPS.

Doesn't bother me at all. How would you advise people emphasize their words otherwise? It's not always immediately obvious from sheer context.

 

[Banten]

The Chosen one being some young angsty teenager who is somehow good at everything and liked by everyone.

Surprisingly many characters like that out there. Might also be why I hated young adult fiction even as a 12 year old.

 

[glutton]

Where's the semi-divine warriors who can leap castle walls with a single bound or have the strength of a dead giant? Forget huge axes, how about swords that are actually bigger than them, or swordsmen who go around fighting with branches to make it interesting. Martial Artists who can kill with a shout, or breathe in and inflate themselves to twice their normal size, or chase down enemy horsemen.

I have pretty close to that, my more over-the-top heroines have feats like taking down Godzilla-sized monsters solo with nonmagical weapons, deflecting gatling gun fire with a weapon, tanking automatic gunfire from mechas, smashing said mechas with again melee weapons, walking off being bathed in stone melting dragonfire, drenched in acid, skyscraper-height falls, city-shaking explosions, and being impaled in countless ways, resisting Dark Lord-level magic and possession with sheer willpower (like one carrying around the soul of the 'evil emperor' inside herself and mostly keeping him under control... after she killed him), cleaving apart ancient mystical artifacts with mundane blades, powering through barriers strong enough to keep a minor deity at bay, and on and on lol. One of them wields a hammer with a solid steel head bigger than her torso, another a 5' long 20 lb one handed sword with an alchemically strengthened lead core; the second of those almost chases down a fleeing chariot while having two giant weapons stuck through her torso... etc. One is the protector of a herd of sauropods she befriended from a predator of sauropods lol. And they have human rivals who can match them so they're not the only ones on that level.

And they aren't powered by magic although some of them can cast spells but that tends to be secondary to their physical prowess, which is only explained as being due to a combination of training, talent and uhhh one could infer super-estrogen/testosterone in the case of males XD

 

[skip.knox]

I agree with Demesnedenoir about italics and will go further, on two points. One, using typography to create emphasis is a parlor trick. Every writer should learn to write without using a single typographic trick, exclamation points included. Once the disciplined has been learned, then the writer will be allowed to use whatever she or he wishes, for by that time the writer will have little need of the device.

Two, the italic font already has a typographic function in prose. It signifies internal dialog. So using it for emphasis is simply incorrect.

 

[Ireth]

I agree with Demesnedenoir about italics and will go further, on two points. One, using typography to create emphasis is a parlor trick. Every writer should learn to write without using a single typographic trick, exclamation points included. Once the disciplined has been learned, then the writer will be allowed to use whatever she or he wishes, for by that time the writer will have little need of the device.

No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I suspect this means outside of quotes. !'s in the prose itself, much like ?'s, can be frowned upon, but I think some of this depends on POV also, as well as target age. In the book self-editing for writers, the ? & ! (if I recall correctly) are listed as things an agent/editor might glance at as an indicator of writing to pass on. This does not include quotes... except! Even when quoting you wouldn't want to use too many !'s! Overuse turns them into pointless marks! In the prose, !'s can be eliminated completely (or at the minimum mostly so) while ?'s may be rewritten as observations that naturally raise the question.

In general, these won't bug me as much as italics, unless overused. But they are often an indicator of a writer with habits I won't care for. Italics for emphasis will bug me first time, every time.

No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.

 

[emmarowene]

Okay, I have a big thing. I'm not sure how to name it, really, but it's something I still see in popular fantasy today (though I think we're moving away from it). I call it the dudebro's fantasy MC. I just recently read a book by a popular fantasy author (no naming names) where, in just the *first chapter*, the main character singlehandedly defeated fifteen goblins, stole a treasure chest full of gold from a prince (which...don't tell me that wouldn't be too heavy to carry away in a pinch), and then seduced the prince's wife (I believe the phrases "swoon" and "heaving breasts" were used). Usually it's better disguised than this, but there are SO MANY fantasy books with this infallible main character.

 

[valiant12]

I call it the dudebro's fantasy MC. ...........

I don't see nothing wrong with writing for primarily male demographic.

 

[Holoman]

I suspect this means outside of quotes. !'s in the prose itself, much like ?'s, can be frowned upon, but I think some of this depends on POV also, as well as target age. In the book self-editing for writers, the ? & ! (if I recall correctly) are listed as things an agent/editor might glance at as an indicator of writing to pass on. This does not include quotes... except! Even when quoting you wouldn't want to use too many !'s! Overuse turns them into pointless marks! In the prose, !'s can be eliminated completely (or at the minimum mostly so) while ?'s may be rewritten as observations that naturally raise the question.

In general, these won't bug me as much as italics, unless overused. But they are often an indicator of a writer with habits I won't care for. Italics for emphasis will bug me first time, every time.

Wait, you shouldn't use question marks in prose? Even for thoughts?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Thoughts are inner monologue quotes, question marks are necessary where they're necessary. The trick is, a lot of narrator voice questions can be better expressed, IMO, through a rearrangement of prose. As with so many things it depends a great deal on execution and rate of use.

Wait, you shouldn't use question marks in prose? Even for thoughts?

 

[Russ]

No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.

I think they should be used very rarely indeed. They can become a crutch and there overuse on social media etc makes them even more troublesome to me. I think there only real use is basically for a person expressing some sudden surprise where you cannot make the context and writing do that work for you.

Many writers I respect deeply say this about the issue "Exclamation points are great. Every book should have one."

 

[glutton]

I take cues for my style from manga, comics and video games more than actual novels so I use super simple prose and exclamation points in my dialogue wherever they would be seen in those mediums. As clear and in your face as possible lol.

 

[FifthView]

Exclamation points and italics for emphasis don't bother me at all. In some sub-genres and styles. In others, they'd seem out of place.

I have difficulty remembering specific occasions when I cringed at their use. This is probably because, for the most part, the books I've read seemed to stick to what I said in the paragraph above. On the other hand, perhaps this means that the use of exclamation points and italics for emphasis automatically forces a book into that category of "in some sub-genres and styles," so I didn't notice anything being out of whack!

Stress in the above paragraph intended.

Incidentally, this argument of visual vs content cues pops up a lot in the formalist vs free verse debate in poetry. Well, it pops up when a certain subset of formalists deride free verse with the incorrect notion that line breaks in free verse are merely visual in nature.

Has anyone else watched Night Watch? I mean the Russian movie, not something on GoT. The subtitled version has English subtitles in red letters that move, bleed, grow etc. I always thought that was an excellent choice for that movie.

 

[skip.knox]

No exclamation points? Really? How would one write a person shouting? Periods just won't cut it sometimes.

Yes, really. The exercise is to learn to write without them. Then you can use them judiciously.

 

[skip.knox]

Let me put into other words the point I was trying to make about exclamation points. The issue is less about the use of the punctuation itself and more about learning to strengthen one's prose. If one leans excessively on punctuation, or on fonts for that matter, to achieve an effect, one is using them instead of using words. This necessarily means the author is not stretching. Learn to write without those for a while. Then, when you do use them, they will be tools rather than crutches.