Thursday, November 8, 2012

Five Things That Make Me Cringe When I Read

1.   Implausibilities

2.   Telling

3.   Overuse of "-ly" adverbs


4.    Word Repetition

5.    Poorly Worded Sentences Amid Brilliance



3 comments:

  1. "Poorly Worded Sentences Amid Brilliance"... sweet.

    Your #1 is also mine.

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    Replies
    1. Haha. By "Poorly Worded Sentences Amid Brilliance" I was referring mostly to the Ranger's Apprentice series, a MG adventure series that would be incredibly well-written if it didn't have an extremely awkward sentence in almost every paragraph, with sprinklings of "tellings" and info-dumps. It reminds me a lot of my first novel attempt several years ago.

      Occasionally I'll stop at horrible implausibilities and just start yelling "What?!" (please excuse my terrabang [?!, if you weren't aware of the term]) at the book.

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    2. No, I wasn't aware of the term, but I've got to remember it. Terrabang. Sounds like a wild root that could be used for "medicinal purposes" or something. :-)

      But you're quite right about plausibility. I worked diligently on my magic system, races, history, geography, etc. in my book (series) to make everything as believable as possible. I don't like magic systems where literally anything can happen at any time, for example.

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