What writing 'tics' stand out to you? Repeated phrases, strange words, or otherwise weird stuff that jumps out at you.
Up front: I don't like the term 'tics', as it's a medical term for neurological or psychological involuntary movement, but the term is widely used to describe this phenomenon. I couldn't find a more modern term despite trying. If we could come up with a better term, that'd be great!
I was just reading Starfarers by Poul Anderson, one of my favourite mid-century sci fi writers. He uses the word yonder so much - for space exploration, for what's over the horizon, even calling aliens 'the Yonderfolk'. I don't know if he knew it was an uncommon word or if he didn't like it.
It made me remember reading another sci-fi series, The Expanse, where I noticed a similar phrase that would yank me out of reading. It was essentially 'It is until it isn't.' As in, 'That plan'll work great, until it doesn't.' 'We'll keep living, till we don't.' 'They will until they don't.' Once I noticed it, it was in every second chapter (I guess one of the two writers preferred it).
My more nebulous one makes its way a lot into literary fiction - '[building] was all glass and steel', '[the dress] was all silk and shadows', and, if they're feeling very adventurous, '[something] was all copper and wine and smells of before.' Every time I see that phrasing I whack myself in the head gently with my book.
What are your funny, annoying, infuriating, or notable phrases that stop you in your tracks - or, once noticed, always jump out at you?
Speaking for myself, I use "just" and "though" far far too much. I use like as well but that feels colloquial and helps the pacing. Just and though are pure mental stutter though, they just don't help but pad things out.
God I do the same thing with "just"! Pretty sure I've shared this before on tildes. Overusing "just" is an incredibly annoying reflex, I hate it and I'm actively trying to stop lol.
Same here. I routinely have to go through anything I write to remove "just". I also use "actually" far too much. That one is probably an indicator of how much time I used to spend on Reddit.
I definitely use those words a lot when chatting online. Other overused words include "actually" and starting sentences with "honestly". I end up editing a lot of my longer comments or posts to remove those words.
I don't think those tendencies translate to my prose though. Possibly because I usually write in third person limited, so I'm writing in a character's "voice" rather than my own. I'm sure I have some other writing quirks in my prose though, probably related to squinting or narrowing eyes.
...yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, though...
Not a book, but at times, it feels like a visual novel? Final Fantasy XIV. Often, the game has these cutscenes where they need to show what some party member who's apart from the Warrior of Light (the player), or a villain in their lair, or whoever, wherever, is doing. The game will flash the worlds on screen: "Meanwhile, at Limsa Lominsa..." Sometimes this can happen multiple times within a cutscene. "Meanwhile, at Garlemald..." followed minutes later with "Meanwhile, at Everkeep..." followed shortly by, "Meanwhile, at Yo Mama's House..." Oh my god, use a different word or phrase!
It's become a meme within the FFXIV community.
I always read meanwhile in a 1950s voice over manner: MEANWHILE at the hall of justice! It’s become a joke in our house. We’ll just go around shouting it sometimes.
Sounds like meanwhile, back at the ranch, an older meme/trope but apparently one notable enough for a Wikipedia page.
I'm picking up what you're throwing down: verbal crutches...
I would say these conversational platitudes are more like clichés. Phrases that pejorate into meaninglessness but are still heavily used regardless, for filler.
But clichés do not hold an exclusive monopoly on words that irk. When something begs the question I beg to get out of there.
Tautophrase. It is what it is. Devices of rhetor, rhyme as reason...
There's one that really bothers me but I can't think of it right now. I'll update this comment when it comes to me
edit: okay I was looking for "not for nothing"
"Not for nothing, I told you this would happen."
It's such a bizarre double negative phrase--if you're not familiar with it. It literally means "for something" but it doesn't tell you what the "for something" that it's about.
But I imagine if you've heard it all your life it sounds bob is your uncle
don't think about it too hard
Strange, I've only seen "not for nothing" used to imply the effort put into a task wasn't entirely wasted even if the results weren't optimal. Is it a regional thing to use it purely as filler?
I agree with you from another language. It doesn't even have to imply it was partly or in full a wasteful endeavour.
I have niet voor niets learned English to communicate online.
I would say it's filler in the same way that FWIW / "for what it's worth" or BTW / "by the way" is filler. It doesn't really change the content of what you're about to say next
It certainly can be filler, although I was thinking of it's use as in: "It's not for nothing that we climbed that mountain. " That does add some context to say that you think the journey was worthwhile.
Perhaps it's just that its use at the start or end of a statement--feels very weird to me. Something like this doesn't feel that strange:
Maybe it's just that I can more naturally intuit the reason for why you should fill your gas tank. If you don't know or can't imagine the reason why--maybe it is more useful to state what is obvious to you.
Takes only a few more words and it gives people the actual reason.
In the same way this feels like it is lacking information. To me it sounds like "We climbed that mountain for a reason" where the reason was previously discussed or will be discussed. "It was not in vain that we climbed that mountain"; it sounds like a pep talk. If the intent is to convey that it was worthwhile why not say, "It was great that we climbed that mountain--let's do it again some time" ?
The one that first comes to mind is Robert Jordan's use of "Smoothing her skirt" in the Wheel of Time series. I get that it's trying to add a physical response to emotions but after the 50th time I see it I just have to sigh. A quick search shows I'm not alone in this.
Similarly, the first thing that came to mind for me with the question was "tugged her braid".
This was also the first one that came to mind as I was opening the thread. It's absolutely iconic and still very regularly mocked within the fandom.
For writing that is really quite tame, I’m always taken out when Jordan makes it a point to call out an item (medallion / necklace / whatever) that’s hanging between a female character’s breasts. It’s such a specific thing, and the rest of his writing is so un-sexualized, that it surprises me every time it comes up, which is weirdly often. I feel like said item “hugging her chest” or “close to her bosom” would have been way less tonally jarring and conveyed the same point, but again, this is so anatomically specific that the entire premise of it always throws me a bit.
One other totally unrelated thing: Jordan often starts new chapters or paragraphs with “He” or “She” or “They” referring to a character from a previous chapter as if it was a contiguous passage. If you’re reading the sections in one sitting, it’s not a big deal, but it’s always felt like a bad practice to me and I’ve had to flip back a page more than once to remember who “he/she/they” is in context.
Dune series. "Presently" in the sense "soon". I think Frank Herbert just really liked the word. I googled "frank herbert presently" just now, and that sense of the word is apparently obscure enough that the leading theory on Reddit is some far-fetched nonsense about using it to distinguish between the present and Paul's visions of the future.
That's exactly what I meant! I remember 'presently'. I think it got better as the books went along, but the book's third person omniscient narration made it confusing enough on first read.
I remember that now but it has more given me a desire to use it! I dislike the lack of distinction between soon that means “do it not right now but before I move on to the next thing” and soon “I’ll do it in a bit but not in the current moment”. Maybe I’ll start using it ‘soon’…
it's kind of an old-timey-sounding thing; not sure if it would have been old-timey enough when Herbert was writing to have that effect, & he wanted to communicate stuffy royalty or something, or if it was just written in old-timey times lol. But my grandma would say "directly" instead of soon, same sense, very confusing.
My grandma was the same. If she was trying to freeze someone out she'd say 'directly' or 'presently' instead of 'I'll be there soon' hahaha
I'm a little annoyed with "said" in my own writing, to the point where I would rather write in script format, but don't mind it in other writing.
But if I hear "You just don't get it, do you?" for an exposition dump one more time, I'm never watching another movie again.
I think said is better than trying to come up with a hundred different substitutes. He whispered, he shouted, he grumbled, he exclaimed... this sort of thing annoys me far more. Said becomes virtually invisible to most readers.
In my writing, I find I use but and though too often. I set up a scene, an action or a thought and then use but or though to qualify it.
Hmm, looking through some of my latest chapters, I seem to have knocked that habit out of my writing, at least for now. I wasn't aware of that bit of progress, so yay.
You can also just not use said or any alternative. Cormack McCarthy can write an entire dialogue without quotation marks, let alone “said”. That’s extreme - his writing style is hit or miss depending on the person. But either way, context is a powerful tool. It’s a lesson to remember that words are, in the end, a tool - in prose, there’s no reason to follow rules for no reason. If people can understand who’s talking, it works.
The substitutes do have their places, mainly for helping get across specific emotions and tones. That said, a lot of writers do seem to abuse it. Having the same substitute used multiple times in one conversation (minus stuff like someone shouting and the other character "shouting back" in an argument) can break immersion. So can never using "said". It all comes down to balance.
Instead of thinking of it in terms of direct substitutes I would reach for "show, don't tell". Below I never directly attribute anything to anyone and I never explicitly write how something is uttered, but I feel like it comes across well enough, and that the dialogue is more animated for it:
He looked up at the night sky, holding his hand out in an exaggerated theatrical pose. "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck." She pushed his hand back down in laughter. "Nice one, Macbeth, but how do you suppose we navigate?" Looking back up, he still held onto a smile, but scanned the stars carefully this time. "That bright one right there would be the north star, I think." It was her turn for theatrics. "Behold! He doth pluck after all!"
I've been reading the Mistborn series and have been irritated by how often clothing is described as "simple". At first I thought it meant rags because it seems to describe all clothing with by the underclass/slave class, but then he used it to describe something worn by a well off person. Now I have no idea what he means.
I'm not sure what happened, I haven't noticed anything like this in his other books.
It's been ages since I've read those, but is it also being used as utilitarian/practical? You can have "simple" cheap/roughspun peasant clothing, but it also sets apart fancy attire from something modest or unembellished?
Oh, maybe. I was definitely thrown by the money of times it was repeated, for a while it seemed to describe everything and maybe that was intentional.
My own:
Various things come to mind: patterns, quirks or habits.
Having said that, nothing directly comes to mind as specific as your examples. I can think of various things that will pull me out of a story or fail to capture me to begin with. But those are of different categories.
I think "habits" is the perfect term. It captures the subconscious nature of the phenomenon without having that medical edge. "Compulsion" could also work, but seems a bit too negative for what we're discussing.
I usually notice something in each book I read. Some are so numerous that I remember it for a long time. Currently, in the book I'm reading, everyone is constantly "canting [their] head." While tilting the head is a natural response, especially when questioning something, doing it 8 million times and using the same word for it every time is very repetitive.
One I've noticed in most romantic fiction recently is "the shell of her ear." I just think it's a really weird way to describe an ear and it bothers me every time.
Previous single-book offenders have been the word "brawny," used almost exclusively to describe one guy's arms. I gasped when it was used to describe another character a single time in the book in question. Another is an author's refusal to use the word "hair" for the hair on her characters' heads and instead using "strands" 9/10 of the times it applied. I'm still questioning that choice.
These were all in reasonably recently published books and I don't understand why the editors didn't go "find your crutches and replace them." That was one whole edit of my own book, lol.
I
liberallypepper my writing with adverbs and get sick of editing them quickly.I had to quit listening to the audiobook of the first Spell Monger book after the poor English narrator had to end a second passage with the phrase “and that seriously pissed him off.“
Despite the fact that the English don’t use that phrase, neither would anyone in the fantasy world the author had so painstakingly crafted. It pulled me out of the world permanently and completely and I became convinced the author had never left his suburban bedroom.
I want to start an editing service where all we do is search your manuscript for "ould of" and replace 99% of them with "ould have".
Hm, you've peaked my interest with that idea, and I think your really onto something their. Its a common kind of error that effects a lot of writing. For all intensive purposes, such a service would benefit humanity. Unfortunately, I think most people could care less, so it might be a mute point. In which case, whose going to do it, than?
Okay, that was painful! Sorry! <Ducks for cover.>
I think you took that a little to far! Your going to make people loose there minds.
Don't forget replacing "try and" with "try to."
...if i could offer to be pedantic for a moment: i should of course, as i would often see that strategem go awry...
This applies doubly so to online chats, but when someone says, "I like how . . .", "It's funny/cute how . . ."
Something I see in the fiction Brazilian writers send me is an excess of everything. The idea that writing less can be an asset is completely lost. Chiefly, they describe everything in excruciating detail. The idea is that literature should be like a movie but in words. I must know every single feature of every character. The face. The hair. The minutiae of their never ending smiles.
Also, the expression "olhos marejados" ("teary eyes") to convey emotion again and again. One would think that these characters are constantly dehydrated.
And oh, a sea of ellipsis!