Wednesday, August 17, 2011

No NO NOOOOOO!

 I am doing a lot of critiquing lately; it keeps my creative mind in the game while giving my muse time to stew over my own revisions. The one downfall to this is pet peeves, little things that I purposely keep out of my own manuscripts because they drive me insane.  I find myself pointing them out in other people's manuscripts, often swearing at my computer when I come across them.  My biggest one:

"Furrowing of the brow"

Seriously, there are a thousand and one other ways to convey a boy's mood besides describing the movement of his eyebrows.  I assure you, brow arching is not the universal symbol for conveying sarcasm, annoyance, worry, sexual arousal, and so forth.  In fact, I have seen it so much lately, that I have ceased to point it out in the manuscripts, simply inserting a sarcastic "Edward Cullen much?" at the end of the chapter.

So my fellow writing cohorts, what is your biggest pet peeve?  I will make a list and post them at the end of the week!

5 comments:

  1. I laughed so hard at this, Trisha! Mostly because it's so true, and mostly because I'm sure I do it.

    Repetitive mood gestures definitely wear me out, but probably most annoying to me are stereotypical physical features. Like the horribly misfigured villain, or the plain-but-adored-by-all-boys heroine, or the super-steamy mysterious hunk that treats everyone like crap but somehow loves plain-but-adored and she loves him back.

    I realize all of these can work (that's why stereotypes exist, after all) I just long for something a little less expected. :-)

    EJ

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  2. I hate it when something 'suddenly' happens, especially if it happens every other page :P

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  3. "His eyes widened"...taken straight from my own pages.

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  4. Ha, I can relate. One mannerism I detest (and I just saw this repeatedly repeatedly in a published novel I recently read) is digging one's fingernails into the palms until the skin breaks. Creating blood. Yeah...right. Maybe I'm just scornful because my fingernails aren't long enough to do this?

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  5. Too funny! I hate the "as" statement, mainly because I catch too many when I'm editing my own work. I want to kick myself.

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