5 Things Audiences Hate (Writing Advice)

one of the best ways to win over your audience is by not pissing them off in the first place today we're going to talk about that so stick around by the way my name is brandon mcnulty i'm the author of bad parts also the author of entry wounds and welcome to my writing channel today i'm going to talk about some horrible things horrible habits that writers have or horrible decisions that writers make things that cause audiences to turn away from your stories i have five particular things i want to talk about today and the first thing audiences hate is when you fail to prepare them for genre elements now when we're talking about genre elements we're talking about any storytelling element that is associated with one particular genre so within the sci-fi genre there are elements like spaceships aliens time travel cures for previously incurable diseases things like that within the thriller genre you have things like car chases or murders or being hunted down by an assassin things like that and nowadays a lot of writers like to combine different genres and mix them together in order to get something fresh and original and that can work really well but the thing is early on you need to establish what genres you will be working with in this story and if you don't do that if you for instance are mixing two or three different genres and early on in the story you only tell us that okay this is going to be a romance and then early on you you show us this wholesome romance like a hallmark movie with this wholesome couple going on wholesome dates and it's just it's very easy going and then all of a sudden in the middle of the story they they meet at a cafe and the couple is they're sharing coffee together and then they're leaning in for that first kiss and as that first kiss is about to connect all of a sudden there's this loud explosion and next thing we know the guy's head the back of his head just pops off jfk style and we learn that there's a sniper that was after the guy and then all of a sudden this this romance for for half the story this this purely just a romance has become a thriller revenge story and it's just not gonna click with the audience because those thriller revenge elements were not established early on so you need to be careful with that number two thing audiences hate is inconsistent pacing when we're talking about pacing we're talking about the speed at which a story is told and the key word there is told because you can tell a story that takes place over the course of many years you can tell that story at a fast pace and at the same time you can tell a story that takes place over the course of 20 minutes at a slower pace it's all depends on what you want to do with the story but one thing to keep in mind is that audiences typically expect the story to move along faster as it goes toward the end so early on it's totally okay if you're going at a slower pace because audiences expect that okay you're going to have to establish the characters and in the scenario and the setting and things like that but as you're heading toward the end they want to see things picking up in terms of pace in most cases now one thing you definitely want to be aware of if you have a story that starts fast and then all of a sudden it grinds to a halt in the middle and it just kind of muddles along until the very end where things ramp up again and then it's very fast that story is not going to work because the thing is audiences aren't going to get to that ending because they're going to be so bored by the middle you need to be aware that that pacing is a balancing act you don't want to overdo it you don't want to have things going fast-paced 99 of the time you need those cool down periods you need those sections where the audience can breathe but at the same time you don't want to promise them something upfront something that's fast-paced right off the bat and then nothing happens for the rest of the story until the very end the number three thing audiences hate unnecessary recaps of events they've already seen this is something i've come across from time to time in various books where early on in the story an event happens and we experience it through a character's point of view we experience it we get all the details all the information that we need and we move along with the story but for whatever reason sometimes in the middle of the book or toward the end of the book we will get this extremely detailed recap of that event we already witnessed for whatever reason maybe maybe it'll be like two characters having a discussion or maybe there's an interrogation or a confession or maybe two people meet for the first time and it's like well how did you get here oh let me tell you about what happened and then they have this this long drawn out conversation about the event that the reader has already experienced firsthand and i have just a major problem with this because first of all there's an easy fix for this you could just basically summarize and say that oh bob brought jill up to speed on what happened earlier to him and then you move along that's all you need to do but for whatever reason some authors feel the need to have these drawn out conversations about these prior events and they they have them take place over the course of an entire chapter sometimes even multiple chapters and the only reason i could think of that these are included is because the author wants to fill up space in the story maybe they think that the beginning of the story is a little front loaded and the middle or the back is a little thin so instead of actually doing the hard work to come up with new material new exciting material that pushes the story forward and keeps us in the present instead of doing that what they do is they they fall back on something exciting that happened earlier if you're doing this in your stories chances are you need to take a step back and ask yourself how can i develop from within the middle of my story or how can i develop from within the end of my story in order to make things more interesting and in order to create more content to make the story satisfying the number four thing audiences hate when you pull punches when we're talking about pulling punches we're talking about a scenario in which a character usually a villain has an opportunity to harm someone they have the desire to harm someone and they fully intend to harm someone but for some silly stupid reason they fail to do so maybe they slip on a banana peel or they just you know get clumsy all of a sudden or whatever it is or the weather breaks or anything like that and as a result the hero gets to get off scot-free audiences hate this because it breaks with the reality of the story for instance if you have a thriller and early on you establish your villain as this expert sniper they're just boom boom boom 100 accuracy and then that villain all of a sudden they encounter the hero who's just this everyday guy not trained in special forces or anything like that just this everyday person and all of a sudden the villain is about to take out the hero but the bullet sails wide and then the next bullet misses and then the next one after that misses and the hero just luckily manages to escape that breaks with the reality of the story and not only that it makes the villain look stupid and it also makes the hero look weak because the hero just got lucky now the way to solve this problem instead of pulling punches instead of just having this clumsy scenario where the sniper just all of a sudden is no longer accurate what you can do you can have your hero become a clever person or come up with some kind of clever solution to fight back against the villain or to dodge the villain's attacks or whatever it might be and the number five thing that audiences hate cliffhanger endings with no resolution whatsoever let me say right up front that cliffhanger endings are totally fine you can end a story on a cliffhanger you can get your audience wondering what's going to happen in the next book in your series that is totally fine but you also must include a resolution to the book you just finished because if an audience just worked their way through your story all the way to the very end they deserve a resolution and if they don't get one they're gonna be upset now here's the thing a lot of the best stories out there end on cliffhangers the dark knight for instance ends on the cliffhanger of what will happen to batman now that the police are out to get him but the dark knight also ends with a concrete resolution batman defeats the joker he prevents harvey dent from being turned into this corrupt figure or at least being perceived as this corrupt figure so that movie has both a resolution and a cliffhanger that's what you need to be aiming for if you do want to go that cliffhanger route so i hope this helps question of the day what pisses you off the most when you're taking in a work of fiction let us know in the comment section below thank you guys for watching if you want to support the channel please pick up a copy of either one of my novels also be sure to check out my other videos hit the like and subscribe buttons for me share this video with a friend and as always remember to keep on writing

Channel: Writer Brandon McNulty

Views: 427,091

Keywords: Writing, Writing advice, Writing Tips, Fiction, Creative Writing, How to write a book, How to write a novel, novel, book, bad writing advice, bad writing vs good writing, terrible writing advice, mistakes, writing advice for beginners, writing advice for young writers, how not to write, mistakes new writers make, new writer advice, new writer mistakes, short story, hate, audience, audiences, genre, pulling punches, cliffhanger ending, cliffhanger endings, cliffhanger, pacing, screenplay

Id: zs6sEYEzsKo

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022