- What's up, my friend? Abbie here, and welcome back
to WritersLife Wednesdays, where we come together to help
you make your story matter and make your author dreams come true. Today, we are talking about all the things I
cannot stand in books and stories, in general, for that matter. My biggest bookish pet peeves and why I hate these
tropes and cliches so much, plus some advice on what you can do to fix these mistakes if you
find yourself writing them. Last week, I put up a post on my Instagram asking you guys what your
bookish pet peeves are, so thank you to everyone who responded. You helped to make this video possible, so as you watch, don't be like, "That's just Abbie's opinion. What does she know?" Remember, there are
many, many, many readers who have these pet peeves. So if you don't want to
tick your readers off and make them never wanna
read your stuff again, take notes. Why does your story matter? Good question. What if I told you that there's a science
behind every great story? I don't just teach you how to write. I teach you how to change
the world with your story and make your author dreams come true. Okay, pet peeve number one, the biggest pet peeve of all time, I think for most people,
especially for myself, lack of character development and/or unsympathetic characters that you cannot care about
no matter how hard you try. This is the number one
worst felony of writing. When characters, especially
the main character, the protagonist, the one we're
supposed to be rooting for, has no internal conflict, and no deep-seated desire for anything, and no goal, and no fear
that's holding them back, and no misbelief that
makes all of their attempts to accomplish their goal impossible. If I start reading a book and the main character
falls into this category where they just do not have
any sort of development, I cannot understand who
they are, what they want, what they're afraid of, what their misbelief or fatal flaw is, I lose interest so quickly. I do not care. Nothing matters to me. I can't see how it
matters to the character. Therefore, it doesn't matter to me. - That was a bit dull. She's boring. Boring, boring. Dull, dull, boring, predictable. - Which leads me to pet peeve number two, which is a flawless protagonist. This is especially popular for some reason amongst the strong-female-character trope, which I think we are all tired of seeing, the flawless strong female character who has absolutely no flaws and faults, and that's what makes her strong. No, God, please, no! If you wanna hear all my
thoughts on this topic, check out this very
in-depth video essay I did on the strong-female-character trope. But bottom line, it doesn't
matter what your character is. If they are flawless, they have no misbelief,
no fatal flaw, no faults, they're not gonna be relatable. So easy way to fix this? Just give them internal conflict. Just give them a desire
for your misbelief. And if you need help with that,
check out this video here. Start with my character profile template. Another pet peeve in books
that we all know and hate. "I'm not like other girls." Or discount, "She's not like other girls." Yes, she is. Yes, you are. You just proved you are like other girls because every girl says
that in every book I read. (static crackling) - [Man] In case you
haven't noticed, I'm weird. I'm a weirdo. I don't fit in and I don't wanna fit in. - Why do you have to tell me this? Why can't you just show me, okay? If she's really not like other girls, then show me how she's
really not like other girls. Don't come out and tell me,
"I'm not like other girls," or have the love interest guy say, "She's not like other girls." How? Why? Another one of my hatest pet peeves... Hatest, is that a word? Fake tension, otherwise known as fake outs of injuries, deaths, breakups,
any perilous situation where you can tell the writer
just wanted to add conflict without actually making a commitment to any kind of conflict happening. Like that classic cliffhanger
ending of a chapter where you think the characters are gonna get in a car
accident or something. And then first line of
the next chapter is, "Oh, the car swerves away and we're okay." Why are you doing this to me? There is no call for fake tension, ever. If you want tension, make it real, please. And another top hated
trope by many people, miscommunication between characters who would normally be
communicating with each other. It's very obvious and easy that they should be
communicating with each other, but they're just not doing that because we need a plot,
we need some conflicts. So they just have to keep
being mad at each other and not speaking, or having these conversations that are incredibly frustrating
and go absolutely nowhere because we need miscommunication in order to have anything
going on in this story. - If you'd only told me that
you feared for her safety, I would've thought twice-
- I could not have been any clearer about
my feelings for Mr. Molyneux. - You spoke only in the vaguest of terms. You gave no reason for your
antipathy, no explanation. - Oh, so you supplied your own? You baselessly accused me of prejudice. - Hardly baseless, given
how you made your fortune. - Oh, for God's sake! (static crackling) - Miscommunication can be done well if you have actual legitimate obstacles standing in the way of these characters communicating with each other, such as tragedy, or physical distance, or a deep-seated insecurity
that prevents the characters from really speaking their mind. World-building dumped all at once, especially in the first chapter. I cannot even tell you how many books I have
DNFed for this reason. I stopped reading them
because I had such a headache just trying to orient myself in this story that I didn't even wanna meet
the characters at that point. It's just, like, please stop. I need a break from this. I've talked about world
building a lot in the past, but the way to fix this, if you find yourself dumping all your world building at once, especially in the beginning,
please don't do that. The way to do it is to
sprinkle it in as we go and to broaden our horizons as the protagonist
broadens their horizons. And what I mean by that is showing exposition through action, not through hitting pause on the story, so that we can have this
Wikipedia page of information dumped on us. If you wanna see what that looks like with more in-depth examples, you can check out this
video I did right here about writing exposition through action. When the MC is a rebel without a cause. Their only character trait is
being annoyed at everything, also known as the characters having a lack of personal
stakes in what is going on. This is kinda like the
"Captain Marvel" syndrome where you have a character
who doesn't have any flaws, or faults, or any
internal conflict, really, and they're just kind of
going around being angry, and smashing things, and reacting to the plot
however the plot needs them to. The way to fix this is to give your protagonist
a personal stake in what's happening in the plot. (static crackling) - I know a rogue soldier when I see one. I've got a personal stake in this. (crickets chirping) - Make them driven by
a misbelief-based goal and give them unique consequences
to not meeting this goal. If they fail, what will happen? How is that failure different for them than it is for any of the
other characters in the story? Which leads me to my next pet peeve, which is characters who are
a punching bag for the plot, also known as passive characters. Essentially, passive characters let everything happen to them. They are helpless to
respond or do anything. The plot just punches them around and they kind of react to it without ever making any active
decisions to change things or to be a main character
in their own life. It's easy to fix this. Just make your characters active, give them an active role in
their lives and in the story, make them throw some
punches back at the plot, make them choose things, and make decisions based
on their internal conflict. They have to make active choices based on their internal
conflict and their misbelief. When books have complicated words and pretentious flowery prose that we need a dictionary to understand. Some people like this,
some people hate it. A lot of people hate it. My opinion is that if you can say something really profound in plain simple language, that is way more impressive to me than stringing together a bunch of complicated SAT
vocabulary that I get a headache just trying to pronounce. Inconsistent personalities, i.e., when the main character or any character acts
completely out of character from what their personality
has been established to be. I hate this one so much. It takes me completely out of the story and just makes me feel like I
don't even know the characters when their personality's
been established as one thing and then they go and do something that's totally not like them. (static crackling) - [Lara Jean] My name is Lara Jean. I write a letter when I
have a crush so intense that I don't know what else to do. Nobody else knows about them. - [Narrator] A few minutes later. (suspenseful music) - Oh, my God - [Peter] Oh, oh, okay, yeah. (suspenseful music) - [Coach] Hey! Stop that! - Personality whiplash. I understand it can be difficult to write different personalities, especially personalities
that aren't like you, but there are tools to help you with this, one of which is my
favorite, the Enneagram, which if you start digging into that and studying all the
different personality types within the Enneagram, you will find that you
have an unlimited resource, a wealth of information to go off of to create tons of unique characters and stay within the boundaries of what would be realistic for
their personality to express. Which kind of leads me to my next one, which is when every character's
voice sounds the same. I know I'm getting kind
of picky at this point, but seriously, this bothers me, especially when I'm reading dialogue and it's hard to even tell
what character is talking unless I have dialogue tags because they all sound the same. Character voice is a
difficult thing to get right, but practice makes perfect. Also, check out this podcast if you have trouble
writing character voice. Me and my sister did a
whole podcast on that with example stories,
side-by-side comparisons. Great, valuable stuff in that podcast. Definitely check that out if you have trouble
writing character voice. - We have one hand on the wheel. We can still see her if we take it off. - Aren't you the same woman
who told the government to kiss her ass few years ago? - I'm just, I'm reading the terrain. (error message pinging) - Aren't you the same woman
who told the government to kiss her ass few years ago? - Another thing you can
do is use the Enneagram and pay attention to how
people speak in real life or how people speak even
in movies and on TV shows. And if you need to assign a certain voice that you've heard before to a character in order to
make them sound different and unlike the other characters, that's a great exercise. Too much description, especially of scenery and
locations that we don't care about and that literally don't
matter to the story or the characters at all. It's just there to make us skip over it. How to fix this? Delete it. Toxic relationships glorified
as something good or romantic. Ugh. I hate this. It's so overdone. And it's just not a good theme, not a good message you wanna
leave your reader with. If you wanna write a toxic relationship, then give your character an arc where they eventually
come to the realization, an, "Aha!" moment that this
was a toxic relationship, or somehow they grow
into a new understanding and new perspective and they understand the
truth about the situation. You could also play with
negative character arcs here and have it be kind of a tragic end moment instead of an "Aha!" moment. That's a possibility, but I think it's important
to really pay attention to the message you're conveying through the relationships in your story. And you might not even realize what messages you are conveying. Remember, story is all about
how the characters change as a result of their journey, so keep that in mind as you
are creating this character arc and take into consideration the big ideas that your reader's
going to walk away with. This one's more technical, but
it still is worth mentioning because it annoys me a lot when
I see it too much in books, which is, "He said," or, "She said." Said, said, said, said, said, said, said. Doesn't matter if the character is dying or they're just walking down
the street with their friends. It's said, said, said. Quick fix? Google image, other words for said. But don't go too overboard
on the alternatives because that can become just
as much of a headache to read. But you do want to figure out, "What is actually happening here? How is this character
actually saying this? How can I reflect their emotion and their intentions with their speech through this dialogue tag?" Or maybe you don't even
need a dialogue tag. Maybe it can just come out completely. Repeat information that
makes the reader feel stupid or makes the reader feel like the author
thinks they're stupid. This one will depend on your situation. I understand that some
repeat information is good from book to book in a series. If you need to recap what
happened in the last book because it came out last year and it's been a while since
we visited those characters, so we do need a little bit of a refresh. But try not to repeat information
too much to your readers throughout the course of one book. We don't need it, we
got it the first time. Or showing and then telling. I hate that so much when it's
like there is some action or some line of dialogue that
showed me something perfectly and then the very next line is
the main character narrating telling me what they just showed me. When romance is rushed or just not realistic or emotional at all. Lots to say on that topic, so check out this new
podcast I did recently on writing slow burn romance. When every character has
perfectly structured sentences and they all sound like
they graduated Harvard with English degrees. Again, this is all about character voice, making each character different, unique, have different quirks to their dialogue, and the way they speak, and their tone, and their
personality, their backstory. All of that should be
coming through their voice. Killing off characters for
no reason other than... killing off characters. - [Narrator] Bruh. - You know how in the
OG "Star Trek" series, there would always be a group of people who would show up on an enemy planet or in some bad situation, and there would always be a couple of guys wearing red shirts, and they would always be the ones to get shot down or obliterated first. That's what I say every
time I'm reading a book and a character is introduced that I know is going to just
be killed off by the author because I know they just
want to kill a character in this scene. I'm like, "Red shirt guy." - Stench him. (suspenseful music) - Modern speech or slang in historical
novels or period dramas. Don't. Just don't. "But Abbie, I am from the modern era. How am I supposed to
write a historical novel and get all of the language
and all the speech right?" Read books from that era. Study stories that were actually written in the time period that
you're trying to write for because all the natural speaking, and the language, and
the slang of the time will be there in that book. (cymbals clanging) Another cliche that's become so cliche it is everyone's pet peeve at this point. When the love interest is
hundreds of years older than our teenage main character, but they still look like
a teenager themselves, so it's all good. (static crackling) - How old are you? - I'm 17. - How long have you been 17? - A while. (static crackling) - I understand the appeal of it, but it's just become so overdone that it comes across as cliche. Like, you couldn't come up
with any more unique ideas that haven't really been
done that much before? Like, how can we give this
character the same conflict that a 100-year-old teenager might have without making them a
100-year-old old teenager? And my final pet peeve. When the plot is so convoluted and clever that it's really, at this point, just the author flexing
their ability to confuse you and bend your mind. - Clever.
- Clever. - Clever.
- Clever. - Clever, yes! - It's so agonizing and so confusing and I can't even enjoy your
intellectual cleverness because I'm too busy trying
to untangle the knots that my brain has become. I don't really know how you fix this. Just stop trying so hard. Another thing you can do is
ask a trusted beta reader or critique partner to read your work and tell you if it's overly
convoluted and confusing or if it's just really clever. It's all about finding a balance. Okay, boom. That's it, those are my top pet peeves in books and stories of any kind, and I know there was a lot of them because I get very nerdy
about analyzing stories. But it's important to do that. As a writer, as a storyteller,
it's important to find: What are those moments that make you disengage from the story, that make you feel less
connected to the characters, and that just get on your nerves? What are those things? How can you avoid those
things in your own writing? That's why it's so important
to engage with story on other levels from other creators, whether that is books,
or TV shows, or movies. It's important to
consume a lot of stories, so that you can learn from it. So now, it's time for you to talk to me. Comment below this video and tell me: What is your number one bookish pet peeve? Could you relate to any
of these or all of these? And if so, what are you waiting for? Why don't you recommend me some stories and some books in the comments that don't have any of
these pet peeves in them? Thank you. Smash that like button
if you liked this video, and be sure to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already because I post writing
videos every Wednesday and I would love to have
you here in the community. Also, be sure to check out my Patreon because that's where we go beyond videos and take storytelling to the next level. The Patreon community
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to get exclusive access to the WritersLife
Wednesday Discord community and also get access to my
monthly live trainings. You can find all that and more
at patreon.com/abbieemmons. I hope to see you over there. Thank you again for being
here and for watching, and I will see you guys in the next one. Until then, rock on. (Abbie mimics air whooshing) So slow burn in romance is something that Kate and
I are both huge fans of, and a lot of you guys love as well. And there's a reason
why we love slow burn, because it feels realistic. When it's done well,
it can be so immersive because we feel like we are on a journey with these two characters
as they overcome their own.
