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Desiderius Price

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Posts posted by Desiderius Price

  8. Pet Peeves-What can't you stand

    in Writers' Corner

    Posted

    On 4/22/2018 at 3:58 PM, BronxWench said:

    Sometimes, something about a character’s appearance is relevant, and so I mention it. Maybe his eyes are a shade not customary where he’s living, or maybe he has a unique scar. But on the whole, I describe the minimum about a character’s appearance. As a reader, I don’t want an overload of details. I might not growl about it in a review, but I do prefer being able to put my own mental spin on a character. 

    I like to do a little bit more than minimum, just so that describing “red T-shirt” isn’t obvious that it’s important, but going into an involved description into the intricacies of the stitch/weave pattern is typically beyond where I’ll write to. 

    22 hours ago, BronxWench said:

    It’s very true. Sometimes you need to actually prod the readers into realizing things that should be freaking obvious. :D 

    A little extra is fine, ie, lamp is green … I mean, do I need to remind the readers that a male character has a penis?  Probably not, but I’ll still add in some mention of it :)

  12. Pet Peeves-What can't you stand

    in Writers' Corner

    Posted

    4 hours ago, KassX said:

    Yeah, this is really more wrt my YA stuff. With the smut, I do physical description in more detail than the YA stuff; and I think that does come with the territory. I prefer to sprinkle in details as the story goes along too, but I’ve literally heard people say not to do that either. I personally have never had a reader ask for less, but as a reader, I have sometimes wanted less, only if it starts to go on for too long. It is definitely up to the writer to find balance. 

    I totally feel you on the narcissist characters; I have one who will go on and on about his GREAT hair :D :D

    Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  As a writer, I tend to prefer leaning on the reader’s imagination, I mean, they should have an imagination, right?  Esp as that imagination can fill in the detail much more than my words can.  So, my typical description of a character… a sentence of two, because, well, when I’m a reader, I find that  pages and pages of description to be a pet peeve of mine.

  22. Pet Peeves-What can't you stand

    in Writers' Corner

    Posted

    3 hours ago, CloverReef said:

    What?! No! Not as long as I have something to say about it! 

    Okay… Content warning: I swear.

    I actually raged about epithets before. I don’t remember where. People just acted like it was just inane – like I just pulled a random, nonsensical pet peeve out of my ass. I get this reaction whenever I tell people that helper verbs are passive. Yes, I am still on a crusade against overuse of ING verbs. 

    But one of my major pet peeves, and this I have developed recently, is something I see in a lot of writing tips articles. It never used to bother me, but I find I get pretty pissed off when I encounter it now. Professionals telling amateurs not to do something. The word lists apply to this. “Don’t use gimmicks”, “Don’t use intensifiers”, “Don’t put rape in there”, “Don’t chop your arm off and eat it” (I couldn’t remember any more...) Of course there are some things that are best avoided, but when you tell a budding, insecure writer not to do something, like BW said, they’ll twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid shit when maybe, just maybe, it would have been fine. There’s a time and a place for everything. To me, when I beta, it’s more important that you’re conscious of your word choice, and when you make iffy choices, like throwing in a ‘very’ (outside of dialogue) that you did it intentionally and well. 

    Plus I really fucking hate it when someone tells me not to do something. 

    Don’t chew your arm off!  :)

    Having some tips are good, especially when they’re word patterns that can indicate a more serious issue, but sometimes those words are the right choice.

     

  25. Pet Peeves-What can't you stand

    in Writers' Corner

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, BronxWench said:

    I’m going to own up to abuse of epithets. My editors tend to want to beat me over the head, I think, and they are teaching me to stop that annoying habit. It started, quite frankly, when one person who was editing a novella of mine took the hard and fast rule that there could only be one “he” in a paragraph. Dude, I write slash, okay? It’s ALL he. If you are clear enough in the context of the sentence, a reasonably sober reader can figure out which male it is. 

    I’m also coming out in support of the correct use of “that” because nothing grates more than seeing people go through contortions in writing to avoid a word someone put on a blog as a “bad” word. There are no bad words. Trust me on this. A good editor understands when you need “that” as opposed to “which” and certainly as opposed to the spate of verbiage required to avoid using either word.

    I do miss the Oxford comma, however. Apparently it’s going out of style again. ::sigh::

    And anything can be overused.  When I find such a word, I’ll try to avoid it for a while, it can help me weed it down to a better level. 

    As to the comma, don’t forget to eat, shoot, and leave :)

     

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