Writing quirks/bad habits

My characters all purse their lips, narrow their eyes, and sigh probably more often than they should. My best friend pointed it out to me while she was reading some of my work. One specific character "laughs softly" a lot. I'm working on those, but it still fits into his playful personality, so I'm not sure how to go about replacing them or taking them out.

All my female characters are smart, good looking, rich and maniptalive.

Nothing at all like the ones I know in real life.

I got some great feedback when I started this thread a while back. I saved quite a lot of the advice for future editing sessions:


What do you search and destroy in the editing process?

KTC said:

I got some great feedback when I started this thread a while back. I saved quite a lot of the advice for future editing sessions:


What do you search and destroy in the editing process?

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Love the lists to add. I'll have to tag the link some how.

In the story I just got back from a beta reader, there were about 20 occurrences of "as soon as" or some variant thereon. In only 14k words. Yeah, there was a plot event involving time pressure, but fail for boring reuse of the same generic phrase.

"For his part"

I got this from the Dragonlance novels, and I use it ALL THE TIME.

"Ed ate greedily. For his part, John was constipated."

Man oh man, why do I throw that in there?!?

Leah_Michelle said:

My characters all purse their lips, narrow their eyes, and sigh probably more often than they should. My best friend pointed it out to me while she was reading some of my work. One specific character "laughs softly" a lot. I'm working on those, but it still fits into his playful personality, so I'm not sure how to go about replacing them or taking them out.

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You too? *lol* I thought I was the only one with the laughs softly or chuckles ..sometimes I swear chuckles the clown is running through my feverish brain when I write...

My biggest peeve is when I tend to skip over scenes. It's kind of annoying.

My really bad habit is avoiding writing.

I tend to use 'looking' far too much. And i often put a lot more words in a sentence than it needs.

Bad Habit - Editing while I write.
swapping little words like; of, on, if, it
spell check misses. Long sentences,
using '. . .' as a pause instead of a comma.
Commas in general, colon & semi-colon
punctuation in general, general.
Starting to many sentences with a 'ing' word.

I could go on but, you get the idea.

Quirks - Pencil behind the right ear.

not writing every day.

Writing long chapters with complex and detailed characters / storyline / world what my co-writer / editor can't cut significantly.

Until someone in SYW pointed it out, I had a real problem with overusing past perfect: had been had had had had had. *eeew* I was also shown that the adverb is not my friend.

On the had thing...

People who know proper grammar can correct me if I am not quite right on the name (past perfect versus past pluperfect*) and details, but if one is writing in past tense and addressing (or describing) something that happened further in the past (as in a dip into the past for a little in-the-stream backstory), the dip can be highlighted (bracketed) for the reader by using the "had" thing as past pluperfect (perfect?) tense. If there are multiple sentences in the backstory description, regular past tense can be used until the writer is ready to pull the reader back out of the time-dip, so the final sentence is once again written in past pluperfect (the "had" thing). The following may not be the best example as it's made up as I'm writing it, but here goes:

Mason caressed the scar that ran across his temple. The damn donkey had cracked his skull, but without any serious brain damage. And he did get even with that nasty beast. He discovered the glue factory was more metaphor than reality, but not so with the bullet. At least he had been quick about it.

He touched the scar again. Would he ever get feeling back in that part of his face?


This should give the impression that from the second sentence to the end of the first paragraph is a dip of backstory--the first "had cracked" sending it into backstory and the second "had been quick" pulling it back out. At least this is a lesson I was given early on about using the "had" pluperfect tense as a writing tool. In any event, perhaps the overuse some people experience is in staying with past pluperfect for the entire block of backstory, which isn't necessary in most cases.


On a separate note, one problem I had early on with my writing was using "began to" and "started to" in my character's actions. I've been on so many such search-and-destroy missions I've eliminated them from my writing from the start (for the most part, although there are exceptions where such a passive entry into action is needed or warranted). I no longer have a character start to slam the door, I have him just slam it, or if it is to be an interrupted activity, I have him shove the door and have whatever is blocking it, do so.


*From the web: The French past perfect, or pluperfect, is used to indicate an action in the past that occurred before another action in the past.

I've got a problem with the wishy-washy words, too: seemed, almost, appeared to, might have, started to, began, etc. Either the character did something or not. Better to have a character commit to an action than appear to commit. Maybe.

Writing an Epic Fantasy creates the same pitfalls of a long-running sitcom. At some point you run out of new ways to say things. And it also goes for descriptions. There's only so many interesting ways to describe the moon and stars and setting.

As far as bad habits, I'm continually working on them. First I had to join "That-aholics" annonymous. And I began to throw out every "That" I could find, only to re-insert a few that should have been kept.

I have an apostrophe addiction, I tend to want to put an apostrophe with everything that ends in "s"...1980's, PC's, writer's (when I mean the plural and not the possessive) it's a sickness.

I also have a character who is always squeezing the shoulders of other characters. I'm wondering about when that is an endearing character trait and when it is one of those things that makes the reader go, "Not the shoulder again!"

I use too many qualifiers. It's quite annoying, but really, I'll get over it very soon.

jenelcc said:

I also have a character who is always squeezing the shoulders of other characters. I'm wondering about when that is an endearing character trait and when it is one of those things that makes the reader go, "Not the shoulder again!"

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Make the other character's ;-) react to it. Some will love it; some will hate it.

Dale

My characters wink far too much. They also chuckle, snicker, laugh, and snort excessively. I need some new synonyms and/or I need to make them a little less easily amused and silly.

AuburnAssassin said:

My characters wink far too much. They also chuckle, snicker, laugh, and snort excessively. I need some new synonyms and/or I need to make them a little less easily amused and silly.

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chortle titter guffaw

You're welcome. Or: I apologize. Whichever is appropriate.

AuburnAssassin said:

My characters wink far too much. They also chuckle, snicker, laugh, and snort excessively. I need some new synonyms and/or I need to make them a little less easily amused and silly.

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Try having them convey their silliness or amusement through dialogue.