Comments on: Writing Tics That Bug Me

By: Pop Culture Nerd

Pop Culture Nerd — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:39:45 +0000

I don’t think your example is expositional dialogue that exists only for the reader. If one character doesn’t know something about the other, even though WE know it, it’s okay if he asks. It irks me when two characters who are close tell each other something the other would obviously know just to fill in the reader.

I’m rooting for you to finish by B’con!

By: Travis

Travis — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:26:25 +0000

Hey Elyse,

I hope I didn’t violate #4, but it’s tricky. In mystery stories characters usually ask questions and explain the bios of different suspects, colleagues, etc. and then those characters explain themselves when confronted. Like “Weren’t you involved with____” “Yeah, but I also worked for_____, that’s why they call me _____, because I always ____ and____.” (fill in the blanks with your favorite noir cliches.)

Also I’m finding that I overuse the words “just,” “well” and “so.” They usually sound fine when reading them, but after I take them out I find they weren’t needed at all. I may do a word search to keep them to a minimum.

Regarding my novel, I’ve got 450 pages down to 396 and I’m still working on it. (15k words out, but I’m shooting for 20.) I want to have it polished before Bouchercon. Hope you are well. Thanks for asking.

By: Pop Culture Nerd

Pop Culture Nerd — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:54:23 +0000

You should try #4, too, just to be a completist. And then remove them all!

How’s your rewrite going?

By: Travis

Travis — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:01:01 +0000

As I’m going through a third re-write, trying to get the word count down, I’ve found myself often guilty of tics 1 – 3 and hopefully I’ve removed most of them… though I may have used #5 to make a sentence fit on one line.

By: Shell Sherree

Shell Sherree — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:50:17 +0000

I love these comments as much as I love your post, PCN! I’m very guilty of over-using exclamation marks and if I ever write a book, I’ll keep it in mind. {Or I’ll keep that in mind.}

By: EIREGO

EIREGO — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:31:46 +0000

Actually, I thought PCN was going for “Tick” as in bug, as in a play on words about things that get under a person’s skin….he said, hopefully.

By: jenn

jenn — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:46:28 +0000

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. I never finished it, and I ALWAYS finish books. It was so distracting. In my opinion, the characters weren’t developed enough so I could tell who was speaking. It was incredibly annoying.

By: Pop Culture Nerd

Pop Culture Nerd — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:00:05 +0000

I think the editor is partly responsible. Isn’t it her/his job to catch things like the overuse of exclamation points and characters addressing each other? Sometimes writers are too close to their work and that’s why they have editors.

Your !!! mention made me think of the overuse of italics to stress a point. I read a book many people had told me was brilliant, and it was very smart, but the author used italics in almost every paragraph to say things like, Something was wrong. Or, The door was ajar. It was the equivalent of having loud ominous music in a movie to indicate “This is important—pay attention!” I thought, like you, “You think I’m too stupid to see that?” But the people who recommended the book to me are far from stupid and it didn’t seem to bother them (they didn’t mention it) so I guess it’s a matter of taste and no author can please everyone.

By: LolosLetters

LolosLetters — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:56:02 +0000

My question about being fair is whether it is fair to hold the editor accountable. While discussing this issue with another commenter “off the air” I thought of another one (which, unfortunately, was in the same novel I was commenting on earlier), which is the overuse of the !!!!. The main feelings I came away with from the read were:

1. The author thought I was stupid and couldn’t tell when there was drama or excitement taking place, hence the vastly overused !!!.

2. The editor failed this author greatly.

3. Sadness that this author, who plots a good story, has lost me as a reader and perhaps other readers because of these seemingly silly issues. Is it me as a reader that can’t overlook them? Is it the author who should “know better?” Or is it simply a case of ‘no right answer’ and our styles just don’t mesh? If this author were not supposedly such a nice person I wouldn’t feel so badly. But apparently is, and thus I do.

Or should I say “Lauren does!”

By: Pop Culture Nerd

Pop Culture Nerd — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:51:44 +0000

Hahahaha! Thanks for the laugh, Rodney, my friend of 28 years from high school.