Peeves on a Leash

It startles me that, in this modern and enlightened age, I have read professionally published novels with Deus ex Machina endings. I mean, there are still editors, right?

I once heard an author at a convention say that one of the big things that gets people into trying to write professionally, for whatever medium, is when they look at something and say “I could do better than that!”

Generally, I suspect they find that writing well is harder than it looks. But at least they know which mistakes they are not going to make.

So what are your pet peeves when it comes to storytelling? What tropes drive you nuts? Me, I’m getting awfully tired of the idiot listening to loud music through headphones who fails to hear the carnage and screaming from right behind him. We’ve all seen that movie, right?

And I don’t like it when a character makes a promise and the reader knows instantly that the story will be set up to make him or her break the promise.

And the Deus ex, of course. Any contrivance so old it’s name dates back to classical antiquity should be probably be avoided.

But it’s all personal taste, isn’t it? There are some tropes that I’ve seen as often as the idiot in headphones and they still work for me every time. 

Crafting a story is  an art based on choices, on making decision after decision after decision. And consciously or not, the tricks you’ve seen before are in your head, part of your storytelling arsenal.

Use them wisely.