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Original poster

Fiction cliches you hate

337 replies

SPBInDisguise · 30/12/2012 00:11

I read mostly crime and thriller.
Can't bear books that take the first hundred pages to describe the landscape. Thick frost, frozen lake, snowy trees, onto the action please.
Detectives that drink lots of coffee and work all night but somehow seem to actually work very little

OP posts:
LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 00:58

line - pupils expanding to cover more of the iris? Not very sexy really.

I don't get the 'feeling hot' or 'tremors' though. I have met a lot of sexy, sexy people and never felt hot. Confused

LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 00:56
Blush

I am a sucker for the crossed-wires stuff.

It has to be reasonably subtle though. None of this 'Sheila snuggled up to Paul thinking what a good friend he was ... and how sexy his gorgeous tall, muscular body, square jaw, and 'unconventional' good looks were ... she hoped he would find someone to love the way she loved that total wanker Derek whose paunch was beginning to show ...'.

I really hate when there's a conversation in a book just to help the audience keep up, where the whole of it is characters in the middle of something really busy reminding each other what has just happened.

LineRunner · 30/12/2012 00:55

'Her eyes darkened'. How? Just how?

wannabedomesticgoddess · 30/12/2012 00:51

The usual "we fancy each other but we are going to get our wires crossed and fall out until the last chapter."

Oh and the unsaid shit. If you have feelings or an opinion just bloody say it. Thats more in soaps and films though.

LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 00:50

I'm with bunty about dreams.

I hate when halfway through it becomes all magical and woo.

And where someone does something shitty you'd be sacked for in RL/dumped and categorised as a wanker by your boyfriend or girlfriend, and everyone in the book thinks it's amazing.

IsawFoofyShmoofingSantaClaus · 30/12/2012 00:46

Not a cliche, I know. Just bloody irritates and it's everywhere.

IsawFoofyShmoofingSantaClaus · 30/12/2012 00:44

Anyone who describes a cup of tea in the terms "he drank the hot sweet liquid" Angry
I know what a fecking cup of tea is. You don't need to spell it out.

SparklyAntlersInMyDecorating · 30/12/2012 00:34

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BuntyPenfold · 30/12/2012 00:34

Yes, and the dry wind hissing in the rushes. What, again?

Also, the word 'surrender' must be banned.

LineRunner · 30/12/2012 00:32

I can't be doing with wind cutting through people like a frozen scimitar.

PolkaDotsandPumpkin · 30/12/2012 00:30

I really dislike the term "a shock of blonde/red/brown/grey hair".
I don't know why but it instantly makes me think less of any writer who uses it to describe a character's appearance.

BuntyPenfold · 30/12/2012 00:30

I hate it when a considerable part of a plot was only a dream. Angry

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