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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:
Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:56

Ah! Of course ... It was Chat.

Never mind.

Ayala would just invent something to make it all better.

MorrisZapp · 30/12/2012 19:54

University lecturers staying away from home 'at conference' must have adulterous sex in their hotel room.

Actually, I don't hate that at all, it makes me want to go 'to conference' myself.

PatFenis · 30/12/2012 19:53

The use of 'sardonic smile' makes me irrationally angry Grin

Trills · 30/12/2012 19:53

I can't find it - if it was in Chat it will have disappeared.

Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:49

To be fair it wasn't a particularly long or thrilling thread ...

LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 19:49

I do hope so prima - though I pity you if you're identical to me, since I have Strong Family Resemblance (phrasing courtesy of Trills's link) to my own brother, so you really don't want to look like me ...

I'm up for a good clan of the cave bearing too, please link, if someone has it?

Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:48

I'd love to show the thread but I haven't work out how to do links yet on the iPad.

I think if you searched "Clan of The Cave Bear" back in about June (ish) you might find it?

Primadonnagirl · 30/12/2012 19:47

My god LRD !!!! I've done it again...are we twins separated at birth???,,

Trills · 30/12/2012 19:46

They never get health and safety certificates for their cupcakes either.

StairsInTheNight · 30/12/2012 19:46

i need to read the clan of the cave bear thread. I have much to say about huge members.

MrsMaryCooper · 30/12/2012 19:46

But she is only a tiny bit special!

And surely everyone would find her irrestistible but clearly some think that she is horrible! Debbie & Sandra Pelt for two.The specialness should trump gender but it doesn't.

Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:45

I had long coltish legs once ...

Primadonnagirl · 30/12/2012 19:45

Oh and as I'm the central character in my own life can I have "tumbling locks too"?!and can I start up a business using grans old recipes for jam or some such and by the end of the book have orders tumbling in so I now e mploy staff?

LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 19:45

Good point trills.

I'm also fed up with the ones where woman, down on her luck, suddenly starts a successful business from her quaint hobby, which is invariably something 'girlie' like cooking or baking cupcakes or producing really A1 cosmetics. It's never a spot of light car mechanics or particle physics.

For this reason I give points to Joanna Trollope, who does write some formulaic stuff (that many books, who wouldn't?!), but also remembers that women can work in labs as well as bakeries.

Trills · 30/12/2012 19:45

Show us your Fred! I will rip the piss out of it with the best of them, I was just saying that they do wee and poo and have periods and go wash themselves after having their ridiculous perfect-person throbbing member sex.

Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:44

I had a Fred.

StairsInTheNight · 30/12/2012 19:44

the 'borrowing an amazing party dress' device which suddenly makes various male characters realised what a stunningly beautiful person the heroine is, especially if she has long coltish legs normally hidden in jeans, and a mop of curls Hmm

Salmotrutta · 30/12/2012 19:43

Oh Lordy.
I had Fred about Clan of The Cave bear a few months back.

It's full of throbbing members.

And impossibly blue eyes.

ProphetOfDoom · 30/12/2012 19:42

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

EuphemiaInExcelsis · 30/12/2012 19:41

Stories where the central characters are independently wealthy, meaning they don't gave to do tedious things like go to work or clean the toilet.

Orphans, for similar reasons. They can wander the world at will without having to do their homework or answer to their parents.

Trills · 30/12/2012 19:41

If it's halfway in and the woman is moaning there is probably something going wrong, you should stop and ask her if she is OK.

TheLightPassenger · 30/12/2012 19:40

The remarkable irresistibility of the late fifties, dysfunctional workaholic alcoholic detective to young females. He will also like jazz or opera. Strangely never into old school or techno.

LRDtheFeministDude · 30/12/2012 19:40

True, Jean Auel does have that going for her.

OTOH .... !

KeemaNaanAndCurryOn · 30/12/2012 19:40

I have no idea whether this has been mentioned or not BUT...

ANY fecking chick-lit that inevitably involves some high-flying woman living in London who can't find love until some low-life twonk comes along and repairs her damaged, single soul.

Any book where the woman ends up dating and/or marrying an utter loser as he has a soft and fuzzy side. HE IS STILL A LOSER.

Also, would love to point out to any authors out there, is that there are places other than sodding london to live. Yes, thousands and thousands of people DO live there, but there's a good chunk of the population who don't, so if you are going to write some hackneyed chick-lit, don't write about Hackney. Even sodding PRESTON would be a refreshing change.

Trills · 30/12/2012 19:38

They are ridiculous in many ways, but the Clan of the Cave Bear and sequels make me happy because they describe prehistoric life and don't omit details like weeing and having periods.

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