I don't want to ruin every book you're going to read from now, but have you noticed they all have the word

[Cify]

Detritus.... in therm?

And now I've noticed it I can't stop seeing the word in everything I read.

And yet I've never heard a single friend complaining about the detritus in their kitchen.

Please tell me I'm not alone? Do you notice certain words or phrases (that people don't actually say in real life) being used over and over again in novels?

There’s a book where one of the characters is a novelist, whose work is analysed by software which shows which words they use disproportionately. They’re told that the word ‘greasy’ and its derivatives permeate their work. Sends them into a spiral of decline. I often think of it when Reacher Says Nothing.

I read a book in which three different characters used the word apercu. But with a weird accent thing under the c.

I googled the word because I'd never heard it before, I'm still none the wiser.

I once read a few books one after the other where all of them used the word "poleaxed" a few too many times. It was really noticeable and distracting.

Oh and I tried to read Sleepwalking by Julie Myerson once, but it was about someone who was pregnant and she was constantly going on about her "solar plexus" and it got really annoying.

You never hear anyone talking about a "solar plexus" only in books.

Sorry CaptainCardamom, cross post!

I'm a fan of the 'narrowed eyes' that so many people seem to look with.

If it's a romance, the heroine's hair always has caramel highlights - though of course they are natural.

The thing I hate most is when they say someone (usually the heroine, who, of course, can't have an appetite) nibbles food. Makes me think of a squirrel.

I find the description 'sleepy village' or 'sleepy town' extremely annoying and lazy.
Every village and town that I've ever known have been far from sleepy - they've been full of people having affairs, rows, feuds, fun and every other vice and virtue of human nature.

Ooh Times amazing x-post!

I'm not even really sure where mine is...

The solar plexus is in the Milky Way, I believe.

Yes narrowed eyes. My eyes are regular fat ones.

I hate any description of hair - looking out from under a fringe, twirling it round a finger, flipping it over shoulders.

The killer clown waited patiently at the kitchen table alert to the unmistakable sounds of his victim slipping on her dressing gown and padding down the stairs. As she opened the fridge the light cleaved the darkness, illuminating the attacker easing out from behind the table. Narrowing her eyes she surveyed the detritus of the broken window on the floor. “Fucking killer clowns” she muttered, slamming her fist into his solar plexus and flinging the hot liquid from her thermos of bovril into his face.

Biting their lip. People always bite their lip. Just the one, mind.

I shuddered reading that scribbly

Yes the padding!!

And letting out breaths they didn't even realise they were holding (?!)
And brushing "invisible" crumbs/fluff from their laps

I’m so impressed by the solar plexus x-post! Spooky.

I proofread a lot of commercial fiction and almost every single title uses the word ‘adrenaline’ (or ‘adrenalin’ depending on house style) at least once. It courses/pumps/rushes through veins/bodies/people.

I bite my lip, so that doesn't annoy me in books. I sometimes do it literally, at times that other people do it figuratively, to stop myself from saying something that I really shouldn't.

I hate 'padding around', 'she padded into the kitchen wearing only his discarded shirt'. No, she fucking went into the kitchen, and is it really hygienic to be wandering around without knickers after a night of frankly unlikely amounts of condom-less sex?

When a character is shocked or surprised by something and their mouth makes a perfect O shape...I don’t think my mouth would ever make a perfect O shape and it’s one discription that annoys me no end!!

Pulse going in his temple = suppressed anger

I’m working on some proofs right now, and someone’s eyes have just narrowed

There’s one author I sometimes work on who writes really well but has a total blind spot about eyebrow stuff and routinely puts six or seven separate eyebrow gestures into a single stretch of dialogue. Arching, lifting, raising a quizzical ... my most hated one is ‘quirking’. ‘Janet quirked an eyebrow.’

The killer clown waited patiently at the kitchen table alert to the unmistakable sounds of his victim slipping on her dressing gown and padding down the stairs. As she opened the fridge the light cleaved the darkness, illuminating the attacker easing out from behind the table. Narrowing her eyes she surveyed the detritus of the broken window on the floor. “Fucking killer clowns” she muttered, slamming her fist into his solar plexus and flinging the hot liquid from her thermos of bovril into his face.

Genius scribbly. Subverting the female killer clown victim trope via a veritable thicket of cliches. Do you have a publisher lined up? :o

(Although you can't steal my title.)

CaptainCardamon it should be a collaborative effort. The subversive heroine needs to shoe horn in some lip biting, tendril fingering, eye brow quirking and perfect mouth O making in the next scene.
64BooLane needs to be editor

And there’s a lot of blinking too. “ She blinked” . Well yes we all do don’t we every few seconds. You don’t need to tell us . It doesn’t add to the drama.
Also.. I’ve complained on here about this before but I’ll do it again “ He said, thickly.” What the hell does that mean?!

Sophie Kinsella and bloody ‘incredulous’.

Most of these are lazy writing, or perhaps used for rhythm rather than content, but 64BooLane, I'm curious - what do you use instead of 'adrenaline'? It's difficult to think of an alternative wording which has more merit - and sometimes you want to mention adrenaline.