Writing Wednesday: Literary Pet Peeves

Hel-lo everyone, I am back! And I have missed you. And I've been doing lots of reading, so I have a good stock of stories to tell you about for Book Talk. But today, as it is Wednesday and not Friday, I'm talking about writing. Not mine, but what I dislike seeing in writing. These are my literary pet peeves:

1) exclamation marks in narrative. I don't know why, but this bothers me. I love 'em in dialogue, but narrative... Meh.

2) having two or more characters of the same sex whose names begins with the same first three letters, e.g. Brianna and Britney. It gets confusing, especially in a book with a large character cast.

3) alliteration. This is just me being a weirdo. Most people like alliteration, and I do, but only in titles. The rest of the time it's just plain cheesy.

4) sentences with too many/not enough commas. I like my pacing to be just right. You may now accuse me of Monica-ism. (hey, that reminds me, anyone watch friends?)

5) crazy protagonists. This is most annoying in first person, but can still irk me in third. How can the reader be expected to have a clear vision of the story if they have to see it through the deranged and fogged mind of the looney main character? I don't CARE if that's the desired effect, it still bugs me!

6) and last but not least, the biggest of them all: UNSATISFYING ENDINGS. I like happy endings best, obviously. I can deal with a sad ending just about. I mean, I'm not about to criticise Shakespeare or John Green. But ohmygolly, authors, do not, I repeat: DO NOT write me an unsatisfying ending, or I will assume one of three things. A) you got bored with your own story. B) you couldn't think of anything good, so you gave up. C) there is some secret league of writers who exist solely to cause pain and suffering to their most emotionally attached readers i.e. me. And I'm pretty sure the answer might be C.

Mark my words, blog readers. One of these days I will write a book that ends on the most horrible cliffhanger possible. I will take the protagonist right to the edge of the metaphorical cliff, and pretend like I'm going to push her off. Then, while your all busy worrying about her, I'll kill of the love interest! And then all those mean authors out there can get a taste of their own medicine.

But don't get me wrong: most authors are lovely, friendly, totally-not-as-crazy-as-their-imaginations-may-make-them-seem people, and they're awesome. So yeah, always buy books new, and don't take part in disgusting e-book piracy, to do your part in helping these wonderful creative people, because of you wrote a book -- and I bet some of you reading this will -- you would want others to do that for you. That's enough rant for one day. Toodles!