Lords of Inner Filth

Oct. 18, 2012 at 6:13pm with 17 notes

remarried asked: what are your biggest turn-offs in a piece of fiction? can something easily overcome that if it's good enough?

Overly descriptive names in non-satirical low-fantasy fiction settings (IE, naming a red-haired, axe-wielding dwarf Redd McAxehandles, etc.), and no, that is not easily overcome. If you’re naming characters that way and your story is not satirical, I suspect you and I have very different ideas about what constitutes “worth my time”.

Overly flowery prose where it isn’t necessary. Sure, I can get over that if the overall narrative is good enough, or if the characters are great, etc.

This one is comic-specific: a lot of comics pace “talking heads” portions of their narrative really poorly (too fast) because they assume everyone hates talking head scenes, and will find them boring. Hint, industry: people just might hate them and find them boring because you pace them like shit, but still insist on including them. If your narrative requires that you include scenes of people communicating, please, for the love of God, watch some movies and figure out how the shit pacing works.

That one, I don’t think I can get around! I LOVE a good action sequence, space battles, crazy power shit, you know, that kind of thing - but I’m not going to stick around for that unless I care about the characters. Characters gotta communicate and shit for that to happen. They have to build relationships. That’s not happening to any degree I’d call “successful” if I can tell the writer didn’t even LIKE the parts where characters are communicating. What a waste.