forum Things You Want LESS Of In Books

Started January 21, 2019 by @evastardust groupRRAAAARRL

tune

Youngest ever is… goes to check fourteen.
Oldest super is the one I was discussing is 376.

My youngest kiddos are both 14
The story about angels and demons I was writing is getting a total rehaul but my oldest there was about 1,000 I think

Oldest supernatural is in the 10000 range or so
Oldest ever is in the billions _(trillions?)

Youngest supernatural idk
Youngest character ever is only a few weeks old

Youngest: ???
Oldest: ???

Somewhere between 3 to 500,000
I don’t know the exact age of any of my characters and there’s only like 8 of them
You’d think I’d be better with this

My oldest ever is in the 41. He's a fairly minor character. My oldest main character ever is 18. My youngest while the majority of the story takes place is 11. 6 months if you count a few chapters
Yeah, that's not fun. I don't have any supernatural stories. Makes note to start one

Oldest supernatural characters have indetermined ages but are over 400 years old
Mab is also old af, but since she died super young she looks young.

My oldest would have to be ancient af, like tens of thousands of years, but the two characters are enemies. Next one would be slightly over 1000

Youngest would be 11
The only romance i have is an elf guy who's almost 100 and a snek boi who's 20 - but their relationship is more emotionally focused, no banging going on

My youngest main cast character is 16, and then I have another side character who’s with the main group for a while and I haven’t determined his age yet. Probably like 12.
As for oldest, I’m really bad about including older characters in the main cast. The oldest there is in his early 30s. But in the story, there are other characters whose ages aren’t described but they’re “elder” status. No immortals or anything though, there’s a time and a place for it, but I didn’t feel like adding any more shenanigans.

I– you can't have a police officer say, "we can't do that, that's not how the law works" when everything the police is doing is something they can't do???????? Why???

???

Okay, so in an earlier book, they asked their police officer friend to do something and he said, "I can't do that. The law doesn't work like that," or some crap, and then in this one, they got arrested, weren't read rights, and only one was told WHY she was being arrested (which is not how the system works), plus they were arrested because of a survey in which 92% of the people thought they were guilty. And the people didn't have any evidence either.
Actually, the police did have evidence: some IMs from only ONE of the girls, that proved nothing.

My goodness that sucks.

Wooooooooooooooow that's awful

That’s just mean to the readers! If they are actual police, they should follow actual police rules (or at least what’s reasonable in universe). I literally made up a secret group called the WNP (Weird Not-Police, it’s a temp name) just so the members don’t have to follow laws and crap and don’t have to let people have things like lawyers

I made two of my characters freelance detectives as opposed to cops so I wouldn't have to deal with police rules.
One is an actor and the other is a former lawyer and they've got Big Chaotic Energy

Slut shaming and stuff of the like. Can we just not?? It's not too hard to just have a character notice the size of a stranger's dress and think "Zero. Bitch." Because that legitimately just happened in this book
I hate this series

(Update: they were almost immediately released based on strong overwhelming evidence that some random creep did it)

(Wait what?)

That sounds like a load of bull, (especially to me, who watches stuff like Forensic Files)

Love interests who serve no purpose other than to be the love interest. I'm all for stories of varying genres featuring romance, but the romance should mesh well with the main themes. So many love interests feel like they purely exist as this dumb placeholder character who does nothing except be an object of affection. They don't get their own characterization to the degree other characters do; theirs usually hinges pretty closely on the main character. It is impossible for me to care about them or like the relationship when they feel like a shell of a person. I think the most popular example would be Ginny from the Harry Potter series. She had a bit more personality in the books than in the movies, but that still wasn't much. Her relevance hinged on Harry and it made me not care about their relationship because she was so underdeveloped.

Love interests who serve no purpose other than to be the love interest. I'm all for stories of varying genres featuring romance, but the romance should mesh well with the main themes. So many love interests feel like they purely exist as this dumb placeholder character who does nothing except be an object of affection. They don't get their own characterization to the degree other characters do; theirs usually hinges pretty closely on the main character. It is impossible for me to care about them or like the relationship when they feel like a shell of a person. I think the most popular example would be Ginny from the Harry Potter series. She had a bit more personality in the books than in the movies, but that still wasn't much. Her relevance hinged on Harry and it made me not care about their relationship because she was so underdeveloped.

Absolutely! A love interest character needs to be able to stand on their own, apart from the character they are in/going to be in a relationship with. If they can’t be a compelling part of the story in their own right, the love interest should probably be developed more or scrapped altogether.

I'm getting kinda sick of the "last minute plot twist to ensure you read the sequel" thing, especially when it leaves the ending super open and everything unresolved.

Anyone still salty about Mark of Athena?

Yes. I’m just glad I didn’t have to wait that long to read House of Hades. I couldn’t imagine having to wait months for it to be published

I was thinking of Crier's War (which I really loved) and it

and I honestly don't know if the sequel will be able to tie up all the loose ends.

I've come across this a few times, particularly in books where the main character is a princess
"[Insert maid's name]'s face was covered in blemishes. Personally, I'd never had one, but they looked painful."
This is a sad attempt at trying to make your character relatable while keeping them on another, inhumanly perfect level and it's just unrealistic. I understand that you're trying to make your character be a sympathetic person but either don't mention it or have them have a pimple. Like… I don't know. It's just not realistic for them to never have had a pimple. Even if they're a princess. Just no. Stop

Ewww leave the poor maid alone, tf?
Was that in The Selection series? It sounds like it could be from The Heir or something lol