forum Things You Want LESS Of In Books

Started January 21, 2019 by @HighPockets group

tune

I think an already existing relationship would be great.

I think if it feels right, do it.
I have several pre-story relationships (Maia/Esther, Lucas/Ophelia, Francesca/andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer), Claudio/Liz, and Henry/Victor) and I think the key is to still give them focus, not just let them drift into the background since there's no during-story set up.

One thing that is constantly being missed is having relationships that are just moving along without drama. Just a good, solid relationship would be fun to read every once in a while.

Too true. I'll try to write it in and see how it goes. And if it doesn't fit in earlier on, I can act like they started officially dating during the one year time skip. But they've known each other since their teenage years and been friends, so it works.

One thing that is constantly being missed is having relationships that are just moving along without drama. Just a good, solid relationship would be fun to read every once in a while.

I plan on having a slow burn friends-to-lovers in one of my stories where two friends fall in love slowly and don't get together officially until their senior year because soft romances are the best. There's not much drama in the relationship, just outside of it.
Same with Victor and Henry, the drama they deal with isn't (often) caused by misunderstandings and stuff, but by one of them (usually Victor) getting held hostage or otherwise injured or sick, or issues involving money and college.

Money and college. I feel this deeply.

Yeah Victor couldn't afford the college he was at after he lost his partial scholarship and his parents disowned him so now he goes to a less expensive one with Henry.

Eesh. I too will have to spend hours typing papers of eloquent begging to receive the money I need for the knowledge I desire.

I'd like less "sassy protagonists without a filter" please
Like I love snark as much as anyone else but it irritates me when they just blindly mouth off to anyone they interact with ever without considering consequences (such as leaders or strangers with power or authority figures in general). Give me a sassy protagonist who still knows when to keep their mouth shut.

I'd like less "sassy protagonists without a filter" please
Like I love snark as much as anyone else but it irritates me when they just blindly mouth off to anyone they interact with ever without considering consequences (such as leaders or strangers with power or authority figures in general). Give me a sassy protagonist who still knows when to keep their mouth shut.

(my main yells at her future love interest who is the crown princess five seconds after meeting her, not knowing she is the crown princess, and now i feel Attacked)
the princess knows how to shut the fuck up tho

I'd like less "sassy protagonists without a filter" please
Like I love snark as much as anyone else but it irritates me when they just blindly mouth off to anyone they interact with ever without considering consequences (such as leaders or strangers with power or authority figures in general). Give me a sassy protagonist who still knows when to keep their mouth shut.

(my main yells at her future love interest who is the crown princess five seconds after meeting her, not knowing she is the crown princess, and now i feel Attacked)
the princess knows how to shut the fuck up tho

Or protagonists who start without a filter and realize that they need one to survive.

I'd like less "sassy protagonists without a filter" please
Like I love snark as much as anyone else but it irritates me when they just blindly mouth off to anyone they interact with ever without considering consequences (such as leaders or strangers with power or authority figures in general). Give me a sassy protagonist who still knows when to keep their mouth shut.

I feel like Percy Jackson did this well, Percy was always snarky but kept his mouth shut in intense situations and the snark was more-or-less his internal monologue.

I have a very controlled character who has to learn not to be so controlled. Then she has to learn to not let her impulses control her.

my main is an immigrant from a different country and she thinks the system succ but she's not supposed to actually talk abt it bc it's heresy but she does it anyway. and then she has to learn to keep her mouth shut.
meanwhile, the princess was raised to be very diplomatic and controlled, but that means that when it's time for her to act on instinct (say, when you're 2 inches from the love of your life and you really wanna kiss her) she lets the moment slip by because she's too scared of the consequences and overthinks everything. and then she like, runs away with the main and forfeits the throne so lesson learned i guess lmao

I'd really like to see less of the 'deaths=good writing' trope. I mean I get that in an epic fantasy battle people should die, but as long as the entire cast doesn't come out completely unscathed, I think it's fine.

I'd really like to see less of the 'deaths=good writing' trope…

Oh my god, yes! Thank you! I'm someone who doesn't like a lot of character deaths very much so as I'm sure you can imagine, I despise this trope. Like yeah, sometimes character deaths are kinda inevitable in certain situations but not everyone has to die. There's other ways to write your characters out of a story, I'm just saying.

I ended up changing one character who was supposed to die into surviving, but with a badly injured leg, and getting unofficially adopted by his mentor and her girlfriend and I like this ending much better for him.

Haha yeah I've done stuff like that too. I had a character who was slated to die, but then I gave him a backstory which altered the entire ending of the story. Technically, I could still kill him off, but the story is more interesting if I keep him alive.
I have another character who should have been sentenced to death for committing treason. Originally that was supposed to make him a hero, but I feel like that wasn't entirely realistic. I couldn't bring myself to kill him though because I've had him for so long, so instead he just gets exiled.

And I saved my old man from death!

I think that I only kill off one or two important characters (except in one story where almost everyone bits it, but that's an outlier) per story, and honestly it's so easy to find other ways to keep them alive instead.

I'm trying to decide how to go about killing characters off in my story. On the one hand, I feel like someone needs to die, because otherwise, there don't really seem to be stakes. On the other hand, I'm not so sure about that. I realized which character would need to die, and it makes me really sad just thinking about it.

Is there any sort of fate worse than death that you can have looming over everything?
I know that for a lot of my characters dying wouldn't be as bad as, say, the rebellion failing.

Also more minor stakes throughout the story that build up to a bigger stake is always good!

I have a girl who had a fate worse than death. I'm still not over it.

Well, that's the thing. This individual dying would really hurt the protagonist, who has already lost a lot of people. And honestly it would be terrible for everyone, as this character plays a big brother role. And the only things worse than death for that character are losing his siblings, which isn't an option, and the ultimate loss of the team of protagonists, which also isn't an option. I'm also thinking of having him die in a way which reveals a lot about his character and another character, so perhaps it is necessary.