Author Habits That Annoy You

[JonnyQuest037]

I posted this a couple weeks ago in the Good Behind the Scenes Books thread, but @Laura Cynthia Chambers pointed out that it would work here too. And since I don't think I've made this complaint in this thread before, here it is:

I'm also not a fan of some of the alien names prose writers come up with, where they're overly long, look like the writer's cat just walked across the keyboard, and have a million apostrophes jammed in there. It just gets exhausting to read a name like "Kkkk't'lll'skyll'dwalis'pk'pk" dozens of times over the course of a novel.

 

[Tosk]

I'm also not a fan of some of the alien names prose writers come up with, where they're overly long, look like the writer's cat just walked across the keyboard, and have a million apostrophes jammed in there. It just gets exhausting to read a name like "Kkkk't'lll'skyll'dwalis'pk'pk" dozens of times over the course of a novel.

I agree!

[...] please do not give them all crazy hard to read/spell names that are similar to each other. I absolutely understand why they would if they're all from the same new species, but it still makes reading about them less pleasurable.

It's tricky though, because the scene where someone says, "X'theniqh-Tarfflen? ...I think I'll call you Lenny." is often awful.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Then there's snickers when a character learns what the full name of an alien who previously called themselves by a nickname is. "I can see why you changed it."

 

[JD]

I posted this a couple weeks ago in the Good Behind the Scenes Books thread, but @Laura Cynthia Chambers pointed out that it would work here too. And since I don't think I've made this complaint in this thread before, here it is:

I'm also not a fan of some of the alien names prose writers come up with, where they're overly long, look like the writer's cat just walked across the keyboard, and have a million apostrophes jammed in there. It just gets exhausting to read a name like "Kkkk't'lll'skyll'dwalis'pk'pk" dozens of times over the course of a novel.

Yeah, that bugs me too. It's not funny or clever, it's just irritating.

 

[Trek Survivor]

Not specific to one author (though most recently it turned up in "Exiles" by Howard Weinstein) but early TNG authors had a preoccupation with Data "cocking his head" (inquisitively/curiously/intrigued etc) and also people's fingers "dancing across the console". Overused phrases/imagery can be a bit annoying.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Not specific to one author (though most recently it turned up in "Exiles" by Howard Weinstein) but early TNG authors had a preoccupation with Data "cocking his head" (inquisitively/curiously/intrigued etc) and also people's fingers "dancing across the console". Overused phrases/imagery can be a bit annoying.

I can see why they did that, though, as those are both specific physical mannerisms that Brent Spiner brought to the character. It's not a bad thing to try and paint an image of the actor who portrays a character in your head. If they phased it the exact same way every time, though, that's a bit much.