Pet Peeve I Developed after becoming a writer

[inubasket]

Typos happen to everyone but it frustrates me to no end when people constantly confuse these words:

Choose/Chose
Lose/Loose
Women/Woman
College/Collage

I literally cringe when someone who is IN COLLEGE spells it collage lol. Like come on.

[Dizwikz]

@alexlcuri07 @redfeather714 I hate when that happens.
I remember someone on Wattpad said they would do critiques until they stopped reading on a forum and they stopped reading after a few paragraphs and said they were unable to connect to the main character. They also criticized a part of my first chapter where I said the MC didn't want to think about writing a story for the paper and just wanted to get home and have a snack. They said how I should do show don't tell, and I should describe how hungry she was by saying her stomach rumbled, despite the focus not being on her hunger but instead her not wanting to think about a stressful task.

That kinda goes into my next pet peeve which is people kind of just criticizing a piece of work in a context that it shouldn't be criticized. Like I've gotten reviews where people say my work isn't realistic, despite it very clearly being a fantastical setting with fantastical characters that does not really treat itself seriously. Like demanding that from a book where a character became more powerful by eating glue just seems sillier than the premise of someone eating glue to become stronger in my opinion. I've also seen a reviewer criticize how bystanders on the subway train in my first chapter reacted with indifference to the conclusion of the fight, which they felt wasn't realistic and that people would be running and screaming and calling for the police. This just kinda fails to see that everyone acting with super indifference juxtaposed to the craziness is done for humor(and I know not every single joke in my work will land, that's fine) but also that not realizing that people act in very strange ways without rationality or reason, and often times indifference makes it really difficult to gauge how people would "realistically" deal with a situation.
There are of course people that got my work was very wacky and enjoyed the anime kinda style and humor in my writing and would sometimes correct or tell people to just not take it too seriously. I even saw one commenter who felt parts weren't that realistic found it very humorous that a character stuck a teacher to the ceiling with glue, and didn't really care that it wasn't realistic that that had happened, which felt nice lol.

[lunagraves714]

Actually whoever said people would be reacting that much to a situation would be wrong. It's called the bystander effect: with more people present to witness something tragic/awful/strange, the less likely anyone is to do anything about it because of the diffusion of responsibility. And in some places, people might want to refrain from reacting to fights/violence for the sake of not wanting to drag attention to themselves and risk getting hurt, so your work is more realistic than they give you credit for.

[rajillustration]

For me it's becoming very, very aware of chapter lengths. Like when you write on Tapas they're itty bitty--then you pick up a published book to read and it's like "dear lord this whole book is only separated into 3 chapters"

[NickRowler]

English is my first language and I have really bad dyslexia and has been teased by my family and classmates and I always felt insecure when it comes to writing and even talking. Stuff like spellcheck has helped out a lot so I can talk to people and hopefully not be teased.

Dyslexia is a learning disorder and I find it sort of weird how some people advocate against ablism yet say awful things about people with LD.

[Dizwikz]

Thank you! It's very real stuff like that that people don't consider. Like sometimes it isn't that something is unrealistic, it's that people can't fathom how strange people act sometimes.

[cherrystark]

I agree. Even if you don't have access to a good beta reader, most writing software has spellcheck and there are programs you can download to help with grammar.

[Dizwikz]

Thank you! It's very real stuff like that that people don't consider. Like sometimes it isn't that something is unrealistic, it's that people can't fathom how strange people act sometimes.

[sweetabsynthium]

I think I saw someone on a forum once complain that they have to use chocolate cause there just aren't any other brown things in the world.

Like what world do you live in?

[foxnflames]

I think I was on that thread if we’re talking about the same one. It was interesting the implicit bias some people have. Could literally come up with various descriptives for other characters but when it came to their black characters: chocolate, caramel, mocha, etc. Like, come on

[sweetabsynthium]

Systemic racism is a helluva drug. It has us all forgetting an entire genre of color.

[foxnflames]

I have the longest time editing because I will stare a word and see another word and the sentence won’t make sense to me. Especially if certain words start with the same letters. And my mind flips letters a lot so w and m, p and b. Also I’ve recently found that I tend to write do instead of go, probably because lowercase d and g

[foxnflames]

That’s why on that thread I opted to be a good noodle and “educate”. I’m not one to do the labor for people but I used up my daily allowance of maturity and provided feedback and links to how to write black/poc characters

[carreonaiwille]

I've also seen a reviewer criticize how bystanders on the subway train in my first chapter reacted with indifference to the conclusion of the fight, which they felt wasn't realistic and that people would be running and screaming and calling for the police.

Just saw a prank where a guy in a mall pretends to be superpowered and people like dunno 20? 30? (who were acckmplices) pretend to collapse as if they're hit by that guy's power. Granted, the premise of the prank was fantastical but most people only stood by watching, some whippin out the phones while a few mothers would yank their children outta there. But mostly people stood.

[indysyew]

This entire thread appears confirmation that we each possess individual likes and dislikes ! Which begs the question whether we have licence to criticise the efforts of others, unless of course invited to do so....?

[Kiweevil]

Run on sentences hurt my head.

[LadyN]

Y E S

20 characters smh

[NickRowler]

I always struggled in school because the tips they gave were not helpful. They kept pushing concepts like word parts and sounding it out. My dyslexia also effect my hearing so my brain would not process words right. It just made my spelling worse. The way I read, is that I see words like shapes, not a series of letters. I was told by reading tutors not to do this even tho it was the technique which has helped the most.

[foxnflames]

When I write I either skip letters or write them upside down accidentally. My nephew has dyslexia and his mom was showing me how she helps him sound out letters and he also sees the letters as shapes. I told her that I have to remember letters as shapes sometimes because my mind will go blank when I’m writing or typing and I have to visualize the shape of the letter to remember it.
Mind you, I’ve never had an actual diagnosis and have been dealing with this since 1st grade. My mom always told me to slow down when reading or I was making simple mistakes. I’m glad on the site we can have dark mode and spaced out text at least.

[MeltingCORE]

Kind of a funny pet peeve of mine but if I see "the" used too many times, it annoys me.