What are some icks you get when reading a novel?

@justincarbunkle Justin Carbunkle
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 01:19:12 +0000

@justincarbunkle wrote:

Any grammatical mistakes. Whether you’re ESL or a teenager, I immediately stop bothering to take your story seriously. For the few that do somehow grab my attention, there’ll be a grammar mistake during a dramatic scene that'll completely kill the mood.

Writing being too basic. Has the bare minimum to get across actions, with little to no descriptions of where anyone is. These stories are easy to read, but often offer too little substance to attach too.

Careless use of curse words. At best they’re sentence filler, at worse they make every character sound like an edgy teenager. There are plenty of works that use a lot of curse words that I enjoy, but I’ve seen far more works that abuse them for the worse.

Dystopian world of machines where an angry teenager has to fight a corrupt system dividing rich and poor classes. I’ve read like 10 of these here. They weren’t bad. I’m just annoyed by how similar all of them were in tone, descriptions, and plot beats.