Why is “You might want to take a look at this” considered a bad writing trope?

JoshRaed 2023-10-02 02:19:14 UTC #1

It’s such a normal ass sentence. There’s nothing about it that’s like worth feeling negatively about. Why do people hate it?

IndigoShirtProd 2023-10-02 02:25:24 UTC #2

It's just a well used, cliché, and kind of uncreative phrase that may show a limited amount of experience or an inability to think outside of the box in writing the dialogue of a story. Nothing inherently wrong with the sentence but it shows up a lot in, I believe, action and horror genres that any fanatic consumers of these two genres may find the phrase annoying.

JoshRaed 2023-10-02 02:31:10 UTC #3

So what do you think a writer who wrote this should/could replace it with?

IndigoShirtProd 2023-10-02 02:38:50 UTC #4

Its sister phase of: There's something you need to see.

No, but in all seriousness, it's not enough of a make or break element of a story that would turn a reader off. Maybe it'd get you the comment of, "The dialogue is generic." But nothing more serious than that. But if it really bothers you, you could go for a phrase that's more character specific, reframe the scene so that type of dialogue isn't warranted, or just not have a character say anything in reference to what needs to been seen and just have it shown to the ignorant character.

NetherSlayer 2023-10-02 03:35:31 UTC #5

It's definitely used in a ton of media, specifically action/mystery/horror I suppose, but it's also a weird filler. It could easily be replaced with just a simple command/request "Look at this." or even "Look, here."
It's also not necessary; When it's used, of course the detective/director/general/protagonist will want to look at X, there's no 'might' about it! Same with saying "You need to see this!" unless it's being used in irony, e.g. the main character does not, in fact, want/need to see a social media post about some celebrity or another but is being hounded to by their friend, or whatever. Or, in the detective's example, they're being told they 'might want to look' at something that they have already seen or has no bearing on the issue at hand, and maybe they respond with "No, I don't," before moving on.
And nowadays I feel like that's probably the best place to use it: when you know that, in the moment, either the phrase is being ironic or inherently wrong.

NickRowler 2023-10-02 04:02:33 UTC #6

What is the context?

It sounds like someone gave you feed back, you didn't like it, and you came here to vent. But we don't know how you used it or what exactly the critic told you.

I think for writing comic dialogue, it's not really a good statement. It's a bit wordy and can easily replaced with "Look at this". Or even better would be them telling the other character "What's this?" or "Is this what you're looking for?" It sounds less condescending.

moontokkym 2023-10-02 06:41:49 UTC #7

Reasons:

Filter words. The sentence has filter words like "might" that diminsh the impact of the sentence.
it doesn't tell us much about either character nor the situation. Like @NetherSlayer said there are so many other options that tell us so much more about the situation even without saying what it is. Especially in comics where the amount of text is limited, you really need your dialogue to pack a punch of subtext (think "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.")
it can very easily lead into bad exposition in the same way as phrases like "as you know, Bob" can. "As you know, Bob" leads into information that both characters know, so there is no real in-world reason for one to be explaining this thing to the other. "You might want to look at this" can imply it's something not very important or at least not urgent or not directly related to what the character is doing. It only really works in stuff like police dramas and even then it can be overused and the police is a hierarchy so it's more likely that lower status officers would use "might" to their bosses but not the other way around.
unnecessarily cryptic and vague. People don't really talk like that, it's very obviously used to tease the audience so it'll only feel right in certain contexts and tone of story. The closest I've ever heard irl is "I have something to show you", which isn't really the same undertone, it's explicitly saying "there's a think and you need to see it" rather than "I have a thing and maybe if you want I didn't think to show you but now it could be of interest to you".

I have multiple points in my comic where characters are showing eachother stuff, and it's important stuff. I've never had them say "you might want to look at this" nor even "look at this" or equivalent I believe. Characters have either flat out summaried what they're going to look at:

"C'mon, Finn's getting a visual on Haise"

At this point the audience doesn't know who Haise is, but they know the character speaking has been doing some shady business, so that creates the same amount of intrigue if not more than your phrase.

Or the characters looking have explicitly been aware that the others are hiding something from them and both they and the audience will want to find out what it is:

"I know you’ve got information, you think I don’t see your little whispered meetings from down the hall?"

This gives the character still in the dark more agency and it makes the discovery of the information a confrontation, it strains character relationships and asks whether now they're confronted if they will trust the character.

TL;DR: "you might want to look at this" is a placeholder phrase, it holds up but it's there instead of a more interesting dynamic because it's only doing one thing (teasing the audience) rather than a lot of things (giving the audience a bit of info to tease them, show character dynamics, create conflict, add weight to character arcs, reveal insecurities...)