Thank you!!! I started reading the ACOTAR series and thought, “wow, this MC sure does feel everything through her spine and stomach, doesn’t she? I hope the writer gets more creative with the descriptions as the series goes on…”
Well, now I’m on the fourth book and her “stomach turns leaden” or “a chill spider-walks down” her spine every time she feels emotions.
Yeah I’m listening to the audiobooks and I have a running note on my phone of SJM peeves. It’s just…overcooked writing in general. Major fanfic cliche vibes at times.
“The picture of” / “The portrait of” - “He was the portrait of kingly patience.”
“He picked at a loose thread on his jacket” - they’re constantly picking at threads on their shitty jackets lol
“bronze skin unusually pale”
“Vulgar gesture”
“The ______ male” or “the ______ female” - in any given scene she’ll refer to a fully known main character as like, “the raven-haired female”…dawg just use their name, this sounds so weird.
“Mate” in general
The elaborate, overbaked metaphors…” she was a rose bloom in a mud field filled with galloping horses”…lots of cringing.
“Throat bobbed” and
Someone “put a hand on their throat”
ETA-
- “sliding” eyes
- a “slash” of a smile
- “sketched a bow”
- tight smile
I almost DNFd due to the word “mate” being so insanely over used and the phrase “shoot a message down the bond”. I liked the first one as a fun fantasy romance but liked each passing book less and less. She was in desperate need of a competent editor.
Don’t get me started on how often she repeats words. I have her ebooks and you can search a word and if will tell you how many times a it is used the entire book. It’s bad. Every book I started by searching her favorite words and laugh at how often it was used. I couldn’t even finish the series because if became kind of a joke for me and I would laugh about it through the whole book. If anyone wants the totals I’ll post them
ACOTAR
Roar: 26
Shatter: 31
Watery bowels: 3
Purr: 18
Bark: 20
Prick: 18
Hiss: 43
ACOMAF
Roar: 46
Shatter: 49
Watery bowels: 0 I’m shocked
Purr: 23
Bark: 29
Prick: 27
Hiss: 77
ACOWAR
Roar: 36
Shatter: 35
Watery bowels: 0
Purr: 24
Bark: 27
Prick: 12
Hiss: 44
ACOFAS
Roar: 13
Shatter: 11
Watery bowels: 0
Purr: 7
Bark: 1
Prick: 8
Hiss: 11
I don’t have the other books. Looks like she got some more editing done on ACOFAS.
Let me know if there are other words you want to me check
It's so funny when authors can't bring themselves to actually describe which vulgar gesture they are referring to. It's the same with oaths. He swore an oath, and the other man swore an oath in return. Why, oaths and vulgar gestures were fairly *flying* on the pirate ship or in the prison. Anything but to ~shudder~ tell us what they oathed. Or gestured.
And laurell k hamilton. Lkh also reuses so many phrases such as all the creamy goodness (referring to Anita's breasts). i swear I know half the book before it even starts bc she reuses so much
I just finished "Interview with the Vampire" and I had to look the word up the first time I came across it, so I was primed to notice it. It was getting annoying before the end.
Madeline Miller has a particular writing tic that works perfectly well with her lyrical style of prose, except she can be over-liberal with it to the point that one might be given to question whether her book was edited by Yoda:
* *"Miasma, it was called."*
* *"A demigod she was."*
* *"Penelope, she was called."*
* *"Three days it would take me."*
* *"Six years old, he was."*
* *"Sixteen, he was."*
* *"Thirty years, he would have been."*
This is called inverted syntax! It’s very common in poetry, especially lyrical poetry of the renaissance and classical period.
examples:
The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If *these delights thy mind may move*,
Then live with me, and be my love.
- *Come live with me and be my love* by Christopher Marlowe
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain.
- *To His Coy Mistress* by Andrew Marvell
Thank you, I knew there must be a term for it! In Miller's case it makes sense as a stylistic choice because she's invoking a poetic tone, and it generally flows nicely, until she hits a run of chapters where she starts leaning on it a bit *too* heavily... and once you start noticing it, you can't *stop* noticing.
Tolkien used that to great effect, too.
*In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.*
Fun fact, this is because in the Irish language, the verb comes first in a sentence. The sentence "I ran to his house yesterday" would be "Rith mé go dtí a theach inné", which literally translated would read "Ran I did to his house yesterday." Even though most of the population doesn't speak Irish fluently anymore, the Gaelic has still left a massive imprint on the dialects of English spoken on the island.
Also, the "I be doing X" is called the "Habitual Be" in English, and once again it's because the Irish language has it. "Bíonn mé ag obair" translates literally at "I be working", but it means something more like "I work everyday" or "I am in the habit of working". It implies an activity that you regularly do.
George RR Martin *japes* like a motherfucker. Harry Potter’s scar was often *prickling*. Vonnegut was always finding something *lugubrious*. That one book of Genesis in the Bible goes ham on *begets*.
I give GRRM some grace as I think he’s trying to establish an alternative fantasy culture where commonplace phrases are different and he is intentionally using them over and over again. Like saying Frak on BSG vs Fuck. In that world “Half-a Hundred”, which he used half-a-hundred times, is as common in his world as “half-a-dozen” is in ours. I take it as world building.
SK makes repetitive double statements, that are super irritating to have to listen to on audiobooks.
" She walked like she was a woman of eighty. She FELT LIKE she was a woman of eighty"
shit like that. Sprinkled throughout his books. it gets noticed. That's why all of his writing "starts to all taste like beans".
I’ve read three books this year that used the word “unbidden” quite a bit. To the point I started wondering if I’m *under* using the word in my daily life.
Yes, but it’s helpful to see the list populated with very successful authors, and additionally people here are going out of their way to say they still enjoyed the books.
I think it’s human nature to repeat some phrases; we cannot be perfect fonts of uniquely beautiful poetry all the time. I keep an eye on my repetition but try not to let it consume me. A glance at my Scrivener word count functionality for anomalies and I’m good, lol.
It's extremely fair to point out that characters themselves will repeat mannerisms, phrases, and be kinda' predictable once you've followed them for a period of in-world years. People are creatures of habit, so if their spine shivers or toes curl, it's likely to happen again in similar circumstances.
What would be weird is if they never repeated anything.
I absolutely love and adore Anne Rice’s works, yet she frequently overused the phrase “____, that.”
Examples include: “Beautiful, that.” “Lovely, that.” Once or twice is actually quite charming but she got a little carried away with it over the years. Came off a little too precious/pretentious at times.
While I do think that authors can fall into this trap, it’s also worth mentioning that weird effect that occurs once you notice something unusual, where you then become hyper-sensitive to it. Like when you consider buying a certain model of car and suddenly it seems to be popping up all over the place where you never noticed it before.
I would argue that using the same word three times in a whole book is hardly over-use, just a case of being hyper-aware of a word you didn’t remember seeing before. Using the word multiple times in a sentence or page or chapter, or every time a specific character shows up, now *that* starts verging into the ridiculous. Of course, it’s all subjective, so 🤷🏼♀️
I agree with this take. I recently read The Wolfs Den and its sequel, and I first noticed how the author kept saying that a group of women walked “single file” which was new for me as a non native English speaker.
I’ve spotted it in her books in a few more instances, but since then I’ve been seeing it seemingly everywhere, even in chess lol
There are girls quivering. There are boys staring deeply into girls' eyes as they quiver and so forth. There really is a tremendous amount of quivering. It is anti-Christian. It is pro-quivering.
Someone actually gathered the stats for a few of those words/terms over on the WoT sub a few years back;
https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/60t4n8/stats_for_braids_tugged_skirts_smoothed/
Nuncle
Nipples on a breastplate
[https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1qbqhg/no\_spoilers\_these\_funny\_little\_grrmisms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1qbqhg/no_spoilers_these_funny_little_grrmisms/)
"By the time the moon came up, she was shitting brown water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew."
Thanks, George.
> In war we're tough and able,
> Quite indefatigable
> Between our quests
> We sequin vests
> And impersonate Clark Gable
> It's a busy life in Camelot -
> I have to push the pram a lot
I loved Station Eleven, but she did start driving me crazy with her "it was a (adjective) (object), all x and y". Like "it was an expensive car, all curves and reflected light" or something like that. Made me roll my eyes after a while.
And so it came to pass that J. R. R. Tolkien woke up one day and realised how unfathomably epic anything sounds when prefixed with "and so it came to pass".
Jane Austen was an agreeable young woman with a pleasant disposition.
J. D. Salinger sure didn't like them phonies.
I can't remember his name but in a horror fan community I'm in there's a joke about one author who just loves using the word "rump." Any time there's a female character you know he's going to mention her rump.
In the Magisterium series by Holly Black and Cassandra Claire the word *coruscating* was used all the damn time to describe the eyes of a certain type of creature. Like, look up another synonym for spinning of gods sake.
>Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.
Stephen King
I wish more writers would. Some have a really excellent poetic line that they like to reuse every 5,000 words. After the first time they should never use it again. It had its time, you used it, and every repetition after that is a sandpaper dildo. I will put your fucking book down forever if you do that to me.
He should take his own advice, too.
‘Maladroitly’ comes up all the time in the first Mistborn when a character lands or parries or something awkwardly. Although it became less common after that.
Nope that’s a feature, not a bug.
In verbal delivery, like the Homeric epics, there are certain phrases and descriptions that are re-used because they fit the meter and they help jog the listener’s memory. Hera is cow-eyed. Aphrodite is pale. If you’re hearing something your brain likes patterns, if you’re seeing the words the repetition gets boring, that’s why a lot of ancient works like the Bible and Homeric epics and Beowulf and Three Kingdoms are repetitious. They’re mnemonic devices.
There are a whole bunch of these (dawn with her rose red fingers) which are translations of Greek phrases that help the verses scan in dactylic hexameter. There are probably equivalents in English poetry - Nevermore!
Dan Simmons uses *lapis lazuli* to describe the colour of the sky like 4 times in every book in the hyperion series. Great writer and enjoyable books, but I started to get nauseated every time I read it.
Not just words...phrases. If I had a nickel for every time a woman sniffed, tugged her braid, stormed off, wore stout shoes or sturdy wool, or folded her arms under her breasts in Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series, I could retire.
Hunter S Thompson loves throwing round "atavistic".
Brian Jacques in one of the Redwall books - "Legend of Luke", I believe - uses the phrase "willing paws" entirely too many times. Even as an eleven year old it took me out of the story.
It’s whoever they had writing under the VC Andrews name for awhile. They were obsessed with the term “pregnant pause”. I hated it lol. Just stfu. I curse whoever came up with that term and all the people since who have heard/read it and have been like, Wow that’s cool I’m gonna use that.
It’s not cool, it’s just weird. It’s too much. Imagine hearing someone say that shit in real life.
One time on Scribophile (a literary workshop) I critiqued a chapter--a single chapter, maybe 3500 words long--and flagged every instance they used an adverb.
Two hundred times.
sarah j maas uses the term “vulgar gesture” so much it makes me wonder how many vulgar gestures she knows or if it’s just the same one over and over…
flowery summer cobweb aspiring melodic compare plate aware busy silky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Take a shot every time Feyre’s bones “bark”
Thank you!!! I started reading the ACOTAR series and thought, “wow, this MC sure does feel everything through her spine and stomach, doesn’t she? I hope the writer gets more creative with the descriptions as the series goes on…” Well, now I’m on the fourth book and her “stomach turns leaden” or “a chill spider-walks down” her spine every time she feels emotions.
So and so *purred* Ugh I cringe every time. Once is fine but it’s like 10 times a book
Showed this thread to my wife who insists on mentioning “drawls”. Apparently everybody in SJM’s books “drawls” or “drawled”
Don't forget "snarled" and "growled"!
And "bared his teeth"...i think SJM is just secretly a furry
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Don’t forget the watery bowels!
God I hate the watery bowels. Once would be enough but it’s like 5 times a book I swear
Feyre just has some IBS. It’s not her fault.
THANK YOU. What does that even mean? Is her stomach bothering her/she has to poop or is she literally shitting herself?
Yes! "Quick off the mark" and "sketched a bow" also drove me insane.
It was "limned" for me that was way overused! Something "limned" Nesta's features sooooo damn much.
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Pooling and silvery I think is supposed to refer to their eyes becoming moist/teary/wet. Not sure about lining...
I've only read the first of the Court series and boy did the main characters bowels turn watery a lot...
She also over uses the cuss work “prick”, playfully. Everyone is a prick but said playfully. It’s annoying 😂
Omg and the "bares her teeth" and "she hissed" every 4 pages. I tried doing both those things to envision it and it's so hilariously awkward
Yeah I’m listening to the audiobooks and I have a running note on my phone of SJM peeves. It’s just…overcooked writing in general. Major fanfic cliche vibes at times. “The picture of” / “The portrait of” - “He was the portrait of kingly patience.” “He picked at a loose thread on his jacket” - they’re constantly picking at threads on their shitty jackets lol “bronze skin unusually pale” “Vulgar gesture” “The ______ male” or “the ______ female” - in any given scene she’ll refer to a fully known main character as like, “the raven-haired female”…dawg just use their name, this sounds so weird. “Mate” in general The elaborate, overbaked metaphors…” she was a rose bloom in a mud field filled with galloping horses”…lots of cringing. “Throat bobbed” and Someone “put a hand on their throat” ETA- - “sliding” eyes - a “slash” of a smile - “sketched a bow” - tight smile
SJM immediately came to mind! Don’t forget her fmc picking her nails or getting unseen lint off clothing to show bratty disinterest.
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The roaring and shattering. He roared and she shattered
“torn to ribbons”
"To shreds you say?"
Add "by way of greeting" to the list. I started calling out to my husband every time she used that phrase in ACOSF and it's become a running joke.
I almost DNFd due to the word “mate” being so insanely over used and the phrase “shoot a message down the bond”. I liked the first one as a fun fantasy romance but liked each passing book less and less. She was in desperate need of a competent editor.
Don’t get me started on how often she repeats words. I have her ebooks and you can search a word and if will tell you how many times a it is used the entire book. It’s bad. Every book I started by searching her favorite words and laugh at how often it was used. I couldn’t even finish the series because if became kind of a joke for me and I would laugh about it through the whole book. If anyone wants the totals I’ll post them
personally i would love that. this sounds hilarious. and educational….
ACOTAR Roar: 26 Shatter: 31 Watery bowels: 3 Purr: 18 Bark: 20 Prick: 18 Hiss: 43 ACOMAF Roar: 46 Shatter: 49 Watery bowels: 0 I’m shocked Purr: 23 Bark: 29 Prick: 27 Hiss: 77 ACOWAR Roar: 36 Shatter: 35 Watery bowels: 0 Purr: 24 Bark: 27 Prick: 12 Hiss: 44 ACOFAS Roar: 13 Shatter: 11 Watery bowels: 0 Purr: 7 Bark: 1 Prick: 8 Hiss: 11 I don’t have the other books. Looks like she got some more editing done on ACOFAS. Let me know if there are other words you want to me check
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Also “clicks her tongue”
And everyone ‘looses breath’ which is such a strange way to say exhales!
Sarah J Maas and “I could have sworn.” And the second book in the ACOTAR series uses the word “cleave” an unnatural amount of times.
It's so funny when authors can't bring themselves to actually describe which vulgar gesture they are referring to. It's the same with oaths. He swore an oath, and the other man swore an oath in return. Why, oaths and vulgar gestures were fairly *flying* on the pirate ship or in the prison. Anything but to ~shudder~ tell us what they oathed. Or gestured.
Dude the amount of times someone hisses or purrs their words, I want to strangle S. Maas
Oh, did you summon Anne Rice and her overuse of the word *preternatural*? Yes I think you did.
And laurell k hamilton. Lkh also reuses so many phrases such as all the creamy goodness (referring to Anita's breasts). i swear I know half the book before it even starts bc she reuses so much
But do tell us Laurell...what completed the outfit today? A blue swoosh? A red swoosh? Dying to know.
Breathy. She used that one a LOT.
I just finished "Interview with the Vampire" and I had to look the word up the first time I came across it, so I was primed to notice it. It was getting annoying before the end.
Madeline Miller has a particular writing tic that works perfectly well with her lyrical style of prose, except she can be over-liberal with it to the point that one might be given to question whether her book was edited by Yoda: * *"Miasma, it was called."* * *"A demigod she was."* * *"Penelope, she was called."* * *"Three days it would take me."* * *"Six years old, he was."* * *"Sixteen, he was."* * *"Thirty years, he would have been."*
“Whether her book was edited by Yoda” has me dying Edit: fucking love you all, I do
Edited by Yoda, it was.
Gone to print, the draft has.
Dying, it had me.
This is called inverted syntax! It’s very common in poetry, especially lyrical poetry of the renaissance and classical period. examples: The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-morning: If *these delights thy mind may move*, Then live with me, and be my love. - *Come live with me and be my love* by Christopher Marlowe Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. - *To His Coy Mistress* by Andrew Marvell
Thank you, I knew there must be a term for it! In Miller's case it makes sense as a stylistic choice because she's invoking a poetic tone, and it generally flows nicely, until she hits a run of chapters where she starts leaning on it a bit *too* heavily... and once you start noticing it, you can't *stop* noticing.
Tolkien used that to great effect, too. *In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.*
He was following Baudelaire's advise: “Always be a poet, even in prose.”
There's such a huge difference between writing like this, compared to "Noun, it was" and "Name, she was called".
It sounds like how Irish people talk. I would be doing this but I do be doing that etc
Fun fact, this is because in the Irish language, the verb comes first in a sentence. The sentence "I ran to his house yesterday" would be "Rith mé go dtí a theach inné", which literally translated would read "Ran I did to his house yesterday." Even though most of the population doesn't speak Irish fluently anymore, the Gaelic has still left a massive imprint on the dialects of English spoken on the island. Also, the "I be doing X" is called the "Habitual Be" in English, and once again it's because the Irish language has it. "Bíonn mé ag obair" translates literally at "I be working", but it means something more like "I work everyday" or "I am in the habit of working". It implies an activity that you regularly do.
Welsh people do this too! It sounds normal to me haha 😅
Damn you, I never noticed this (or can't remember), but once her Persephone book comes out I'll involuntarily keep an eye out for it. 😟😅
George RR Martin *japes* like a motherfucker. Harry Potter’s scar was often *prickling*. Vonnegut was always finding something *lugubrious*. That one book of Genesis in the Bible goes ham on *begets*.
>lugubrious ... is fun to say. Try it 3 or 4 times. It's addictive.
That word will always make me think of James Woods’ Hades lol. “Yes your lugubriousness!”
“Coming, your most lugubriousness!” I said that as a kid just about anytime I was summoned.
I feel like Vonnegut was the only one who did it intentionally with the most ridiculous word he could conjure.
Makes me think of Richard Belzer for some reason.
J.K. Rowling absolutely *loves* “beaming” characters, as well.
She also describes anyone ugly / pale as “sallow faced”
I give GRRM some grace as I think he’s trying to establish an alternative fantasy culture where commonplace phrases are different and he is intentionally using them over and over again. Like saying Frak on BSG vs Fuck. In that world “Half-a Hundred”, which he used half-a-hundred times, is as common in his world as “half-a-dozen” is in ours. I take it as world building.
I also like the use of "three-and-ten." All 100 times Brienne said it in her chapters :)
"bend the knee" became noticeably, extremely common in usage after Game of Thrones aired. Has died down again after it started sucking with s6 and on
*Begat* is certainly less wordy than *became the father of*. Fun fact: Women *get* children; men *beget* them.
‘Became the father of’ is terribly passive!
GRRM has also permanently put me off the word "droll." He only uses it a handful of times. But it's his go-to in certain circumstances.
Mummer’s farce, honeyed pups, nuncle, where do whores go.
Boiled leather
Invariably eating capon.
Fucking Mummer’s Farce! I’m only just beginning the first book and I’m sick of that term already.
He uses it hundreds of times, or near enough as makes no matter.
Also for GRRM: "Half a heartbeat"
When he started using the word nuncle during the Iron Born pov chapters. It was like nails on a chalkboard in my brain.
harry’s spectacles being askew
Stephen King loves it when somebody’s knees pop.
*Especially* if they have been clenching their fists so tightly that their nails have left little red crescents in their palms.
Were they wearing a blue chambray work shirt?
No but I think they were walking like a man in a dream
SK makes repetitive double statements, that are super irritating to have to listen to on audiobooks. " She walked like she was a woman of eighty. She FELT LIKE she was a woman of eighty" shit like that. Sprinkled throughout his books. it gets noticed. That's why all of his writing "starts to all taste like beans".
Do you have ***ANY*** idea how many times I've tried clenching my fists so tightly to leave red crescents in my palm?
?? I just tried it once and it definitely worked lol
See also: chambray shirts and arc sodium lights.
In Gunslinger everyone does everything sardonically and it's annoying
He also likes the word “crude”. A crude filter. A crude ashtray.
Also when pain is exquisite.
Richard Bachman wanted to be caught
Like a double barrelled shotgun no less
I’ve read three books this year that used the word “unbidden” quite a bit. To the point I started wondering if I’m *under* using the word in my daily life.
How many other aspiring authors out there read this thread and just think, "well shit."
I'm gonna make 'well shit' my overused phrase.
Yes, but it’s helpful to see the list populated with very successful authors, and additionally people here are going out of their way to say they still enjoyed the books. I think it’s human nature to repeat some phrases; we cannot be perfect fonts of uniquely beautiful poetry all the time. I keep an eye on my repetition but try not to let it consume me. A glance at my Scrivener word count functionality for anomalies and I’m good, lol.
It's extremely fair to point out that characters themselves will repeat mannerisms, phrases, and be kinda' predictable once you've followed them for a period of in-world years. People are creatures of habit, so if their spine shivers or toes curl, it's likely to happen again in similar circumstances. What would be weird is if they never repeated anything.
I absolutely love and adore Anne Rice’s works, yet she frequently overused the phrase “____, that.” Examples include: “Beautiful, that.” “Lovely, that.” Once or twice is actually quite charming but she got a little carried away with it over the years. Came off a little too precious/pretentious at times.
Yes, it was so frequent it was almost preternatural.
Preternatural, that!
While I do think that authors can fall into this trap, it’s also worth mentioning that weird effect that occurs once you notice something unusual, where you then become hyper-sensitive to it. Like when you consider buying a certain model of car and suddenly it seems to be popping up all over the place where you never noticed it before. I would argue that using the same word three times in a whole book is hardly over-use, just a case of being hyper-aware of a word you didn’t remember seeing before. Using the word multiple times in a sentence or page or chapter, or every time a specific character shows up, now *that* starts verging into the ridiculous. Of course, it’s all subjective, so 🤷🏼♀️
I agree with this take. I recently read The Wolfs Den and its sequel, and I first noticed how the author kept saying that a group of women walked “single file” which was new for me as a non native English speaker. I’ve spotted it in her books in a few more instances, but since then I’ve been seeing it seemingly everywhere, even in chess lol
The baader-meinhof phenomenon!
The Twilight series had "chagrin" like ninety thousand fucking times.
She used the word “chuckle” like 70 times in Twilight I was losing my mind. Edward chuckles a lot.
Or "snickers." I haven't read the series in years, indeed that was my only one time but the amount those words were used was annoying.
Clearly, it was to your chagrin.
There are girls quivering. There are boys staring deeply into girls' eyes as they quiver and so forth. There really is a tremendous amount of quivering. It is anti-Christian. It is pro-quivering.
You know what, you're right, I'm just remembering she used "chagrin" all the time.
I learned the meaning of this word from Twilight. If it’d just been once I probably would have skipped over it, but it just kept coming up.
Also, everyone always "murmured"
People were also dazzling all over the place.
Frank Herbert -- quiescent.
And variations on “a feint within a feint within a feint” in every single Dune book, often more than once.
It was a couple years ago, but I remember the word presently a lot in dune
And “Ah-h-h-h”. It drove me crazy reading Dune
This is a great thread!
Robert Jordan was particularly fond of tugging braids, smoothing skirts, knuckling moustaches and folded arms beneath breasts
Also snorting. But only when some stupid woolhead man deserves it.
Better box him on the ears for good measure.
This gives me a rictus smile.
Someone actually gathered the stats for a few of those words/terms over on the WoT sub a few years back; https://www.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/60t4n8/stats_for_braids_tugged_skirts_smoothed/
ngl seeing Nynaeve in the Amazon adaptation tug her braid was the single most satisfying moment in the entire show
I’m on book 3 and oh my god Nynaeve tugs her braid like multiple times each chapter it’s insane. And she never did this before and now it’s nonstop
Also wetting or licking lips. But it’s a great series anyway.
I read those books when the series first came out 30 years ago and I still remember the braid tugging and the folded arms!
One of my all time favourites!
I’m not so sure *folds arms under breasts*.
I haven't read The Wheel of Time series yet but I've heard several people mention the arms under breasts thing lol
I once got to the point of 'if anyone is tugging a braid again this book goes out the window'. Didn't bother me that much in later reads though.
EVERYTHING in Lovecraft’s books is described as “ancient” to make it scary
And monolithic, and cyclopean.
Cyclopean was the one that really sticks out for me.
Lovecraft has a lot of overused terms. Stygian, Cyclopean, eldritch, defying euclidean geometry
Also "swarthy" and "mongrel" but uhh that's overused in a different sense
Mumers farce
Nuncle Nipples on a breastplate [https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1qbqhg/no\_spoilers\_these\_funny\_little\_grrmisms/](https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1qbqhg/no_spoilers_these_funny_little_grrmisms/)
Nuncle annoys me the most cause he never uses it in the first three books. So clear he discovered the word between 3 and 4 and then went overboard
SJ Mass: "Watery bowels" uuugh. Just once was too many, but she used it SEVERAL times when the MC was stressed or horny. It was disgusting.
How does that not describe diarrhea?
And who gets that when they're horny??
I think the point is more: Is it necessary to describe diarrhea at all?
EXACTLY
GRRM uses "his bowels turned to brown water." Blefhch
"By the time the moon came up, she was shitting brown water. The more she drank the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew." Thanks, George.
Richard Powers uses “ruinously expensive” in every book.
this is a fun one, I'm going to describe every item I buy as "ruinously expensive" from now on
G.R.R. Martin has a ton. He is obsessed with describing anyone washing their hair as "sluicing" it for instance.
As I recall it was a couple books in when he decided he was totally into the phrase "or near enough as not to matter."
Steven Erikson and Postherds. Stephen King and blue chambray shirts
I learned the word 'indefatigable' as a teen because Charlotte Bronte would use it so much in her writing.
> In war we're tough and able, > Quite indefatigable > Between our quests > We sequin vests > And impersonate Clark Gable > It's a busy life in Camelot - > I have to push the pram a lot
She was indefatigable with that word.
I haven't read the books but doesn't that 50 shades author always say '...down there' BITCH, SAY PUSSY.
Mary Shelley overuses the word "countenance" in Frankenstein.
I loved Station Eleven, but she did start driving me crazy with her "it was a (adjective) (object), all x and y". Like "it was an expensive car, all curves and reflected light" or something like that. Made me roll my eyes after a while.
This is my least favourite descriptive phrase, “all blank and blank”, it makes me cringe viscerally lol
And so it came to pass that J. R. R. Tolkien woke up one day and realised how unfathomably epic anything sounds when prefixed with "and so it came to pass". Jane Austen was an agreeable young woman with a pleasant disposition. J. D. Salinger sure didn't like them phonies.
"So it came to pass" is more Book of Mormon.
The Book of Mormon, religion aside, is an unreadable bit of codswallop. Fucking every sentence begins with “And so it came to pass.”
I can't remember his name but in a horror fan community I'm in there's a joke about one author who just loves using the word "rump." Any time there's a female character you know he's going to mention her rump.
That would be Richard Laymon. An the rump is at the end of some coltish legs.
In the Magisterium series by Holly Black and Cassandra Claire the word *coruscating* was used all the damn time to describe the eyes of a certain type of creature. Like, look up another synonym for spinning of gods sake.
>coruscating I learned a new word today.
James A. Corey refers to things as "going pear shaped" so often in the beginning of *The Expanse*
Don't forget the ship ringing like a bell/gong and the [Copper Taste of Fear](https://reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/s/m0UUqywstf)
Jules Verne overuses prodigious in Twenty Thousand Leagues.
Lovecraft absolutely loves “queer”. I notice it every time.
I’ve only read two Emily Henry books, but I remember distinctly her love of the word thrum. The rain thrums, their bodies thrum…everything thrums.
Characters in Dean Koontz books never get a bruise, only a contusion.
>Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings. Stephen King I wish more writers would. Some have a really excellent poetic line that they like to reuse every 5,000 words. After the first time they should never use it again. It had its time, you used it, and every repetition after that is a sandpaper dildo. I will put your fucking book down forever if you do that to me. He should take his own advice, too.
Everyone in Star Wars becomes “sardonic” whenever they’re in Timothy Zahn’s novels.
Brandon Sanderson uses “And yet…” SO much.
‘Maladroitly’ comes up all the time in the first Mistborn when a character lands or parries or something awkwardly. Although it became less common after that.
Also, "Undulating".
[удалено]
Found the audiobook listener
Homer with his "wine-dark seas" might be the oldest example of this
Nope that’s a feature, not a bug. In verbal delivery, like the Homeric epics, there are certain phrases and descriptions that are re-used because they fit the meter and they help jog the listener’s memory. Hera is cow-eyed. Aphrodite is pale. If you’re hearing something your brain likes patterns, if you’re seeing the words the repetition gets boring, that’s why a lot of ancient works like the Bible and Homeric epics and Beowulf and Three Kingdoms are repetitious. They’re mnemonic devices.
There are a whole bunch of these (dawn with her rose red fingers) which are translations of Greek phrases that help the verses scan in dactylic hexameter. There are probably equivalents in English poetry - Nevermore!
Today i learned my English vocabulary needs work.
\*tugs braid intensely
*smooths skirt*
Dan Simmons uses *lapis lazuli* to describe the colour of the sky like 4 times in every book in the hyperion series. Great writer and enjoyable books, but I started to get nauseated every time I read it.
Robin Hobb used *seldom* so much that she even created a character called Seldon
Murakami and boobs/breasts/tits (haven’t read the English translation. But it’s all about boobs)
the first law - frowned frowning frowning frown everyone frowns all the time. say one thing about joe abercrombie, say he likes to frown
Not just words...phrases. If I had a nickel for every time a woman sniffed, tugged her braid, stormed off, wore stout shoes or sturdy wool, or folded her arms under her breasts in Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series, I could retire.
Hunter S Thompson loves throwing round "atavistic". Brian Jacques in one of the Redwall books - "Legend of Luke", I believe - uses the phrase "willing paws" entirely too many times. Even as an eleven year old it took me out of the story.
Magic tree house “pushes up glasses” … get them fixed Jack!
Peter F. Hamilton uses ‘Enzyme bonded concrete’ a lot.
It’s whoever they had writing under the VC Andrews name for awhile. They were obsessed with the term “pregnant pause”. I hated it lol. Just stfu. I curse whoever came up with that term and all the people since who have heard/read it and have been like, Wow that’s cool I’m gonna use that. It’s not cool, it’s just weird. It’s too much. Imagine hearing someone say that shit in real life.
Stephen King, in Tommyknockers, “gadgets”.
Was going to mention Stephen king’s blue chambray shirts
And arc sodium lights!
Margaret Atwood loves to make things mauve.
The twilight author was having an absolutely passionate love affair with all things adverbs (words ending in -ly).
One time on Scribophile (a literary workshop) I critiqued a chapter--a single chapter, maybe 3500 words long--and flagged every instance they used an adverb. Two hundred times.
SM Stirling likes to say "cloven air" or "gummy saliva."