I Have a Pet Named Peeved

Once, I Told a Whole Story....

So, I've been reading and reviewing stories....and praying not to loose my patience with them.

This is a short story of sorts about things that people do on Wattpad that bother me as well as writing in general. Now, I will say this, I got the idea from others, but they can never quite cover my own ideas on what peeves me. So I decided I would write my own. So if you bug me about plagiarizing, I WILL Cut You (Bon Qui-Qui reference) Who knows, you might walk away a better writer for it. I'm planning on dropping my own gems of wisdom. (sorry that was my sarcastic side coming out in full force)

****WARNING: CONTAINS SARCASM, PROFANITY, BAD JOKES, IT WILL BE MEAN, BUT COMPLETELY HONEST!!!*********** LOL, not for wimps, just saying.

One of the things that bother me the most about Wattpad writers are the TITLES!!

I've read a few rants, and so far, none of them have mentioned titles. I mean WTF?

Titles are the first thing you see, whether it's on the cover or the actual title itself. They're kind of like the good first impression, if this were a business world. If you don't make a good frist impression, it's not as likely for you to get hired. So if the title isn't interesting, is that an indication of your story too?

Werewolf stories, unfortunately, are some of the worst. They seem to always have "mate" in the title. (Not saying that it includes every story) Not only does that get repetitive after a while, but are you really not creative enough to come up with something better? I've read so many that if I even see the word "mate" in the title, I just skip over it.

They're either along the lines of "OMG My Mate is the Alpha Werewolf"

OR they're along the lines of "OMG, my mate is the alpha but he rejected me"

OR even the cliche "My Mate"

And seeing this over and over and over makes me want to rip my hair out, and believe me when I say I am quite vain about my hair. In fact, I'd rather not rip my hair out, so if you're writing a werewolf story PLEASE be more creative and DO NOT put "mate" in the title.

However, I know that most werewolf stories involve mates, but it doesn't have to be announced in the title. Of course, there are always exceptions. There are a few stories that involve the word "mate" that I really enjoy, and wouldn't change their title because it's perfect for their story. BUT it's not for every author.

Titles are meant to be unique, not used so many times that they too become cliche. Take my own werewolf story for example, it's called "Bottled Fury"   <---- omg the word mate is not present who knew!

I did! And yes, it has the cliche idea of having a mate in the story. (But that's not the point)

Another thing that bothers me about titles....if they're super long, think about renaming it. If it goes something like this "I'm going to tell you the entire story in one sentence because I couldn't come up with something shorter..." then you know you need to change it.

I've seen several stories that are like this, and that's just too much. Names are meant to be relatively short, to the point, and leave a little mystery as to what is going to happen within the story. If I know exactly what is going to happen from the title...well I'll have to say try coming up with something else.

The last thing that bothers me about titles....FUCKING CAPITALIZE THE DAMN THING. If the cover has lower case cool, beause it's a creative way of drawing people in, but the actual title???

IT NEEDS TO HAVE CAPITALIZATION!!! No matter in what day and age a story is written, a poem, an article, anything that has a title, it is always capitalized. I am a perfectionist sometimes, I know this, but I know I speak for several authors when I say I get absolutely frustrated when I see a title that isn't properly punctuated with caps.

I look down at every keyboard I come across and there is a shift key on both sides AND a caps lock key if you are at a computer while writing (phones and Ipods don't count). There is no reason that something can not be capitalized, and now I'm speaking about it in general. You don't spell your name in lowercase so why should you do that with any other proper noun? or even "I" when referring to yourself. That is ALWAYS capitalized.

Going way off there, but back on point. I love reading, but what I love even more are the unique titles that authors come up with. For me, picking out a title is like picking out the right car. It has to match with the personality of the story, fit the plot line, and reflect on the overall idea of the story just like a car has to fit and reflect the owner. I enjoy twisting words into titles and just having a blast just sitting there and sitting there and then BAM, a name just pops into my head and wah-la! The perfect title for your story.

So that's all for this particular subject. If I think of something, I'll mention it in later chapters. Thank you for sitting there and reading through my rant that was probably very mean... Until next time :)