Arbitrary Angst

It's the Little Things 4/11/12

Pet peeves prominent of today.

Tense Changes

He woke up and got out of bed. He reaches for his glasses and puts them on. He wanted eggs for breakfast, but he doesn't have any so he ate cereal.

It's present or it's future or it's past. It can't be any combination of the three. Not even because it throws off the story, but just makes it mildly irritating to follow and it's a childish mistake. Or a mistake of one who doesn't edit (or know how to edit) their work, insisting they don't take it seriously. 

Homophones

"John, you're food is ready. It's on the table," she called from the kitchen. "Where? I can't here you! I'm out back!" "It's right their on the table!" she yelled, frustrated. He came in and sat down, poking at his food. He didn't no weather or not he wanted to eat it, seeing as it was raw and spread around as if she through it together without looking. 

Is it just me or does each homophone sound different from another? Like "you're" has a different emphasis than "your". I have to go back and read the sentence again when there's a mistake because I thought it meant something else. And the weather one is infuriating because that is so far from the actual meaning and it's such a common word. That's one you should have down in kindergarten.

Completely ridiculous names

Sure, Agnostia de Pleckerson sounds cool, and beats out Sally Jones or Amy Smith after reading about a thousand of them, but what purpose does that serve? How farout is that? You would never meet a person named Agnostia de Pleckerson. It's completely unrealistic for anything that isn't sci-fi or fantasy, especially when the name serves no purpose in the story other than to sound different. And some stupid spellings of average names. Adding silent letters to make a four-letter name eight letters and shit. I saw one today I assume was supposed to be Ian but was spelled something like Ieohn. 

Overusing stereotypes

This one can be fun if used correctly, but people use the cheerleader or the nerd or the goth because they run out of ideas for characters. Now in some of my stories, there are preppy girls and douche bag guys, but they aren't all biased, like the "cheerleaders" are dumb, slutty, blonde, and have fake tits and nose jobs. That's because in real life, not all of them are like that. They actually have different personalities. Or different types of non-personalities. Not all "goths" wear pentagrams and lipstick and are angry at the world. Not all "nerds" are loners no one likes with pocket protectors, sinus problems and broken glasses. I'm tired of reading stories that have no combinations of people. No slutty nerds, no smart cheerleaders, no happy goths. And the rest are just background characters.