Verbal annoyances

[easol.livejournal.com]

Y'know, people often talk about LKH's unbelievable metaphors ("evil chocolate in your ice cream" or whatever the hell that was), her smells, her silly "gawth" names, or her tendency to describe in detail what every character is wearing. But I find that there are a lot of verbal tics that bother me just as much.

Edit -- Similes: It feels like LKH cannot go through a paragraph without at least one terrible and/or vague simile, even when a simile is not needed. "... the fire burned us both like a force of nature"? Yeah, way to kill the drama.

Shading: Note to LKH -- I do not care how many shades lighter X's eyes are than Y's, or how many shades darker their shirt is. What are you using, paint chips?

"... Across My Skin": Words cannot express how sick I am of this phrase.

"White Bread": I hate this with a passion. What the hell is wrong with just saying "Hispanic" or "black"?

Rude conversations: If you are going to have people talking about the heroine like she isn't even there, then write books in the third person. It's just annoying to have people dissecting Whorenita's emotions while she sits there and drools.

Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Does anyone else have 'em?

Comments

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

"...the fire burned us both like a force of nature"

Not to mention that fire IS a force of nature, so it completely fails as a simile. Isn't the point to compare an object with something it ISN'T normally associated with?

[darkese.livejournal.com]

Soon LKH will be writing such similes as 'The fire was hot like a flame'.

[leoin.livejournal.com]

You seriously made me LOL.

A+++

[assplund.livejournal.com]

She did once describe Damian feeding on Anita as "like a sucking thing at my neck."

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're kidding. I do that on the Internet--"May I quote you like a quoting thing that quotes?" and "::steals like a stealing thing what steals::"--as a joke. I'm reminded now of the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight.

[darkese.livejournal.com]

I read this as a reader spilling my eyeballs from my head.

[darkladynyara.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? Good grief, I must have repressed that one.

[easol.livejournal.com]

"... he was sucking on my neck, like a sucking thing that could suck. At my neck."

Sucky.