All too often beginning and inexperienced writers want to dictate every minutiae of what you are reading and are suppose to be comprehending. In other words they leave little room for interpretation, and they don’t allow you, the reader, to engage your sense of imagination and interact with the story they’re reading. I think this weakens the writing and the overall story and is insulting to one’s intelligence. Personally I feel that style of writing completely takes me out of the story, and the story fails because the writer won’t get out of the way of the story.
A few pet peeves that get this editor’s goat?
– Overuse of adjectives, adverbs, gerunds and passive voice
– A lack of strong verbs (he adivsed) in favor of weak gerunds (he was advising)
– Over-reliance on complex sentences (why are so many newbie writers so afraid to use a period?)
– Overuse of patois. It’s a French word that means a regional form of a language that differs from the standard, literary form of the language. In other words it’s dialect. Inflected dialogue points to what I was saying earlier about writers wanting to control your every sense while reading. A writer need only to use subtle hints to establish regional speak of the character and then just get on with telling a clear and comprehensible story.
I have more, of course. But those are the three major ones sticking in my editor’s craw right now.
Just remember, kids, that it’s okay to trust your readers and not insult their intelligence.
Lost Signal 
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