Three Things I Don't Trust
1. Framing Devices. Obviously framing devices work sometimes, but it's to the point now where I will spend an entire novel/film/short story/TV episode trying to decide whether the framing device is justified. 90% of the time it isn't. There's nothing wrong with telling a story in chronological order, you know; if doing that bores you, then maybe your story is just boring.
2. Lush Descriptive Prose. Here's the thing; if you use a dozen words where one will do, or you re-describe a scene or a person who has not changed since the last time you described them, I will begin to suspect that you have nothing interesting to say, and I will wander away.
3. Stories About Writers. See also: Films About Filmmakers, and anything about painters, because apparently everybody pictures their secret artistic self as a misunderstood painter. Again, there are exceptions, but for the most part this is the sort of recursive choice that sends a story straight up its own butt. It's possible to do metafiction or to comment on the making of art without doing this; or perhaps you didn't know that other people tell stories too? Seriously, if you want to tell everyone that you are out of touch, this is a good place to start.
2. Lush Descriptive Prose. Here's the thing; if you use a dozen words where one will do, or you re-describe a scene or a person who has not changed since the last time you described them, I will begin to suspect that you have nothing interesting to say, and I will wander away.
3. Stories About Writers. See also: Films About Filmmakers, and anything about painters, because apparently everybody pictures their secret artistic self as a misunderstood painter. Again, there are exceptions, but for the most part this is the sort of recursive choice that sends a story straight up its own butt. It's possible to do metafiction or to comment on the making of art without doing this; or perhaps you didn't know that other people tell stories too? Seriously, if you want to tell everyone that you are out of touch, this is a good place to start.