Book Blogger Hop
Hey, hey, hey! Today is the last day for this week’s Book Blogger Hop. I realized I didn’t actually explain the Hop on last week’s post. Basically, it’s a weekly meme in which you answer a book-related question. It’s meant to help readers get to know the blogger and encourage bloggers to check out other people’s blogs. It runs every week from Friday to Thursday.
Prompt: Is there anything that drives you bonkers when you’re reading a book and it makes you want to tell the author a thing or two?
Oh, ho ho! Boy, is there! But today I’m going to talk about the pettiest, most inconsequential pet peeve I’ve got. Why? Because sometimes those are the things that get under your skin the most.
The thing that drives me absolutely batty in books is the phrase, “And then the world went black.” I will also accept, “And then the world went away” (or not accept, as it were). This phrase is used excessively in YA when a character loses consciousness. And it drives me up the wall.
Why do I hate this phrase so much? Because it’s pretentious. The first time I read it, I didn’t mind it. It has a sort of lyrical quality to it. But the more I read it, the more I realized this is unnecessary purple prose.
I know exactly which part of that phrase makes it so: “the world.” I mean, consider the phrase, “Everything went black.” It cuts right to the point. Replacing “everything” with “the world” has all these existential implications that are completely unnecessary when all that’s happened is that your character has been knocked out.
I love flowery writing, but there are always exceptions. This particular phrase almost never appears in books with an overall flowery writing style. It comes out of nowhere and makes my eye twitch. “The world went black/away” is my “She let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.”
So, authors, please stop using this phrase. If you care about my eyes at all, you’ll never use it again. Otherwise, I’ll strain them from rolling them so hard. And you don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?
This week, I’d like to shout out Lindsay from Singer of Stories. She recently did The Television Tag, answering questions about her favorite things on TV. I’d like to try my hand at this tag soon myself.
So, what’s something that drives you bonkers while reading? Something that makes you want to go off on the author? Tell me about it in the comments!
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Strange Storyteller 