#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 2: What do you dislike as reader and thus avoid in your own work?

[cstross@wandering.shop]

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 2: What do you dislike as reader and thus avoid in your own work?

TOO MANY CLICHEs!

I began work on a space opera in 2015 and as prep I wrote up a taxonomy of cliches in space opera, just so I could avoid them. It's a LONG list, and it's not even exhaustive!

Note that writing a space opera that accounts for all these cliches—either by avoiding them or by deploying them with deliberation—is not difficult. They're a symptom of sloppy writing.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html

[oddhack@mstdn.social]

@cstross Poul Anderson was pretty good about astrogeology issues, especially given his timeframe.

Re "You can keep a starship crew healthy and sane indefinitely using a life support system running on blue-green algae, tilapia, and maybe the odd soy bean plant", I wonder if a natural limiter on fascist space programs will be the lack of Manly Beef and Coffee.