agreed shaut on the whole villain i wub villains and study them to!

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That which does not feel pain is dead.

I ran across a pet peeve the other day. :P

Not making books long enough.

I hate it when people tell you what the character said instead of actually letting the character say it. Like, "He ran up to her and told her how much he loved her", rather than "He ran across the stree to her. "I love you!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "I love you!""
Etc.

Oh, and something I just learned. If you write

And then he said I was "weird".

You are wrong. It's supposed to be:

And then he said I was "weird."

According to American English, the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks or the parens (like this.) instead of (like this).
Seriously. The British have it right, as usual. It just makes so much more sense to do it "this way", rather than "this way."

ditto the top one! it falls under the whole showing rather than telling thing

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That which does not feel pain is dead.

OOOH, I HAVE ONE, though I don't know if I'd call it a "pet" peeve because MOST PUBLISHED AUTHORS I READ HAVE THE SENSE NOT TO PULL CRAP LIKE THIS.

ARGH.

To avoid spoilers, I won't say which book it was. But basically, this book--which had decent writing, okay characterization, some "aww" moments but nothing, like, super-spectacular--was driven by the main character wondering, basically, who was telling him to do the stuff he was being told to do. Because he was being told in ways that were very personal to him (like, references to his childhood and stuff), and there wasn't really ANYONE who knew him that well in the whole world.

So, this whole book is written semi-realistically. By which I don't mean it was always totally believable, but that it was set in the real world, in the present, with no element of the supernatural EXCEPT the mystery of "who's behind it all?"

Which turned out to be the author.

Yes.

In the last chapter, the author WROTE HIMSELF INTO THE STORY, and EXPLAINED to the main character that HIS STORY WAS A MESSAGE TO EVERYONE.

To fully understand how BADLY this was done, a point of comparison:

I would sooner read Twilight. Because Twilight was not nearly so condescending to its audience.

So. Yeah. It'll become a pet peeve if I see it again.

*blink* That...sounds like it would pretty much ruin the whole story. Wow.

Yeah KINDA DID. I went from (after reading one of his other books) wanting to read everything he's ever written to (after reading this book) never wanting to read him again.

I'm sorry, if there is one thing I can't abide, it's being talked down to.

So maybe that's my pet peeve, after all.

Wow. Dude--that gives me hope. If someone can pull a stunt like that and get published, there's still hope for me. LOL

It wasn't his first book; in fact, I think it's his most recent. And he had a bestseller under his belt, too--that bestseller was the book I mentioned that made me want to read his other stuff.

Take Twilight as encouragement. And Eragon. Because those are unrepentant tripe, and they sell like crazy.

Eragon gives us all hope =P

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That which does not feel pain is dead.