Stop Using These Cheap Tricks in Your Writing
Readers deserve better than recycled gimmicks. When writers lean on shortcuts instead of craft, the whole story sags. You can feel it. You know exactly when a character was built out of tropes instead of truth, and the disappointment is instant.
Here are the worst offenders and why they need to go.
1. The Clumsy Girl Problem
She trips. She spills. She tumbles into someone’s arms. It’s supposed to signal vulnerability or charm.
It doesn’t.
It signals that the author didn’t bother to give her an actual interior life. If the most memorable thing about your heroine is her inability to stay upright, you haven’t written a character, you’ve written a running gag.
2. The Brooding Guy™
The silence isn’t depth. The glower isn’t mystery.
If he has no thoughts, no drives, no contradictions, he’s not “enigmatic.” He’s unfinished.
Readers can tell when a man is brooding because something’s boiling inside him versus when he’s brooding because the author thought it looked cool.
3. The Trauma Dump Shortcut
Dropping a tragic backstory paragraph into chapter two is not character development. Trauma isn’t seasoning.
If you introduce it, you need to show how it shapes choices, flaws, relationships, and pressure points. Otherwise, it’s emotional clickbait.
4. The Quirky Hobby Placeholder
The teacup collector. The jellyfish fact-dropper. The guy who plays obscure instruments no one asked about.
These details only matter if they connect to something deeper. Aesthetic is not personality. A quirk without meaning is just noise.
5. The “Strong Female Character” With No Thoughts of Her Own
She punches a guy once and then spends the rest of the book reacting to everyone else.
Strength without agency isn’t strength.
Give her opinions, wants, edges, and an actual arc. Readers are tired of cardboard cutouts in leather boots.
If your character’s biggest trait is clumsiness or a quirk, you didn’t write a person. You wrote a placeholder.
6. The Instant Chemistry Myth
Two characters lock eyes, and the universe trembles. No, it doesn’t. They just saw each other.
Real chemistry comes from tension, choices, friction, risk. Earn it. Let it simmer. Let it complicate their lives.
7. The Token Best Friend
Here to deliver one line of advice, crack a joke, and disappear.
If a side character has no inner life, they’re not a character. They’re a prop.
Even minor roles should have motives, contradictions, and presence.
8. The Villain Monologue Exposition Dump
If your villain has to explain the entire plot out loud for the stakes to make sense, something went wrong pages ago. Readers should understand tension through action, conflict, and consequences, not a TED Talk.
9. The “She’s Not Like Other Girls” Escape Hatch
If you need this line, your world-building failed.
Build women with diversity, nuance, complexity. Don’t isolate one girl as “special” because everyone else is written flat.
10. The Random Pet for Instant Cuteness
If the cat, dog, or ferret has no narrative role and exists purely to soften the protagonist, it’s not a character. It’s a plushie.
Use animals with intention or don’t use them at all.
If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at a blank page, this little worksheet will help you start writing again with less pressure and more joy.
So What Should Writers Do Instead?
Respect your reader.
Give your characters real contradictions, real desires, real pressure.
Let them screw up because of who they are, not because they tripped over a conveniently placed shoelace.
Let them want things. Fear things. Hide things. Reveal things.
Let them feel like people.
Good stories stick because the characters feel true, not because the author tossed in a handful of clichés and hoped for the best.
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