Here is an addendum to the previous post. Josh is ticked off by one of Lola's "Angelina" books because the first page contains his biggest writing peeve. The following short-short story will make clear what this peeve is.
Finding herself once more at the grocery store, Sarah could hardly tolerate the thought of looking for another non-organic bottle of apple juice for her husband.
"Can I help you?" smiled the clerk in the striped vest as he advanced down the aisle toward her. She groaned inwardly. One of the accoutrements of a successful writer like herself, she knew, was an inevitable contempt for the common herd.
"That's okay," she smiled, "I know where I'm going." But did she really, she smiled inwardly to herself. She saw the canned vegetables pass before her eyes, and then, before she knew it, she was into the fruit.
"DOLE!" the labels smiled at her, all in a row. Perhaps they even leered at her, but she kept walking, talking to herself, and smiling a little, on the inside:
"They are out of non-organic apple juice!"
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2 comments:
Repugnant as "smiling" dialogue may be, I have a better one, courtesy of an editor who spoke at the last conference I attended. When asked to name her pet peeve, she said it was bad writing. (No surprise there.) "For example," she continued, "I once had an author conclude a piece of dialogue with the tag 'she mewed.'"
As in: "Thank you," she mewed.
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