An Editor's Take: The 5 "Icks" to Avoid

Everyone knows adverbs are the literary equivalent of wearing socks with sandals. Backstory dumps on page three? Immediately suspicious. Dialogue tags that aren't "said"? We've all been there.

Think you know what makes editors cringe? It's not those things.

I've been reading manuscripts for years, and I close files on certain patterns every single time. Not because they're grammatically wrong. Because they reveal something about how the author is thinking—or not thinking.

Ick #1: The off-screen action problem

Your detective investigates for fourteen chapters, but we never see the investigating. Or your lovers fall apart during a time jump. Or someone plans a heist in summary while we watch them drink coffee in a safe room.

If the investigation matters to the plot, show it. If it's not interesting enough to show, it doesn't matter to the plot. You can't have both.

The fix: If it changes the story, it gets page space.

Ick #2: The spoon-fed ending

Final chapters that explain every symbol. Every thematic echo. Every metaphor you buried on page fourteen.

The reader finishes and feels nothing.

Interpretation is the reader's job. When you do it for them, you kill the part that actually sticks—the unanswered question, the gap they fill themselves.

The fix: Leave one thing unresolved. One moment that could mean two different things.

Ick #3: Bad camera placement

Your protagonist is running for his life. Somehow he notices the antagonist's "demon eyes." The "dripping drool." The way his shoulders hunch. While running. Without turning around.

You're not inhabiting the character's point of view. You're watching a movie and narrating what you see, not what they see.

The fix: If they can't see it without turning, looking, or a mirror, we can't see it either. Block the scene like a director.

Ick #4: Visual noise

Character names like K'th'rk. Xyloph'ra. Apostrophes everywhere. The reader's brain registers this as a shape, not a sound. Not a person. Names need to be sayable. Made-up is fine. But readable. Pronounceable.

The fix: Say the name aloud three times fast. If you stumble, so does the reader.

Ick #5: Emotional shortcuts

Two characters meet on page thirty-seven. By page fifty-two, they're declaring love. By page sixty, one's willing to die for the other.

You want the payoff so badly you skip the setup. Readers feel it.

Real intimacy is built in small risks. Conversation. Someone seeing you and choosing you anyway. Not declarations. Work.

The fix: Map when the vulnerability happens. Every intimacy beat needs to earn its place.

So here’s what I notice

These five things show up constantly. They're not stylistic preferences—they're signals that the author doesn't understand how a confined space actually works. What a reader can process, what they can see, what they need to be shown versus what they need to figure out themselves.

I close files on these patterns all the time, and it's usually because the author hasn't thought through the reader's actual experience. Just hasn't considered it.

That's usually where it ends.