Not the little vampires that spread Lyme Disease. The other kind.
Every writer who edits their own work has noticed them creeping in. The repeated word or phrase, the same way of describing a character’s clothing or hair, that one move that always ends a fight- or starts one. That kind of tic.
Tics have their uses. When they’re not too obnoxious, they’re called ‘continuity’, a vital part of any story, because readers are going to think you’ve lost your marbles if a characters starts out with blonde hair and it turns red with no explanation. Just call it strawberry blonde from the get-go, and everybody’s happy.
Story-telling tics served an even greater purpose when the story were passed down verbally. Think about ancient myths- ever notice that all the women are beautiful (or ugly) without much variation? That was so poor Homer, reciting the Iliad at his patron’s dinner party, didn’t have to remember exactly what Helen looked like; he could use a standard description- it’s been a while, but I think ‘Helen of the white arms’ was a common one- and get on with the story. Tics are a way to fill the silence while the speakers brain catches up.
Sometimes the writer can and should lean into a character’s tics. I recently acquired a review complaining about how the characters were complaining a lot (the irony apparently escaped the reviewer. Maybe he was committing an extremely subtle satire?) and he wasn’t wrong. The characters in question are a spoiled teenage girl and a mercenary who is Done With This Nonsense. On a list of characters who grumble a lot, they’re both pretty high on that list; one whines out loud, the other grumbles internally and rolls his eyes every few minutes.
Maria from A Small and Inconvenient Disaster also has a tic- she contradicts herself a lot. Every other sentence contains a ‘but’ or ‘however’. I can’t claim that I did that on purpose. Mostly, I was too inexperienced to notice what I was writing, and too brain dead to do anything about it. But it does serve the character; she’s supposed to come across as uncertain and in over her head, because she is (she gets better toward the end).
As with so many things in writing, the acceptable number and frequency of writerly tics varies. Some words and phrases get used so often that they fade into the background, like ‘said’ as a speech tag. I try not to use an unusual word more than once on a page, but of course, everyone’s definition of unusual is different. The best litmus test I can come up with is, does the word or phrase appear often enough to annoy you or your beta readers? If it does, think about changing it.
What are your writerly tics? Do you try to get rid of them, or lean into it?
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Tics”
As far as excess grumbling goes, if it’s the story I’m thinking of, the complaining didn’t seem to be out of lineMaxim, one of my current 1st person POVs, tends to say “I confess, I thought/felt X, Y, Z” in situations where he feels that what he’s about to say is indiscreet or an admission against interests. I have a tendency to do this in dialogue: $SPEECH$, s/he said. $ANOTHER SPEECH$ Sometimes I manage to get a change of expression or a “bit of business” (movement, activity) instead of s/he said.
The other horrible thing the little vampires spread is an allergy to red meat.
OMG. Does every Canadian (well, maybe not ALL of them) in literature end a sentence with “,eh?” Is that a tic, a trope, or just a horribly obnoxious stereotype?
When Marvel put out Alpha Flight, they had one character talk like that and got flooded with complaints that they don’t all talk like that.
I try to limit my own tics by being habitually chaotic, but one thing drives me crazy when I’m editing. I see a word that I’ve started to repeat too often, change it to something more meaningful, and then realize I used that new word in the very next sentence.
Recently I binged the Beauty and the Beast series, the most recent one with Kristin Kreuk because I’m a big fan of hers. Unfortunately the 4th and last season, they emphasized how all the characters’ lives were totally messed up by trying to hide Vincent’s beastly identity. By emphasized I mean they spent 15 minutes of every episode of the last season discussing with each other how screwed they are because of that. Every time an episode plot got interesting, they had to stop to rehash their personal problems with hiding his secret identity. Have you never read comics people? Just put on a pair of glasses and act all meek and mild.
I’ll unconsciously lock onto a word and use it a lot. It started with “very,” then “little,” “makes sense/sensible,” and so on. I might go two or three books and stories before a new one appears and litters the text.
Word clouds are your friend. Ever since I found it, I’ve been cutting back on my excessive use of the word “even.”
But sometimes they change from story to story. The Lion and the Library has a heroine who thinks in metaphors; The Eyes of the Sorceress, a heroine who does not pay attention to the details of her surroundings.
I’m okay with the amount of mathematical non-fiction I have been reading.
I hated when I noticed that the style was bleeding into my non-mathematical writing.
Methodical proofs are wildly inappropriate for a lot of what I am trying to write. My writing skills have been more embarrassing than I expected them to be, but that is also my life with other skills as well right now.
Everybody knows the worst tics are poli-tics. 😄