What sorts of writing techniques should I avoid?

For example,

ALLCAPS = shouting/screaming

Using no commas and stuff to stop your sentences which make you look like you are speaking faster

Large...amounts...of...these...to...make...it...look...like...people...are...speaking..more...slowly...

emphasis using 'this kind of stuff.

And I'd also like to know techniques that don't appear weird which can still produce the same effects of shouting(I guess exclamation markswork for that but sometimes they look rather weak) speaking faster/slower, etc.

Also.

edited 3rd Dec '10 12:58:45 PM by Edmania

Any technique can be done well, it just matters how well you can do it. But I'd avoid any hard to read accents.

I'm not good with accents and there isn't a use for them I can think of so.

To show trouble with a foreigner, maybe. Or to depict a lisp.

Try having a read at How NOT To Write A Novel.

-looks up on Google-

-sees no working free downloads-

Bleh. Guess i'll have to buy it...

Purple Prose on action-heavy sequences, Beige Prose in, well, anything else.

How about Bad Writing?

Well, for shouting/screaming I use italics....though I'm guilty of not using commas for when my characters are feeling really frantic and whatnot, and for the speaking slowly, I can't help you there, I use ellipsis myself, although sparingly.

How NOT To Write A Good Novel is an awesome book tho, highly recommended.

Adding elements because they're popular/not popular. Either one is letting yourself be controlled by popular trends, and there's no such thing as The Tropeless Tale

Hehe, I see that we're fencing partners now. What fun!

edited 2nd Dec '10 7:32:39 PM by deathjavu

At the same time, one should pay attention to certain tropes. Things become cliché for a reason, and using something popular can easily make you look like a bandwagon jumper.

For instance, writing a book series that plays a vampire romance with a happy ending and no real deaths, might not be the greatest idea.

edited 2nd Dec '10 7:34:34 PM by MrAHR

Avoid writing a style that you can't maintain for the duration of whatever piece you're writing. While it would be interesting to see a Purple Prose writer experiment with Beige Prose and vice versa, most people simply don't have the mental discipline or stamina when it comes to pulling off drastic changes successfully, even for a decent-sized short story. So simply figure out your natural style and work on improving it.

Aas for the no-comma thing i've read several books that use it to great effect. It makes a tiring but strangely natural reading experience.

Something i myself have trouble is making the speech patterns of differente characters reflect their personlities. An educated, mild-mannered professor is not bound to talk in the same way a cocaine-addicted teenager hoolingan does.

As with everything, it is also important to not take it too far away and make every character a parody of itself. That's the deal with subtle characterization, me so thinks.

Seconding the second sentence. It's one of the reasons I make a point of hating El Goonish Shive.

Uh, just to clarify, I meant writing techniques in order to manipulate a sentence a character is saying (like the ones I said in the OP) rather than ones like which tropes not to use, don't jump on the bandwagon, etc.

edited 3rd Dec '10 5:57:19 AM by Edmania

Using excess words in order to try and fit as many words as possibly possible into a single sentence without any punctation marks simply because it pads out your book or other story and medium and thereby increasing the word count.

Who would ''do'' that?

EDIT: Other than Dickens and other such people who would be paid per word.

edited 3rd Dec '10 10:33:18 AM by mmysqueeant

Particularly bored and sadistic authors who are getting paid by the word. Oh, and fanfiction writers.

^^ Na No Wri Mo?

German Romantic Novelists.

Most writers from before the 19th century used long, complex sentences, actually. I find their works, especially the ones about political and social issues, to be dreadfully boring to read and honestly egotistical. Much of the reason they wrote was to "impress" other writers. Luckily, standards have changed over time.

Dostoevsky wrote in quite long sentences, I don't know if he was writing to impress other writers but I doubt it.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote in long sentences too. He was trying to impress his readership with literary fireworks, rather than his fellow writers. I think.

I'll let Tommy Hobbes give his example of this:

"Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he."

Yeah, that's all one sentence.

It's not that that's so very long as much as that it's...hideous. I...I'm sorry. I had no idea.

I didn't know! I DIDN'T KNO-HO-HO! :'(

Writing sound effects like BANG! or WHOOSH! Better just describe them. 'There was a loud noise', for example.