Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy

tries and fails to conceal a lack of intensity, style, substance, or all those qualities, in your prose.

Their use will drain the life from your prose. “Some kind of” has recently joined the infamous company of weasel words.

It’s Almost Writing,
or,
Half Baked Weasels

are weasel words that allow you to evade the responsibility of being precise.

Pitfall #1: The Expository Lump

Useful technique: It’s easier to describe something if it’s broken. If something is broken, then you notice it. If it’s working right, it just sits there being invisible doing its job. Not to be overused!

We all write sf in standard English, unless we are Anthony Burgess (who did made-up dialect well), or some other people who do it not so well.

Just because you call a long-eared short-tailed lagomorphic mammal with long hind legs a “smeerp” doesn’t make it alien.

watch out for what Damon Knight called “calling a rabbit a smeerp.”

If you aren’t good at them, you can make yourself sound silly.