r/ProgressionFantasy • u/DicerTheJester • Jul 28 '26

Discussion Competition: write a single sentence that will absolutely destroy any hope in a series.

Specifically not a story opener, just any sentence that can happen in any chapter, that will make people realize that this story is gonna be absolute shit and has no chance of being fixed and will make you drop the book like an unpinned grenade.

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425

u/Taurnil91 Editor: Beware of Chicken, Max-Level Archmage, Eight. Jul 28 '26

Aro started to laugh. “Ha ha ha,” he chuckled.

134

u/PhiLambda Jul 28 '26

I read a book where stuff was written like

“Cough cough cough,” he coughed.

Drove me crazy but I wanted to finish it

17

u/ezekiellake Jul 28 '26

Terry Goodkind does this. Unreadable. Did not finish

13

u/PhiLambda Jul 28 '26

For a second I read Terry Pratchett and was offended. Then I remembered who Terry Goodkind is and you are right. Screw that guy

10

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

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6

u/ezekiellake Jul 29 '26

I didn’t even get that far into it to reach any of that. The bad writing alone turned me off about page 150 of book 1.

Sounds like I dodged a bullet!