I was going to spell out a whole bullet-point list, but that’s one giveaway. 😅 Along with em-dashed parenthetical clauses or joined sentences, an overly wordy need to explain the obvious, and metaphors stranger than a rotting orange.

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Agreed, and the giveaway is usually the compliment. A real reader praises the odd bit, the scene in chapter four nobody else noticed. The machine praises your ‘compelling narrative and vivid characters’, which is how you'd review a book after reading only its barcode.

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Can confirm - just spoke with an author friend and he said the same thing. He said it's especially egregious with short story anthologies since they'll compliment him on his writing for stories and plots he didn't write (another author did). Real writers ain't falling for it, people!

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Goddamn, Kelly Thompson. The voice.

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Just read the first issue of @kellythompson.bsky.social & @mattiadeiulis.bsky.social ‘s The Bride of Frankenstein lives and it was utterly stunning. I believe if Mary Shelly could have read the issue she would have loved it. That’s how great it is.

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