"It's Just That He Finally Shrugged"

After looking over my previous post, I realized that I may have come off a little harsh about Dar the doneel winking all the time. Perhaps if I explained why....

As my faithful readers/friends will know, I'm an unpublished author myself. I've been writing since the fifth grade (not that anything I produced at that time is any good; most of it will never see the light of day ever again) and lately, I've been working on a Christian science fiction trilogy that I call The Leader's Song.

I've been working with a critique group from Ameican Christian Fiction Writers help me polish up the first book in the trilogy, The Rune Enigma. One of the things these wonderful ladies in my critique group has helped me realize is that I have four pet words that I constantly use. I incorporated all four into a sentence to help me remember to search them out and destroy them.

My four pet words are: just, that, finally, shrugged.

Notice the last one. It seems like on every page, I have a character shrugging, often when there's absolutely no logical reason for them to do so. I've had to grit my teeth and groan whenever I encounter one of these words.

I suspect part of the reason why Dar the winking doneel bothered me is because I'm too hypersensitized. And, like I said in the previous post, I loved DragonQuest. The constant winking wasn't enough to stop that.