I recently read this post on A Writer’s Path about writing pet peeves. In it, the author describes three practices that are irritating, namely cliches, Mary Sues, and sloppy grammar/spelling. Scroll to the comments and you’ll see a handful of others provided by other readers/writers (including yours truly).

After I wrote my comment, I got to thinking about why certain practices become pet peeves. The grammar one is straightforward – sloppy proofreading gets in the way of a smooth read. The others, though, are a bit more subjective. What makes pet peeves for me are things I would call writing cheats – those things that either read terribly awkward or are indicative of weak writing. And since I’m a blogger and we bloggers love lists, I’ve compiled my top three pet peeves/writing cheats that a writer may want to avoid.

Cheat 1: Broken scenes to create new chapters

Chapters have a…