Sentimental. This is unearned emotion. If you tell me they’re devastated, if you tell me their voice cracks, if you show me their tears, none of that matters if any of it had to be said. “Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.” – Albert Camus
Contrived. This is unearned circumstance. They can’t just think very hard or be especially earnest to make their weakness disappear. To overcome has to come from somewhere. Maybe I never saw it coming but when it does it should feel inevitable. “You can’t hit the magic note without going through the scales.” – Jim Crace
Invulnerable. This is unearned resilience. It doesn’t have to be mortal peril. It doesn’t have to be a cost I myself would ever have to pay. But they have to suffer and I have to believe it would really matter to them in the universe you’ve constructed. “The dark does not destroy the light, it defines it.” – Brené Brown
Inauthentic. This is unearned character. No matter how strange the universe, characters, and circumstances, the emotional context must be real, and their response to it must be authentic. “All truth is a shadow except the last. But every truth is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance.” – Isaac Pennington
Inconsistent. This is unearned direction. I may not have predicted how they would get here or that they would get here at all, but now that they’re here it has to feel believable. “It is in the very nature of things to manifest themselves.” – Vivekenanda
Uninteresting. This is unearned attention. I can’t say more than C.S. Lewis… “To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will even begin to compensate for failure in this, and very serious faults will be covered by this, as by charity.” – C. S. Lewis
Formulaic. It must be earned. It can’t be borrowed. It can’t be assembled from parts. It can’t be produced from a checklist. You can’t follow the rules. “We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.” – Roger Ebert