When I first got an iPad, a lot of my reading shifted into Zite. It’s a great app, but it seems to think that I really, really like lists. My “Writing” section is full of them. Top tens. Five bests. And not good ones that I want to read. Zite lists things on which I have no lack of opinions. No need for lists of tips on how to create mood, or write dialogue, or describe setting.

But they put me into a listing mood. So, here’s my contribution. Five terms I think we’ve beaten to a whimpering death in the blogosphere.

5. Craft

Sometimes it’s what we all do, as in “the craft of writing.” Sometimes it’s just “my craft” or “your craft.” It tries to capture something magical about the process. It tries, perhaps, to create some fraternity. We are all practitioners of a craft. Together. Like other terms on this list, though, it implies formulae and rules that masters have invented, and that mere mortals who aspire to write just need to follow. As my grandfather would say, “you’re full of donkey dust” if you try to sell that.

4. Genre

Genre are in danger of becoming so granular as to be blueprints. Perhaps it’s all of those “customers who bought this also bought that” kind of features on our favorite online bookstores. Or maybe it’s all of those folks selling formulae and rules. But I’ve now read too many theses from bloggers explaining differences between this genre and that. Is it paranormal steampunk romance or urban dark fantasy romance? What’s the painfully detailed and over-thought difference between horror and fantasy? Shall we cite Tolkien and Lovecraft to justify it? Let’s. What shelf in the bookstore or, maybe more importantly, what keyword? Innovative writing challenges genre. Once, there were none. We can’t have found them all yet.

3. Trope

Genre have tropes. Princesses to be rescued. Snarky robots. Abusive drill sergeants. Boys and their dogs. I don’t know why we call them tropes when Jung, Frazer, Campbell, and a ton of other folks more thoughtful than those who inhabit the blog and podcast echo chambers already gave them good names that sound a lot smarter than “tropes.”

2. Platform

“Platform” is this really fuzzy term that everyone can blog about because everyone can have their own spin on what it means. In fact, blogging about what a platform is actually seems to be somewhat of a way to build a platform. It’s become a word that stands in for a whole bunch of things that we used to call “marketing,” but with a healthy dash of Web 2.0 spice. The word itself has this techie feel to it, sort of like “beta reader.” Though not sure what it means, I fear that we’re beyond the point of defining it. Sort of like when a potential romance evolves into friendship, thus nipping the romance in the bud.

1. World-building

Folks may be angry at me for including this one, especially at number one. But I’ve really had my fill of this term. It had noble-enough beginnings. It was a great discussion about elevating setting to the level of character. You build Middle Earth. But then it became part of the formula. It became the highly-technical, overwrought details of your magic system, or the funky word that you choose to use instead of “years” to describe character ages. Moons. Cycles. Circles. Sigh. Or, and this is my favorite, it’s the self-conscious, way-too-conspicuous shout from some secondary character: “Gods-dammit!” I’ve put down far too many novels, lately, for feeling like I’m walking through a forest of dungeon master’s graph paper rather than a real world with its own currents, its own agenda. When asked about the magic system in Toothless, I usually answer: “I don’t know. Somewhere in that world, though, someone must understand it.” If you can imagine that corner of my world, then I’ve done my world-building.