I like to read short stories, mostly sci-fi/fantasy. These stories turn up over and over again in near-identical forms in multiple genre magazines. I'm just tired of them. Sorry if you like or write these.
Story attempts to use robots as a metaphor for some kind of oppressed class, while never explaining why anyone gave the butter spreader/trash compactor/roomba consciousness and emotions in the first place. Maybe we're supposed to accept that the robot spontaneously developed emotions, but I can't and won't.
Pubescent girl turns into monster. Pubescent girl turns into plant. Pubescent girl turns into alien creature. Pubescent girl starts losing parts of herself. Pubescent girl has secret wound. Pubescent girl sees horrors that nobody else can see. Or the exact same things, but it's a metaphor for depression or a bad relationship or a chronic illness instead of puberty. If the author had written directly and honestly about their experience, or transformed their experience into a genuine story with an active protagonist (e.g. "Boobs" by Suzy Charnas), it might have had pathos and interest. With the distancing effect of the metaphor, it comes across like a self-important teen angst Livejournal post.
We all saw that Black Mirror episode too. You can stop writing this one now.
The actual events happened in the past, and the 'story' is just the characters reflecting on it in a slow, boring, melancholic way. The 'ending' is almost guaranteed to be something along the lines of "Gee, that thing happened and now things will never be the same again, but maybe it will all be OK anyway." I always wish they'd told me the real events, which sound like they might have been exciting if I hadn't experienced them via intermittent flashbacks and referential dialogue.
Cindy was a normal kid, until one day she had to have her brain replaced with a digital one! Her parents wait over the hospital bed anxiously... Cindy opens her eyes!... and then the story abruptly ends. Did they want me to imagine my own story? Where's the rest of it!? I've started skipping to the end immediately so I can tell whether a story is going to be like this.
Person claims to be carrying an important cure for a disease. The twist is that they themselves hold the cure in their blood/cells/DNA. It's not going to surprise any reader over the age of ten.
Author drones on about a fictional animal/plant/language they've invented, usually with a extremely thin veil of characters draped over the top as if a romance subplot between two cardboard scientists could possibly enliven this. If there is not a romance subplot then this will probably be combined with The Post-Mortem to produce a first-person 'story' in which the character takes a soil sample (or whatever) while reminiscing about their dead child/partner or reflecting on ecological/social disaster or both for several thousand words.
Same as the pseudo-scientist, but the author feels very strongly about a political/philosophical point and is determined to hammer it into the reader's head - almost always via the medium of a cardboard romance. The main character makes an impassioned speech directly addressing the issue, or is prevented from doing so by being unjustly oppressed. The reader is left faintly embarrassed by the student-politics vibe.
This topic was mined out before you even began. You don't have anything new or interesting to say about lockdown or the pandemic; we ALL went through it. No, not even if you make it into a different sci-fi/fantasy pandemic.
If you look back at older magazines you'll see this same complaint but about the threat of nuclear annihilation. There was nothing left to say about it.
Narratives about narratives, games about games, films about film-making. It's really hard to tell a satisfying story. It's much easier to say "then they realised they were all fictional characters so nothing mattered all along! You wasted your time reading this! Isn't that clever?" Not really.
(Extra pet peeve: when people go on to write their review in the same annoying gimmick as the work, e.g. "You are about to read Ratshack's review of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller...")
There is a girl with stories written under her fingernails. There is a boy with starshine in his eyelashes. There is a country where your footprints tell your fortune. Whatever. This is like the song lyrics you'd write on your MSN status when you were thirteen. No-effort mystical nonsense.
See also: the flowery love story. "She smelled of citrus and pepper, her smile was all cheekbones and shimmer..." Give it a rest.
The elevator descended, dinging gently at each floor. John got off, checking his watch. He looked through the hallway window at the people outside moving like tiny ants, the trees, the buildings. He went into the next room and greeted everyone, apologising for being late.
I start putting a story down as soon as I see a "The subject did something, doing something else" construction. There may be lots of other stylistic and grammatical objections in the story, but that construction in particular sounds my "this person mainly reads fanfiction" alarm.
The only thing that sounds that alarm even louder is this: "John turned to Jane. The red-headed ranger shook her head." Who the hell is the red-headed ranger? Oh, they mean Jane, but they're introducing her again as if she's a new character to avoid repeating 'Jane'. Just horrible.
Supposedly set in the past or future, or in another country, or featuring an anachronistic character, but everyone talks like they're from present day America and have the exact same political and social concerns of an American youth. A 90s teenager is fastidious about non-binary pronoun usage, a 500-year-old vampire talks about TERFs and tone policing, an Australian suddenly says "criss-cross applesauce". All believability is lost in an instant.
The story is set in the past or future, or in another country, and the author is so committed to this setting that it's full of references to brand names, locations, food, sayings, jokes, traditions, myths and monsters that you've never heard of in your life before. You spend more time on Wikipedia than reading the story. The story cannot help but fail since 99% of readers will have no feelings or memories at all attached to these references. The story will end up in a best-of collection because the editor had no idea what any of it was either but it looked diverse and meaningful.
No, I didn't. (Or don't, if your story is really stupendously bad.)