Actually, many of these could apply to a number of genres. I just happen to notice them more in fantasy novels.

1) You've named dozens, perhaps hundreds of characters, and nobody has the same first name?

2) In actual conversation, people do not use each other's name in every sentence.

"How was guard duty, Shalalalamir?"

"Do not trouble me with frivolous questions, K'j'h'r'dak."

"Ah, Shalalalamir, you are so serious."

"These are serious days, K'j'h'r'dak."

3) The English language has a lot of cool-sounding words in it. Just because one is your favorite doesn't mean you have to use it every four pages. There are more occurrences of the word "exigent" in the Thomas Covenant novels than in the rest of the books in the Library of Congress added together.

4) Story arcs that spiral out of control. Jordan and Martin, I'm looking in your direction. When you have so many things going on that you actually have to write two books just to address everything that is going on at the same time, or when you have to start deleting entries from your glossary in the back to keep it from being about the size of the actual book, this is your cue that things are getting out of hand. There is no shame in bringing a story arc to a close, gentlemen, and your readers can actually become immersed in your world without knowing what Jerod the Stablehand thinks of the quality of women's dresses these days.

5) Using a special "fantasy word" for things for which there is a perfectly good English word when there is no reason to do so. Every fantasy author has their own neat word for tobacco, for instance. Why can't Grud the mercenary make a sandwich with ham and rye instead of making a sandwichiae with hamon and slorp?

Hey, don't forget Goodkind in rule number 4.

This one's fine; sure, maybe it's not totally realistic but it makes the book readable. Having a book with multiple main characters with the same first name would be ridiculous.

The others I agree with.

Goodking? No way! He has one main arc that runs through the whole series, being the plotline for the series. Most of the other arcs only go for one book. How dare you deflame the name of Goodking?!

I think he meant Terry Goodkind from the Sword of Truth series

You mean She.

I definitely agree with the using names a lot when they speak.

Oh, aaaand the using their favorite word. I love Raymond E. Feist, but he uses 'acrid' waaay too often.

My other pet peeve is using a dark ageish setting as an excuse for constantly stiff speech, so that even supposedly eloquent stuff comes off startched.

I'm gunna actually disagree with you on this one - the rediculous number of story arcs is one of the things I like about Martin's books (can't speak for Jordan). It makes the world feel more real in a sense. I know, I know, its fantasy, but it keeps the consistancy of having a whole world of characters existing in the book. Eh, thats just my oppinion.

So did I, you crazy bard

I really like George Martin's books, and yes, chronicling every detail of every character's life in real time is more realistic than not, but sometimes, when you're telling a story, certain things just need to stop, or (I feel) the story just gets cumbersome and unwieldy.

That's I quit reading Jordan, eventually. Somewhere around book six or so, it seemed to me like he had no idea where he was going, and he was just going to keep elaborating, expanding, and complicating things until he died. When Robert Jordan dies, he'll be on the 38th Wheel of Time book which will be 10,000 pages long, involve 860ish characters, and nothing will be resolved. You can bet there will be plenty of braid tugging and such, though.

Although I don't think the Dragonlance novels are the high point of fantasy writing, structurally I thought they worked out well. There are self contained trilogies that all relate and even share characters, but the story arcs are mostly resolved at the end of each trilogy. You also have a number of side novels that flesh out different characters for people who are interested in that sort of thing.

I'm just worried that George Martin has decided to go the way of Jordan. This last round, when he declared that he was actually writing TWO novels of a bajillion pages apiece just so he could do justice to all the different plots with all the different characters, I began to think that maybe he's lost track of his plot, too, and is just going to write bigger and bigger books with more and more characters and unresolved events until he dies.

Jordan has promised that the next book will be the last, no matter how many pages he needs to tie everything up.

Yeah right. I too gave up around six or seven.

I just keep the faith that everything will be tied up when Dany comes and takes everythign over *nod*

Number 3 rings the most true for me.

Here in science-fiction land, we have no such problems. Ha!

It's true, science fiction writers have obtained a form of literary perfection unbeknownst to the writers of any other genre.

Bolded for emphasis. You seen that thing they call an encyclopedia? This puppy is going to make that sucker look puny in comparison. In other news, his last book will bring about new ground-breaking work on book bindings. For the first time ever, you too can bind 3000 pages at once!

Naaaah... Jordan's next book will be released exclusively as an audiobook, in 6 HDDVDs.

Read in a really fast voice like the legal "notes" at the end of car ads.

And then he'll sell the rights to Hollywood, and a quadruple-feature-length film (Part one of seven) will be made. (Tagline: You've read the book... you've played the award-winning RPG... you've read the book... you've bought the merchandise... you've read the book... you've played the D20-based award-winning RPG... you've read the book... NOW WATCH THE MOVIE!)

It'll be a big disappointment for the fans, though, since they'll cut 90% of the plot. People who haven't read the books, of course, won't notice and will still think the plot is overly complicated. Casting all 100+ central characters will be a bit of a problem, too.