# Things You Hate to See in a Book



## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

When reading, what tricks do authors throw at you that absolutely make you cringe? What are you tired of, bored with, or troubled over when it comes to books?

I've made a nice long list of things that make me roll my eyes and put on my grumpy face. Do we have any in common? What really grinds your gears?

1. Characters who were killed who managed to come back from the dead.

2. The same tired super powers, flight, invisibility, time travel

3. Book covers that appear to be selling sex instead of a book

4. Overwrought names that dictate the character's personality, like Ari McScatterBrain and Killjoy Deathweaver

5. Characters that we're supposed to like just because they are good looking (The Sally Lockhart mysteries made me think of this one)

6. Another Harry Potter or Twilight knock-off?

7. Flagrant Do-goodery...it takes a little bit of selfishness to make heroism real for me

Ok, those are a few of mine. What've you got?

This thread idea is actually a take off of a blog post I wrote with lengthy rationales for each: http://powerlessbooks.com/blog/?p=30


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Awe, you just described my book.  

Did you just get done reading it?

Vicki


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

Victorine said:


> Awe, you just described my book.
> 
> Did you just get done reading it?
> 
> Vicki


HAHAHA trying to imagine any of these in your book is hysterical. I could just see Steven Ashton using his power of invisibility to ditch the reanimated corpse of Emily Grant.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Hee hee hee!  Just messing with you.

Actually, there are some things that I dislike when I'm reading. 

1. De Ex Machina

2. Plot twists that are pointless, just put in to shock the reader.

3. When a book seems very realistic until the end, when someone sprouts wings and flies.  Either stick with reality, or start off with fantasy from the beginning.

4. Super huge cliches... don't start your book with a dream... or someone waking up with a start.

I'm sure there are more... I'm super nit picky.  

Vicki


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Too many characters and too many plot lines, and constantly switching between them. Impress me with your writing and characterization, not with the quantity of things and people you can tie together -- however confusingly -- in one book.

Have interesting and believable reasons for why your characters act the way they do. Don't create plot situations and conflicts simply because someone is unaccountably stubborn, stupid, or evil (or good, for that matter).

Stereotypes such as the evil politician who is in cahoots with some cabal of billionaires. C'mon, it's been done, think of something new. (I know, it's hard to find something that hasn't been done, but at least look for something that hasn't been done by _everyone_.  )


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

Characters who are too darned perfect. Either in terms of ethics and personality, or in some adventure books in particular where the skill set people have built up, often at quite a young age, is unbelievable.

Series that run on too long. One of my favorite SF authors, Harry Turtledove, is guilty of this in some alternate history series that I otherwise love.


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## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

A supposedly-intelligent woman who finds the bad guy simply irresistible, even when she knows he's a scumbag. Imagine Lizzie Bennet being talked around by Wickham after she's learned his real story!

Characters that are hard to tell apart on the page, especially when a whole bunch are thrown at the reader at once. I once started a book (published by a "real" publisher) that introduced nearly 20 characters in the first two pages, all of them largely indistinguishable except for being either male or female, all gathered together at a party. I didn't get far with that book.

The same piece of information being given repeatedly, sometimes in the exact same words.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Shayne Parkinson said:


> A supposedly-intelligent woman who finds the bad guy simply irresistible, even when she knows he's a scumbag....


...or a vampire.


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

NogDog said:


> ...or a vampire.


Ahh you beat me! This is exactly what I was thinking.

I agree about jamming too much in or making it unnecessarily confusing with loads and loads of story lines and things happening all over the place. There's something to be said for getting creative with a linear plot.


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## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

NogDog said:


> ...or a vampire.


Lucy Westenra? Or do you mean something more modern ? 

_Dracula_ is the only vampire story I've ever read, and I don't have any plans to change that fact.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Shayne Parkinson said:


> Lucy Westenra? Or do you mean something more modern ?
> 
> _Dracula_ is the only vampire story I've ever read, and I don't have any plans to change that fact.


I mean that it's been done. _Dracula_ is a classic. Each time someone else writes yet another vampire novel, it's more of a challenge to do something new. And now it seems that most of them have a beautiful (of course) mortal girl who falls in love with the (surprisingly sensitive) male vampire even though she knows he's -- at least technically -- a blood-sucking fiend.  And I'm just stating _my_ issues: apparently there is an audience out there for "Twilight" _et al_.


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

I hate flashbacks. Just a personal quirk of mine but I hate it when you're just getting a good part in a story and suddenly it's five years ago. It also happens a lot when new characters are introduced and authors feel compelled to give them a solid background and let you know their entire life story before you get to go any further with the story. I'd prefer to pick up this information along the way as it were. Sometimes it's like reading the beginning of several different books that all eventually tie in together. 

While I recognise the need for it sometimes, I think some authors use it simply to try and make their books seem more interesting, to give it more facets but I find it distracting - it throws me out of the story.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

Confusion about female biology. I won't go into detail, as I know this is a family-friendly forum - but male writers NEED to do their research. Really irritates me when I see even a mild sex scene stuffed up by wild inaccuracies.


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

nomesque said:


> Confusion about female biology. I won't go into detail, as I know this is a family-friendly forum - but male writers NEED to do their research. Really irritates me when I see even a mild sex scene stuffed up by wild inaccuracies.


HAHAHA I guess that's one way to find out which male writers haven't been getting any...umm...research.


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## Dawn McCullough White (Feb 24, 2010)

A "fiery" or "spirited" female main character.  This is apparently the only completely acceptable feminist protagonist, as I see it done so very often.

Dawn


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> HAHAHA I guess that's one way to find out which male writers haven't been getting any...umm...research.


 I've seen it done by male writers with female spouses... one would hope they've had the _opportunity_ for research, if not the attention required


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## David McAfee (Apr 15, 2010)

I hate lines like "There was so much testosterone flowing through the car I had to stick my foot in and put a stop to it," etc. Usually spoken by the female lead whenever two guys are arguing about something. Really bugs me. Thinking about putting a similar line about estrogen in one of my books. I'll probably do it in the middle of a shoe sale or something just to make the stereotype that much more annoying.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

David McAfee said:


> I hate lines like "There was so much testosterone flowing through the car I had to stick my foot in and put a stop to it," etc. Usually spoken by the female lead whenever two guys are arguing about something. Really bugs me. Thinking about putting a similar line about estrogen in one of my books. I'll probably do it in the middle of a shoe sale or something just to make the stereotype that much more annoying.


Haha! Things like that typically only work one way. If you were to do what you propose you'd be accused of misogyny. It's unfortunate, but there it is.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

David, dear, talk about estrogen flowing while women cluck lovingly and nauseatingly at a newborn child. THAT'S more appropriate to the stereotypical effects of estrogen. Shoe sales are more likely to bring out the testosterone-fueled rages in women


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

nomesque said:


> David, dear, talk about estrogen flowing while women cluck lovingly and nauseatingly at a newborn child. THAT'S more appropriate to the stereotypical effects of estrogen. Shoe sales are more likely to bring out the testosterone-fueled rages in women


McAfee + raging angry women at shoe sale + mummies = book I want to read.

David Dalglish


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## Melonhead (Jan 1, 2010)

It bugs me if I'm reading a paranormal series, and the author changes the "rules" with only limp reasoning.

For example, all vampires get fried in the sun, but by book 3 my main character doesn't because she read the super special book. Or, all vampires need to feed every day, but my 2 vampire lovers only need to feed from each other. Please, at least try to make sense within your own rules, and don't keep changing them because you've run out of plots.

OK, rant over.


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## David McAfee (Apr 15, 2010)

nomesque said:


> David, dear, talk about estrogen flowing while women cluck lovingly and nauseatingly at a newborn child. THAT'S more appropriate to the stereotypical effects of estrogen. Shoe sales are more likely to bring out the testosterone-fueled rages in women


I work in an office with 385 women and 15 men. You can ALWAYS tell when there is a baby in the building. Follow the "awwwwwwww" and "oooooooh" sounds. 



Half-Orc said:


> McAfee + raging angry women at shoe sale + mummies = book I want to read.
> 
> David Dalglish


I'll call it _Night at the Payless Outlet_.


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## David McAfee (Apr 15, 2010)

....thinking of a scene in a police station. One detective is questioning a woman about a murder that happened ten feet away. The woman insists she didn't notice the sounds of screaming and pain or the rain of blood spatter that splashed her back because there was a newborn baby nearby and she couldn't take her eyes off the little bundle. Several other "witnesses" in the station, all similarly baby-smitten women, support her statement.

All of the ladies agree that the baby was the "cutest little thing."


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## L.J. Sellers novelist (Feb 28, 2010)

This could be a really long list, but I'll limit it to a blog I wrote on  this subject.
   * Slow start with too much day-in-the-life detail or too much backstory 
   * Protagonists who do stupid things (especially before I start to like them)
   * Stories that jump back and forth in time for no good reason
   * Characters who have cutsie names or are obsessed with their pets (Sorry!)
   * Detailed gratuitous graphic violence
   * Detailed graphic sex scenes (They’re all gratuitous unless you write erotica)
   * Characters who bicker with their siblings or spouses (I’ve seen a lot of this lately!)
   * Too many characters introduced in the first few pages with no real explanation of who they are
   * Pages and pages with no dialogue
   * Protagonists who engage in immoral acts, like harming an innocent person (I need someone to root for)
   * Long, meandering side stories that take me out of the main plot
   * Serial killers (No offense if you write them, I’m just burnt out)

L.J.


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## Maker (Jun 22, 2010)

All of the above, plus:

I hate books with timeline chapter names like: "Tuesday, 4:13 a.m."  If the time is absolutely crucial to the plot then it's okay, otherwise it's just annoying. 

I hate author acknowledgments that are longer than a paragraph. You can thank your neighbor Bob in person.


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

Maker said:


> ...I hate author acknowledgments that are longer than a paragraph. You can thank your neighbor Bob in person.


LOL - I can understand what you mean, but the point after all is not to actually thank Bob, but for the author to repay Bob by telling the rest of the world that he had Bob's help in writing the book....


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## lib2b (Apr 6, 2010)

One thing that bugs me more than anything else in a book is when a character makes the same mistake again and again and again, often for the sake of the plot.  It's one thing for a character to make a mistake or two, mistakes are realistic, but to keep making the same mistakes without learning from them?  Ugh.  Related to this, I can't handle it when characters constantly cause their own problems, but are too stubborn to see that.  In moderation this can be realistic, but if a person is constantly getting in their own way, I just want to throttle the character for his/her own stupidity and blindness.


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## bvlarson (May 16, 2010)

Characters who don't really want anything, have no goal. I try to have every character in the book, no matter how small, want SOMETHING.
Also, #2 for me would be characters who do something I just can't believe any real person would do.


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## Neekeebee (Jan 10, 2009)

-A snide political remark (or some such contrived scene) thrown into the middle of the story for no reason other than to show the author's political leanings. (I'm talking about those that have nothing to do with the plot and are never developed.) I supposed it is to make readers chuckle in agreement, but all it does is jolt me out of an otherwise perfectly good story. Agree or disagree, I have stopped reading books by certain authors for this very reason because once I've been jarred out of a story like that, I feel like I am not in "safe" hands.

-A female protagonist who keeps reminding us how beautiful she is (_Flowers in the Attic_ comes to mind).

-A huge coincidence is used to resolve the mystery.

-Whining, pining women who only whine and pine. (Though now that I think about it, men who whine and pine would be even more annoying.)

-Some random fact about a never-before-mentioned character is added in the last chapter to set up a sequel.

-Alternating points of view when only one is interesting.

-Teen books where all the adults are stupid or wrong. (This occurs more often in movies, though.)

-Books with foreign protagonists where cultural differences are the root of _every_ conflict.

-Too many sentences have this construction: He then did this. (Michael Connelly does this a lot and for me, the flow comes to a screeching halt every time, especially when it occurs in dialogue.)

I'll stop now. 

N


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

I hate when a book does something like this.
--

First paragraph: a well constructed series of sentences detailing a character, some action, and revealing something of interest (a body, a clue, strange news, a battle, etc).

Next two pages:
EXPOSITION.

David Dalglish


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

L.J. Sellers said:


> This could be a really long list, but I'll limit it to a blog I wrote on this subject.
> * Slow start with too much day-in-the-life detail or too much backstory
> * Protagonists who do stupid things (especially before I start to like them)
> * Stories that jump back and forth in time for no good reason
> ...


Wow! That's exactly my list! How did you do that? 

Mike


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

Mary-Sueism.

Introducing a pet just so it can be killed off in some horrible way. Come ON, we know what's going to happen to that cute kitty in your horror novel!

Couples who "meet cute" and then bicker while falling madly in love.

Brand names. I don't care where your protagonist shops or what labels are sewn on her possessions. Nor do I care what company made your hero's computer.  Unless your novel is set in the past, in which case I want to hear all about her Worth gowns because OOOH! Worth gowns! 

Showing that a minor character is stupid, lower-class, or has undesirable character traits by making them fat. (The stupid bigoted fat deputy, the hysterical fat lady next door.)

In real life, it is true, sometimes people pick their noses or pimples. That doesn't mean they need to do it in your book. I'm looking at YOU, Stephen King.

Using child molestation or abuse as a cheap shock element/lazy way to get sympathy for your screwed-up protagonist. 

Male authors who populate their novels with ugly and/or old but smart men, and a universe of jaw-droppingly hot young women who all find the old smart ugly guy unbelievably sexy. Boys, your fantasy life is showing! Tom Robbins and Mark Helprin are both big on this particular fixation. 

Sloppy prose, sloppy editing.


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## CNDudley (May 14, 2010)

Thalia the Muse said:


> Showing that a minor character is stupid, lower-class, or has undesirable character traits by making them fat. (The stupid bigoted fat deputy, the hysterical fat lady next door.)


Ha ha. Don't forget allergies or otherwise compromised immune systems. Vulnerabilities to illness as metaphor for weakness of character.

I was at a writer's conference and an agent threw out her pet peeves (she handled YA, for those of you who might submit to her--name escapes me...)

- children's book that opens with waking up (someone upthread hated this too). Though how many children's books END with falling asleep/going to bed! It was weird to read all those to my kids when we didn't happen to be going to bed.

- crying characters

- blushing characters

- dream scenes

Apart from the waking up opener, I recall being mortified because I actually did hit at least 50% of her list. All of which is to say, I think you're always going to annoy someone.


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## geoffthomas (Feb 27, 2009)

I find it terrible for an author (this is the subject of another thread) to include a lot of *unnecessary* four language in order to be "acceptable" to a particular reading audience. This is just as bad as writing a book so clean it is sterile when it should be gritty.
Write bad language only to make a point. Because you have talent to write without it. I once was in contact with a couple of airmen 3rd class who found it necessary to use the f word every third word out of their mouths. Now I cannot imagine writing a story that would be about them, so if they were included as necessary background in a story, it would be done, with dialogue, and then over. Not repeated and repeated and repeated.

I also dislike lengthy graphic sex, especially "sordid". I think a book about the relationship between two interesting adults could indeed have a lot of sex and even foul language in it. But I am not sure that I would like them enough to finish the book. I have read several books recently that were about an adult relationship and their attraction was deeply rooted in sexual fulfillment. So it was necessary to at least allude to what was going on. And if in real life, they express themselves to each other only at these times, then that is acceptable also. But many books seem to have put a thin plot together just so that the author can write about sexual relations and body parts. Save that for a sex manual.

I also find lengthy discussions of torture that are graphic and repeated to be in poor taste. You can easily say, our hero was pushed beyond his point of endurance by the acts of the bad guys. And if there is a real reason to be graphic, then go ahead and do so.
But again many books recently seem to be also thin plots so that the author can describe bestial acts by some upon others. That is not creative writing in my opinion. Two authors that I like a lot do too much of this: Terry Goodkind in his Sword of Truth series gets graphic this way over and over. And his work is pretty good, it does not need any of this to keep his readers interested. I have never felt that I could recommend his work because of it. The other author is Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series which once again are terrific stories well told and with very interesting premise (even if a little risque) but she carries the gritty too far too often. And it is not necessary.

Just sayin.....


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

I hate villains with no identifiable goal that makes sense, at least within the context of their immorality.

This is particularly a problem in fantasy ["I want to destroy all life! Everywhere!" Um - why? Give me a reason]. It's also a problem in some types of horror. Serial Killer Police Procedural sub-genre, I'm looking at _you_ here. "Well, my villain is just crazy." Yeah? Well, that's lame.

Unless you're writing about a rabid dog or about zombies or something, the villain should have an identifiable motivation.

My other big pet peeve is when an author builds up an impossible situation - and then has the protagonist escape that situation by extraordinary luck. Or when an author builds up a villain to be impossibly powerful - and then has the protagonist defeat them by some absurdly prosaic means like stabbing them with a pencil or something. Stephen King is probably the worst offender here, but lots of other authors do the same thing.


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## cherylktardif (Apr 21, 2010)

I only have two major pet peeves--poor editing and too much narrative.

Poor editing - I can handle the odd type here and there, but if there are typos every chapter (or God forbid, every page), then you've lost me as a reader. I once read a book where the characters' names changed midway through the book. I never finished it, which is rare for me. I've seen many Kindles with spacing issues and I realize that may be a result of converting to ebook format, so that doesn't bother me at all, but please, authors and editors, get the names right, the spelling write and everything else spelled rite. 

Too much narrative - I think this stems from all the dry narratives I read in high school. I want action, dialogue, and white space. My eyes need a break every now and then. So if there is page after page of boring narrative and endless description, no matter how much that writer may feel they just wrote the most beautiful prose, I'm going to scan it or skip it. 

Action and dialogue moves a book forward.


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## Carld (Dec 2, 2009)

I'm bothered by an author's personal point of view intruding into the story. Sometimes you can just feel the writer hanging up a big old banner saying "Here's what I think about this."


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Thalia the Muse said:


> ...Male authors who populate their novels with ugly and/or old but smart men, and a universe of jaw-droppingly hot young women who all find the old smart ugly guy unbelievably sexy. Boys, your fantasy life is showing! Tom Robbins and Mark Helprin are both big on this particular fixation....


That can irritate me, too. (And have you noticed how every 60-ish man in the Viagra/Cialis commercials has an attractive 40-something wife.  )

Looking at it from the male side, I find it curious how, even though the "common wisdom" is that men are more obsessed with sex and physical beauty in the opposite sex, many books I've read recently by women authors (which were not romances, strictly speaking) had the female protagonists spending a lot more time checking out all the men and fantasizing about them than I typically see in male characters by male authors. Maybe they were targeted toward female readers and that's what they want? All I know is I got really annoyed with both the obsession with the subject and the same thing you said above: every male character who was not some ugly stereotype had a cute butt, chiseled features, a full head of hair, eyes to get lost in, etc., etc....


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## Genaro Zamora (Jul 6, 2010)

a dragging story.......


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

When an authors write novels that "read like a movie."  If authors are seeing a movies in their head while they write a book, trying to get the film like ebb and flow and pace, then they should probably set aside the novel and write a film script instead.  

There have been novels were I can envision the author bouncing up and down in the chair and saying "This scene would look really cool with CGI on the screen."  Fast action and lots of dialogue may make a quick, fun read, but that kind of writing is a forgettable and jejune as fart in the bathroom.


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> I hate villains with no identifiable goal that makes sense, at least within the context of their immorality.
> 
> This is particularly a problem in fantasy ["I want to destroy all life! Everywhere!" Um - why? Give me a reason]. It's also a problem in some types of horror. Serial Killer Police Procedural sub-genre, I'm looking at _you_ here. "Well, my villain is just crazy." Yeah? Well, that's lame.
> 
> ...


This is a post after my own heart. Every character needs to be after something. I remember Michael Palmer talking about how some people are just bad, and though that may be true, they still want something with their badness.

I can get behind your other comment as well. As a writer, luck is something I don't have much patience for. I mean there's always luck in the sense of how things work out, but having that sudden miracle escape troubles me.

I also find anomalies highly suspicious. You know "in this one town in the backwoods of Alabama, the kids never grow older!" Why that town? Why not the whole world? Granted, my book features a character who is an anomaly, but being in some way deficient seems much more plausible to me than someone being extra gifted.


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## RJ Keller (Mar 9, 2009)

*Kel makes mental note to avoid this thread until after her new book is done. It's sapping her will to write!!!*


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

rjkeller said:


> *Kel makes mental note to avoid this thread until after her new book is done. It's sapping her will to write!!!*


Ha ha ha! I know what you mean. No matter what, someone will be annoyed by what you write. Just keep writing, and there will be people who love it. 

Vicki


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## RJ Keller (Mar 9, 2009)

Victorine said:


> Ha ha ha! I know what you mean. No matter what, someone will be annoyed by what you write. Just keep writing, and there will be people who love it.
> 
> Vicki


Don't I know it. One person's "I hate this" is another person's "give me more!"


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## CDChristian (Jun 4, 2010)

rjkeller said:


> *Kel makes mental note to avoid this thread until after her new book is done. It's sapping her will to write!!!*


  I couldn't help but laugh at that. The reasons were fascinating and yet I thought, "Yeah, I did that. I think I did that. I definitely did that!"


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## Guest (Jul 12, 2010)

rjkeller said:


> *Kel makes mental note to avoid this thread until after her new book is done. It's sapping her will to write!!!*


Haha definitely don't let this stop you from writing. I'd say most of it is all about context anyway. Though if it helps you think about what you appreciate and despise in your genre it might be helpful that way too!


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## graykane (Jul 11, 2010)

Wow. I agree with almost everything everyone posted. Let me just add (I hope I'm not repeating anyone's),

1. circumventing difficult plot developments by skipping over time: "One year later ..." (aka, jumping the shark);
2. a suspicious percentage of female characters who rely on male characters to take the lead in solving problems (unless the author is drawing attention to that as an issue to be resolved); and
3. female characters who are abnormally competent, as if it were their responsibility to make up for every weak female character in literary history!


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## Guest (Jul 13, 2010)

graykane said:


> 3. female characters who are abnormally competent, as if it were their responsibility to make up for every weak female character in literary history!


Hmm. This one struck me as curious. Do you have any examples in mind for it? I just wonder if I fall into it, because I have a female protagonist in my book who is pretty smart. I suppose there are plenty of airy females to compensate. Under what conditions is a female character meant to stand for her entire gender? Hmm.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> Hmm. This one struck me as curious. Do you have any examples in mind for it? I just wonder if I fall into it, because I have a female protagonist in my book who is pretty smart. I suppose there are plenty of airy females to compensate. Under what conditions is a female character meant to stand for her entire gender? Hmm.


I don't see your character like that at all... I see her as very smart. But not annoyingly so... like she's trying to make up for weak female characters.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

"And then a gun went off."
I don't know why that line irritates me, but it does.


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## Guest (Jul 13, 2010)

Victorine said:


> I don't see your character like that at all... I see her as very smart. But not annoyingly so... like she's trying to make up for weak female characters.


That's good, I would be a bit perturbed if all of a sudden people lambasted her with accusations of being a model representation of the female gender...because that's already reserved for Mrs. Dalloway, isn't it?



LauraB said:


> "And then a gun went off."
> I don't know why that line irritates me, but it does.


My guess is because of the indefinite article.


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## MinaVE (Apr 20, 2010)

Thalia the Muse said:


> Brand names. I don't care where your protagonist shops or what labels are sewn on her possessions. Nor do I care what company made your hero's computer. Unless your novel is set in the past, in which case I want to hear all about her Worth gowns because OOOH! Worth gowns!


This is what bothered me when I started reading Gossip Girl, which was the first YA I'd picked up in years. And then I noticed it in other books of the same genre. I was actually fine with a few brands for atmosphere, but now it's like product placement.

It's also ensures that the book will be dated in, like, six months, when whatever that cool thing was isn't cool anymore.


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

LauraB said:


> "And then a gun went off."
> I don't know why that line irritates me, but it does.


You mean something like this:

The wind blew and black sky outsized the picture window crackled with a lighting bolt befitting the ire of Zeus. The room plunged into sudden darkness as the lamps lost power. The guests murmured in surprise and confusion. The Duchess asked everyone to remain claim until the storm passed. And then a gun went off. Glass shattered. A body hit the floor with a thud. The maid screamed.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

Geemont said:


> You mean something like this:
> 
> The wind blew and black sky outsized the picture window crackled with a lighting bolt befitting the ire of Zeus. The room plunged into sudden darkness as the lamps lost power. The guests murmured in surprise and confusion. The Duchess asked everyone to remain claim until the storm passed. And then a gun went off. Glass shattered. A body hit the floor with a thud. The maid screamed.


HEY! You gotta ask permission to quote my work! Right folks??


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## D.A. Boulter (Jun 11, 2010)

Things I hate to see in a book?

Chewing gum.
Missing pages. [Hmm. I guess you can't really see missing pages.] Read a book once -- decades ago -- and found the last page had been ripped out.

The words: "Continued in book 4 of . . ." when I wasn't expecting a book 4.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Geemont said:


> You mean something like this:
> 
> The wind blew and black sky outsized the picture window crackled with a lighting bolt befitting the ire of Zeus. The room plunged into sudden darkness as the lamps lost power. The guests murmured in surprise and confusion. The Duchess asked everyone to remain claim until the storm passed. And then a gun went off. Glass shattered. A body hit the floor with a thud. The maid screamed.


It irritates me when it is used as a cliffhanger! At the end of chapters or, worse, the end of a book. It just feels cheap used in these ways. Although there are a couple of other things that bother me in what you quoted. What is it from?


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

LauraB said:


> It irritates me when it is used as a cliffhanger! At the end of chapters or, worse, the end of a book. It just feels cheap used in these ways. Although there are a couple of other things that bother me in what you quoted. What is it from?


It's a Kindleboards original.  I imagined a truly awful, cliché infested novel, then wrote a passage of it myself.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

> The wind blew. The room plunged into sudden darkness. The guests murmured in surprise and confusion.
> 
> Glass shattered. A body hit the floor with a thud.
> 
> The maid screamed.


I like it now.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Geemont said:


> It's a Kindleboards original.  I imagined a truly awful, cliché infested novel, then wrote a passage of it myself.


Ooohhh good, I was trying to be tactful, which isn't my strong point


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2010.htm


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## Groggy1 (Jun 21, 2010)

OK I get it!!

As an author one cannot have too much:
backstory
frontstory
foreshadowing
dialog 
description
attitude
sexism (or reverse sexism)
sex
cliches
time element - lost/gained/otherwise manipulated.
color charactors
time/space anomalies
colorful language
inappropriate language
inappropriate attitudes
graphic anything
fatism
crying 
dream
and blush sequences too...

Is that the start?  Cause so far


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2010.htm


Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That was SO funny. "Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil"

I love it. I'm gonna use the gerbil line in my next book.



Vicki


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Victorine said:


> Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That was SO funny. "Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil"
> 
> I love it. I'm gonna use the gerbil line in my next book.
> 
> ...


Um. . . . .you do understand it won for being the worst of the atrocious lines submitted, right?  

I love reading the bulwer-lytton entries. . . . . . they're truly horrible. . . . . . .


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Um. . . . .you do understand it won for being the worst of the atrocious lines submitted, right?
> 
> I love reading the bulwer-lytton entries. . . . . . they're truly horrible. . . . . . .


Oh, but it shows the fervor of the kiss so well!  What a brilliant author.

*snicker*

Vicki


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I bet she was inspired by the song "Muskrat Love". . . . . .


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## Armadon (Jun 26, 2010)

It always bugs me when a writer doesn't check facts. Nothing takes me out of a story faster than a character who walks up the front steps of a building that doesn't have steps in real life, or having the narrator describe six stages of sleep, when there are only four.

It's the same when I watch a movie. If someone tries to do a Boston accent, it's usually over for me.



Regards,

John


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## Genaro Zamora (Jul 6, 2010)

rjkeller said:


> *Kel makes mental note to avoid this thread until after her new book is done. It's sapping her will to write!!!*


almost anything on this thread will relate to an author one way or another.
But it shouldn't stop you from writing.
Not everyone will like everyones works. Either they like it, love it, or hate it. 
Just the way it is.


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## RJ Keller (Mar 9, 2009)

Oh, I know. I was just making a joke.


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## John Hamilton (May 6, 2010)

When an author stops to explain why a character is feeling the way he/she is feeling.  Just show us the reaction and get on with the story, please.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

A stylistic thing I've been noticing more and more the last few years and which can really annoy me is the overuse of what I'll call "sentence fragments," as I'm not sure what the technical term is. I'm referring to the use of an incomplete sentence. Like this. Or like this one. I have seen them used very effectively -- and very sparingly -- by some authors as a way to emphasize something by breaking up the rhythm of the text at that point. But some authors seem to throw them around on practically every page. I would much prefer that in many of these cases they be rewritten as complete sentences (or sometimes simply re-punctuated or have a conjunction added in order to be merged with the preceding or following sentence).


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Ditto on the _dues ex machina_ as well as "limp reasoning." My pet peeve is the sudden insertion of some life-altering discovery...with absolutely no build-up whatsoever. Even if it's not explicitly mentioned, whatever Incident X is, it should have affected some of the characters' behaviors, words, and attitudes. Just sayin'

Another pet peeve: the disappearance of decent dialogue. In romance books, you'll often see the characters suddenly fall all over each other, and for the remainder of the novel, everything is more or less about sex/sexual tension. Whatever happened to the quality conversation? It makes me think that the only brain that the person has is in his/her pants.

Okay, rant over.


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## MachineTrooper (Jun 22, 2010)

You're SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO lucky I don't have more time for this one!  

#7 from your list.

Straw man arguments.

Contrived situations/dialog/exposition...contrivances, in general.

Too-perfect protagonists.

Too-flawed protagonists.

Lapses in logic.

Inconsistent rules in the milleu of the story.

Too many made-up words in Fantasy.

Info dumps and too much technology description in ScFi.

Extrapolation of contemporary (PC) values/worldview into historic characters/cultures.

Predictability (either because the formula is overused, or because the aforementioned worldview tips the author's hand).

Flow-of-consciousness literary passages that ramble on for pages without advancing the story.

Structurally contrived cliffhangers.

"Non-stop thrill ride(s)!"

Plot devices.

Obligatory portrayal of right-wingers as racists (this goes for allegedly non-fiction material like the "news," too).

Viet Nam was all one large-scale Mai-Lai massacre.

Sloppy research.

Mysteries which are actually suspense.

Getting me to sympathize with a character, then revealing that he is the one who raped and murdered the victim and covered it all up.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> When reading, what tricks do authors throw at you that absolutely make you cringe? What are you tired of, bored with, or troubled over when it comes to books?
> 
> I've made a nice long list of things that make me roll my eyes and put on my grumpy face. Do we have any in common? What really grinds your gears?
> 
> ...


I think you pretty much summed it up for me. Killjoy Deathweaver=awesome! haha!


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## Genaro Zamora (Jul 6, 2010)

rjkeller said:


> Oh, I know. I was just making a joke.


ah okay cool, funny.


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

The Hooded Claw said:


> Characters who are too darned perfect. Either in terms of ethics and personality, or in some adventure books in particular where the skill set people have built up, often at quite a young age, is unbelievable.


This brought to mind the Clan of the Cave Bear series, where our heroine invented fire, the wheel, modern medicine and Freudian psychology.


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

NogDog said:


> A stylistic thing I've been noticing more and more the last few years and which can really annoy me is the overuse of what I'll call "sentence fragments," as I'm not sure what the technical term is. I'm referring to the use of an incomplete sentence. Like this. Or like this one. I have seen them used very effectively -- and very sparingly -- by some authors as a way to emphasize something by breaking up the rhythm of the text at that point. But some authors seem to throw them around on practically every page. I would much prefer that in many of these cases they be rewritten as complete sentences (or sometimes simply re-punctuated or have a conjunction added in order to be merged with the preceding or following sentence).


I definitely agree with this one. I read a book that contained about 98% sentence fragments. I understood that the author was trying to give the story a pace of abruptness, but it spoiled it for me. I kept removing periods, and adding commas in my mind, and noticed that the author truly had a gift for poetic language and rhythm, if she'd only just let the prose flow instead of constipating (is that a word?) it in every paragraph.


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## graykane (Jul 11, 2010)

Nell Gavin said:


> I definitely agree with this one. I read a book that contained about 98% sentence fragments. I understood that the author was trying to give the story a pace of abruptness, but it spoiled it for me. I kept removing periods, and adding commas in my mind, and noticed that the author truly had a gift for poetic language and rhythm, if she'd only just let the prose flow instead of constipating (is that a word?) it in every paragraph.


As a backlash to postmodernism, sentence structures in published works have become shorter since the 1980's -- the most overt case being Annie Proulx's _The Shipping News_ (1993), which uses at best three complete sentences, the rest being fragments. Although I enjoyed the novel's storyline and characters, the excessive fragments became a mere stylistic statement about literature as a whole, not strategic attempts to create a contextually relevant effect.

But fragments can produce a contextually relevant effect. And technically, sentences' starting with a conjunction like "and" or "but" are fragments.


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

graykane said:


> As a backlash to postmodernism, sentence structures in published works have become shorter since the 1980's -- the most overt case being Annie Proulx's _The Shipping News_ (1993), which uses at best three complete sentences, the rest being fragments. Although I enjoyed the novel's storyline and characters, the excessive fragments became a mere stylistic statement about literature as a whole, not strategic attempts to create a contextually relevant effect.
> 
> But fragments can produce a contextually relevant effect. And technically, sentences' starting with a conjunction like "and" or "but" are fragments.


So do you think we're headed that way, in general? I know that, as a writer, I have to keep in mind that the audience has an extremely short attention span. They tweet. They think in tweets. They write in tweets. They get impatient for the next tweet, and don't want to linger on this one. The challenge now is to create graceful language and rhythm using the least possible number of words. Charles Dickens - in fact any of the classic authors - wouldn't have a prayer today, with their pages and pages of description you might effectively encapsulate in a sentence if you're skilled, and you select exactly the right words. They wrote to an audience that had no TV, and whose evenings were spent in front of a fire, knitting and reading.

We now have to select every single word for the most impact, and cull everything that doesn't move the plot along. We're permitted no superfluous words, which brings us to the adverbs discussed in another thread. They may be on their way out.

You can condense and still be effective, but I balk at the incomplete sentences. I use them very infrequently, just on principle.


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## graykane (Jul 11, 2010)

Nell Gavin said:


> So do you think we're headed that way, in general? I know that, as a writer, I have to keep in mind that the audience has an extremely short attention span. They tweet. They think in tweets. They write in tweets. They get impatient for the next tweet, and don't want to linger on this one. The challenge now is to create graceful language and rhythm using the least possible number of words. Charles Dickens - in fact any of the classic authors - wouldn't have a prayer today, with their pages and pages of description you might effectively encapsulate in a sentence if you're skilled, and you select exactly the right words. They wrote to an audience that had no TV, and whose evenings were spent in front of a fire, knitting and reading.
> 
> We now have to select every single word for the most impact, and cull everything that doesn't move the plot along. We're permitted no superfluous words, which brings us to the adverbs discussed in another thread. They may be on their way out.
> 
> You can condense and still be effective, but I balk at the incomplete sentences. I use them very infrequently, just on principle.


Sort of. Although there's a visible overarching trend from complexity to simplicity, what actually happens from one decade to the next is more shaky than that. Ezra Pound and many other modernists incessantly attacked adjectives and adverbs as representing a bourgeois appeal to aristocratic values of excess. Then everyone started to write like Hemingway. Then the postmodernists rejected Hemingway and praised Faulkner (who wrote in obscurity, gaining fame only at the very end of his writing career during the start of early postmodernism). They then went off the deep end with their own excesses in the 1970's. The 1990's had a backlash to postmodernism that both publishing norms and digital templates like Twitter and Facebook eventually reinforced. Of course, with a new social-media outlet (like the ease of self-publishing through Kindle and Smashwords), that trend could change in an instant. We could face a new backlash. But the overarching trend from complexity to simplicity is clearly there.

And you're right. Maybe "simplicity" isn't the appropriate term. Maybe it's not "simplicity" so much as "effectiveness." We don't want to unnecessarily put a negative spin on this.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Nell Gavin said:


> So do you think we're headed that way, in general? I know that, as a writer, I have to keep in mind that the audience has an extremely short attention span. They tweet. They think in tweets. They write in tweets. They get impatient for the next tweet, and don't want to linger on this one. The challenge now is to create graceful language and rhythm using the least possible number of words. Charles Dickens - in fact any of the classic authors - wouldn't have a prayer today, with their pages and pages of description you might effectively encapsulate in a sentence if you're skilled, and you select exactly the right words. They wrote to an audience that had no TV, and whose evenings were spent in front of a fire, knitting and reading.
> 
> We now have to select every single word for the most impact, and cull everything that doesn't move the plot along. We're permitted no superfluous words, which brings us to the adverbs discussed in another thread. They may be on their way out.
> 
> You can condense and still be effective, but I balk at the incomplete sentences. I use them very infrequently, just on principle.


I'm not sure I'm convinced that your audience is necessarily going to be composed of chronic tweeters -- more likely the chronic tweeters are going to be tweeting rather than actually doing real reading.  All I know is that to me, using lots of sentence fragments is like using a lot of exclamation marks: in very small doses either can be effective, but when overdone I simply notice _them_ as opposed to the words and meaning, distracting me and detracting from the story-telling.


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## geoffthomas (Feb 27, 2009)

I agree with Nogdog.
I don't think good writing has changed.
And frankly I don't think it will.
What we write about has and will change.
And what we write on and read on will and has changed.

But a good story is a good story.

Just sayin.....


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## Danielleqlee (Jun 21, 2010)

A book loses my attention very quickly when the author goes into too much description about the landscape or three consecutive paragraphs on how the character or scenery looks. I love the pace of Dan Brown's novels, he stays focused on the story whereas some authors (I think) are trying to beef up their books by adding unimportant details. Description is good, of course, just in moderation.


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

Danielleqlee said:


> A book loses my attention very quickly when the author goes into too much description about the landscape or three consecutive paragraphs on how the character or scenery looks. I love the pace of Dan Brown's novels, he stays focused on the story whereas some authors (I think) are trying to beef up their books by adding unimportant details. Description is good, of course, just in moderation.


I think you're right. Think of anything by Dickens, and how much detail he went into about...anything. People are getting impatient with wordiness, more so now that everything is served to them in bytes. Publishers are demanding that novels be 100,000 words or less, so authors are getting squeezed into figuring out how to produce "good writing" with fewer words. Things are, by necessity, changing.


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Nell Gavin said:


> I think you're right. Think of anything by Dickens, and how much detail he went into about...anything. People are getting impatient with wordiness, more so now that everything is served to them in bytes. Publishers are demanding that novels be 100,000 words or less, so authors are getting squeezed into figuring out how to produce "good writing" with fewer words. Things are, by necessity, changing.


With that being said, there's a reason that the classics are still read today. I don't think that the short attention span is universal. In any case, it depends on whether or not the background serves a purpose. The translation for the incredibly long Chinese story "Dream of Red Mansions" has an insane amount of description and random details, but it's lauded because none of them are extraneous; they are all symbolic or foreshadow some later event somehow.

Basically, if it serves a purpose, then fine. If it really is useless, then it's..well..._useless_. Then there's the old adage "When in doubt, cut it out."


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## Guest (Jul 16, 2010)

Nell Gavin said:


> I think you're right. Think of anything by Dickens, and how much detail he went into about...anything. People are getting impatient with wordiness, more so now that everything is served to them in bytes. Publishers are demanding that novels be 100,000 words or less, so authors are getting squeezed into figuring out how to produce "good writing" with fewer words. Things are, by necessity, changing.


That sounds like the same rationale as the car companies that make sure the cars wear out after 100,000 miles. If people are reading the same book forever, they won't be buying any new ones!

I do love long books that I can nibble at over a long period of time. It's almost like they become a part of my life. Usually they are the classics...or a series.


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## David McAfee (Apr 15, 2010)

Danielleqlee said:


> A book loses my attention very quickly when the author goes into too much description about the landscape or three consecutive paragraphs on how the character or scenery looks. I love the pace of Dan Brown's novels, he stays focused on the story whereas some authors (I think) are trying to beef up their books by adding unimportant details. Description is good, of course, just in moderation.


This is one of the issues I have with LKH's books. I don't need to read three paragraphs about Anita Blake's outfit or some vampire's slacks. Just keeps bogging down the story, in my opinion.


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## Dawn McCullough White (Feb 24, 2010)

Writing in present tense.

(Yes, it just hit me at nearly 2am that I NEEDED to come in and resurrect this thread just to let everyone know how I felt about it.)

Dawn


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## Guest (Jul 21, 2010)

Dawn McCullough White said:


> Writing in present tense.
> 
> (Yes, it just hit me at nearly 2am that I NEEDED to come in and resurrect this thread just to let everyone know how I felt about it.)
> 
> Dawn


You're completely justified with this one. Remember when writing in the present tense was fashionable? Now it's just a bad memory, like when we all used to drink Smirnoff Ice.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> You're completely justified with this one. Remember when writing in the present tense was fashionable? Now it's just a bad memory, like when we all used to drink Smirnoff Ice.


I agree, present tense is terribly annoying.

And I never drank Smirnoff Ice... so does that make me beyond the times?



Vicki


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Something that occurred to me last night, mainly pertaining to the fantasy genre but by no means exclusively: the concept of the hereditary hero. Even though I enjoyed the Aragorn character as one classic example, the idea that someone is destined to be the savior and future ruler of some country, group, or whatever simply because of who his parents or ancestors were has (a) been overdone and (b) is in some ways repulsive to me to begin with. (I am not one of those people who is fascinated by royalty, and have never understood why people accept the idea that the ability to rule should be hereditary.*)

__________
* I know it's more complicated than that, but generally it's greatly simplified and at the same time made mystical in much fantasy.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

I agree with ya for the most part NogDog. I want to see characters endure/survive/win by their own strength. This kind of bleeds into my annoyance with Chosen Ones and Prophecies. Aragorn, while prophesied to retake the throne, still had many admirable traits. He -acted- Kingly. He struggled and bled and cared for lesser people. He spent years in the wilds, dirty and ugly and exhausted, protecting the land. I can dig him.

Now, say, _Aragon_...

Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is a good way to set up royalty as main players. The vast bulk of the POV characters are of a noble bloodline, princes, queens, daughters of kings, etc. In that world of his, however, that gives them importance due to claims to thrones and control of soldiers. It simply makes sense for them to be important. But none are all uber-amazing swordsman or whatever just because of their dad. (Some, however, do have severe psychological damage because of who their dad is, though )

David Dalglish


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

I agree that the born or prophecy decreed hero can be tedious and is certainly overused. But damned if it isn't an alluring and powerful trope. Especially for fantasy stories where education and training can vary so wildly (if the culture being represented is medieval based), how else can a guy become king if not A) born to a position where he can gain the necessary skills or B) aided by a prophecy that enables him to break through the class structure? Otherwise you essentially have the uncouth barbarian ruling the sophisticated urbanites, much like Conan, which is fine if you want to revel in primitive man versus "soft city dwellers", I suppose. I notice that sci-fi and contemporary stories avoid this scenario quite easily.

My literary pet peeves include character ensemble stories where they all harbor misunderstandings and secrets from each other that leads to pointless conflict, all of which could probably be resolved by a frank discussion over a round of beer. I also dislike factual errors that could be easily caught by even a superficial understanding of the subject matter. Things like safety levers on revolvers, junior officers initiating salutes to senior NCOs instead of the other way around, and doctors who can diagnose rare and co plex diseases based on non-specific and common symptoms. Probably just limited to my specific skill set though, and I'm sure we can all pick apart certain parts of any book (a woman would NEVER wear an orange shirt with a green sweater!) that the rest of us would be oblivious about.


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## Joel Arnold (May 3, 2010)

One pet peeve of mine is that so many writers always describe blood as having a 'coppery' taste or smell. Almost every time blood is found or about to be found, there's the smell of 'copper' in the air. While this certainly doesn't ruin a book for me, it does make me roll my eyes a little and wonder if there aren't more creative ways to talk about blood?

Joel


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## Noni (May 1, 2010)

Absolutely can't stand animal cruelty.


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## Double Booked (Jul 14, 2010)

I may have skimmed a bit, but did anyone mention when the book suddenly moves ahead several years right at the end. You get some kind of event that is supposed to tie it all together, but all the years in between - nothing happened. I find that really disappointing.


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## Guest (Jul 21, 2010)

NogDog, Double D, Jason, 

I too am completely repulsed by the hereditary hero idea. Actually, I have a great deal of trouble with any kind of king/price hero situation. To me it's all pretentious and contrived. Finding out that Aragorn was the lost king was never the part of Lord of the Rings that wowed me.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

I don't think it was supposed to be some big surprise or anything. Aragorn was filling a part of a tale very common to Medieval poems and literature: a lost knight or nobility returning to his splendor. But listen to him decide that regardless of the Ring, they must push on for the other hobbits, who they know are in danger, rather than the more 'important' people that may or may not be in danger. Or listen to the life he's described as a ranger, hated and feared by society while he keeps them in the dark about the creatures of Sauron that would scare them witless.

It wasn't like halfway through the book, Aragorn, having done nothing but sit around in his house picking his nose, was suddenly declared King and we're supposed to be wowed.

David Dalglish


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## Dawn McCullough White (Feb 24, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> You're completely justified with this one. Remember when writing in the present tense was fashionable? Now it's just a bad memory, like when we all used to drink Smirnoff Ice.


_What's Smirnoff Ice? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Dawn_


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## Guest (Jul 22, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> I don't think it was supposed to be some big surprise or anything. Aragorn was filling a part of a tale very common to Medieval poems and literature: a lost knight or nobility returning to his splendor. But listen to him decide that regardless of the Ring, they must push on for the other hobbits, who they know are in danger, rather than the more 'important' people that may or may not be in danger. Or listen to the life he's described as a ranger, hated and feared by society while he keeps them in the dark about the creatures of Sauron that would scare them witless.
> 
> It wasn't like halfway through the book, Aragorn, having done nothing but sit around in his house picking his nose, was suddenly declared King and we're supposed to be wowed.
> 
> David Dalglish


Just in case you were under the impression I thought him becoming king at the end was some kind of big twist ending, let me clarify that my reading comprehension skills are a little better than that, and I had a handle on it much earlier. Yeah, there's no doubt Tolkein had his mythology and folklore down, but I think it's a little different for people like us writing here today. It's just a model that I find hard to swallow.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Half-Orc said:


> I don't think it was supposed to be some big surprise or anything. Aragorn was filling a part of a tale very common to Medieval poems and literature: a lost knight or nobility returning to his splendor. But listen to him decide that regardless of the Ring, they must push on for the other hobbits, who they know are in danger, rather than the more 'important' people that may or may not be in danger. Or listen to the life he's described as a ranger, hated and feared by society while he keeps them in the dark about the creatures of Sauron that would scare them witless.
> 
> It wasn't like halfway through the book, Aragorn, having done nothing but sit around in his house picking his nose, was suddenly declared King and we're supposed to be wowed.
> 
> David Dalglish


Also, in LotR, Aragorn was for all practical purposes a different sub-species from the "normal" men he would come to rule, so there was some "reason" for it. And of course the nature of fantasy is that anything can be "true", including the ability to inherit mental, physical, and/or magical traits that make one more fit to rule. So _logically_ the hereditary ruler/savior/whatever can work, I just find it rather philosophically undesirable. Therefore, if you're going to use that mechanism, you better find a creative way to use it and write an otherwise darned good book if you want me to buy into it. Otherwise, instead of using it as a convenient way for your hero to become, well, the hero, why not try to be creative and find a way for someone without those magical genes to save the day? (And when you get right down to it, _that_ is what happens in LotR: some ordinary halflings without a drop of royal blood are the real heroes.)


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

I wasn't implying you had a malfunctioning brain, Mr. Cranked Awesome, nor that you thought it was a big twist. It seemed to me you meant that when it was revealed who Aragorn was supposed to be (which I believe was in Fellowship of the Ring, so again, not some twist ending) that you found it ill.

I'm not defending the "rule because I'm born special rawr" story-line. I'm just defending Aragorn. I'd like to make sure that distinction is clear  .

Besides, even if he wasn't some special bloodline or prophesied to become king, everything he does is pretty darn impressive -anyway-. That's why I like him. Him becoming King afterward is just icing on the cake.

David Dalglish


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## Guest (Jul 22, 2010)

Ok, crystal clear. Yeah, he's a great, strong character. Definitely heroic in his own right. And I'll definitely go along with you that saving the filthy hobbitses made a great display of that. The sort of race-based class hierarchy was a great component of Lord of the Rings. 

People also routinely love to trash Tolkein as a writer, but honestly I never found myself in a position where I didn't understand what was going on or felt detached from the story. He may not be Shakespeare, but he gets the job done.


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## jason10mm (Apr 7, 2009)

The hereditary hero (noble born, lost prince, etc) seems almost exclusively limited to medieval/pseudomedieval fantasy. I've read plenty of Roman, Egyptian, etc historical fiction where the hero "rises up from the ranks" or whatever, but it is rare in Tolkien inspired stuff. I think it is a function of the "save the kingdom" style plots where the endgame is to have the hero rule. Makes it much easier if he has a "legit" claim to the throne, I guess. Certainly stuff from Steven Erikson, Glen Cook, etc have little to no hereditary rule, but then they tend to focus on the grunt level action, leaving the "rulers" to be discussed in the abstract. And of course the Dragonlance saga, a very influential work from the 80's, had princes and princesses in secondary roles with the heroes rising mostly on grit and ability, though IIRC some of the main characters were noble raised at least. Hmmm, maybe we can chalk it up to lazy writing, because the more I think about it, the more "exceptions" I'm remembering


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