What ticks you off when reading a book/story? - Page 5 - Writers Forum

Impressario · 02-11-2008, 05:44 PM

When a story is predictable I can hardly finish it. It bugs me to know end when I know where we're headed.

Adjective Ocean · 02-11-2008, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Winchester

Ha ha. Love it. I haven't heard that saying in ages.

What really pisses me off about a novel? About sixty characters. I have a hard time remembering the main character's name, much less fifty-nine others. I also have no time for long-winded novels. 800-900 pages is my limit. I once tried to read Stephen King's 'The Stand' which is over 1800 pages long. The first part of it was okay, but after a while I just lost all interest.

I like novels that move along quickly. If you want to know who I think is currently the best author in the world, it's Jeffrey Deaver. His novels never disappoint. Another good author is Michael Connelly. Their work moves along almost at breakneck pace, and they are usually always filled with with double-whammy endings.

Yeah, name dropping pisses me off to. It's very difficult to remember 60 names of people who barely matter.

Mishki · 02-14-2008, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crow

Quotation coherency and disorienting point of views. I found the most recent culprit in McDevitt's 'Polaris.'

While it has a sound premise, too often I can't tell whose speaking or whose point of view I'm dealing with, and that takes away from the experience. It made me do something that I rarely ever do--stop halfway through and get another book. As an avid reader, I consider that a cardinal sin to do to a novel. Especially when you're a good ways through the book already.

Another annoyance is paragraph breaks. I don't mind long paragraphs. Actually, I prefer them to shorter, choppier Grisham-style ones, as long as they are fluid and culminate to a point. Tom Wolfe does an excellent job with his paragraphs, they almost read like poetry.

Word to the infinite power. The former is the reason that I can't read Neal Stephenson, try as I might. The latter used to bother me, but I've learned to look at how much white space is in a book before I pick it up. If there's too much of it, I never bother.

Tangent, it's a novel written by someone who has a master's in fine arts, like Matt said. I believe that the degree process erodes something in the writer--perhaps willingness to take risks? These novels read like an editor wrote them. The best analogy that I can make is music: you ever hear an album that's just produced to death? The later Jewel albums were, and was Neil Young's "Harvest Moon." They have no edge to them at all, no rawness. The writing is like that--it feels labored and strategic.

The Hooded One · 02-15-2008, 01:13 AM

I see alot of repetition in todays fantasy. Take Tad Williams "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" for example. It seemed to share alot of similarites with Gail Martins "The Summoner". Both in which I know are excellent books however the plot runs for the first few chapters almost parallel with one another.

- The Hooded One

lemonavenue · 02-15-2008, 01:15 AM

I hate it when an author introduces their main character by writing down their thoughts, word for word, in italics. Why didn't they just write this in first person? Heck, even first person would have been more sublte!

I have one book that used this method for exposition right at the beginning and never got to page ten. I couldn't stop thinking about how lazy it was.

flores · 02-17-2008, 03:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by howowiginal

It annoys me when authors use their characters to express their own opinions, especially if it serves no purpose to the story.

Unnecessary details are the most annoying. That's one of the reasons I couldn't finish Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

Really? That's interesting to me

I think a writer should be voicing their own opinions through their work. Sure, maybe not as obviously as some tend to do, but if they aren't going to SAY something, why are they writing? I love stories to have ridiculous opinions, or extreme views, or subject matter

I hate sex in books most of the time. I hate sex scenes in most movies as well. Most of the time it just seems out of place, awkward and uninteresting

I also hate over the top pointless usage of punctuation. The scholarly "zomg I'm a genius and can use a semicolon obnoxiously for 300 pages!" type really, really annoys me. I prefer very meat and potatoes stuff when it comes to grammar

dilkara · 03-17-2008, 09:47 AM

I dislike when an author reveals all their research. Jean M. Auel's series set in the period of early man. It's great that she researched for the book, but she seems to want to tell us everything that she found out. I have to skip pages of her listing all the plants and animals from that region.

I also dislike stilted unnatural dialogue.

Modest Me · 03-17-2008, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Impressario

When a story is predictable I can hardly finish it. It bugs me to know end when I know where we're headed.

i like to try and guess whats going to happen, and then see if im right or not..
i love being right (i am like 80% of the time)
but youve got something there, its always best when i dont see it coming

chimchimski · 03-17-2008, 03:31 PM

A predictable story has to be one of the worst annoyances for me...when I'm reading a novel and I begin to see where the story might be going I'll give it some time but, when I know that my suspision is right...I'll flip through to the end, read it, and donate it to one of the local libraries.

kjetterman · 03-19-2008, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClancyBoy

I remember The Mist. King used the word "acrid" a lot.

The thing that pisses me off the most is really transparent plotting. I know how 90% of stories are going to play out and end just based on the first chapter.

And yet the vast majority of creative writing classes and writing books tell you you have to write that way.

I have to agree with you here. What ways do you think transparent plotting can be avoided?

mi is happy · 03-19-2008, 03:37 PM

I hate it when I buy an entire series which ends up to just disappoint in the end. I especially hate flat unrealistic villains. (Example: "Mwahaha!" laughed King Dragonia as he twirled his mustache. "I'm going to kill countless people and burn down their little village house, because I can. I'm so evil! Hahaha!") Ugh. I also hate it when authors try to force their views to much on you. I hate boring climaxes. I hate points that could have been great, but were either ended to early or just forgotten. I hate it when authors foreshadow something that never happens. I hate it when the main villain has a badly written death. Harry Potter 7 is a grand example. A back-fired wand? How stupid! Also it was unrealistic. If Harry had any emotions in him, he would have killed Voldemort the good old fashioned way. (Avada Kadavra)
I hate it when they kill a character and they come back to life. I hate it when......

PageOfCups · 03-20-2008, 08:09 AM

Main characters that are just far too nice or that have a hero complex. Like Harry Potter. I actually whooped when he died then violently swore when he came back to life. That book would have had a much more interesting ending if he had stayed dead and someone else killed Voldemort.

the_poison125 · 03-20-2008, 10:15 AM

I hate when one conversation goes for a whole chapter. I usualy skip it and pray nothing to important happend.

Freedom Is Not Free · 03-20-2008, 04:23 PM

I can't stand cookie cutter characters. The type of character you can throw into any other story and realize that they are the same thing. I've noticed quiet a few authors out there that repeat character types in their books to the point where its basically the same story, but just in a different place with different names. A good example of this is Lauren Weisberger. Her characters from "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Everything Worth Knowing" were exactly the same. A good, down to earth girl thrown into the crazy high end industry and loosing themselves only to have a close old friend bring them back to themselves with some big happening. The two characters could have been completely interchangeable and not have really changed anything. I was highly disappointed reading her second novel and find these same flaws.

Another thing is when a story starts off great and then just kind of drifts off at the end. Almost like the author got bored by the end and was forcing themselves to finish things. If they can't get into their own story, how are they going to expect anyone else to?

Transparent plots is another. In college, my writing teacher once told me that when writing you should offer a lot to your readers so they don't get confused. I knew by this she meant a lot of input into the main character, but not the plot. But it seems to me that this point is sometimes lost on others that lay all their cards out on the table.

Back Plotting. I hate this. When the first paragraph, chapter, sentence, whatever, tells you what's going to happen point blank, and the rest of the story leads up to it. Sometimes this is good, such as in the movie Moulin Rouge when you know from the beginning that a certain character is going to die. But this is, in my opinion, is a hard trick to get a hold of. It can either work very well, or bomb. And most of the times I've seen it, it bombs. I can't bring myself to read a story when I already know what's going to happen at the end. That's kind of the point of reading a story is to follow it from beginning to end.

Useless characters also bother me. I can understand a story having a lot of characters if they have a point to the plot. But needing to stop and talk to the neighbors brother that has nothing at all to do with the story and ends right after their short conversation, so annoying.

Long tangents. I once read a story where they used 4 pages to describe breathing, and another five to describe eating cheese. By the end of the novel I wanted to cry from boredom.

There's more...but I'm running out of time. I like reading anything, but I am picky about the novels I read.

PageOfCups · 04-27-2008, 09:20 AM

Just remembered another pet peeve. Main characters that everyone wants to bed. Like Anita Blake. There is no need to have the majority of the other characters atracted to her. It just reminds me of the Mary Sue characters that crop up in badly written fanfiction.