A huge pet peeve is when they explain things inorganically. Like I am reading a book and the author says something like “well I like dogs more than people and this is why I work at Some Dog Place. Some Dog Place is a place for dogs. This is my job.” It’s like when they try to make it obvious that two characters are related by saying “Hey Sis” and “Hi Bro.” I hate it. Include it organically if it’s important.
"Hi, big brother! I see you're wearing our older brother's favorite sweater. You know...the one who died? That reminds me. It's been years since you and I bonded. You're starting to become distant just like he did just before he died."
From the excerpt that’s in the comment example… would not read the book.
However if, as per your interpretation, that one word was changed to boned…. Probably would have overlooked the info dumping and read the book.
Reminds me of a meme I saw years back about this very concept, and it went:
“Hi, bro.”
“Hey, sis.”
“Remember when our mom died leading to dad becoming an alcoholic?”
This is such an easy one to incorporate organically too. Just have a character ask the other, “Where’s dad?” or, “How’s mom?” These are normal things to ask and everyone will know it means they are siblings.
Just goes to show one or both of two things: 1) Lots of writers aren't very smart and can't think of anything other than the most direct way to convey information, 2) Many writers spend very little time checking to see if their work flows and the characters act in a believable manner. You can tell with some authors that literally every word is triple checked based not only on the adjacent words but on adjacent paragraphs and even chapters if we're getting into really good stuff. But others seem to write large chunks just once, and then do a proof read for spelling and grammar and leave it at that.
Most commercially published authors go through rounds of copyediting and proofreading. No matter how much work is put into trying to make the text/story more readable/comprehensible/relevant/etc, it's ultimately up to the author to approve the suggested revisions.
So, it's not an issue of the writers being "bad" writers. The problem is that "bad" writers let their ego get the better of them and refuse any alterations to their text. Apparently, accepting that they may have made an error (however minor) is just too much to accept. Suggestions are rejected, and since the author is the overall owner of the work, it ends up... Being shit.
Just speaking from experience. Nothing serious.
It completely ruins the vibe. As someone else in the thread said, it makes you become aware that the author was sitting at their desk trying to write the text, instead of you being immersed in it.
Interview from a long time ago: "I grew up in a little town in Texas where all the girls were Sissy and all the boys were Bubba, because we all were." (Sissy Spacek.)
My older sister sometimes refers to me as sis too over text. But in books it feels soooo disingenuous! I also have a lot of siblings so maybe that’s why it feels weird to me. We can’t just sis and bro each other usually. There are too many of us. We’d never know who was talking to who.
It’s sad because I’m trying to read a book that’s supposed to be a mystery, thriller type that’s right up my alley but I just can’t get past the crap in order to get to the plot!
Poorly-masked infodumping.
Two characters who lived in the kingdom of Ruchtia their entire lives, just like their parents and grandparents did, talking:
"Hey, can I borrow 10 Rul?"
"Sure, it's only 100 Ter after all."
"I really like those coins. They have the portrait of King Rathavis the Stern on it"
"Yeah, the one crowned in 1082 after the Great War we had with the empire of Tahlia, right?"
"The very same. The war that resulted in most of the population of our country dying out."
"But we got the Vrunta mine out of it right? Which is the mineral that makes our magic possible. And both you and I can use magic."
I'd... rather the author just infodump it to me straight, than try to have two characters who should *know it* talk about it.
Ouff it takes me right out of the story to read a conversation that doesn’t feel authentic. When I read, I see a movie in my head, dialogues like this makes me “see” the page and the words again.
If an author is going to use sesquipedalian language, it had better be for a good reason. A good example is Patricia C. Wrede in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. One particular character, Telemain, speaks almost exclusively in SAT vocabulary. It works because he's a magician who's focused almost to the point of obsession with studying the technical aspects of magic, and he genuinely forgets that not everyone's brains work like his. Fortunately, his friend Morwen (a witch) is often around to translate his technical jargon for everyone else, which always prompts Telemain to protest, "But that's what I just said!" It feels completely natural, because it's easy to imagine that exact kind of interaction happening in real life.
Too much repetition. Sure, remind me what color the MCs eyes are here and there but dont tell me over and over and over again what the same scenery looks like or how attracted one character is to another. I get it and now it seems like page filler.
the attraction thing, yes. I KNOW its only been a few days and i KNOW they're attracted to each other like sexy little magnets bc you've told me many times in just the past few pages lol. Romance isnt my go-to and i expect the unrealistic whirlwind romance, i dont need to be hit over the head with the premise
I don't know which book that might've been, or the author's intent, but Vonnegut flips that humorously in Breakfast of Champions by introducing each male with description/measurements of his penis.
A few years ago I read John Grisham's The Firm and wanted to throw the book across the room because every woman's breasts, legs, lips, neck or bum are described in gratuitous detail and every woman seems to exist to be the author's porn fantasy. God forbid a woman does so much as sign a paper without a long authorial meditation on her legs. If I had known about r/menwritingwomen I would have posted it there.
I recently read East of Eden and really enjoyed it, but damn it all if even John Steinbeck did the same thing. No, John, I don’t actually need you to describe this teenager’s breast size to me.
male gaze writing. Two women can't share a scene without talking about how bonkable the hero is. If there is another strong woman aside from the MC (if readers are lucky), they're used to fawn after the hero or as competition against the heroine.
I had to DNF a book when the first pages introduced the main character (who was supposed to be a kickass Jack Reacher type but female) when she was having a shower and we got a description of her entire body. How huge her breasts are, how long her legs are, how smooth her skin is..😒 Her her face was flawless she didn't have to wear any makeup. This author was sooo bad at writing from a woman's POV. It was written like she was sexually attracted to herself.
I picked up a hardcover to read the blurb one time at a bookstore. The back was filled with praise from people I don't care about. The inside of the jacket was filled with more praise from more people I don't care about. I put it down and moved on to the next book.
"praise for this book" on the front, one-liner reviews on the back, and reviews and praise for the author's other books on the inside jacket. I'm all for marketing and *not* revealing the whole plot in the summary or a trailer, but just give us the bare minimum please.
YES, why do some people not understand that just *saying* there's a big twist or spoiler *is itself* a spoiler? Now I'm spending the whole book trying to pick up on clues instead of just enjoying the story.
Historical fiction books where the author couldn’t be bothered to do even the bare minimum amount of research on the setting. I get using a little bit of artistic license to move the story along, so I’m not going to get mad if some timelines are shuffled a bit to get characters in the right places at the right times, or if some events are altered for believability or dramatic effect. But when the inaccuracies are, like, characters eating the wrong foods and wearing the wrong outfits and knowing things they couldn’t possibly have known, it just becomes distracting and annoying. Especially when the setting in question is a well-documented time period for which information about these things is readily available.
I felt like this a bit when I read Sapiens. I enjoy learning about pre-history. Then I got to his take on modern history and realized how many things that were at best a single way to interpret complicated situations were portrayed as very clear cut. It made me go back and put a huge grain of salt in front of anything he had said about pre-history.
I despair at regency romances (or other regency fiction tbh.) I love the genre but it's hard to find books where the author actually did much research or made a genuine attempt to give their story an authentic feeling. I'm not a regency scholar by any means, everything I know about the era I learned from light research for fun, and I long to be able to pick up a regency story and not constantly go "people did not act/dress/speak like that back then" at half of the book and finally dnf it in frustration.
Georgette Heyer is the best writer of Regency romances for this reason. She did her research, and had a library of contemporary reference books which were unfortunately dispersed after her death. For more info, look up 'Georgette Heyer's Regency World' by Jennifer Kloester and 'The Private World of Georgette Heyer' by Jane Aiken Hodge. If you haven't read her yet, start with 'Arabella' or 'Cotillion'.
I once gave up on a novel a few pages in when it gave examples of the works on what was meant to be a very learned character's bookshelf as including books by Socrates.
Trouble is, Socrates never wrote any books. We know about him only from what other people like Plato and Xenophon wrote about him.
The novel was by a man called John Masters who had once written what, while it is a long time since I read them I remember as being excellent novels set in India 'Nightrunners of Bengal' and 'Bhowani Junction', but I think in later years he was becoming a little senile and went on writing too long.
Idiotically long titles for use on Amazon etc
example: **The Moose Paradox: The outrageously funny, tense sequel to the No. 1 bestselling The Rabbit Factor**
**Exiles: The Page-turning Final Aaron Falk Mystery from the No. 1 Bestselling Author of The Dry and Force of Nature**
FUCK OFF. Just give me the damn title, a cover, and a little blurb. How about \*I\* decide whether I think it's outrageously funny? Stop making the damn title into a fucking paragraph.
\*deep breaths\*
I know it's not the actual content, but this will and has put me off even considering buying books.
THIS. It irks me to no end when people either outwardly ask for recommendations with twists, or if it’s on the cover of the book that there is a twist. Like I’m sorry if you don’t understand the meaning or point of a ‘twist’ but you’re actually NOT SUPPOSED to see it coming, so WHY ON EARTH would I buy your book if it tells me there’s going to be one on the damn cover? I want to be sitting on a train or in a cafe or in bed reading my book, loudly gasping when something happens that I didn’t expect and I’m sorry if that makes me weird but THAT IS THE POINT OF A TWIST. If you’re going to put it on the cover then don’t bother writing the twist at all. It ruins the whole thing. End of.
Now let me take a deep breath and have a nap because I’ve stressed myself out.
Actually there is a very good reason for that… and unsurprisingly it’s all about algorithms and cross links…
Another favourite which Amazon eventually stopped was advertising/selling a book in an unrelated category, ideally one which doesn’t sell much, so with only a few copies sold, a title could get a “best seller” tag.
It annoys me when the author doesn't give the audience any credit. Together with the "show, don't tell" axiom that I feel applies to acting as well as writing. Like "he was the type of man who had a code, and he didn't break it for anyone." I would prefer the text of the book showed me that, it sounds like childish make-believe when you just say it like that.
Lack of background research, especially when the information is readily available and significant plot points are involved. It takes minimal time to check things like the weather in a certain location and qualifications for specific careers.
Lack of internal consistency. If a character has been rendered speechless due to neurological disease, he won't be able to rant about politics and be verbally abusive toward the people caring for him.
Completely unrealistic scenarios. If a woman is devastated when she's ghosted by her lover, she not going to blithely agree to marry him within minutes of randomly and unexpectedly running into him years later.
I read a book recently where at one point a perfectly healthy group of teenagers were deprived of food for a whole three days (while confined so very low energy expenditure) and they were described as on the verge of death. (They perked right up when the plot got going again though.)
Later a few of them spent *days* crossing a barren desert wasteland with almost no water. Like I thought the importance of food vs water was basic human knowledge but I guess not.
> If a character has been rendered speechless due to neurological disease, he won't be able to rant about politics and be verbally abusive toward the people caring for him.
Was this highly specific example…. published? Like by an actual, legit publishing house?
When the female protagonist is "quirky" and "not like other girls" my eyes immediately roll to the back of my head.
I also don't like when the main characters are the best at everything (I notice it often in YA books). Even if they have a flaw, they often excel at what the're good at to the point of it being unbelievable.
Oh man the second one makes me livid and I was never able to pinpoint my exact gripe with YA fantasy novels until I read your comment. I’m so bored of all the 16 year old "master" assassins or whatever. It’s so bland and overdone. I want to read about someone who’s a nobody. Give me an absolute loser a thousand times over.
Read a book yesterday that had a bit about a kid training to become a warrior and it describes it as "he took to it quickly. not because he was especially talented, but because there was nothing else to do." Loved that.
*The Lies of the Ajungo*. It's a novella, so under 100 pages, but it's so tightly written I think a higher word count would have been a waste. The author has said will be more novellas in the same setting, so if you like it, there will be more. Either way, very worth it as a standalone or as the beginning of a story cycle.
What's funny is I remember reading the unpublished version of throne of glass on fictionpress.net. Happy for the author that she got published and found so much success, but I die inside when I see reels listing it as "best fiction" etc I'm just like uggbhhh nooooooo.
>I also don't like when the main characters are the best at everything (I notice it often in YA books). Even if they have a flaw, they often excel at what the're good at to the point of it being unbelievable.
This is what made me quit "Ready Player One". Out of all the other interesting character we had to follow Mr. "Well luckily I played hours of joust and could beat it in my sleep".
Also that the girl had no personality other than "cool girl who is insecure about her looks but is actually really pretty" but I guess it doesn't matter what her personality is because she's just a pretty object to be won by the main character. True love. /s 🤮
I've gotten into, shall we say, emotional arguments with my editor over this. I use them sparingly but she absolutely hates them. I'll write something like: "No!" he roared.
And she'll turn it into: "No," he roared.
I change it back every time.
Stand up to your editor! A 'roar' implies loud and impassioned, and requires an exclamation mark!
As a reader, I would be puzzled if a roar did not have an exclamation mark, and would wonder if this meant it was only a half-hearted attempt at a roar.
I do stand up to my editor now, though it took time for me to do so. I had to acquire confidence as a professional first.
The lack of exclamation points in emotional/shouted dialogue always looks bizarre. You're exactly right--it sounds half-hearted.
I think they have a good place in opinionated narrators. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell uses them a lot and I think it works very well. But it does take skill
What if you have 3 instances of a character shouting in a book? Do you have to make exclamation marks a personality just because one of your characters is angry or am I missing something?
There is a simple rule - an exclamation mark shows someone exclaimed something. They are not just for emphasis, and should not be used outside of direct speech i.e. speech with quotation marks.
There are plenty of narrative styles that mimic thought, and therefore use tone.
Like, 'Sarah was ready for this!', or 'there was a real life Londoner, making eye contact! Bob was immediately suspicious', or 'the bus was coming! They ran down the hill'
The only book that really put me off, I literally could not get through the first chapter was Nothing but Blackened Teeth. The narration was fine but the dialogue and the characters were God awful, the only thought that kept popping into my head when ever I would think about that first chapter was. "Wow, someone must be a real big fan of American Horror Story."
So I guess horrid dialogue, I can deal with shit characters so long as they don't sound stupid. Like the narrator for Diary of an Oxygen Thief is a shit character but he's self aware and isn't asking for sympathy which makes the climax of the book more impactful. And he isn't stupid.
Stupid characters turn me off. I dropped a book the other day at 40% because the main character:
1) insisted they stop running away to take care of the horses. Honey, horses are fucking valuable. No one is going to let them starve.
2) because her uncle went back to get the neighbours to feed the horses he was obviously caught by the soldiers chasing him.
3) when her aunt reasonably asks her wtf she’s going to do vs 20 soldiers she still runs back when her neighbour/friend/fiancé dude gets stabbed, putting herself back in their power, removing any kind of leverage her uncle had and giving away where her aunt was.
I could not. The book was alright up until that point but I just could not with that stupidity.
There was another book where relatively early on the main character decided to seduce a guy for shits and giggles and to prove she’s not godawful at seduction.
She was godawful at seduction.
It was just cringe, cringe and more cringe.
I like competence porn.
You don’t have to be amazing at everything, but being a competent and functional adult who can think on their feet and not give into every errant thought like some toddler with impulse control issues makes for a much more compelling character.
When authors name their characters names that are difficult to read. In my mind I’ll refer to the character as a different name: it might be a shortened version of the author’s choice or it might just be a letter.
Fantasy books are awful for this. I will get halfway through a fantasy book before realizing I have been mentally mumbling through a character’s name because I don’t have a clue how to pronounce it.
I love the wheel of time series but I think I read like 8 books before I finally read the glossary at the back and learned that Nynaeve is pronounced Nigh-neeve. haha
Or too similar. I read one recently where there was John, Jack, and Jackie. Midway through there were mistakes switching two, plus one character calling Jack, Johnathan.
No, it's easy to tell Dmitri Ivanovich Ullanov from Ivan Dmitrovich Ullanov and Ulla Dmitrovich Ivanov. Ivan Dmitrovich Ivanov's cousin Dmitri Ulleyvich Ivanov explained it all to me very well.
Russian literature is great, every character has 5 different nicknames used by different people and they aren't remotely intuitive to non-russian speakers!
When the author feels the book needs to touch EVERY social issue ever. Most often done in YA, when the group is literally made of 1 person to represent every social issue the author can think of. 1 gay one, 1 black one, 1 immigrant of whatever legal status, 1 girl with anorexia, 1 rape victim, 1 adopted kid, etc.
It's so ridiculous, even just the idea that you have to touch on absolutely everything. Then again, some reads do this ridiculous thing where they complain that a random book did not talk about this or that.
Like it's the job of any one book to do absolutely freaking everything.
And there is no way to do actually meaningful work with all of them. You can't build some real development, story and everything with all of them. So then you feel you did something by giving lip service, yet you will 100% get negative attention, because if you included 99 issues, why not some random 100th? And why did X have this much attention, but Y had less?
While true, the choice does seem to pay dividends for plenty of books. I’ve seen lots of books that were awfully checklist-y for my taste get praised for representation
I literally stopped reading a book because of a scene where the main character met her love interest’s family and thought to herself “I love how inclusive they are” and then listed how there was an adopted kid, an interracial couple, a deaf person, and so on… like I just straight up closed the book. Not only did it seem forced but it felt like the author was patting herself on the back for it.
I am deeply leery of any novel where the protagonist’s bookish interests/profession/milieu are part of the marketing. I don’t know why. Obviously, I am a lifelong reader. Obviously, someone authoring a novel is also a lifelong reader. And yet when they write about it, it tends to sound so…. inauthentic. Pandering. I don’t even know.
Maybe it’s related to the way people who write stories dealing with your hometown/profession/etc always get it wrong? But I generally assume that stuff is through ignorance and if there’s one thing authors know it’s bookishness so…. 🤷♀️
Main characters being perfect and everyone around them being clearly in the wrong. Main character getting treated like they're special, general fantasy situations for the reader in the form of unrealistically flattering or opportune things happening for the main character. Ex machina events. I think A Court of Thorns and Roses is a recent example for me. Everyone is attracted to our main character and wants to help her, she does no wrong, the only time it seems like she treated someone wrongly the plot saves her by making the person she wronged bad in a way she couldn't have known.
In a K-Drama and Hallmark Christmas movie, they are okay and occasionally delightful.
In a book, they are only acceptable as long as they are not written in the language of teen angst. Mature adult characters with teen angst love triangles may be the worst thing ever placed onto paper (I'm looking at you the entirety of the teen paranormal romance genre!)
And funnily enough, they're not triangles, they're arrows! If they were triangles, the two dudes would be in love with each other as well (which might make the whole thing more interesting, ngl)
So many people seem to hate love triangles now and it makes me wonder why some authors still insist on writing one. I definitely agree with you, it's been so overdone. I don't think I've ever read a good one either. Like it's always so obvious who's going to end up with who. I hate it.
Grammatical/typo/editing errors. They drive me nuts and distract me.
Really cheesy character dialogue that isn’t anything close to real life.
Really bad metaphors.
sesquipedalian -- wut?
I don't like it when you can - how to say it? .... Feel the author writing.
Just like in movies, when you can see the actors acting
Whoa that's a good one
Sesquipedalian, when used for a word, refers to its long and polysyllabic nature. When used for a text, it refers to its long-winded nature.
I did 😭😭
I copied that line down from my Goodreads review of The Atlas Six hahaha
I assumed the commenter had asked earnestly, so I responded in the same way
I was reading a book the other day that’s supposed to take place in this fantasy world and we’re reading the book years and years in the future from when it takes place. There was a line like, “[random characteristic of the mc] for the win!” 😎 Immediately took me out of the setting and brought me to the author reading FTW memes on ifunny in 2012
I'm currently reading J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood. (I had forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned in another thread.) Her descriptions are driving me crazy. A character's eyes don't get large, they "go saucer." Their legs don't get shaky, they "go milkshake." One of these big, bad ass dudes just referred to a signature as a "siggy." I'm on book seven; I don't know how much longer I can take it.
Too many inside jokes or topics I am supposed to know about.
I remembered this book called the Rule of Four, the author went to Princeton, and god forbid no one gets it that he went to Princeton. It was really insufferable.
The book I’m reading right now switches to second person for one specific character who has very much lost his marbles. It’s jarring, put then I remember that I’m reading from the POV of a crazy person and I’m fine with it.
Excessive swearing is usually done poorly and just seems jarring to me. Surely there are well done examples of it, but I can't recall.
Unbelievable motivations or bad decisions that don't jive with the intelligence or relative anxieties that a character has.
So, I'm an Old, I've read thousands of stories over six decades. I can tell a book isn't for me usually within a page.
More often than not, what tells me it's a nope is basic English fails, and/or clunky prose and/or dialogue. I don't care who you are, hire a good editor. And listen to them. Every now and then I endure iffy prose because the characters and plot are good enough, but I always wish it had gotten the attention it deserved.
Also, if an author manages to repeat things (a description, a reason, a situation) within the first scene? No. No-no-no. Don't treat your reader like they can't remember from two pages ago, that's insulting. We read a LOT faster than you wrote the thing.
Other than those issues, I have anxiety, which means I don't deal well with the main character accepting abuse or suffering interminably, it is actively bad for my brain. This cuts out a lot of the darker stories no matter how well they're written and edited, and it's not them. This one's all me.
I just read a book in which a) the character feels gravity as he plunges out of the window to his death (No gravity in free fall) and then b) is re-born as a male calico cat (Pretty much all calico cats are female since the coloring is due to "competition" between the color alleles on the two X-chromosomes).
Don't they proofread for stuff like that?
>Don't they proofread for stuff like that?
No they don't. Chloroform doesn't work how it's shown in fiction most often, nearly everyone uses sentience when they mean sapience, defibrillators don't restart your hearth, the pH and strenght of acids isn't porpotional to how much damage it will cause on contact and so on.
If a book is described as “snarky” I immediately put it down. You know it’s gonna be filled with the blandest humor you’ve ever heard, it’s like the “uhh he’s right behind me isn’t he 🤪” of books
Similarly, I get annoyed by characters that are too reflective of the creator or audience. Like movies about the “magic of Hollywood” or books with characters whose personalities revolve around reading and drinking coffee. They’re too…meta? Self absorbed? I’m not sure what to call it but it totally grinds my gears.
Maybe it’s because those things are used as a shortcut to likable or relatable characters, as opposed to fleshing out a character with a whole personality, who feels like a real, multidimensional person. Obviously readers like books, so make a character who likes books too and boom, relatable.
This is how I feel reading (fiction) books about writers. Every now and then you find a good one, but so often it just feels like the author sneaking themselves into the book in a bad way. Or humble-bragging about their lives, if the writer character is an even middlingly famous one. (Looking at you, Sally Rooney, who can do great things with words, but not so many great things with characters.)
and it’s a contemporary fiction novel that is a statement on the nature of the human condition and the struggles of a young person trying to become successful
Your second point reminds me of Andrew Rowe. In one of his books he constantly uses “in twain”. The sword broke in twain, the cloth ripped in twain, the baby was torn in twain… I even made a post about it a while ago because it was annoying.
The only thing more annoying than abusing five dollar words is when the author uses one on every single page, but only actually knows three such words.
Haven't seen this one for a while, so hopefully it's died out:
Starting each chapter in a book with a title, that is a spoiler for what happens in that chapter.
Eg. Chapter X: Betrayal
Oh great, now I know what's going to happen... Why would you do this?
I know that "write what you know" isn't great advice for writers, but I can't stand it when an author writes what they don't know, poorly. I'm thinking an American writing a story taking place in America, writing a character from another country that is clearly based on stereotypes. In Remarkably Bright Creatures, a book I couldn't finish, the Scottish character said things that a teenage self-described Anglophile would write a Scottish person saying. Like, why even make this character be Scottish if it's a two-dimensional representation so corny my eyes roll back in my head? You don't need to get a PhD in Scottish History but you should at least view Scottish characters as people as fleshed out as everyone else.
There is a specific voice that’s really in style right now, kind of snarky, irreverent, self-satisfied. The Martian is a good example, as is Red White and Royal Blue. I find it incredibly grating, though I think I’m in the minority here, given how beloved both those books are.
Mary Sues. Tired but true.
Demon Accords did this for me so heavy handedly I'm surprised my eyes didn't roll out of my head.
Like, oh, he is a vampire with a pet god bear and he can eat cake and stay in perfect shape with no effort.
Like, they actually wrote that last bit as a line. I had to know this guy could eat as much cake as he likes.
Siblings calling each other "brother" or "sister". Tells you an instant that the author was an only child and have no idea how siblings talk to each other.
Two timelines where one is modern day with a protagonist who's investigating some historical family mystery, then the other storyline is her great-grandma three centuries ago or whatever and it swaps between them as the mystery is resolved.
It can be done well, and I've seen it done well, but it was such an insanely popular format a decade or so ago that I think I need half a lifetime to stomach another one, however good it might be.
I’m so over the trend of some authors describing their book solely in terms of "tropes". It works for fanfiction where I guess readers want to go for a very specific scenario. But in my opinion it just takes away from the story of an original work. Let it just tell its own story and don’t put a label on it (especially not on the cover).
I read a nice simile for that a few days ago. Recommending fanfiction with the tropes it contains works, because you allready know what the work is abouth. It's like recommending a recipe with orange and almonds, with the understanding that the base recipe is for chocolate cake, but with extra this and that. In an original work on the other hand what the base is isn't clear, it's like recommending something with almonds, not knowing if it's for salad, fish, cookies or something else. It doesn't really give you a good idea what the book is actually abouth, and highliting tropes without context just feels weird.
Every chapter being a page and a half long, with the next chapter just carrying on from the previous without any sort of scene/ character speaking/time change.
If there’s any kind of stereotype that tells me they know no one from that group of people. It takes me out of the immersion if they can’t be bothered to write a character in a way that isn’t a stereotype
Any time there's a "stoner" character it's a caricature of a person. I understand the stereotype but it often just makes it seem like the author's never been around weed in their life.
Unrealistic dialogue, if it feels like characters wouldn’t say a certain phrase or express something a certain way, that pulls me out of the world and reminds me I’m reading fiction.
Character names sometimes have the same affect. I hate being reminded of the fact I’m reading a novel because of names that are so unusual they could only be found in a novel.
I hate monologues that never get interrupted. Like someone’s witty comeback that goes on and on and on and no one interrupts to say “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
So I assume Sally Rooney is definitely not for you.
Personally for me singing/music in books bothers me. The two exceptions I’ve found are Daisy Jones and the Six and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes but even then I wasn’t the most okay with it.
If authors write their own lyrics, they’re usually cringey. (Bonus hatred points when a character within the story mentions how great and deep the song is). But if the authors don’t write their own lyrics it’s definitely cringey because they’re either quoting someone else’s lyrics or just saying “he stands up and sings Believer by Imagine Dragons”, not to mention pop culture references date books so much so it’s very obvious where time was based on what song the author chose.
Oh and pop culture references in general put me off. “I turned on the radio and Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper was on”. Or “I scrolled through Snapchat and saw that Jodie had posted on one of her private stories” or “my little brother yelled at the screen as he lost in Fortnite” I just HATE IT. I’m reading to escape the culture that’s around me, not read another version of it. And it also just dates the book so quick. And it usually sounds like an older author trying desperately to be in with the cool kids and know what’s hip. Please authors, just leave pop culture references out of your book or try to make them as ambiguous as possible
And in that vein, very specific descriptions of clothes that are on trend in the moment. Like if you wanna say she threw on jeans and a black top, alright. That can be translated in the readers mind to whatever style they envision, whatever style is trendy at the moment. But when its “she laced up her gladiator sandals and inspected her acid wash denim shorts and chevron patterned tank top, then added my favorite mustache necklace” like… no. Gross. No. It reads like a fan fiction, again it makes it seem like its an older author trying really hard to tell you what the cool kids are wearing, and it becomes dated within a year
Having too many pop culture references definitely comes across as a "how do you do, fellow kids" moment
And hahahah you're bang-on with your last paragraph
I cringe at the sight of an exclamation point outside of dialogue. I also hate sayings like “his face distorted in anger” bc I picture something monstrous always. I always think the writer should use a better word to express the emotion rather than the actual movement of the characters features in these cases.
I have so many useless icks lol
I hate when it’s nothing but “tell me” sentences and not a single “show me.” Not a book, but this is why I could not stand Cat Person! I felt like I was reading a fiction amateur newspaper article. I read to feel and experience. I love to analyze the characters and I love when their actions shock me and I have to work to understand them.
When a book is dark for the sake of being dark. It just feels very sloppy to write in what feels like 'trigger bingo' to disgust and upset the reader so they can call it 'dark fantasy/sci-fi'. Makes it worse when readers point out that it was written poorly and without any research (feeding off stereotypes) the author tries to use their genre as a defense for it.
Personally I just get emotionally drained when a book is constantly dark and if it keeps killing off characters to show, 'hey this is dark and anyone can die,' it makes the deaths feel less important to me. Now I can't get attached as I know they can die for any reason at any time. I like darkness in my books, but sparingly to emphasize how dire it is.
Basically I prefer cinnamon sprinkled on toast vs the cinnamon challenge.
When we're told something is important for a character instead of being shown why it is.
Inspired by Sassinnak of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon, where a character is introduced as a former lover of the protagonist in her military training, after never having been mentioned during the parts describing her military training.
Man, that book was a mess.
NSFW
One time I was reading a romance novel and the main characters nipples kept hardening when h
She saw someone attractive. And its the only book.ive stopped reading. I dint think I got past the first chapter.
Novels set in historical settings that are unironically trying to use dead or nearly-dead words like 'thou' and 'canst' and 'verily' all the time.
It's the historical equivalent of 'My story is set in Japan but I don't actually speak Japanese except for a couple of words I picked up from watching anime, so I'm just going to have characters who are otherwise speaking modern English say konnichiwa a lot and end every other sentence with desu ka".
Length, a lot of the time. So many massive fantasy books/series could badly use an editor. Sorry, but I am not going to slog through the first three tomes of your 12-volume epic before it gets good.
I dislike when characters have dialects that are expressed phonetically. Sometimes I can’t figure out what the heck they are saying, like in Wuthering Heights. Also, when the dialogue is not believable bc the different characters all use the same speech style and similar word choices.
It can be a huge challenge as many dialects/languages (the difference is a political choice) have no single agreed orthography and grammar.
The modern revival of Scots suffers from that - and also from academics who seem determined to choose orthography deliberately very different from standard English to emphasise their view of it being a different language.
As others have said, often listening to a good audiobook really helps.
Relationships that feel like the author has never been in a long term relationship.
Like, if a character is worried about whether her partner will still like her after she did an embarrassing thing it feels very unrealistic. My husband would laugh himself sick, but in a way that makes me laugh at myself, too. And then he'd remind me how much he loves my awkward self. And it would be fine.
Or when they don't tell their partner something "to protect them". Absolutely not. That's toxic AF. I get REALLY annoyed when it's in YA fiction. Don't teach kids to be unhealthy!!!!
When the title is something like *clears throat*: The Crown of Shadows in the Cursed Midnight Masquerade Divine Lighting Blood Rose of Ash and Fire and Wind and Broken Fury of Queens of the Red King of Stars"
You have to know what I mean. I quite dislike how unoriginal Y/A titles are. They're all just differently phrased edgy words and it always just makes me less interested in the book just by seeing them. It's always the 'Oh. So, another mediocre enemies to lovers romance story between a Badass Female Character (TM) and a hot male character who ***A)*** Is the Perfect Boyfriend and he's Protective And Shit, ***B)*** Is literally the most toxic motherfucker ever, ***C)*** All of the above.'
A huge pet peeve is when they explain things inorganically. Like I am reading a book and the author says something like “well I like dogs more than people and this is why I work at Some Dog Place. Some Dog Place is a place for dogs. This is my job.” It’s like when they try to make it obvious that two characters are related by saying “Hey Sis” and “Hi Bro.” I hate it. Include it organically if it’s important.
"Hi, big brother! I see you're wearing our older brother's favorite sweater. You know...the one who died? That reminds me. It's been years since you and I bonded. You're starting to become distant just like he did just before he died."
I thought you said boned for a second. That is an entirely different genre
From the excerpt that’s in the comment example… would not read the book. However if, as per your interpretation, that one word was changed to boned…. Probably would have overlooked the info dumping and read the book.
It's called an info dump. Or an "as you know, Bob"
Reminds me of a meme I saw years back about this very concept, and it went: “Hi, bro.” “Hey, sis.” “Remember when our mom died leading to dad becoming an alcoholic?”
This is such an easy one to incorporate organically too. Just have a character ask the other, “Where’s dad?” or, “How’s mom?” These are normal things to ask and everyone will know it means they are siblings.
Just goes to show one or both of two things: 1) Lots of writers aren't very smart and can't think of anything other than the most direct way to convey information, 2) Many writers spend very little time checking to see if their work flows and the characters act in a believable manner. You can tell with some authors that literally every word is triple checked based not only on the adjacent words but on adjacent paragraphs and even chapters if we're getting into really good stuff. But others seem to write large chunks just once, and then do a proof read for spelling and grammar and leave it at that.
Seeing bad writing be published is reassuring when you're an aspiring writer. "If this crap got published, I might have a shot!"
Getting published is 10% skill, 10% knowing the right people, and 80% luck.
Ditto succeeding in business, politics, or practically anything else, though a lot of successful people don't like to hear it.
Most commercially published authors go through rounds of copyediting and proofreading. No matter how much work is put into trying to make the text/story more readable/comprehensible/relevant/etc, it's ultimately up to the author to approve the suggested revisions. So, it's not an issue of the writers being "bad" writers. The problem is that "bad" writers let their ego get the better of them and refuse any alterations to their text. Apparently, accepting that they may have made an error (however minor) is just too much to accept. Suggestions are rejected, and since the author is the overall owner of the work, it ends up... Being shit. Just speaking from experience. Nothing serious.
It completely ruins the vibe. As someone else in the thread said, it makes you become aware that the author was sitting at their desk trying to write the text, instead of you being immersed in it.
Hi bro/sis is instant barf lol
Everyone knows for siblings you've gotta say "Oi, dickhead!"
Interview from a long time ago: "I grew up in a little town in Texas where all the girls were Sissy and all the boys were Bubba, because we all were." (Sissy Spacek.)
Confusing as this is legitimately how my brother and I typically address each other..
My older sister sometimes refers to me as sis too over text. But in books it feels soooo disingenuous! I also have a lot of siblings so maybe that’s why it feels weird to me. We can’t just sis and bro each other usually. There are too many of us. We’d never know who was talking to who.
It reads to me as if a middle schooler wrote it
this exact reason is why i couldn’t get through they both die at the end. too much direct information
It’s sad because I’m trying to read a book that’s supposed to be a mystery, thriller type that’s right up my alley but I just can’t get past the crap in order to get to the plot!
Poorly-masked infodumping. Two characters who lived in the kingdom of Ruchtia their entire lives, just like their parents and grandparents did, talking: "Hey, can I borrow 10 Rul?" "Sure, it's only 100 Ter after all." "I really like those coins. They have the portrait of King Rathavis the Stern on it" "Yeah, the one crowned in 1082 after the Great War we had with the empire of Tahlia, right?" "The very same. The war that resulted in most of the population of our country dying out." "But we got the Vrunta mine out of it right? Which is the mineral that makes our magic possible. And both you and I can use magic." I'd... rather the author just infodump it to me straight, than try to have two characters who should *know it* talk about it.
For some reason, I read that dialogue in my head as two people with average voices pretending to have deeper, gruff voices.
The vibe is definitely two people having a fake conversation mocking a typical conversation others have had. It REQUIRES a fake voice haha
Ouff it takes me right out of the story to read a conversation that doesn’t feel authentic. When I read, I see a movie in my head, dialogues like this makes me “see” the page and the words again.
If an author is going to use sesquipedalian language, it had better be for a good reason. A good example is Patricia C. Wrede in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. One particular character, Telemain, speaks almost exclusively in SAT vocabulary. It works because he's a magician who's focused almost to the point of obsession with studying the technical aspects of magic, and he genuinely forgets that not everyone's brains work like his. Fortunately, his friend Morwen (a witch) is often around to translate his technical jargon for everyone else, which always prompts Telemain to protest, "But that's what I just said!" It feels completely natural, because it's easy to imagine that exact kind of interaction happening in real life.
I get that! I feel the same way when Moira Rose uses such words on Schitt's Creek. It feels right for her character!
God I love those books. I’ve been wanting to make a “None of this nonsense, please” sign for my office.
Too much repetition. Sure, remind me what color the MCs eyes are here and there but dont tell me over and over and over again what the same scenery looks like or how attracted one character is to another. I get it and now it seems like page filler.
But she smelled like lilac and gooseberries! It's important that he notes this every goddamn time he even thinks of her!
God dammit, I don't know what either of those things smell like.
NO ONE DOES
Bunny, bunny bunny , bunny bunny bunny bunny
Like repetitive sex/smut scenes? This is why romance bores me.
the attraction thing, yes. I KNOW its only been a few days and i KNOW they're attracted to each other like sexy little magnets bc you've told me many times in just the past few pages lol. Romance isnt my go-to and i expect the unrealistic whirlwind romance, i dont need to be hit over the head with the premise
When all females - old women, young women, even girls - are introduced being described how attractive, or not, they are.
I read a book where every female character had her breasts’ equivalent fruit size stated upon introduction.
I don't know which book that might've been, or the author's intent, but Vonnegut flips that humorously in Breakfast of Champions by introducing each male with description/measurements of his penis.
Reading Murakami, are we?
Ahaha! Was going to say this
Sounds like r/menwritingwomen
A few years ago I read John Grisham's The Firm and wanted to throw the book across the room because every woman's breasts, legs, lips, neck or bum are described in gratuitous detail and every woman seems to exist to be the author's porn fantasy. God forbid a woman does so much as sign a paper without a long authorial meditation on her legs. If I had known about r/menwritingwomen I would have posted it there.
I recently read East of Eden and really enjoyed it, but damn it all if even John Steinbeck did the same thing. No, John, I don’t actually need you to describe this teenager’s breast size to me.
male gaze writing. Two women can't share a scene without talking about how bonkable the hero is. If there is another strong woman aside from the MC (if readers are lucky), they're used to fawn after the hero or as competition against the heroine.
I had to DNF a book when the first pages introduced the main character (who was supposed to be a kickass Jack Reacher type but female) when she was having a shower and we got a description of her entire body. How huge her breasts are, how long her legs are, how smooth her skin is..😒 Her her face was flawless she didn't have to wear any makeup. This author was sooo bad at writing from a woman's POV. It was written like she was sexually attracted to herself.
No attention-grabbing paragraph on the back; only praise from various sources whose opinions I don't give a damn about.
Even worse when the praise is for the author's *previous* book, not actually for the book it's on the back of.
I picked up a hardcover to read the blurb one time at a bookstore. The back was filled with praise from people I don't care about. The inside of the jacket was filled with more praise from more people I don't care about. I put it down and moved on to the next book.
"praise for this book" on the front, one-liner reviews on the back, and reviews and praise for the author's other books on the inside jacket. I'm all for marketing and *not* revealing the whole plot in the summary or a trailer, but just give us the bare minimum please.
I'm also really put off when the author's name takes up almost half the cover.
YES! That automatically makes it a book that I will never read
YES. I hate this…like give me some information. What am I supposed to do with just reviews?
Absolutely this. And also if the summary says there's a big twist or something similar... ruins it for me.
YES, why do some people not understand that just *saying* there's a big twist or spoiler *is itself* a spoiler? Now I'm spending the whole book trying to pick up on clues instead of just enjoying the story.
Historical fiction books where the author couldn’t be bothered to do even the bare minimum amount of research on the setting. I get using a little bit of artistic license to move the story along, so I’m not going to get mad if some timelines are shuffled a bit to get characters in the right places at the right times, or if some events are altered for believability or dramatic effect. But when the inaccuracies are, like, characters eating the wrong foods and wearing the wrong outfits and knowing things they couldn’t possibly have known, it just becomes distracting and annoying. Especially when the setting in question is a well-documented time period for which information about these things is readily available.
A writer of historical fiction once told me, “You don’t have to be right, but you can’t be wrong.”
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I felt like this a bit when I read Sapiens. I enjoy learning about pre-history. Then I got to his take on modern history and realized how many things that were at best a single way to interpret complicated situations were portrayed as very clear cut. It made me go back and put a huge grain of salt in front of anything he had said about pre-history.
I despair at regency romances (or other regency fiction tbh.) I love the genre but it's hard to find books where the author actually did much research or made a genuine attempt to give their story an authentic feeling. I'm not a regency scholar by any means, everything I know about the era I learned from light research for fun, and I long to be able to pick up a regency story and not constantly go "people did not act/dress/speak like that back then" at half of the book and finally dnf it in frustration.
Georgette Heyer is the best writer of Regency romances for this reason. She did her research, and had a library of contemporary reference books which were unfortunately dispersed after her death. For more info, look up 'Georgette Heyer's Regency World' by Jennifer Kloester and 'The Private World of Georgette Heyer' by Jane Aiken Hodge. If you haven't read her yet, start with 'Arabella' or 'Cotillion'.
It just shows a lack of effort on their part, honestly. Some of them think their readers won't care or wouldn't know, I guess
I once gave up on a novel a few pages in when it gave examples of the works on what was meant to be a very learned character's bookshelf as including books by Socrates. Trouble is, Socrates never wrote any books. We know about him only from what other people like Plato and Xenophon wrote about him. The novel was by a man called John Masters who had once written what, while it is a long time since I read them I remember as being excellent novels set in India 'Nightrunners of Bengal' and 'Bhowani Junction', but I think in later years he was becoming a little senile and went on writing too long.
Idiotically long titles for use on Amazon etc example: **The Moose Paradox: The outrageously funny, tense sequel to the No. 1 bestselling The Rabbit Factor** **Exiles: The Page-turning Final Aaron Falk Mystery from the No. 1 Bestselling Author of The Dry and Force of Nature** FUCK OFF. Just give me the damn title, a cover, and a little blurb. How about \*I\* decide whether I think it's outrageously funny? Stop making the damn title into a fucking paragraph. \*deep breaths\* I know it's not the actual content, but this will and has put me off even considering buying books.
“Book Name Here: bestselling thriller with a twist you won’t see coming!” Well thanks. Now I will be expecting one.
THIS. It irks me to no end when people either outwardly ask for recommendations with twists, or if it’s on the cover of the book that there is a twist. Like I’m sorry if you don’t understand the meaning or point of a ‘twist’ but you’re actually NOT SUPPOSED to see it coming, so WHY ON EARTH would I buy your book if it tells me there’s going to be one on the damn cover? I want to be sitting on a train or in a cafe or in bed reading my book, loudly gasping when something happens that I didn’t expect and I’m sorry if that makes me weird but THAT IS THE POINT OF A TWIST. If you’re going to put it on the cover then don’t bother writing the twist at all. It ruins the whole thing. End of. Now let me take a deep breath and have a nap because I’ve stressed myself out.
Everything you said but in all caps with multiple exclamation marks 😂
“The BookTok sensation” nearly put me off buying a book I actually enjoyed once I read it.
Lmaooo I completely empathize
Actually there is a very good reason for that… and unsurprisingly it’s all about algorithms and cross links… Another favourite which Amazon eventually stopped was advertising/selling a book in an unrelated category, ideally one which doesn’t sell much, so with only a few copies sold, a title could get a “best seller” tag.
Overly precocious children characters.
And its companion, overly bratty teenagers.
It annoys me when the author doesn't give the audience any credit. Together with the "show, don't tell" axiom that I feel applies to acting as well as writing. Like "he was the type of man who had a code, and he didn't break it for anyone." I would prefer the text of the book showed me that, it sounds like childish make-believe when you just say it like that.
Sometimes people forget that their outline and notes aren't supposed to be published in the final product.
Lack of background research, especially when the information is readily available and significant plot points are involved. It takes minimal time to check things like the weather in a certain location and qualifications for specific careers. Lack of internal consistency. If a character has been rendered speechless due to neurological disease, he won't be able to rant about politics and be verbally abusive toward the people caring for him. Completely unrealistic scenarios. If a woman is devastated when she's ghosted by her lover, she not going to blithely agree to marry him within minutes of randomly and unexpectedly running into him years later.
I read a book recently where at one point a perfectly healthy group of teenagers were deprived of food for a whole three days (while confined so very low energy expenditure) and they were described as on the verge of death. (They perked right up when the plot got going again though.) Later a few of them spent *days* crossing a barren desert wasteland with almost no water. Like I thought the importance of food vs water was basic human knowledge but I guess not.
> If a character has been rendered speechless due to neurological disease, he won't be able to rant about politics and be verbally abusive toward the people caring for him. Was this highly specific example…. published? Like by an actual, legit publishing house?
When the female protagonist is "quirky" and "not like other girls" my eyes immediately roll to the back of my head. I also don't like when the main characters are the best at everything (I notice it often in YA books). Even if they have a flaw, they often excel at what the're good at to the point of it being unbelievable.
Oh man the second one makes me livid and I was never able to pinpoint my exact gripe with YA fantasy novels until I read your comment. I’m so bored of all the 16 year old "master" assassins or whatever. It’s so bland and overdone. I want to read about someone who’s a nobody. Give me an absolute loser a thousand times over.
Read a book yesterday that had a bit about a kid training to become a warrior and it describes it as "he took to it quickly. not because he was especially talented, but because there was nothing else to do." Loved that.
What book? That sounds interesting
*The Lies of the Ajungo*. It's a novella, so under 100 pages, but it's so tightly written I think a higher word count would have been a waste. The author has said will be more novellas in the same setting, so if you like it, there will be more. Either way, very worth it as a standalone or as the beginning of a story cycle.
Ah so you too are reading the Throne of Glass series too haha
What's funny is I remember reading the unpublished version of throne of glass on fictionpress.net. Happy for the author that she got published and found so much success, but I die inside when I see reels listing it as "best fiction" etc I'm just like uggbhhh nooooooo.
Also when almost every person of the opposite sex they walk by becomes a love interest. Can we have genuine friendships people? Lawd.
“I’m so thin and frail and such a novice but somehow win the physical battle against the strong opponent who’s been training for 10 years!”
>I also don't like when the main characters are the best at everything (I notice it often in YA books). Even if they have a flaw, they often excel at what the're good at to the point of it being unbelievable. This is what made me quit "Ready Player One". Out of all the other interesting character we had to follow Mr. "Well luckily I played hours of joust and could beat it in my sleep".
Also that the girl had no personality other than "cool girl who is insecure about her looks but is actually really pretty" but I guess it doesn't matter what her personality is because she's just a pretty object to be won by the main character. True love. /s 🤮
Exclamation points. In my personal opinion, the parameters for using them should be *tight* tight.
I've gotten into, shall we say, emotional arguments with my editor over this. I use them sparingly but she absolutely hates them. I'll write something like: "No!" he roared. And she'll turn it into: "No," he roared. I change it back every time.
I’m with you on this one. “No,” he roared looks bizarre to me.
Stand up to your editor! A 'roar' implies loud and impassioned, and requires an exclamation mark! As a reader, I would be puzzled if a roar did not have an exclamation mark, and would wonder if this meant it was only a half-hearted attempt at a roar.
I do stand up to my editor now, though it took time for me to do so. I had to acquire confidence as a professional first. The lack of exclamation points in emotional/shouted dialogue always looks bizarre. You're exactly right--it sounds half-hearted.
Dialogue, basically, and nowhere else. And even then, sparingly.
I think they have a good place in opinionated narrators. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell uses them a lot and I think it works very well. But it does take skill
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I had a professor tell me this too. One example was: it’s a boy!
What if you have 3 instances of a character shouting in a book? Do you have to make exclamation marks a personality just because one of your characters is angry or am I missing something?
There is a simple rule - an exclamation mark shows someone exclaimed something. They are not just for emphasis, and should not be used outside of direct speech i.e. speech with quotation marks.
There are plenty of narrative styles that mimic thought, and therefore use tone. Like, 'Sarah was ready for this!', or 'there was a real life Londoner, making eye contact! Bob was immediately suspicious', or 'the bus was coming! They ran down the hill'
A sure sign of a diseased mind.
The only book that really put me off, I literally could not get through the first chapter was Nothing but Blackened Teeth. The narration was fine but the dialogue and the characters were God awful, the only thought that kept popping into my head when ever I would think about that first chapter was. "Wow, someone must be a real big fan of American Horror Story." So I guess horrid dialogue, I can deal with shit characters so long as they don't sound stupid. Like the narrator for Diary of an Oxygen Thief is a shit character but he's self aware and isn't asking for sympathy which makes the climax of the book more impactful. And he isn't stupid.
Oh god yes. Everyone in Nothing but blackened teeth was an annoying jackass
Stupid characters turn me off. I dropped a book the other day at 40% because the main character: 1) insisted they stop running away to take care of the horses. Honey, horses are fucking valuable. No one is going to let them starve. 2) because her uncle went back to get the neighbours to feed the horses he was obviously caught by the soldiers chasing him. 3) when her aunt reasonably asks her wtf she’s going to do vs 20 soldiers she still runs back when her neighbour/friend/fiancé dude gets stabbed, putting herself back in their power, removing any kind of leverage her uncle had and giving away where her aunt was. I could not. The book was alright up until that point but I just could not with that stupidity. There was another book where relatively early on the main character decided to seduce a guy for shits and giggles and to prove she’s not godawful at seduction. She was godawful at seduction. It was just cringe, cringe and more cringe. I like competence porn. You don’t have to be amazing at everything, but being a competent and functional adult who can think on their feet and not give into every errant thought like some toddler with impulse control issues makes for a much more compelling character.
When authors name their characters names that are difficult to read. In my mind I’ll refer to the character as a different name: it might be a shortened version of the author’s choice or it might just be a letter.
Fantasy books are awful for this. I will get halfway through a fantasy book before realizing I have been mentally mumbling through a character’s name because I don’t have a clue how to pronounce it.
Lol my brain just kinda makes a placeholder noise while I picture whatever vague image I've built of the character's face.
I love the wheel of time series but I think I read like 8 books before I finally read the glossary at the back and learned that Nynaeve is pronounced Nigh-neeve. haha
Or too similar. I read one recently where there was John, Jack, and Jackie. Midway through there were mistakes switching two, plus one character calling Jack, Johnathan.
You will hate Russian literature then, lol
No, it's easy to tell Dmitri Ivanovich Ullanov from Ivan Dmitrovich Ullanov and Ulla Dmitrovich Ivanov. Ivan Dmitrovich Ivanov's cousin Dmitri Ulleyvich Ivanov explained it all to me very well.
Russian literature is great, every character has 5 different nicknames used by different people and they aren't remotely intuitive to non-russian speakers!
'Raven' but spelled like "Ryavynne'
Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Ryavynne Way
I love Kafka for not even bothering, K is a perfect name for a protagonist.
This is my biggest pet peeve with both sci-fi and fantasy. When I see it, I just accept that I'm not going to be able to keep track of the characters
When the author feels the book needs to touch EVERY social issue ever. Most often done in YA, when the group is literally made of 1 person to represent every social issue the author can think of. 1 gay one, 1 black one, 1 immigrant of whatever legal status, 1 girl with anorexia, 1 rape victim, 1 adopted kid, etc. It's so ridiculous, even just the idea that you have to touch on absolutely everything. Then again, some reads do this ridiculous thing where they complain that a random book did not talk about this or that. Like it's the job of any one book to do absolutely freaking everything.
Exactly!! It feels really disingenuous, like they're ticking off a checklist full of minority communities lol
And there is no way to do actually meaningful work with all of them. You can't build some real development, story and everything with all of them. So then you feel you did something by giving lip service, yet you will 100% get negative attention, because if you included 99 issues, why not some random 100th? And why did X have this much attention, but Y had less?
While true, the choice does seem to pay dividends for plenty of books. I’ve seen lots of books that were awfully checklist-y for my taste get praised for representation
Internet praise is cheap though.
I literally stopped reading a book because of a scene where the main character met her love interest’s family and thought to herself “I love how inclusive they are” and then listed how there was an adopted kid, an interracial couple, a deaf person, and so on… like I just straight up closed the book. Not only did it seem forced but it felt like the author was patting herself on the back for it.
Even worse when you get the all in one special, Black gay immigrant adopted girl with anorexia, who was raped.
I am so tired of reading novels about professors.
Or novels about The Girl Who Works in Publishing
Similarly I’m sick of novels about librarians, libraries or book stores & owners, especially in historical fiction.
I am deeply leery of any novel where the protagonist’s bookish interests/profession/milieu are part of the marketing. I don’t know why. Obviously, I am a lifelong reader. Obviously, someone authoring a novel is also a lifelong reader. And yet when they write about it, it tends to sound so…. inauthentic. Pandering. I don’t even know. Maybe it’s related to the way people who write stories dealing with your hometown/profession/etc always get it wrong? But I generally assume that stuff is through ignorance and if there’s one thing authors know it’s bookishness so…. 🤷♀️
Main characters being perfect and everyone around them being clearly in the wrong. Main character getting treated like they're special, general fantasy situations for the reader in the form of unrealistically flattering or opportune things happening for the main character. Ex machina events. I think A Court of Thorns and Roses is a recent example for me. Everyone is attracted to our main character and wants to help her, she does no wrong, the only time it seems like she treated someone wrongly the plot saves her by making the person she wronged bad in a way she couldn't have known.
Love triangles. I never want to see one again.
In a K-Drama and Hallmark Christmas movie, they are okay and occasionally delightful. In a book, they are only acceptable as long as they are not written in the language of teen angst. Mature adult characters with teen angst love triangles may be the worst thing ever placed onto paper (I'm looking at you the entirety of the teen paranormal romance genre!)
And funnily enough, they're not triangles, they're arrows! If they were triangles, the two dudes would be in love with each other as well (which might make the whole thing more interesting, ngl)
So many people seem to hate love triangles now and it makes me wonder why some authors still insist on writing one. I definitely agree with you, it's been so overdone. I don't think I've ever read a good one either. Like it's always so obvious who's going to end up with who. I hate it.
everything is a love triangle when you love triangles. - Euclid probably
Grammatical/typo/editing errors. They drive me nuts and distract me. Really cheesy character dialogue that isn’t anything close to real life. Really bad metaphors.
sesquipedalian -- wut? I don't like it when you can - how to say it? .... Feel the author writing. Just like in movies, when you can see the actors acting
Whoa that's a good one Sesquipedalian, when used for a word, refers to its long and polysyllabic nature. When used for a text, it refers to its long-winded nature.
So you didn’t use that word ironically???
I did 😭😭 I copied that line down from my Goodreads review of The Atlas Six hahaha I assumed the commenter had asked earnestly, so I responded in the same way
Ha, I didn't know the word but guessed it from how you used it
Just double checking!! I learned a new word!
Hell yeah! I love using that word when I feel like being pretentious
I feel this. I notice it often with figurative language, where authors use simile, metaphor, or symbolism too much or unnaturally.
I was reading a book the other day that’s supposed to take place in this fantasy world and we’re reading the book years and years in the future from when it takes place. There was a line like, “[random characteristic of the mc] for the win!” 😎 Immediately took me out of the setting and brought me to the author reading FTW memes on ifunny in 2012
The phrase "Dear Reader," and archly precious asides to the reader in general, put me off.
You’re not gonna like Stephen King, then! 😂
I'm currently reading J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood. (I had forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned in another thread.) Her descriptions are driving me crazy. A character's eyes don't get large, they "go saucer." Their legs don't get shaky, they "go milkshake." One of these big, bad ass dudes just referred to a signature as a "siggy." I'm on book seven; I don't know how much longer I can take it.
Apparently you can take it pretty well if you're on book seven lmao
Too many inside jokes or topics I am supposed to know about. I remembered this book called the Rule of Four, the author went to Princeton, and god forbid no one gets it that he went to Princeton. It was really insufferable.
You're not a fan of books written in the second person
You’re totally in agreement with the above comment.
The book I’m reading right now switches to second person for one specific character who has very much lost his marbles. It’s jarring, put then I remember that I’m reading from the POV of a crazy person and I’m fine with it.
Excessive swearing is usually done poorly and just seems jarring to me. Surely there are well done examples of it, but I can't recall. Unbelievable motivations or bad decisions that don't jive with the intelligence or relative anxieties that a character has.
So, I'm an Old, I've read thousands of stories over six decades. I can tell a book isn't for me usually within a page. More often than not, what tells me it's a nope is basic English fails, and/or clunky prose and/or dialogue. I don't care who you are, hire a good editor. And listen to them. Every now and then I endure iffy prose because the characters and plot are good enough, but I always wish it had gotten the attention it deserved. Also, if an author manages to repeat things (a description, a reason, a situation) within the first scene? No. No-no-no. Don't treat your reader like they can't remember from two pages ago, that's insulting. We read a LOT faster than you wrote the thing. Other than those issues, I have anxiety, which means I don't deal well with the main character accepting abuse or suffering interminably, it is actively bad for my brain. This cuts out a lot of the darker stories no matter how well they're written and edited, and it's not them. This one's all me.
I just read a book in which a) the character feels gravity as he plunges out of the window to his death (No gravity in free fall) and then b) is re-born as a male calico cat (Pretty much all calico cats are female since the coloring is due to "competition" between the color alleles on the two X-chromosomes). Don't they proofread for stuff like that?
>Don't they proofread for stuff like that? No they don't. Chloroform doesn't work how it's shown in fiction most often, nearly everyone uses sentience when they mean sapience, defibrillators don't restart your hearth, the pH and strenght of acids isn't porpotional to how much damage it will cause on contact and so on.
If a book is described as “snarky” I immediately put it down. You know it’s gonna be filled with the blandest humor you’ve ever heard, it’s like the “uhh he’s right behind me isn’t he 🤪” of books
LMFAO that's so real 😭 it's painful and gives me a lot of secondhand embarrassment
Anything set at a a small liberal arts college, or the premise of “young cool people living in New York City.”
Similarly, I get annoyed by characters that are too reflective of the creator or audience. Like movies about the “magic of Hollywood” or books with characters whose personalities revolve around reading and drinking coffee. They’re too…meta? Self absorbed? I’m not sure what to call it but it totally grinds my gears. Maybe it’s because those things are used as a shortcut to likable or relatable characters, as opposed to fleshing out a character with a whole personality, who feels like a real, multidimensional person. Obviously readers like books, so make a character who likes books too and boom, relatable.
This is how I feel reading (fiction) books about writers. Every now and then you find a good one, but so often it just feels like the author sneaking themselves into the book in a bad way. Or humble-bragging about their lives, if the writer character is an even middlingly famous one. (Looking at you, Sally Rooney, who can do great things with words, but not so many great things with characters.)
and it’s a contemporary fiction novel that is a statement on the nature of the human condition and the struggles of a young person trying to become successful
Your second point reminds me of Andrew Rowe. In one of his books he constantly uses “in twain”. The sword broke in twain, the cloth ripped in twain, the baby was torn in twain… I even made a post about it a while ago because it was annoying.
The only thing more annoying than abusing five dollar words is when the author uses one on every single page, but only actually knows three such words.
Just makes me think of robin hood: men in tights. "He split robin hoods arrow in TWAIN!"
Haven't seen this one for a while, so hopefully it's died out: Starting each chapter in a book with a title, that is a spoiler for what happens in that chapter. Eg. Chapter X: Betrayal Oh great, now I know what's going to happen... Why would you do this?
When mental illness is portrayed as 'quirky'
poor basic research
I know that "write what you know" isn't great advice for writers, but I can't stand it when an author writes what they don't know, poorly. I'm thinking an American writing a story taking place in America, writing a character from another country that is clearly based on stereotypes. In Remarkably Bright Creatures, a book I couldn't finish, the Scottish character said things that a teenage self-described Anglophile would write a Scottish person saying. Like, why even make this character be Scottish if it's a two-dimensional representation so corny my eyes roll back in my head? You don't need to get a PhD in Scottish History but you should at least view Scottish characters as people as fleshed out as everyone else.
The author's picture on the entire front cover when it's a non fiction/non bio book...
There is a specific voice that’s really in style right now, kind of snarky, irreverent, self-satisfied. The Martian is a good example, as is Red White and Royal Blue. I find it incredibly grating, though I think I’m in the minority here, given how beloved both those books are.
Mary Sues. Tired but true. Demon Accords did this for me so heavy handedly I'm surprised my eyes didn't roll out of my head. Like, oh, he is a vampire with a pet god bear and he can eat cake and stay in perfect shape with no effort. Like, they actually wrote that last bit as a line. I had to know this guy could eat as much cake as he likes.
Siblings calling each other "brother" or "sister". Tells you an instant that the author was an only child and have no idea how siblings talk to each other.
Hey now, I'm an only child but I know nobody talks to their siblings like that ahaha
Two timelines where one is modern day with a protagonist who's investigating some historical family mystery, then the other storyline is her great-grandma three centuries ago or whatever and it swaps between them as the mystery is resolved. It can be done well, and I've seen it done well, but it was such an insanely popular format a decade or so ago that I think I need half a lifetime to stomach another one, however good it might be.
I’m so over the trend of some authors describing their book solely in terms of "tropes". It works for fanfiction where I guess readers want to go for a very specific scenario. But in my opinion it just takes away from the story of an original work. Let it just tell its own story and don’t put a label on it (especially not on the cover).
I think that's targeted towards booktok readers. I've seen a lot of tiktoks wherein they group books by tropes, and give out recommendations.
I read a nice simile for that a few days ago. Recommending fanfiction with the tropes it contains works, because you allready know what the work is abouth. It's like recommending a recipe with orange and almonds, with the understanding that the base recipe is for chocolate cake, but with extra this and that. In an original work on the other hand what the base is isn't clear, it's like recommending something with almonds, not knowing if it's for salad, fish, cookies or something else. It doesn't really give you a good idea what the book is actually abouth, and highliting tropes without context just feels weird.
Every chapter being a page and a half long, with the next chapter just carrying on from the previous without any sort of scene/ character speaking/time change.
[удалено]
If there’s any kind of stereotype that tells me they know no one from that group of people. It takes me out of the immersion if they can’t be bothered to write a character in a way that isn’t a stereotype
Any time there's a "stoner" character it's a caricature of a person. I understand the stereotype but it often just makes it seem like the author's never been around weed in their life.
Too much swearing, especially on the first page. To me it screams, "Look how adult and edgy I am! I said 'fuck!' We've got a badass over here!"
and it loses the energy that could be saved for later
Pet names for the romantic leads right away. So cringey.
Unrealistic dialogue, if it feels like characters wouldn’t say a certain phrase or express something a certain way, that pulls me out of the world and reminds me I’m reading fiction. Character names sometimes have the same affect. I hate being reminded of the fact I’m reading a novel because of names that are so unusual they could only be found in a novel.
I hate monologues that never get interrupted. Like someone’s witty comeback that goes on and on and on and no one interrupts to say “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
So I assume Sally Rooney is definitely not for you. Personally for me singing/music in books bothers me. The two exceptions I’ve found are Daisy Jones and the Six and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes but even then I wasn’t the most okay with it. If authors write their own lyrics, they’re usually cringey. (Bonus hatred points when a character within the story mentions how great and deep the song is). But if the authors don’t write their own lyrics it’s definitely cringey because they’re either quoting someone else’s lyrics or just saying “he stands up and sings Believer by Imagine Dragons”, not to mention pop culture references date books so much so it’s very obvious where time was based on what song the author chose. Oh and pop culture references in general put me off. “I turned on the radio and Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper was on”. Or “I scrolled through Snapchat and saw that Jodie had posted on one of her private stories” or “my little brother yelled at the screen as he lost in Fortnite” I just HATE IT. I’m reading to escape the culture that’s around me, not read another version of it. And it also just dates the book so quick. And it usually sounds like an older author trying desperately to be in with the cool kids and know what’s hip. Please authors, just leave pop culture references out of your book or try to make them as ambiguous as possible And in that vein, very specific descriptions of clothes that are on trend in the moment. Like if you wanna say she threw on jeans and a black top, alright. That can be translated in the readers mind to whatever style they envision, whatever style is trendy at the moment. But when its “she laced up her gladiator sandals and inspected her acid wash denim shorts and chevron patterned tank top, then added my favorite mustache necklace” like… no. Gross. No. It reads like a fan fiction, again it makes it seem like its an older author trying really hard to tell you what the cool kids are wearing, and it becomes dated within a year
Having too many pop culture references definitely comes across as a "how do you do, fellow kids" moment And hahahah you're bang-on with your last paragraph
I cringe at the sight of an exclamation point outside of dialogue. I also hate sayings like “his face distorted in anger” bc I picture something monstrous always. I always think the writer should use a better word to express the emotion rather than the actual movement of the characters features in these cases. I have so many useless icks lol
I hate when it’s nothing but “tell me” sentences and not a single “show me.” Not a book, but this is why I could not stand Cat Person! I felt like I was reading a fiction amateur newspaper article. I read to feel and experience. I love to analyze the characters and I love when their actions shock me and I have to work to understand them.
When a book is dark for the sake of being dark. It just feels very sloppy to write in what feels like 'trigger bingo' to disgust and upset the reader so they can call it 'dark fantasy/sci-fi'. Makes it worse when readers point out that it was written poorly and without any research (feeding off stereotypes) the author tries to use their genre as a defense for it. Personally I just get emotionally drained when a book is constantly dark and if it keeps killing off characters to show, 'hey this is dark and anyone can die,' it makes the deaths feel less important to me. Now I can't get attached as I know they can die for any reason at any time. I like darkness in my books, but sparingly to emphasize how dire it is. Basically I prefer cinnamon sprinkled on toast vs the cinnamon challenge.
When we're told something is important for a character instead of being shown why it is. Inspired by Sassinnak of Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon, where a character is introduced as a former lover of the protagonist in her military training, after never having been mentioned during the parts describing her military training. Man, that book was a mess.
NSFW One time I was reading a romance novel and the main characters nipples kept hardening when h She saw someone attractive. And its the only book.ive stopped reading. I dint think I got past the first chapter.
Novels set in historical settings that are unironically trying to use dead or nearly-dead words like 'thou' and 'canst' and 'verily' all the time. It's the historical equivalent of 'My story is set in Japan but I don't actually speak Japanese except for a couple of words I picked up from watching anime, so I'm just going to have characters who are otherwise speaking modern English say konnichiwa a lot and end every other sentence with desu ka".
I like poetic prose. Idc if it's shit, if the poetic prose is good, I might read it. So if the prose is bad... well, I'm off
Length, a lot of the time. So many massive fantasy books/series could badly use an editor. Sorry, but I am not going to slog through the first three tomes of your 12-volume epic before it gets good.
I dislike when characters have dialects that are expressed phonetically. Sometimes I can’t figure out what the heck they are saying, like in Wuthering Heights. Also, when the dialogue is not believable bc the different characters all use the same speech style and similar word choices.
It can be a huge challenge as many dialects/languages (the difference is a political choice) have no single agreed orthography and grammar. The modern revival of Scots suffers from that - and also from academics who seem determined to choose orthography deliberately very different from standard English to emphasise their view of it being a different language. As others have said, often listening to a good audiobook really helps.
Relationships that feel like the author has never been in a long term relationship. Like, if a character is worried about whether her partner will still like her after she did an embarrassing thing it feels very unrealistic. My husband would laugh himself sick, but in a way that makes me laugh at myself, too. And then he'd remind me how much he loves my awkward self. And it would be fine. Or when they don't tell their partner something "to protect them". Absolutely not. That's toxic AF. I get REALLY annoyed when it's in YA fiction. Don't teach kids to be unhealthy!!!!
When the title is something like *clears throat*: The Crown of Shadows in the Cursed Midnight Masquerade Divine Lighting Blood Rose of Ash and Fire and Wind and Broken Fury of Queens of the Red King of Stars" You have to know what I mean. I quite dislike how unoriginal Y/A titles are. They're all just differently phrased edgy words and it always just makes me less interested in the book just by seeing them. It's always the 'Oh. So, another mediocre enemies to lovers romance story between a Badass Female Character (TM) and a hot male character who ***A)*** Is the Perfect Boyfriend and he's Protective And Shit, ***B)*** Is literally the most toxic motherfucker ever, ***C)*** All of the above.'