excellent build up, and then a rush ending that only serves to tie up loose ends as quickly as possible, even if they dont make sense to the story or character.
Oooh, now that brings back some memories for me. I once read, I wanna say an entire full length novel that was marketed as romance - it was about a woman whose love interest went missing right when they were about to get together after some back and forth and she tracks him to Australia only to find out he's been in a coma for a number of years. It was so well-researched, the medical terms, the path to recovery for him, how he was never going to be the same person that he was before, their trip back to America and how it's draining to take care of someone who has lost years of their life. Like, well-researched, fantastic in-depth discussion of how badly treat disabled people are, etc., etc. But the ending was so rushed in comparison to the entirety of the novel. Like, I wanna say it spends a third of it searching for the guy in the coma, another third of it with the guy in the coma, and another third facing the trials of coming to terms with him never being the same as he was before the coma, but not, like, any sappy romance or satisfying end to it. A real bummer.
I read a romance where the damsel was kidnapped and the male lead sails across the ocean to save her but she HAPPENS to get free after the whole expository monologue and the guy who kidnapped her gets killed by one of his servents or something so when the guy came for the big rescue scene, she's already free and the bad guy is already dead... After the whole build up of them being half brothers and one inheriting land and the other being exiled to sea, etc. etc. etc. The book set it up like there was going to be this big show down and the girl was supposed to be the plot device that lead to the showdown.... But the brothers NEVER MEET! And the hero guy never questions why or how his brother is dead. He's just like "ok, i've saved the girl. Back to sea!" and the girl is like "you saved me!" And im like "HE WAS LITERALLY NON EXISTENT FOR THE LAST HALF OF THE BOOK!"
Same here. Modern Stephen King sucks. I was a huge fan in the 70s and early 80s but beyond that, forget it. He's another one of those authors who got so popular that editors won't tell him to tone it down.
My nail was when I realized I didn't give a damn if anyone on the show lived or died. If you can't have characters that the reader (or viewer) cares about, what's the point? There are far too many shows out there where the cast of characters are reprehensible. NuBattlestar Galactica was just like that. I wanted them all to fly into a star and die.
Starting chapters with quotes. Especialy Sun Tzu quotes. I think authors throw these in thinking they sound cool, but they really dont.
I don't use them myself, but I love reading quotes at the beginning of chapters as long as the quotes relate to the story and the chapter. Sun Tzu, Alice in Wonderland, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare- I'm not particular. Epigraphs have taken me down some interesting routes I wouldn't have sought out otherwise.
Hyper-prolific, established authors phoning it in. I'm thinking of a romance thriller I read once, that was No. 67, more or less, in the writer's oeuvre. Too many flashbacks, too many protagonist couples who were pretty much alike, too many plot threads left unresolved . . . If her publisher had an editor look at it, it's like the author said, "I don't care, publish it the way I wrote it."
I like them when they illustrate what's going to happen in the chapter. I wish I could do it, myself, but I don't have that wide a vocabulary of Great Quotations.
It's probably just a thing that I've noticed, but something I like to call writer's stutter: the the...etc. When two of the same word like that appear together it urks me, and to really hit the nail I catch myself doing it in my stories lately with 'is is' and 'and 'and'. Not sure how it happens for most, but mine is due to thinking too much and not paying as much attention when in the middle of a sentence that I have to think through a bit or find the right words. Those books that have characters that don't feel like they were written by humans, but some other worldly being trying to write them and doing it poorly. Continuity issues bug me. Is it really too much to ask to reread through so that later on things don't get all F'd up?
There's another form of it as well. It's a different kind of writers' stutter. I've seen it done a little differently, and I'm doing it right now to demonstrate. People will write something, and then repeat it, often twice. They'll write something once, then again in different words, and then sometimes even say it again. It's like they repeat themselves, sometimes twice.
hmm I’m not tracking. Are you suggesting in 3rd person close/deep POV the POV character should only be referred to with pronouns? I’ve never done it that way.
One big bugbear is when the MC tells us his opinions on everything or explains every detail. A little bit is okay. But does it have to be so much? My guess is it's just to fill pages. And this is by an extremely well-kown crime author.
Supposedly smart characters making moronic decisions for the sake of the plot, I also hate untrained teenagers beating fully trained adults in combat, especially hand-to-hand combat.
That's a big one, especially in some genres. It's the old horror trope, "there's an axe-wielding killer in the woods, let's go skinny dipping!" How stupid are these characters?
With one last bullet, the MC can plug a mosquito's cavity a mile off. (I know it's an exaggeration, but you get what I mean.)
I read a book that was like 70% exposition (literally nothing else happening, same room, same characters, just dialogue) and then like 10% action (not that the characters TALK and EXPLAIN what they are going to do.... They do it briefly), and then like 20% celebration (yay! We did the thing! Time for really random celebratory sex in an elevator!)
This mostly refers to writing in JRPG but my pet peeve is when the villain starts out interesting, but it eventually devolves into 'haha let's go defeat the evil god with the power of friendship' I even plan to have a satirical scene in the climax of at least two of my future stories mocking this concept. Even worse when the villain is actually interesting for like 3 fourths of the game, and then they either have a 'surprise, I was the REAL villain all along!' twist that everyone calls from ORBIT. Actually: there's a college humor video that sums up my pet peeves with JRPG writing in a nutshel, so here you go.
Aggggghhhhh, just came across another on. Again, its the usual suspects that do this. In this case writers for Black Library (Warhammer stuff). Saying one thing, and then saying the opposit. ie... It was wet, yet it was dry. --- WHAT??? I've purged most of these occurences from my mind so I cant give examples that much but I was listening to a new 40k book today (been years since I last listened to one) and this kind of thing happened and I was immediately triggered with rage. The line went something like, The gardens were well organised and maintained, yet they were wild. Look, no one try and justify this. It can be done, but it should be done better. This kind of thing sounds stupid and is infuriating as hell. Everytime I hear the word yet in a 40k book, someone comes a little closer to being killed.
Ahh yes. Dont read America Falls then. The MC is some 15 year old kid who spent a year in a McDojo and is now a ninja kicking the crud out of veteran soldiers, chinese veteran soldiers no less. Good series of books, really enjoyed them, but the hand to hand 'duels' of McDojo Dave (dont kill my friends Mr Chinese Special Forces Commando guy, lets go one on one and if I win we can all leave) were a little cringy.
Supposedly smart characters making moronic decisions for the sake of the plot... Oh, yeah, that's a favorite: with all readers shrieking, "Don't go there, you dumb bimbo," the girl in the Daisy Duke shorts/sequined minidress/bath towel follows mysterious figures into basements, abandoned houses, or creepy dark woods.
I have a rule of thumb for my own writing: never try to write a character that is smarter than me. I will inevitably fail.
