Things you wish authors would stop doing?

Ah, an Irish character then.

 

I wish they would stop using technical jargon that confuses them and assume it confuses everybody. I've never read a scifi book that correctly described general relativity. Yeah, the general population doesn't really get it, and will have no idea if what you write makes sense or not. But it's not mysterious and there are people who actually understand it and are very familiar with it's limitations. Same thing with quantum mechanics, tachyons, and dark matter. Writers seem to think that because we don't know what dark matter is, they can use it however the hell they want. Yeah, we don't know what dark matter is, but we sure as hell know what it is NOT. There are very hard bounds or how it interacts, what mass it has, we even know it has to have a positive integer spin value.

 

1. Creating female villains and trying as hard as possible to not have the male hero fight her directly. I.E. she gets killed by the big bad instead, is beaten by the side character (who's also a woman), dies via collapsing building or cave. Like if you're honest to God scared people aren't gonna like your character if he hits a girl (even though she's causing chaos and death) then just don't write a female villain. Those cliches are hella easy to spot when they happen.

2. The bruting, badass hero who doesn't work with anyone. I often find being super antisocial to be a character flaw that needs to be overcome (unless there's something up with the world/society in which being antisocial benefits you), but when said antisocial guy is killing monsters left and right, sleeping with tons of women, and having his name spread as a legend it starts to feel more like the author's personal power fantasy. This trope can be done really well, like Trevor from the animated Castlevania series, but in most cases I roll my eyes at them.

 

Writing bad books.

 

unresolved endings/cliff hangers with no sequels.

Example: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, Helen Oyeyemi's Boy, Snow, Bird, and Dawn Cook's Princess "series" (Premise is basically, this plain-jane girl was raised as the princesses decoy and then becomes her body guard, and the princesses male body guard is actually on loan from another kingdom wanting to settle a score... the end of book two leaves the decoy princes/guard stranded on an island and the grand advisers of all the kingdoms coming together in this elaborate chess game where actual human beings are the chess pieces and they commend the one guy for using the decoy princess)
SO MANY QUESTIONS UNANSWERED!!!

 

Well, it's incredibly, amazingly easy for me to say I'd be the ice-cold badass, but in reality, none of us know how we'd act in that situation until we're in it. I get kind of squicked out when people start thumping their chest and declaring that any character who doesn't immediately weigh the numbers and Do What Must Be Done in a state of guiltless Vulcan rationality is an idiot.

I was going to answer, but I've got this irritating noise on the edge of my hearing, distracting me. It sounds like a dog whistle.

 

I have another new one and I wont mention the book as no spoilers to anyone who might want to read it.
But I realized one is authors who don't follow through on their promise.
I just read a book that had a subject that was morally grey. Some might feel the main character was being selfish as the life of someone close to her was at risk. Others might feel sympathy for the character and anger at the pressure and circumstances a child is put under - she was born simply to provide medical aid and that's all. So the big thing was, the main character had a choice. To help or fight for her human rights. She had a big decision to make and there was this build up then a total cop out. The character died in some freak accident and so saved her sister without making a choice. I felt the whole point of the story was investigating the dilemma and her choosing. Was a bit disappointing.

 

That's Rghfcyws to you, Sais.

 

I like this thread. I think I'll wake it up.

I just finished a James Patterson book where the author did exactly this. Though it wasn't at the start of the story, but a good way in, every time the character entered a new space. Somehow it worked, maybe because the POV character was a cop, who'd be trained to mentally catalogue a room like that.

I noticed it as it was happening (audiobook) and thought, "Look what the author did! Maybe I can do it, too. No, I'd never get away with it."

 

For me, things I wish authors would stop doing range from petty annoyances to disappointments to shut-the-book dealbreakers.

It's a petty annoyance when the author identifies a character so much with himself he forgets what time the character is acting in. I see this a lot in older fiction, you know, the setup where the two English guys are sitting before the library fire with their brandy, and Smythe says to Bellwether, "I saw old Abernathy in Piccadilly Circus yesterday, and he told me the strangest tale." And Smythe proceeds to pass on the story Abernathy told him. Trouble is, the author forgets that Smythe is operating in the present while he, as the master narrator, is working in past tense. So he'll have Smythe say, "Abernathy was a fair-haired man of good family, but had fallen on hard times." Like Abernathy is dead, when patently he is not.

Kin to this are stories of any era where the author forgets how the timeline would look from the character's perspective. So she'll have her say something took place "last Tuesday," when the thing referred to happened yesterday.

Things like that, I go "Ouch!", make my mind bury them, and read on.

 

Urk! I've been thinking on how to do exactly this, because my MC does one-on-one cold readings and needs to have an insane eye for detail so that he can produce "revelations" about the Old Widow and her late husband from a quick glance around the sitting room. The sort of thing that gets explained with a quick bullet-time pan in a Sherlock Holmes episode (you pick which iteration of Sherlock Holmes, I'm pretty sure they all use it).

This, but in inner monologue (first person story):

 

As for disappointments, one example is when I get to the end of the book and discover that all along the author has been using secondary characters not as real people, but strictly as cogs in the plot. No, I don't expect to find out the fate of every last personage mentioned in a story, but allow them to interact with the MC as genuine human beings, will you? Don't make me care about them if you're going to change them back into cardboard placeholders when the story's over.

I'm thinking of a mystery thriller I read, where a couple get married and immediately head to the mountains of upstate New York for a wilderness camping and canoe trip. The new bride thinks it's her bridegroom's way of bonding with her, away from the griping and complaints of their respective families. For the new husband it's that, yeah, but more that he and his two groomsmen are doing a big favor for a fourth friend of theirs by transporting some drugs up to Canada. Of course things go terribly wrong, there's a dead body, injuries, getting lost, being kidnapped and nearly killed by a murderous fugitive living in the mountains, etc., etc. Meanwhile back home in NYC, we find out a lot about one of the groomsmen and his involvement in this, and he's instrumental in the couple's being found before it's too late. We learn he has a lot to lose if the drug running comes to light, but he comes through for his friend the bridegroom anyway. But at the end of the book, do we find out what happened to him? No. Does he lose his teaching job, flee the country, go to prison? No idea. As soon as he comes across with the information needed, he just disappears.

Cardboard. Nothing but cardboard.

Damn, things like that bug me!

 

There's a beautiful example in a LeCarre book of the exact opposite of this. The first chapter focuses on one character and what a great spy he would make. If it were Hollywood... but no, the real spies thank him for his contribution to the Cause, have him sign the Official Secrets Act, it's mentioned that he has to do so every six months, and... exit stage left.

 

As for things that make me close the book and say "Forget it," I wish, if the author is going to make a villain out of an institution, a way of life, or a philosophy, she'd take the trouble to get it right for the time and place the story is set. Don't take every problem it's ever caused in every era of history and lump them all in together at once. It makes me think the story isn't really about making me care about the protagonist, but making me hate the institution.

(You'll notice I don't demand the author give equal time to any good the institution may have done. I just request she'd keep to its issues at the time of the story. No need to pile on.)

 

I take it that this man not becoming a spy has a bearing on the rest of the plot?

 

Well, kind of. Untrained, he did an amazing job of covering his tracks and bringing vital information out of the USSR. The rest of the book covers taking another untrained person and teaching him to be a spy. It's just that LeCarre did such an excellent (and conscious) bait and switch with who the MC of the book was going to be that impressed me.

 

Basically, any national stereotypes (e.g. rude German) or physical characterisitics somehow conveying personality (e.g. fat = jolly, or beady eyes = shifty) in a novel annoy me immensely. Sadly, there are still plenty.

 

Calling a character 'broken' as a substitute for giving them any actual identifiable character flaws. Some authors seem to think they can stick that tag on their Mary Sue and somehow magically get a onion.

Having other characters talk to each other about how wonderful/unique/exceptional the MC is, especially when the MC has done nothing remotely interesting or unexpected so far. I can see your hands, puppet master...

Referring to a character as 'inherent cool' or similar, and then using that to mean that the character never ever has a single uncool or awkward moment ever, especially as regards career (for musicians, actors, etc). Bonus points if Bowie is referenced explicitly or implicitly, which tells me that the author has never heard that late 60's classic The Laughing Gnome. (Not knocking Bowie or even the song, I actually think it's cute. )

 

Whittling down and tightening the prose to an absurd degree. I'm talking about mandatory minimalism that a lot of publishers push.

I don't demand every book to be purple, elaborately-written, and excessively poetic--but authors and editors like to cut so much that the prose has no voice, no soul, no flavor.

 

I tend to be prolix and over-explain, so I've been striving to make my prose more lean. You rightly point out that it can go too far.

 

Not a Raymond Carver fan then? Me neither, don't worry.

It is, however, very constructive to wittle your own story to its base plot and necessary items that it can't live without just to get a real feeling for what you have there though. Best way to find if you have scenes or characters that simply are wasted space. You can always grow into a healthy description when you know the basic bone structure actually on the page.

 

meh. if an author is writing stories I don't like, i put that book down and pick something else up. there are so many writers. there are so many books. I don't have time to read them all, so if an author is doing something I don't enjoy, good for them. they have plenty of readers who do and they don't need me.

 

True, though for me these wishes only apply to books that are otherwise pretty good. If a story's just plain bad, there's no point saying "I wish the author wouldn't do that." It'd be like saying, "I wish authors wouldn't write bad books."

 

I wish Stephen King would stop putting guns in his stories without a modicum of research.