Simple things that a lot of Fantasy Writers get wrong in their books....

I rather enjoy doing about when and how various things were invented, for instance, and about how something might or might not be possible in a given pre-industrial society. But I'm sure there are still little things I miss

But some of the most common "offenses" that are most likely to annoy a lot of readers are things related to ships, weapons and horses, since these are things that a fair proportion of people who read fantasy are actually knowledgeable about. I just caught myself looking up port holes, for instance, because it occurred to me that a Renaissance-style caravel likely wouldn't have a sealed, round glass window below decks that would allow greenish light to filter though the swirling foamy water the way a modern sailboat or ship does (and such a lovely image is quashed).

Phaeal said:

LOL, I'm a stickler for this kind of detail. I almost stopped reading The Hunger Games when Katniss and Gayle were collecting strawberries and blackberries on the same day.

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We get strawberries and blackberries at the same time. Between the wild strawberries, everbearing varieties, wild brambly blackberries, and the feral himalayans that are notorious for eating cars and houses we generally have both species available from mid June to early September.

Canotila said:

... the feral himalayans that are notorious for eating cars and houses...

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It's scary where you live.

As a historian, I rarely mind much when setting histories are a little implausibly written, but I do notice. I notice the ones that seem to be based on the "great men" theory with no social movements or changes of attitude among the majority of the population, just a bunch of important people doing everything by themselves. And I notice the ones where things actually are kinda realistic and show that things change over time--for instance, Mistborn did a good job of talking about how views on the skaa and governance and religion had changed multiple times during the bad guy's reign, and I liked that.

I find that I usually don't care about little inaccuracies in horses or ships or swordfighting, I do often find it jarring when people act in utterly not-how-humans-think ways for the sake of the story working out. For example, the first Dune book establishing that many soldiers had shields, some soldiers had lazguns, lazgun beam + shield = nuclear explosion, but for some reason lazgun + shield suicide bombings never happened and rogue lazgunners who were dying and no longer cared about standards of war wouldn't just shoot the nearest shield to force a Phyrric victory. But I've probably done that myself in worldbuilding, and I know it's hard to get all those little holes covered.

I think it depends on the character (and perhaps which bodypart). One of mine swears by Death's bollocks...or maybe at them.

This could be influenced by the fact I am wont to say 'By Odin's crusty left nutsack' myself.

I remember a friend reading a draft of a novel of mine (which is still a draft after multiple drafts) and complaining that some characters here thought having sex with boys was okay, whereas some other character there thought it was a dreadful sin. The worldbuilding wasn't consistent, they said. I dunno, what do you think? Should everyone in a culture hold the same views?

Buffysquirrel said:

I remember a friend reading a draft of a novel of mine (which is still a draft after multiple drafts) and complaining that some characters here thought having sex with boys was okay, whereas some other character there thought it was a dreadful sin. The worldbuilding wasn't consistent, they said. I dunno, what do you think? Should everyone in a culture hold the same views?

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Didn't you know we all live in the one-world-government-slash-dictatorship where everyone willingly toes the party... oh wait. Sorry. Wrong genre.

Mark Lawrence said:

I get turned off when characters swear by their gods. I know that they probably should be and that it consitutes world building, but when someone bursts out with "By Hogalbuff's teeth!" or "By Jeg's hairy elbow!" I just can't hang with it.

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Trust me, having just written one novel and working on a sequel where - for reasons of don't ask me why - no main character may use the word god in any curse, I'd give half my soul for a fictional god people can damn.

Canotila said:

We get strawberries and blackberries at the same time. Between the wild strawberries, everbearing varieties, wild brambly blackberries, and the feral himalayans that are notorious for eating cars and houses we generally have both species available from mid June to early September.

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Best I can tell, District Twelve is in the Appalachian coal country. It could stretch over several current states, given these boundaries don't apply in Panem. District Twelve, in Katniss's town, also sees heavy winters with a lot of snow. So if wild (or possibly escaped) strawberries and blackberries are available at the same time in this region, I stand corrected.

Where locale is ambiguous, I imagine we all judge by where we live. Strawberries mean early summer around here, blackberries late summer, early fall.

MoLoLu said:

Didn't you know we all live in the one-world-government-slash-dictatorship where everyone willingly toes the party... oh wait. Sorry. Wrong genre.

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Lol, well, not necessarily the wrong genre. It was alternate history, and some says it's SF and some says it's F.

MoLoLu said:

Trust me, having just written one novel and working on a sequel where - for reasons of don't ask me why - no main character may use the word god in any curse, I'd give half my soul for a fictional god people can damn.

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Oh yes, this. Which is why my characters say "oh gods" and "godsdamn" a lot! And occasionally swear by the name of a god, but just saying their name, like some people say, "Jesus Christ!" as a swear. I avoid "by" before it and anatomical parts after it.

Reziac said:

My pet peeve is climate.

Folks struggling along in -40 temps, wearing gloves.

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OK, I'll bite: what ought people to wear in very cold temps? Mittens?

(I ask this as someone who has lived most of his life in Maine and Minnesota and who wears gloves when it is cold. What have I been doing wrong?)

rockhazard said:

It is for these reasons that I most often invent my foodstuff out of whole cloth. No one can tell me where banaca berries grow, thank you very much! And yes, as a matter of fact, hala trees do bear fruit in the Winter...

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The winter berries won't get sweet that fast though unless you're in a climate that's desert-like. Then the majority of the fruit will grow near the winter months. The limit on sun would slow down the ripening considerably.

And I'd have a pretty hard time believing anything on an Earth-like planet grows at the north or south poles. Not only because of the weird sun cycles, but the absolute freezing cold. Also the fact that it's unlikely humans would make frequent journeys there.

Despite that, if you do have a tropical like plant in a temperate climate, you have issues if you don't establish some sort of trade route.

Saanen said:

Slightly related pet peeves: Preindustrial society but no one raises sheep. Where does the wool for those homespun wool cloaks come from? Or they raise sheep, but inexplicably no one is eating mutton or lamb (just because we're big beef-eaters here in the U.S. doesn't mean that's the case everywhere or everywhen; you eat what you have).

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Angora rabbit, llama hair, dogs, cats, goats. Wool refers not only to sheep, but other animals... rabbits would also be possible.

Instant! Skillset is annoying, even with magical means...

Say you get a magical book to know how to ride a horse. It doesn't mean that someone would be able to make the muscles in their legs work to do it. Experience is part of the knowledge. You ever read a book, see pictures of it done and then still fail? Yeah.

You need coordination, body memory, and the muscle capacity to do a lot of the instant! skill sets. Not just the mental knowledge of it. Plus the Instant! Skillset undermines the character having to earn anything.

Rachel Udin said:

And I'd have a pretty hard time believing anything on an Earth-like planet grows at the north or south poles. Not only because of the weird sun cycles, but the absolute freezing cold.

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Except that there have been times in Earth's history when the poles weren't frozen as they are now. And it may be we're due for another of them....

By Vandor's mottled skin, what infuriates me is when the flying panzers attack the dragons of Doncaster, people should remember that dragons can't look up.

Apart from that it tends to be speed over distance. In a none or near fantasy setting "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves", Robin falls to the sand at Dover and says he will be at his father's castle in Nottinghamshire by lunchtime. Now, England's not a big country, but two hundred or more miles on medieval roads, on foot (I think)... gah.

Having done the Canterbury/Notts drive many times, yeah, it's about 200 miles.

Mark Lawrence said:

I get turned off when characters swear by their gods. I know that they probably should be and that it consitutes world building, but when someone bursts out with "By Hogalbuff's teeth!" or "By Jeg's hairy elbow!" I just can't hang with it.

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I love that! If a writer does a good job, I'm usually swearing to those selfsame gods by the end of the book, inside my head at least. I'm pretty sure the aversion to taking the name of ones' god in vain is particular to the western monotheistic religions and that pagans in various cultures have always "blasphemed" up a storm. Obviously, the oath needs to roll off the tongue smoothly and work for the personality of the person doing it, though. I doubt a timid little temple priestess will be swearing by her god's hairy you know whats the way a soldier would.

I've observed that there is an injunction against taking god's name in vain in those religions, but I've never particularly observed that it's observed among anglicans, at least.

Roxxsmom said:

pagans in various cultures have always "blasphemed" up a storm.

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The pagan gods like to know we think about them. I think cursing using their names strokes their egos

There's an oath preserved in Old Irish that has several variations:

Tonga na dea tungas mo tuath "I swear by the gods my people swear by"

Tongu do dea tonges mo tuath "I swear to god what my tribe swears"

Do tung mo dea dan adraim "I swear by my gods whom I adore"

Vomaxx said:

OK, I'll bite: what ought people to wear in very cold temps? Mittens?

(I ask this as someone who has lived most of his life in Maine and Minnesota and who wears gloves when it is cold. What have I been doing wrong?)

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Yes, Mittens. Clothing keeps you warm because air is a good insulator. The more warm air you can trap near your body, the less heat you lose to the outside environment.

Mitts keep your fingers in a larger pocket of air, and so provide better insulation. Gloves only have whatever air is trapped in the thickness of the material, plus whatever insulating properties the material itself has (which mitts can also have.)

Also, surface area affects radiative heat losses, and individual fingers have more surface area than a big blob of mitten does. (This is why curling up in cold weather helps keep you warm; the closer your body is to a sphere in shape, the less surface area you have, and hence, the less heat you radiate away.)

Curling up also protects you from lightning, done in the right way.

I don't like it when authors get on their soapbox in the middle of a story. Now, this isn't really a problem restricted to SFF, but I think the genre has more than its fair share of this problem. I can't remember what book it was, but Heinlein essentially said that people who are bad at math are subhuman, and Goodkind, well ... is Goodkind (he literally had one of his characters stand on a tree stump and lecture to a crowd of natives!). Do I even need to mention "unobtanium"? Hackish and ugly.

I just thought of one of my pet peeves (and not just in fantasy). Moon phases. The moon does not always rise at dusk and always set at dawn (only does this in the full phase). The moon rises and sets a little later each day of its cycle. It depends on the phase it's in, and the only completely "moonless" night is when the moon is new (and therefore up and invisible during the day). A new moon is the only phase that can produce a solar eclipse.

And a moon would never, ever be setting at dawn on the morning before a solar eclipse (only full moons set at dawn, and how can a moon be in the sky during the day to come between the planet and its sun if it is setting at dawn anyway)? One of my favorite fantasy books committed this faux pas, and I forgive it because I like it so much. But it did knock me out.