What bothers you the most...

There was a thread earlier this year about what you think is the most important aspect of a good novel.

This question is sort of the reverse. All things considered (good grammar, no typos, good writing styles, etc.), what makes you mad the most when you read a "throw-it-against-the-wall" book?

Poor, unrealistic, stilted, dull, fake... dialogue 3 / 100.0%

Cardboard characters 0 / 0.0%

Cliches, predictable or unrealistic/outrageous plots 0 / 0.0%

Preachiness -- being hit on the head with morals, judgment, etc. 0 / 0.0%

Other (please specify)

When I look at many older star trek episodes, they were poorly veiled attempts at social commentary. Gene Roddenberry was a very preachy guy. Yet, he was tolerable because he was entertaining.

Some fantasies have cardboard characters, and some have predictable plots. Shrek 1 and 2 were as predictable as they come, and yet I found them rather entertaining. I'm convinced that we are so hardwired to want to see the prince save the princess, even in the form of an Ogre, we watch the same movies and read the same books over and over again.

blah

i hate all four equally. It more depends on which particular sin the author has committed on the given book in question.

My main issue is that i'm better at catching glitches on the second time around. Let me grab a movie as an example: Mortal Kombat. That movie entertained on the first viewing, i was 'caught up in it'. But on the second viewing... it fell apart. The plot struck me as a total mess. i went from enjoying it as a whole, to only enjoying individual scenes. Whenever i contemplate how a martial arts movie should or shouldn't be done, i think of that one.

So i dunno, maestro. If a creative work works on the first go, even if it makes me want to throw it against the wall on the second... then are the sins really sins? Are the mistakes only mistakes if they make the book "throwable" on the first reading?

(A related question: Is an author supposed to write something seamless and enduring, or is a one-time shot of entertainment all that the reader should hope for?)

Re: blah

For me it's the stilted dialogue, and any obvious dull or cliche writing. If I find that, I don't even get to the point where there's a plot or preaching - it goes against the wall. (Or, more precisely, back on the bookstore shelf.)

It's the subject matter and characters that are the most decisive for what I decide to read, but if I get a book that has the right combination, like Buddhist addicts fishing for sharks off Alaska, and it doesn't deliver, in that the author has them acting like pot-smoking hare krishnas on The Love Boat...

Yeah, authenticity. That's what I'm after. If a book doesn't have that - whether about slavery or space raiders - then I stop reading.

Re: blah

Crusader:

A related question: Is an author supposed to write something seamless and enduring, or is a one-time shot of entertainment all that the reader should hope for?

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I think there are many different types of stories. Many are for entertainment. Some are supposed to be profound -- and if they're also entertaining, so much for the better.

IMHO, commercial novels are kind of like action movies: they're meant to be enjoyed maybe once or twice, but not for repeat viewing. Once in a while you get something phenomenal like Star Wars or Jaws that are both entertaining and profound. Some literary/mainstream (some people call them true literature, but some may object to that) novels are like a good classic like Casablanca or LA Confidential -- they're meant to be enjoyed over and over and over again and they help define a generation.

What annoys me the most are stupid author tricks. Things like witholding information the POV character knows in a lame attempt at suspense. Or ending every single chapter on a cliffhanger for one storyline then going to another storyline in the next chapter. This is especially annoying when there are several storylines going.

Or ending every single chapter on a cliffhanger for one storyline then going to another storyline in the next chapter.

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Me, I love this.

Ending a chapter with some suspense is a good thing. You want to be sure the reader keeps turning pages. But there are those that push the idea to the absurd.

hmm...

IMHO, commercial novels are kind of like action movies: they're meant to be enjoyed maybe once or twice, but not for repeat viewing.

Unfortunately, i could be persuaded to agree, based on some of the commercial schlock i've seen in both print and film.

[sigh] And i could also agree with just about everything else you said. Thing is, it doesn't help at all to frame the question in those terms, because i'm so driven for perfection that i can't bring myself to accept the truth of "designed obsolesence in literature" willingly. It's like swallowing a burr. That was dipped in salt. And lemon juice. And i have a sore throat. In the rain.

errr, ok, i need sleep... but my point is that i personally cringe from writing anything that would implode. i don't even write forum posts that way. So, it's hard for me to know when to turn on my critical thinking to recognize "appropriate" booboos, versus spotting gaffes that nobody in a genre would care about because the book is supposed to blow up after a viewing (like the recorded briefings in the old Mission: Impossible series).

@detante:
Or ending every single chapter on a cliffhanger for one storyline then going to another storyline in the next chapter.

Isn't this a staple tactic of just about every multi-threaded television show (and therefore, just about every TV screenplay) ever filmed? Or am i loopy from fatigue...

It depends on the genre, but I do kind of like cliffhanger chapters. I guess I see too many movies, so I'm well trained to hold on to the edge of my seat when the movie cuts to another scene, leaving me hanging on the previous one...

I often have debates with a friend of mine on literature. In many ways we are opposite. If he finds one defect with a novel then he discards it as trash: If I find one really good aspect of a novel then I consider it a good novel. No one thing destroys a novel or movie for me.

I voted for preachiness because that is the one I find hardest to over come. It is partly because those who wax preachy always repeat the same boring angles we all know by heart. However when a new angle or idea comes up I find myself interested.

Jack London was my first introduction to social organization. He was a preachy socialist. I knew I was born into a capitalist society but I did not understand the difference or why people thought one should work and others thought another should work. So I studied to try to understand. My conclusion was that any form of social organization would work if everyone in it agreed with it, but that there are always people who do disagree with it and furthermore there are always a group of people who are justified in disagreeing with it.

So my sentiment is, "Don't preach at me unless you got something to say I haven't heard before."

Definitely the plots one but also cardboard characters.

The visceral

A related question: Is an author supposed to write something seamless and enduring, or is a one-time shot of entertainment all that the reader should hope for?

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Nothing is truly entertaining unless it taps into the visceral, instinctual part of the audience on some level. Harry Potter has been dismissed as "passing entertainment" and perhaps someday it will pass, but people today read and watch over and over and over again. Why?

Two of the worst and potentially least enduring movies I have ever seen are Election, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Both have the same level of vulgar humor; both do things that are stupid and gross; both go against social convention.

Yet Jay and Silent Bob wins hands down: Why? Because Jay and Silent Bob had scenes some people wanted to riff back through and watch again. Because somewhere down deep people feel sorry for two stupid smucks abandoned outside a supermarket for twenty years by uncaring mothers. Because behind Jay's vulgarity lies an honesty most of us could not achieve if we wanted to. (He actually asks the girl he loves if she is going to do him). Because they are the most likable people in the movie.

In Election the only potentially likable person is lesbian sister of one of the candidates and she succeeds in deliberately destroying herself leaving the viewer to wonder why they should care about her.

You cannot separate seamless and enduring from good entertainment.

Or ending every single chapter on a cliffhanger for one storyline then going to another storyline in the next chapter.

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Except for those rare stories I write where there is only one protagonist don't bother to read anything I writer -- You will be disappointed, disgusted, and irritated.

I'm referring to one note pacing that treats every storyline in the same fashion.

Chapter one -- Bob's storyline, rising action ending with cliffhanger. Will Bob travel north or south?

Chapter two -- Carol's storyline, rising action ending with cliffhanger. Will Carol accept the package or return it unopend?

Chapter three -- Jack's storyline, rising action ending with cliffhanger. Will Jack survive the horrible car wrecK?

Chapter four -- Alice's storyline, rising action ending with cliffhanger. Will Alice make it to the photolab in time to pick up her prints?

Chapter five -- Bob chooses south! Rising action ending with cliffhanger. Will Bob make it to gas station before the engine overheats?

Chapter six -- Carol returns the package unopened. Wait, what package? Who's Carol again? (flip back to chapter two) Oh, her. Boring. What happened to the guy in the car wreck? (flip forward to Chapter Seven)

Chapter seven -- Jack crawls from the burning wreckage. He smells the leaking gasoline. Can he rescue the cooler with the donor heart before the car explodes?

Chapter eight -- Alice makes it the PhotoHut just in time! Oh, thank goodness. I was so worried. (flip forward to chapter nine)

Chapter nine -- Bob pulls into the gas station and coasts to the nearest pump. But does this station take credit cards?

Chapter ten -- Carol . . . not her again (flip, flip, flip)

Not interested in trivial cliff hangers. Mine go more along these lines:

Chapter one -- Bob's storyline: The killer is out there somewhere, no idea where and Bob is running out of gas. Will Bob travel north or south?

Chapter two -- Carol receives two packages, one she thinks contains a bomb the other the antidote. What will Carol do now?

Chapter three -- While running from the police Jack sails over a cliff. Will Jack survive the horrible car wreck?

Chapter four -- Is Jack the killer the police think he is or what he says he is? Will Alice make it to the photo lab in time to pick up her prints and will they show the proof she thinks is on them?

Chapter five -- Bob chooses south! By now the engine is overheating and waiting him inside the station is the killer.

Chapter six -- Carol both packages in a bathtub and runs water on them thinking this will disarm the bomb and not hurt the antidote. She leaves the bathroom. The house blows up.

Chapter seven -- Jack crawls from the burning wreckage. The police are lowering people and equipment down the cliff. Can he rescue the cooler and get away? And if he does can he make it in the four hours he has left?

Chapter eight -- Alice fails to make it in time. But she has to know the truth, the lives of three men hang in the balance, so she looks for a way to break in and steal the prints.

Chapter nine -- Bob presses his foot on the gas and speeds up to get away from the killer leering at him from inside the gas station only to discover the killer pulled an eighteen wheeler across the road. Bob tries to put the car in a ditch before impact.

Chapter ten -- When Carol wakes up she discovers that the ingredients that blew up her house, and the antidote that is desperately needed were those used to make methamphetamines and instead of helping her to get more antidote the police are charging her with manufacturing drugs.

Let me try rewording it to say:

Formulaic pacing that results in artificial cliffhangers at the end of every chapter.

I can't be the only one that has seen this done badly. Not every story deserves a cliffhanger. I'm not talking about ending with suspense. I'm talking about elevating the mundane task of making it to the PhotoHut to the same level as crawling away from a firey car crash.

If I read one more book where the little girl (or in some cases, woman) has huge blue eyes, my family will hear a loud thump as I toss the book. It's usually when the author is lamely trying for a tear-jerker.

Nothing is truly entertaining unless it taps into the visceral, instinctual part of the audience on some level.

That's word for word what i would have said. And the analysis of Jay and Silent Bob... works for me as well.

i'm still short-circuited on how to define a 'real' mistake from one that can be overlooked, though. When Mr. Macdonald critiqued The Street Lawyer, he showed what he felt worked, insofar as 'tapping into something meaningful' goes. And i have little disagreement with what worked... it's just that i saw 'flaws' that looked repairable without the sacrifice of what worked. And i feel that way about many books.

It resembles "form vs. function", all over again. If the author nails the function, nails the meaning, keeps me turning pages, am i supposed to ignore 'glitches' that pop out of the form later?

My instinct is to critique both, and if one has rough edges, it makes the other seem less airtight. i tear apart all my own writing on that score; i want substance/meaning and technical accuracy and aesthetic appeal... the whole enchilada, a side of fries and the super-size soda.

My instinct is to critique both, and if one has rough edges, it makes the other seem less airtight. i tear apart all my own writing on that score; i want substance/meaning and technical accuracy and aesthetic appeal... the whole enchilada, a side of fries and the super-size soda.

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I think your instinct is good.

However a person is best positioned who looks at themselves and what they wish to achieve as honestly as possible. To use myself as an example: I have a modest intelligence and have never displayed any signs of brilliance in any endeavor; I am as uneducated as you can get without being functionally illiterate; It usually takes me a little longer, and sometimes a lot longer to learn things than it does most people; I have never displayed a talent for anything -- Yet I have always risen to above average skill in any endeavor I have set out to do.

Nor can I afford to run off taking courses, going to seminars, or even buying all of the books I would like to. It has always been the case that I learn what I know from the library and second hand books.

What can a person such as myself do to lever past those who seem to be at an obvious advantage?

I have to spend my time wisely. I have to spend my mind wisely. I have to do the most important things as perfectly as possible in the order of their importance and hope that the mistakes I do make will be in areas so minor that the average reader will over look them.

One of the problems is that publishing houses no longer give the editorial support they once did. If I earned enough money I would certainly hire a competent editor to help me find these glitches and holes that I am certain are in my own stories and that I'm certain I am missing. In the mean time I have to slog through.

What gives me the bright idea I have a chance?

The fact that others will rest on their talents and their intelligence while I am mastering the craft; The fact that they will spend time, effort, and intelligence concentrating on petty things that do not work in order that they can feel superior to published authors while I set about learning from those who are smarter and more successful than I what it is that does work.

I find it hilarious that people with twice my intelligence and three times my education find it so hard to grasp such simple things.

I voted for cliches, but for me it usually has to go beyond that to get me to abuse the poor walls with it. I can forgive a lot of things about a badly written novel, but if the plot explodes into a multitude of holes I can drive a truck through I will put the thing down rather forcefully.

I also keenly dislike it when an author feels the need to make each sentence a poetic work of art to impress critics. Came close recently to giving the wall treatment to a popular suspense author for drawing things out with so much flowery description it drove me nuts and thoroughly distracted me. I finished reading it anyway so I'd know how not to write a good book

@Writing Again:

A very reasonable argument. The angle you're describing sounds to me like "well, there are only so many hours in a day and cents in a buck; sometimes we can't cover every single base, so focus on the bases that matter."

If so, then i agree in general. Probably the devil is in the details; i.e. haggling over which individual books suffered more than others as far as constraints of time and energy.

[lost in thought] It's daunting, to think that a good vision could be warped by logistics. Especially knowing that i'm certainly not the only critical reader out there.

* * *

When a book "works" for me, it paints a portrait of something i want to look at. The more it "works", is the more i want to look at it. The more i look, is the more detail i'm going to notice in it. Say the portrait is all about a lovely lady; if it's "working", i'm going to want to get to know her.

Well, in the process of being all zoomed-in, i'll inevitably notice something like, oh, she's wearing a hairstyle that subtly doesn't fit the period of the scene. My reaction depends a bit on how critical her head is to the portrait: if it's a huge panorama and she's only half of it, i'm not as troubled as if it's a closeup.

Either way, though, my argument is that the author should be able to paint the picture, realize his vision, but still be held accountable for something like an inappropriate hairstyle.

My argument is also that the author should be aware of the difference between an anachronism versus, say, the choice of eye colour. The former is arguably a flaw, the latter is just a matter of opinion. Sure, wave aside quibbles about "well, her dress needs another rose on it", but listen to complaints like "nice picture, but one part is unlikely for that era".

Now, the casual reader will just be happy that they're seeing such a lovely lady in their head. They'll thank the author/painter, and close the book in contentment.

Wheras the reader who knows better will be irritated, maybe even disappointed that such a lovely lady wasn't fleshed out correctly. It's not a lethal blow, it's an itch... like the car seat that just doesn't feel right no matter how you adjust it. Or the jeans that pinch on one spot and gap in another.

Some say, it doesn't matter: as long as the author is happy, as long as the editor approves, as long as people buy the book, as long as the lady is lovely, it doesn't matter if she has a subtle bug/feature/flaw/itch that makes readers go "heh, now i wanna fact-check this bozo."

Well, if i subscribed to that, i'd be annoyed with myself. Is it unreasonable for the author to round off all the corners and cover all the bases, so that he reaches both the casual and critical readers?

What works for me about a book is: 1) it draws me into that world, creating a dream state for me; 2) it makes me care about the characters; 3) it touches me at a deep level -- makes me laugh, cry, feel something profound or intellectual.

I think many of these things such as "bad dialogue" or "cardboard characters" or "info dump" prevent me from doing the above. They either yank me right out of the dream state, or create unrealistic situations or characters that I don't care about, or insult my intellect and emotions.

I voted for (against?) cardboard characters for the reason Maestro gives. A story won't hold my interest if I don't care about its people or they don't seem real to me.