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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: knnn on July 11, 2013, 08:19:54 PM
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http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/424-what-makes-you-put-down-a-book
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http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/424-what-makes-you-put-down-a-book
Having looked at the article I still know absolutely nothing about your thoughts on this subject.
So I am left with a great big question mark and wondering why I even bothered to look at the add/study???? (Is this a whole Master of Puppets moment?)
The Deposed King
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Are you asking what makes the rest of us put down a book? I can give you a list although probably nothing on it is absolute.
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fwiw, my first choice is "a book that treats me like an idiot".
Examples would be depicting supposedly wise characters saying things that are blitheringly obvious and being reacted to as if they were wise, and books that keep telling me the same relevant facts over and over again to be sure I don't forget them.
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Someone that is supposed to excel in an area and is instead less than competent will usually drive me from a book, for example a supposedly brilliant detective that continually overlooks obvious clues or an experienced soldier that continually takes unnecessary risks.
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I hate what I might call 'set-up' characters.
Characters that are set-up to die, change things, etc.
If I can tell that then I get angry and put the book down.
Writer who hasn't done their research homework.
Cozy mystery writers who make out cops to be blithering idiots in order that
their heroines/heros can save the day. I really hate this.
Writer who can't make up his/her mind about who a character will end up with romantically.
Decide already.
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I hate what I might call 'set-up' characters.
Characters that are set-up to die, change things, etc.
If I can tell that then I get angry and put the book down.
I'm not sure I see what that's a distinction from, though. I don't know that I can think of there being much point to characters who don't have some story function.
Writer who can't make up his/her mind about who a character will end up with romantically.
Decide already.
Writers whose characters never even consider "all of the above" as an answer to such dilemmas. Considering it and ruling it out as not for them is one thing, but not acknowledging it possible is just infuriating.
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Re: The first one, Neuro.
Yes, all characters have functions but in this one book - it was so blatantly obvious that
a certain character was just being set up to be killed that it annoyed me - I guess because
she came off like a paper target. No real depth to her.
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One of the main things that will make me put down a book is overt preaching by an author--even if I happen to agree with it. I really dislike political/religious tracts masquerading as fiction.
As for supposedly intelligent characters behaving like idiots in service of the plot, it really depends on the skill of the author. In the right hands, it can be a lot of fun: one of the most entertaining series I've read recently features what pretty much amounts to a Parody Sue protagonist.
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I definitely agree about the preaching. Guaranteed to make me put the book down. The comic book industry has gotten particularly annoying in this respect. At least IMHO.
It is partly because of humor that I said none of the things I hate are absolutes.
I find it especially annoying when a character is set up to be especially sweet and charming just so that the villain can look nastier when they kill them.
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One of the main things that will make me put down a book is overt preaching by an author--even if I happen to agree with it.
Mmm. Preaching by an author, sometimes; preaching by a character that illustrates the character's perspectives and biases, I really like as a technique, and the less the character is aware of what the preaching gives away, the better.
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I've got one that started when I started writing.
Lack of conjunctions in ordinary narrative. I know it was the style. But ugh, it kills the flow.
And the most recent thing to kick me out of a book.(Won't name the book because spoilers. Killing the perspective character(in a first person series) from the last X books and switching to his girlfriend after 1 awkward pointless chapter from her perspective. Killed the whole series for me. I haven't wanted to pick it back up since. Even though I'm positive the other character comes back.
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Mmm. Preaching by an author, sometimes; preaching by a character that illustrates the character's perspectives and biases, I really like as a technique, and the less the character is aware of what the preaching gives away, the better.
To me some of this goes back to your earlier statement of "Don't treat me like an idiot." It depends a lot on the author's skill. In real life almost anyone that you talk to will have something that they feel strongly enough about that they will "preach" or push their views about it even if it's just the fact that they don't think anyone else should "preach" or push his or her views on them. If this is all the author is showing then I'm fine with that. If it's the main character, especially in a first person POV, then it rapidly gets annoying. If it's someone that the story sets up as wise and/or "someone that should be listened to" and they are pushing a certain viewpoint, then it begins to feel that the author is pushing that viewpoint. This will make me put a book down.
And the most recent thing to kick me out of a book.(Won't name the book because spoilers. Killing the perspective character(in a first person series) from the last X books and switching to his girlfriend after 1 awkward pointless chapter from her perspective. Killed the whole series for me. I haven't wanted to pick it back up since. Even though I'm positive the other character comes back.
I find this very annoying. I started one series about a woman from our world that finds herself transported to another reality where she has magical powers. I know this is one of the oldest tropes out there but I still enjoy it when it's well done and this was well done. In the fourth book in the series, the main character switches to someone that had been a minor character up until then. It is revealed that the previous protagonist had died, off camera, between books three and four. It was not a gimmick. She was dead and never came back. I never finished the series.
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To me some of this goes back to your earlier statement of "Don't treat me like an idiot." It depends a lot on the author's skill. In real life almost anyone that you talk to will have something that they feel strongly enough about that they will "preach" or push their views about it even if it's just the fact that they don't think anyone else should "preach" or push his or her views on them. If this is all the author is showing then I'm fine with that. If it's the main character, especially in a first person POV, then it rapidly gets annoying.
The thing about first-person POV is there seems to be a huge degree of implicit sympathy that comes with it, and if you want to show your first-person protagonist as flawed, particularly flawed in ways they don't realise themselves, you either have to make those flaws so colossal they essentially define the character (as for example Jeff Lindsey's Dexter), or you risk people not seeing them (as witness, well, any of countless arguments I have had in the on-topic part of the forum in which I think JB is illustrating something about Harry's flaws and weaknesses, and other forumgoers disagree from perspectives based to some extent on assuming JB intends Harry to be sympathetic.)
If it's someone that the story sets up as wise and/or "someone that should be listened to" and they are pushing a certain viewpoint, then it begins to feel that the author is pushing that viewpoint.
How long do you give an author to illustrate that they are subverting that before putting the book down ?
Does it help any to suggest that a rant might not be intended seriously if, say, a first-person character is visibly drunk when they go off on it ?
I find this very annoying. I started one series about a woman from our world that finds herself transported to another reality where she has magical powers. I know this is one of the oldest tropes out there but I still enjoy it when it's well done and this was well done. In the fourth book in the series, the main character switches to someone that had been a minor character up until then. It is revealed that the previous protagonist had died, off camera, between books three and four. It was not a gimmick. She was dead and never came back. I never finished the series.
Hmm. That's the kind of bravery from an author that would definitely make me want to read on; I generally appreciate authors who take chances even if they do not work over authors who play safe, at technical and structural levels.
I think part of it is that I have a really strong dislike for stories where protagonists get protected by different rules from everyone else just because they are protagonists. Titanic for example, where the two leads appear to be playing by Indiana Jones rules when it comes to wasding through icy water but everyone in steerage is dying from exposure much more realistically. I can't connect to protagonists who are safe because they are protagonists, and nor can I connect to protagonists who are supposedly in danger if no serious consequences of danger ever happens to them.
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Someone that is supposed to excel in an area and is instead less than competent will usually drive me from a book, for example a supposedly brilliant detective that continually overlooks obvious clues or an experienced soldier that continually takes unnecessary risks.
I think the worst part about this is that in order to appear in the book, it had to have hit the author's radar. So the author is seeing this important piece of evidence and actively choosing not to 'permit' the character to discover it or understand its importance. If you want your character to be that, for lack of a better word, dumb, then make him or her that dumb.
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Hmm. That's the kind of bravery from an author that would definitely make me want to read on; I generally appreciate authors who take chances even if they do not work over authors who play safe, at technical and structural levels.
I think part of it is that I have a really strong dislike for stories where protagonists get protected by different rules from everyone else just because they are protagonists. Titanic for example, where the two leads appear to be playing by Indiana Jones rules when it comes to wasding through icy water but everyone in steerage is dying from exposure much more realistically. I can't connect to protagonists who are safe because they are protagonists, and nor can I connect to protagonists who are supposedly in danger if no serious consequences of danger ever happens to them.
I do think character death has to have meaning. Yes, as protagonists they shouldn't be invincible. They should be in danger, but if you're killing them, USE IT. Play for the impact of their death. Doing so offscreen is bad bad bad form. When it happened in Harry Potter it forever tainted the ending as badly written, and it wasn't even main characters. Compare that to the end of the book where everything gets different. I swore. I yelled so loud my neighbors were worried and my roomates freaked out. That is how to use character death.
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I do think character death has to have meaning. Yes, as protagonists they shouldn't be invincible. They should be in danger, but if you're killing them, USE IT. Play for the impact of their death. Doing so offscreen is bad bad bad form.
Incidentally, I've just finished rereading a series that does exactly this with a main character well into the series and really makes it work. It is impressively understated, and quitely affecting, as a reader, to go straight from "the central characters have vibrant relationships with this person" to "the central characters are dealing with the rality of a world this person is no longer in" without going through the loss itself (which none of the viewpoint characters were or could have been on the same side of the planet as at the time).
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Incidentally, I've just finished rereading a series that does exactly this with a main character well into the series and really makes it work. It is impressively understated, and quitely affecting, as a reader, to go straight from "the central characters have vibrant relationships with this person" to "the central characters are dealing with the rality of a world this person is no longer in" without going through the loss itself (which none of the viewpoint characters were or could have been on the same side of the planet as at the time).
And that's fair. But at least they are using it then, and there's a viable reason to have the death off screen. Although I'd have been tempted to have a one off chapter from that character's perspective just to show. Or have the information given in some detail, making it sort of on screen. There are ways to do it. A traumatic phone call can be just as effective if handled right. Part of the Harry Potter problem was that the grief just never seemed to be there because SO MANY DEATHS.
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For those of you who read Elizabeth Moon, she wrote the lead up to a character death, the death itself, and the aftermath absolutely wonderful in her latest book, Limits of Power.
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And that's fair. But at least they are using it then, and there's a viable reason to have the death off screen. Although I'd have been tempted to have a one off chapter from that character's perspective just to show. Or have the information given in some detail, making it sort of on screen. There are ways to do it. A traumatic phone call can be just as effective if handled right.
Not in a book set in 1815 it can't.
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Oh come on, that's not historically inaccurate. DRAMATIC TELEGRAPH(Did those exist then?) There are still ways to use the event, just ones that take more time.
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Dramatic messenger or letter - no telegraph at that time, I believe - I could be wrong
on that however.
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Dramatic messenger or letter - no telegraph at that time, I believe - I could be wrong
on that however.
And by the time any plausible one of those has rounded the world, you're a long way from the impact of a direct scene.
I think telegraph is just post-Napoleonic, remembering the telegraph tower scene for The Count of Monte Cristo.
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According to what I just Googled - Morse created the telegraph in 1832.
So 1815 is out.
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I'm sure this may be a bit unfair to the author, but when someone tries to force me to read a book that's almost a guarantee that I will never read it. Apparently the lines "hey you might like this book" can be swapped with a rabid "READ THIS THING OR WE'LL NEVER BE FRIENDS AGAIN" without incident. If I do read the book, they get really surprised when I voice a poor opinion of it and don't think the author is God's gift of prose.
The opposite effect is when a friend shows me a book, tells me the gist of what it's about, gives me the option of borrowing their copy, and leaving it at that. I'll blaze through that mother and probably love it to bits.
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Re: The first one, Neuro.
Yes, all characters have functions but in this one book - it was so blatantly obvious that
a certain character was just being set up to be killed that it annoyed me - I guess because
she came off like a paper target. No real depth to her.
But you just decribed aq large slice of English murder mysteries. I've read a lot of those type, in which you're fairly sure who's going to get killed withing the first few chapter (if it's not on the back of the book cover), usually through interaction with the people around them (who then become the suspects.)
Craig
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But you just decribed aq large slice of English murder mysteries. I've read a lot of those type, in which you're fairly sure who's going to get killed withing the first few chapter (if it's not on the back of the book cover), usually through interaction with the people around them (who then become the suspects.)
There is, indeed, a term in horror criticism for such characters: shreddies.
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fwiw, my first choice is "a book that treats me like an idiot".
Interesting thread... Agree to this one. Definitely have difficulty figuring out why some authors don't get this. Reading a book is a joint activity. No reason to force feed an author's heavy opinion & conclusions at the end of chapters or (as I've seen) ending of paragraphs. It is far better to have the reader active. You have to let your work fly and let the reader put their own end caps on things. I've pointed this out to a couple critique partners but they still don't get the difference. Perhaps it's my personal preference or I'm not explaining it right.
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You have to let your work fly and let the reader put their own end caps on things.
On the other hand lots of people say that Nabokov supported paedophiles- granted, mostly those who were prejudiced from the start, but still.
I must say that I often have the problem with historical fiction, mainly with the way most of the authors handle values dissonance- and I don't day about things like 300 that just take some fancy tokens from the past but so called "historical fiction". No matter time and culture, the protagonist will always have morals strangely resembling those preached by liberal upper middle class from USA- and I have an impression that lots of them either
a) didn't do research
b) did, but was afraid that the audience will react like those amazon reviewers who complained that "Kristin Lavransdattir" would be a better book had the heroes not thinking that much about religion.
I know it's risky topic that requires a lots of skill to make a protagonist likeable in spite of having different morals than reader, but it's possible. I understand that Melanie Wilkens wasn't abolitionist and that Mammy considered herself a better caste than field slaves. Petronius of Quo Vadis while being considered by his slaves as exceptionally patient and understanding man didn't hesitate to order corporal punishment when one of them didn't obey him on spot. Heroines of Lisa See couldn't be more different from modern Western women, yet they are interesting characters whose characteristic perfectly fit their time and background.
I don't say that character can't have some modern morals- Sometimes skilled writer can sneak them by presenting it as an extraordinary- like Judge Dee who gave shelter to rape victim and later married her to keep silent bad tongues (on the other hand he wasn't above using tortures while serving justice).
On the other side of the spectrum we have that guy from Patriot, pure as freshly washed clothes who see like a transplant from XXI century.
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I must say that I often have the problem with historical fiction, mainly with the way most of the authors handle values dissonance- and I don't day about things like 300 that just take some fancy tokens from the past but so called "historical fiction". No matter time and culture, the protagonist will always have morals strangely resembling those preached by liberal upper middle class from USA-
That sounds to me like you're not reading the really top-end historical fiction like Patrick O'Brian and Dorothy Dunnett, then.
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Top-end authors are no way the majority :) But thanks for recommendations :)
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The first thing that will cause me to put down a book is to find it isn't what I thought it was or looking for. That will usually happen within the first couple of chapters.
From there I'll set it aside when it no longer is a pleasant read, which can be caused by:
- The amount of editing errors.
- Wandering off topic enough that you lose the pace of the read or storyline.
- To many sentence structure issues, so that it's difficult to understand what is meant and you have reread sentences repeatedly.
- Piles of adjectives and adverbs that destroy the pace of the story.
- When the writing is very mechanical, so there is no sense of the story or characters.
- When the story is inconsistent or becomes unbelievable.
- When the story is factually incorrect and poorly researched.
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- the amount of editing errors.
- Wandering off topic enough that you loose the pace of the read or storyline.
- To many sentence structure issues, so that it's difficult to understand what is meant and you have reread sentences repeatedly.
- Piles of adjectives and adverbs that destroy the pace of the story.
- When the writing is very mechanical, so there is no sense of the story or characters.
- When the story is inconsistent or becomes unbelievable.
- When the story is factually incorrect and poorly researched.
agreed