Book/Reading Pet Peeves

[Seshat]

Of course, there is also the third, story-only, reason, which is that the author knows the reader doesn't know all this stuff, and there is no other way to get it to the reader outside of using a block explanation.

There's always another way.

One that one author I know uses occasionally: she has a kind of conference, gathering together people who each know parts of the overall backstory, and THEN they dialogue their way through the Things The Reader Needs To Know. With appropriate reactions and responses from whoever's not talking.

But show-don't-tell is always, always preferable, IMO.

[MoonCat]

There's always another way.

One that one author I know uses occasionally: she has a kind of conference, gathering together people who each know parts of the overall backstory, and THEN they dialogue their way through the Things The Reader Needs To Know. With appropriate reactions and responses from whoever's not talking.

But show-don't-tell is always, always preferable, IMO.

Exactly. It's illogical for a character to tell another character something they already know. If you have to work in references to things that happened in a previous book, you do it in small bites, not all at once, so that it's worked naturally into the story.

The technique you mention above reminds me of the the chapter "The Council of Elrond" in The Lord of the Rings. A great deal of backstory is worked into that, telling the readers things they didn't know; new characters (Legolas, Boromir, Gimli) are introduced; and information is relayed that brings all the characters up to speed on what's already happened and where they're going next. It's masterful. One of my favorite parts of the book.

[Lace Neil Singer]

The technique you mention above reminds me of the the chapter "The Council of Elrond" in The Lord of the Rings. A great deal of backstory is worked into that, telling the readers things they didn't know; new characters (Legolas, Boromir, Gimli) are introduced; and information is relayed that brings all the characters up to speed on what's already happened and where they're going next. It's masterful. One of my favorite parts of the book.

^This. Basically, one of the greatest examples of "show, not tell" I've ever seen. And most definitely preferable to an infodump.

[PepperElf]

my own:

Overuse of "clever" tricks. It's one thing to misdirect the reader in the overall plot, and frankly I like books that do that. What I dislike are books that use misdirection in every single paragraph. I read - or tried to read - a book once where the author did that. Instead of just describing what happened, he described the end result and then worked backwards until revealing the entire event. Once or twice is ok, but ... constantly? It started giving me a headache.


Books where the protagonist ... is just annoying. Perhaps even worse than a "Mary" (or Gary) ... when the protagonist just whines all the way through, or does nothing. For example some book I tried reading that was suppose to be similar to the Kushiel's Dart books. Similar my ass - the heroine was no Phedre; she was just mindlessly subservient.

This is also why I didn't dislike "Victoria" from the Dark Shadows movie, but I wasn't overly impressed by her. [spoiler]She did nothing in the movie except walk around. Everyone else saved them from the bitch. She just pranced through the mansion looking pretty and innocent.[/spoiler]

One of my peeves is a writer who creates a character who's obviously a complete sociopath, but the author means for them to be thought of as a hero or romantic lead.

I'm laughing my ass off cos... I read a review about Eragon that explained why he's a sociopath.

As much as I love the series - I did the audiobooks for this one - I can see where the reviewer is coming from.

Hype: Not necessarily the same kinds that I see others posting about. I picked up the Harry Potter series somewhere after book 2 or 3 had been written, just because I'd heard how popular it was and wanted to check it out. Mind you this is before the first movie was released.

Likewise I also picked up LOTR... kinda. I'd tried reading it before but did more skimming than anything else. The movie however did help me get through the council meeting in the book. Man that was kinda dry.


However... hype HAS turned me away from some series that I previously enjoyed. True Blood comes to mind. When I first heard about it, I was like... "Synthetic blood allows vampires to come out from hiding... that sounds just like that book I read... Oh!"

Maybe I'll get back into reading the books again but frankly... the over-popularity of the series on HBO kinda dulled my interest in the books.

[Eireann]

Talking about food and/or sex in almost every chapter.

Professional women who assume that nobody else around them knows what they're doing, so they give a lecture each time. This is particularly common in novels where the female protagonist performs autopsies as part of her job.

A female protagonist who has a steady job, a house, several degrees, half a dozen guys wanting to date her, and tons of money, but the author tries to pretend that she isn't a Mary Sue because she gets drunk occasionally, or flies off the handle at one person in the entire book, who always forgives her.

[PepperElf]

oo just remembered another one: over analyzation.

This was prevalent in the mid 80s early 90s more or less.... where characters would take a small issue and analyze it to death, as if it the fate of the world depended on it.

The first example that comes to mind is a sci-fi book i read where the heroine fell injured during a battle and a man helped her out. after the battle, some of the other women berated her for being helped by a man, almost sparking a dialogue about what it meant etc. (actually they did a lot of that in that series)

stuff like that just makes me think of facebook/forum arguments where say... someone might have a big discussion on how it affects everyone else if someone decides to post in green text or something meaningless... and then everyone has to add their 2 cents in, repeatedly. until the horse hasn't just been beaten, it's been turned into slush.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

This was prevalent in the mid 80s early 90s more or less.... where characters would take a small issue and analyze it to death, as if it the fate of the world depended on it.

The first example that comes to mind is a sci-fi book i read where the heroine fell injured during a battle and a man helped her out. after the battle, some of the other women berated her for being helped by a man, almost sparking a dialogue about what it meant etc. (actually they did a lot of that in that series)

Were you in one of my classes in college this last year, by chance?

Because instead of it being in the short story I wrote (a female character who is trained in fast, assassin like combat lost a friendly wrestling match with a guy who was trained to basically crash headlong into the enemy and start beating on them with a big two handed hammer) it was the people who read it. The entire critique almost ended up being about how I'm setting women back because a woman who was not built nor trained for brute strength lost in a brute strength match to a guy whom she is on friendly terms with. {Best part is that later in the story she saved his life, but no one decided to bring that up except the professor who mentioned it then basically "SHUT THE EFF UP ABOUT IT AND MOVE ON!}

That's a pet peeve in my real life @_@. Though I really hate it in books. Eff you Jane Eyre, the only reason you were worth reading was so I got the references in the Thursday Next first book The Eyre Affair - which I do recommend, along with the rest of the Thursday Next books.

[RayvenQ]

The first example that comes to mind is a sci-fi book i read where the heroine fell injured during a battle and a man helped her out. after the battle, some of the other women berated her for being helped by a man, almost sparking a dialogue about what it meant etc. (actually they did a lot of that in that series)

Yeah because the heroine obviously should have bled out on the battlefield rather than be rescued by a comrade (a man no less, shock horror!) just to prove a point about something! (Sarcasm)

Were you in one of my classes in college this last year, by chance?

Because instead of it being in the short story I wrote (a female character who is trained in fast, assassin like combat lost a friendly wrestling match with a guy who was trained to basically crash headlong into the enemy and start beating on them with a big two handed hammer) it was the people who read it. The entire critique almost ended up being about how I'm setting women back because a woman who was not built nor trained for brute strength lost in a brute strength match to a guy whom she is on friendly terms with. {Best part is that later in the story she saved his life, but no one decided to bring that up except the professor who mentioned it then basically "SHUT THE EFF UP ABOUT IT AND MOVE ON!}.

Even if you switched the genders around, you'd probably get a similar respons. In a friendly fight, someone trained in fast ,assasin like combat would probably be at a disadvantage no matter the gender, since it is frienedly and I'm assuming they wouldn't want to actually kill each other, the assassin (regardless of gender) would have to pull a hell of a lot of their punches by sheer dint that the style of said person would be about fast, accurate, effective and crippling/fatal blows, wheras the brawler (again regardless of gender) is free to bash a person, since its a lot easier to just bash someone up and not kill them, than adapting fatal combat techniques to nonfatal ones.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Even if you switched the genders around, you'd probably get a similar respons. In a friendly fight, someone trained in fast ,assasin like combat would probably be at a disadvantage no matter the gender, since it is frienedly and I'm assuming they wouldn't want to actually kill each other, the assassin (regardless of gender) would have to pull a hell of a lot of their punches by sheer dint that the style of said person would be about fast, accurate, effective and crippling/fatal blows, wheras the brawler (again regardless of gender) is free to bash a person, since its a lot easier to just bash someone up and not kill them, than adapting fatal combat techniques to nonfatal ones.

EXACTLY!! EXACTLY! OMG SOMEONE GETS IT!

She even commented after the fight that she could have "killed him four times before he got his first grapple on her" yet noooo, no one noticed that. The guys in the class just remained very quiet looking confused, whereas it was a bunch of girls screeching at me. Bah!

[RayvenQ]

EXACTLY!! EXACTLY! OMG SOMEONE GETS IT!

She even commented after the fight that she could have "killed him four times before he got his first grapple on her" yet noooo, no one noticed that. The guys in the class just remained very quiet looking confused, whereas it was a bunch of girls screeching at me. Bah!

One thing I like about Starship Troopers, is that two troopers fight to work out their differences, and the character quite clearly says/thinks that both of them purposefully fought slower because they didnt want to do lasting damage, wheras they could have had the fight done much quicker one or both of them would be maimed or dead.

It's what irks me in films too when two trained and deadly warriors face off for a marathon length fight, wheras really the fight would pretty much be short lived.

[PepperElf]

Were you in one of my classes in college this last year, by chance?

Nope. Not I.

The last creative writing class I took was about true stories and online only. And the last thing I'd ever do was accuse a story of "setting women back". If anything I'd find that rather melodramatic. Same as I thought the other women in the story I mentioned were being overdramatic about the gender of the person who helped the woman.

If anything, in a fantasy story, I'd more of a fan of the Paksenarrion series where Paks learned by getting her ass handed to her by the weapons master until she learned to do better, etc.

if anything, The Deed of Paksenarrion is closer to my ideal of analyzing motives, actions... because the author didn't have the characters go on about nitpicking stuff, but rather, had them learn from adversity and self-analysis. So instead of coming off as being harping, it comes out as being enlightening.

[MoonCat]

It's what irks me in films too when two trained and deadly warriors face off for a marathon length fight, wheras really the fight would pretty much be short lived.

This reminds me of the old cowboy dramas my grandfather used to watch on TV. Two guys would have a fistfight that started in the barn, worked their way into the barnyard and halfway up to the house, and no matter how many times a guy got hit in the face and went down, he'd always get up and keep swinging. Unless it was in the last five minutes of the show, then the bad guy would go down with one punch and stay down.

[dalesys]

Time/distance paradoxes, where using the same transport, same weather, at the same urgency, they struggle for weeks to get somewhere and take a few days to return.

Multiple moon systems where the moons months are an integer number of days long and therefore every x days/years there is a "night of five moons" identical to the last one.

The moons are scattered east-west across the sky, but they all show the same phase. (Common in artwork) Moons will be at the same phase (full, half, quarter, new) if and only if they are aligned in a plane including the planet, and the plane is perpendicular to the planet's orbital plane. (not necessarily equatorial, ecliptic or any body's orbit)

[MoonCat]

Really dumb mistakes like someone referring to spiders as insects (they're arachnids!); not as an example of a character being wrong, but as in, the author doesn't know the difference (and neither did the editor, apparently). Or mentioning a plant's "seeds" when the plant in question actually reproduces by spores or bulbs or whatever.

[wolfie]

One of the Clive Cussler books I read made me swear off ever having a character chuckle. I think that's all the character ever did.

AARGH! He deals in stuff that's just plain WRONG. In "The Chase", a salvage crane on a barge lifts a locomotive out of a lake. When it lowers the loco onto the barge, the weight causes the barge to settle by a couple inches. NO! The barge was carrying the weight when it was suspended by the crane, so there's no transfer of weight, and therefore no settling, when it's lowered onto the deck.

In another novel, someone needs to reduce the draft of a battleship (one-shot mission, no hostile fire expected), so they remove the armour - which is the main structural component of the hull.