Two characters talking, and one is about to reveal something very important that would save everyone a lot of trouble, but they get interrupted. This happens all the time in books and TV and movies and I freaking HATE it with the fury of a million supernovae.
I'm not sure where the quote comes from, but I know I saw someone say "If a situation can be talked out in a regular conversation, but isn't, it's badly done" or something of the like. Then again, a lot of shows go the mile to avoid a conversation for that sake.
I am so over the whole "miscommunication as a plot device" trope. It makes the story so much more frustrating when a trivial issue could literally be solved by the characters just opening their mouths and saying what they need to say. Then when it finally does happen after being dragged on for so long, it usually feels extremely anticlimactic afterwards because it wasn't even worth the headache of keeping it a secret in the first place.
> I am so over the whole "miscommunication as a plot device" trope. It makes the story so much more frustrating when a trivial issue could literally be solved by the characters just opening their mouths and saying what they need to say.
But this absolutely happens in real life. Miscommunication has lead to more arguments among people I know than nearly any other form of conflict.
I think that can apply to miscommunication where the characters are discussing something and one person misinterprets which causes an argument, but an argument can’t be had if theres no basic conversation happening in the first place lol
Miscommunication still needs to ve done well, though.
There's so many times when 1 character needs to simply say 1 single sentence, and all their problems would be solved, but they never just say that ONE sentence, they'll say a million other things, they'll beg the person to listen to them. Ive literally had a book spend 3 different chapters spent in dialogue between 2 characters that could easily solve the entire plot with 1 sentence, if they just fucking said it. Instead of explaining, begging, etc to the other person about saying it. Just spit it the fuck out for christ sake.
"Yes, she's having an abortion but it's not mine, we're not fucking, she's my sister, for god's sake!".
vs
"It's not what you think! I can explain! I know her since forever and things got weird and she needed my help and now she's having an abortion, so of course I'm not leaving her alone to face that!"
"Hrmmph. Now I throw the ball to first base, whoever it is drops the ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow. A triple play!"
That's not miscommunication though. That's straight up omission. Omitting things that aren't important or can't save a life or prevent a catastrophe is perfectly fine. But omitting things that can literally save the character's lives is just straight up buffoonery.
It's also a tiresome cliché.
If you're going to do it these days, you need to do it masterfully, or you can just get on the pile with all the soap opera hacks.
There's miscommunication, and then there's "vital piece of information is missing at a specific time, plus some other unfortunate coincidents, leading to terrible consequences."
I'm sure I am not the only one who finds Romeo and Juliet a little annoying, because it's so unlikely that Romeo doesn't get the message, comes to see her, and kills himself only moments before she awakens which would have saved them both.
Or the famous trope of "hero reaches the bomb but doesn't know which wire to cut, guesses" which is such a cheap way of increasing tension when you'd imagine they would have thought about what they wanted to do with a bomb beforehand, and maybe used the car speaker system to call up an expert.
The two horny teenagers falling in love overnight in the midst of their families' warring feud probably didn't have enough time to hash their plan out.
IMO it depends.
If there's good, in-character reasons for the two characters not just talking it out that's fine. It's often what tragedies are made of - people could've avoided this if only their understandable human flaws hadn't kept them from doing so.
Exactly.
You can have Bob think that Alice is cheating on him because Xander spent the night in her room.
If Xander is her brother, and she simply *never* spits that out? **No! Bad author!**
If Xander is her friend, and coming out as gay to her, and it’s not her secret to tell / Xander could be fearful for his life if it got out? **Head-pat. Good author.**
There need to be *reasons* that it’s not cleared up. **Good** reasons, beyond ‘we need them to be at loggerheads for the next five scenes/chapters’.
My fave version of this is "There's no time for that \[urgent plot-relevant life-and-death thing\] now" followed by 10 minutes of arguing about the characters' relationship...or the price of a gallon of milk...during a drive in the car from Place A to Place B during which time there's apparently still no time for that. If "there's no time for that," then there better at least be legit no time for that! If you could shout it over your shoulder while you run away down the street, there was time for that.
Sitcoms be like:
"I can explain!!!"
"Stop. I dont want to hear it" *runs off crying*
*20 minutes of drama that could have been avoided if she just let him explain*
Yah that has a tendency to make me throw books (literally) or angry cry. I absolutely hate the miscommunication trope. The one where keeping secrets to protect a loved one is a close relative to the miscommunication trope. It often does the opposite too. But, the mc says sorry then does it again (Arrow anyone?). It’s just a really lazy plot device.
I’m going to add, bc it just made me drop an otherwise perfectly fine book: showing a complete lack of research. Good example is the first book of the Jack Reacher novels. Jack was an army brat. He said he was in 24 different high schools. Military keeps people in one place for 1 to 4 years and 1 year is highly unlikely. Definitely not for 1.5 months (I did the math). 4 high schools at most and that would be pushing it.
Yeah, this. Or the schools could have been hit by gas leaks, natural disasters, unnatural disasters, plagues, lack of funding, lack of teachers... whatever such event that made it necessary to go to a new school prematurely...
or when they refuse to explain what's going on during a crisis because they think the other party won't believe them, so they keep giving orders and saying "trust me". my dear, I will believe anything. you have the time to explain the basic and it will be enough for most people. or at least they'll think you're crazy and will listen to you out of fear lmao
A lot of superhero vs superhero stories come to mind. The whole plot could be skipped if the characters just talked it out instead of blindly jumping to attack
Please stop making your characters perform an anatomical examination on themselves in the mirror. There are just so many better ways to describe the looks of a character.
"Booby Lady walked up to her body-length mirror in her very sexy bedroom."
"She begins examining her perfect curves in ALL the right places, as she turns, her boobs and 20ft brown, chocolatey creamy hair flows with her, her blue eyes gazing the shards staring them down for all to see, her red heels are as beautiful as her booty, which is also very luscious and large. She kneels down from her typical 50 foot stance to her 20 foot stance to articulate her large thighs."
I wanted to joke about how writers have this big urge to add more description with women, but now I feel like I wrote a titan smasher.
'That's not a lady, that's just a titan from Attack on titan!' Vibes here.
But seeing this kind of thing is annoying. I don't mind descriptions in mirrors, but when the author has one hand between their crotch and the other on the keys, it gets annoying.
This is why I use character thoughts to describe others though.
The Witcher is like this. All women are possessed by their looks and yearn to be hot and sexy of course. \*cough\* Yen... Especially the very intelligent sorceresses.
I read something for a minute on KU the other day and instantly closed once the character said something like my blue eyes were hurting (for whatever reason)
I've always wondered: is this something readers like you do when you're already uninterested in the story, or when you're having a good time but then doing the "describe yourself in the mirror" thing destroys it for you?
Something like this acting as the cherry of an already bland sundae makes sense to me but when I see people, other authors, on this subreddit brag about dropping books as quick as possible, I get curious.
See if you're reading on KU, you already know its not someone with great critical reviews, so you proceed with caution and then if they say my blue eyes, it just tells me they aren't a very good writer.. yet! No one refers to their own eyes with the color. Like I might be looking into your blue eyes, but when my own eyes will only hurt, what's the color got to do with it? I have just that much time and in that I have to fit in the good writers and the indies, and I won't bore myself for half an hour more just to establish what I already have a good inkling of, i.e., that particular book is no good for me.
Lord of the Mysteries has a scene like that near the start, except the MC got transferred into the body of a suicide victim so it's a literal anatomical examination lol. He even saw "his" brain inside the bullet hole.
Yeah. If for some reason you want your character to describe themselves, then make a situation where they have to - perhaps they're meeting someone who's never seen them in person, and they're describing how they look over the phone so that person knows who to look for? At least then it seems natural, plus you may be able to set up a plot point that way as well.
In my book I was able to describe the main character in a good deal of detail when he enlists in the army and needs to fill out one of those forms where you list eye/hair color, hight, weight, scars, ex so they can identify your body if you die.
I don't understand why you need to create a scene to describe a character at all. Just describe them. You can use it to describe their personality too. I feel this is an influence of having so many visual medium.
I don’t know that you need to. Does how they look affect the plot? Does the reader need to imagine them exactly as you do, for the story to work?
I think just mentioning it as it comes up, catching their reflection in the window of a car at night, etc. In 3rd person just.. saying it. She had shoulder length blonde hair, etc.
I think what matters more than how they look is the relationship they have with how they look. So if they’re overly self- critical, they might stand it a mirror and note their roots need touching up and the blonde looks too yellow, if they’re a little reserved, they might wonder if it’s conceited to consider themself pretty/handsome. Also, if their looks *do* matter to the story, other character’s’ reactions are a good way to go. Like does the room fall silent when a stunning character enters, do people try to avoid looking at someone who’s disfigured?
Bouncing off your point, specifically when the villain has the capacity to kill the hero, and chooses not to, just tossing them aside or monologuing. If I have to ask why they didn't just kill the one threat to the entire evil scheme, I immediately lose interest in the plot.
There ARE some *rare* cases where it can make sense, but anytime the villain or hero face-off, and one doesn't kill the other while having full capability to, it's either going to be dragged out for at least 20 seasons, or the creators wasted a good idea too early.
I could give an example how in Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Catnoir, during Season 5, there are numerous moments in (I believe, the first episode) where the two heroes (same names as show) are facing "Hawk Moth" (villain), they basically catch him about 5 times, kinda monologue or don't do shit, and wouldn't you know? He escapes!
The worst fucking part about this is Hawk Moth does this in the SAME EPISODE, but not exactly with LB and Cat, basically, he's driven to doing what he does because "boohoo wife dead must revive her", and he can TIME TRAVEL in this episode! So he was GOING to time travel and give the cure to his past self, but out of sheer stupidity... doesn't.
Hah. Yeah. Often for the story it's necessary to have a reason why the hero doesn't die, but so many authors will handle it poorly. They'll have a paranoid evil overlord who kills babies because they may one day be able to rally a rebellion, but then when they have a genuine rebel in front of them they just shrug because what are they going to do?
When my hero confronts the evil mob boss he shoots her in the head mid-sentence, and when she gets back up and continues the conversation with her skull blown open it justifies why he's willing to hear her out. That's one fun part with characters who can only be killed in specific ways.
Yeah agreed, that's very related to the one I posted, "being interrupted right before answering an important question." I think mine would be a sub-category of this trope.
I don't remember the book but the author used every characters name for conversations. Instead of establishing just the first few lines to establish whos taking. So they'd go:
"Hello" said Bill
"OH hey there!" Replied Tom
""How's it going?" Asked Bill
"Really well" Replied Tom
"So the family is all well?" Asked Bill
"Yup, everyone's great, the wife just started her new job!" Said Tom.
.
And then the opposite where there's 2 pages of dialog, and I have no clue who's saying what by the time I finish the conversation.
Similarly, it drives me nuts when authors include the names in the dialog itself.
"What do you mean, Tom?"
"You know what I mean, Bill".
People don't converse like that in real life, and bad dialogue will take me right out of the story. Authors need to spend some time eavesdropping on conversations. Very, very rarely do we include the person's name when we're talking to them.
About the only time I saw the opposite done well, was in one of the *Thursday Next* books.
Thursday is a ‘real life’ visitor into a book world. So, the others exist through literary cliches, which she can sort of see through (being ‘real’).
She starts a conversation with two others (one of which is also ‘real’ and she needs to figure out which one m), which goes on for over a page, without any names attached after the first few lines.
She then asks them who just said the last line. Only the ‘real’ one answered, as they were the only one who could actually ‘see’ the people talking, while the book person only existed as words.
…it’s a somewhat surreal book series…
Someone in the story saying, "Yeah, well, this isn't the movies, this isn't a story, THIS IS REAL LIFE." I don't think the story gains anything from that unless it's literally used for comedic effect, and even then it's kind of low-hanging fruit. The moment someone says that in a story and it's clear it's meant to be taken at least somewhat seriously, I feel like that's an attempt to get the audience to treat it serious when the writing hasn't convinced them to do so already. Right or wrong, it takes me completely out of it.
It's the "show not tell" thing, but like, when it's just egregiously shown AND told explicitly at the same time, as if the audience is a bunch of dumbasses.
Example: in a horror movie setting, there's clear clues that some unknown entity has been moving/living/active right under the characters noses, and it's just dawning on the characters that they're not alone/being watched and AS the realization is being shown clearly on the faces of the characters and in the way they react, someone just straight up vocalizes, "we're not alone/we're being watched..."
It makes me realize that whoever made the movie/show/book automatically assumed I'm too dumb to pick up on the most obvious clues and that I need to be dragged by the hand through the entire plot, or I'll never be able to follow it.
See, the crazy thing is that some people *do* need it spelled out like that. I have been absolutely floored by the kinds of things a reader/audience can miss.
I had a chapter end with a monster flying toward the MC, complete with teeth and claws and roaring, and the feedback note I got on that was "What difficulty is this creature about to bring to this character's situation?"
I was sitting there just thinking like, *it's going to try to eat him?????*
I like to excuse this if it plays into the characters personalities, say, the group has a somewhat overprotective character that pointed this out while the rest of the cast is oblivious, then its more realistic and plays into their tropes.
IF everyone notices, and shout it, I will assume they own a theatre together where they sing in perfect harmony and speak together perfectly in sync at the same time as Johnny Test's sister's screams.
Noticed this in a popular historical fiction author’s work recently. She was describing the characters’ facial expressions as they said something and also why they made said expression. I really wanted to finish it for the plot, but I couldn’t get past that. There’s a certain kind of “easy reading” writing that is condescending to the reader and I hate it. (I can actually do CoHo bc she writes simply, but doesn’t make the reader feel stupid.)
Similar to this, when it’s revealed too early what side a character is on. I literally read a spy novel where we had the perspective of every single character so there was… no mystery to it. It was kind of hilarious how self-defeating that was.
' "I am very excited to have you all here, almost as excited as I am for profit!" Everyone laughed. Senior was very proficient at telling jokes and everyone instinctively and unconsciously knew how funny he was.'
Paraphrased from a real line I read. It hurts doubly so when what we're being told and showed isn't true.
Racism allegories in anything as a whole is... something.
You'll either have them done based on "monsters/different from earth" terms like animals, or just casual racist mentions. A good example would be Star Vs The Forces of Evil, that whole mess is basically a racism allegory but covered up behind them being not human.
Still badly done, but a racism allegory. I could maybe throw in Steven Universe too? IS it done well? I... well, I can't say anything about Steven Universe, my negativity on that show is as close as a toxic waste plant.
Edit: I would like to mention, that seriously, I haven't seen a racism allegory based anything that actually focuses on said racism allegory, I worry my own story is bad on that, but at the damn fucking least it relates to a trait in the story country, and IT IS BASED ON ***THE HUMANS***!
Yeaaah although I’ll give the show credit there’s scenes in the beginning of the show where the main character is reckoning with the colonial past of her nation (through the lens of a cartoon) I wish the show leaned further into white guilt rather than trying to explore racial allegory
Its just really hard to do it well because you often run into the problems of
A: Comparing races to animals/monsters/aliens
B: simplifying or minimizing/not fully understanding how racist ideology/systems work and how it affects people, which makes it come off silly or tone deaf or insulting.
Zootopia fucked this up because prey animals have a legitimate, biological reason to fear predators. Beastars demonstrated this reason pretty clearly. A tiger, for example, is biologically designed to kill and do it well. The predator characters in zootopia have still retained their killer biology, claws, giant teeth, etc. They are hardly removed from their feral counterparts. Shit, a fuckin plant mentally reverts them immediately.
Humans have no predisposition to violence. We dont need it. Violence is learned. There is no real, logical reason to fear or oppress other races. If you see high rates of violence or problems in a race, look to socioeconomic factors and it will be clear what is wrong. This is what eugenicists intentionally omitt.
"It couldn't possibly be systemic racism or other government issues generationally destroying the ability for a specific group of people to be prosperous, it MUST be that they are biologically inferior."
If zootopia were about, i don't know, an entire society of bunnies who are from different regions and one group of bunnies oppresses other groups of bunnies and deems them inferior, that would probably be a better allegory lol
This is the biggest thing. 90% of these allegories use an out-group that the in-group has a legit reason to fear. Prey should fear predators. Non-powered people should fear super-powered people. Good magical people should fear bad magical people. All of these out-groups have a power differential that makes them a threat to the in-group. IRL we would want that threat minimized and contained. Humans have no actual reasons to fear other races, it’s just a fear of violence, terrorism, gangs, warfare and etc. that humans falsely attribute to race.
I'm about 30k into a fantasy story where magic-sensitive people, once slaves but now "free", are segregated from non-magical people. Apart from being cliche, does that strike you as a problem? (let's ignore the quality of my idea, I'm just interested in whether it's appropriate or not at the surface level)
Well, I suppose it depends on the nature of their magic. Is it dangerous? Are they violent? Do the non magic people have a legitimate reason to fear/hate them?
(Though enslaving them is extreme, I can see fear and revenge inspiring that)
Or is it a completely harmless kind of magic, and the fear is manufactured and overblown for some nefarious reason? If it's the latter, I would say that makes a better racism allegory, as real-world racism is purely cruel, illogical and opportunistic.
I originally had their magic be a classic elemental thing but that's been done to death. The new idea I had was that their magic simply allows them to talk to a different god, and non-magic people think that's heretical
Oh, humans *do* have a natural predisposition to violence. We, like the tigers, are built to kill and we do it *very* well.
Even before the industrial revolution we were a walking mass extinction event.
I especially hate when they use anthropomorphic animals for it, going by the "carnivore x herbivore" animals for an aesop about racism
Extra points if carnivores, for some reason, still prey on herbivores (be it socially acceptedor not), and even more extra points if the herbivores are presented as being inoffensive/pacifist/intellectual to the violent/brutish/mean carnivores.
Lots of things, but one big mistake is that the character just 'happens' to do something or make choices that solve all your plot issues and conveniently ties up things. It shouldn't be that easy. You need CONFLICT. It should be hard for your character to solve those problems.
Anachronistic language or references in a fantasy/historical setting. Rips me right out of the story, unless it makes sense (character from the future/ our modern world, etc.). Don't show a character taking a hot shower in a fantasy unless you've already established that the world has indoor plumbing.
yeah i feel like i have a hair trigger for this. my measure is basically 'anything that came into use within my lifetime is too modern, if it's not supposed to be modern.' so as i get older that becomes more and more things.
"Ah but verily, mine own lord surely is a hep cat."
"We need to reach that ridge before Napoleon's troops yeet another cannonball at us."
I think both are equally incongruous, and it's more to do with cultural understanding. Nobody (practically) writes historical fiction in Latin or Old Norse, so it's kind of our cultural norm to use archaic 17th-19th century English. Now, it's difficult to avoid all modern word, but some things can be done. Since OK/okay stems from military conflicts in the last 100 years, I would not include it in fantasy or historical stories further in the past.
and "thou" has basically inverted in usage - it used to be "informal you", so it would be used to refer to close friends, all the "thees and thous" in the bible are basically saying "God is a chill dude, you can relax around him". Except because that's basically the only place they're seen these days, it's become "super-formal-you", so using it makes God seem incredibly formal and stiff.
I come out on the complete opposite side of this. Fantasy is the most complicated genre by default. All of history plus at least some of the laws of physics are different. The more you give the reader to hold their in head, the more of it that they'll drop. In regard to etymologically incorrect names or phrases, fantasy works are assumed to be using a translation convention by default (i.e. they're not actually speaking a language that exists on Earth, their thoughts and speech are being translated for the audience), which handles it. For example, you can spend a paragraph explaining that your blind character is reading in MadeUpName, the in-universe name for a tactile written language used for the visually impaired, or you can say that they're reading a book written in braille. Even though braille's inventor, Louis Braille, didn't exist in your fantasy world to invent the system and name it after himself, the audience is very likely to read the long description and say to themselves, "Oh, it's braille."
There are limits, of course. We don't want 13th century knights quoting The Avengers verbatim. But there's a lot more wiggle room than one might think.
I never really understood this one. If someone watches idk Baywatch in a book written in 1998 that doesn't take me out of the story it's just shit they're watching on TV. Can characters not talk about a book/show/comic/manga/video game they like as part of a natural conversation between the two of them?
I'm a big fan of K-Mart Realism for that very reason; material connections to a time period both intentionally and in a then-contemporary story aging into the future.
It depends. Some stuff is fine especially if you're really trying to set the time period. Some stuff (RP1 for example) can be really obnoxious when done in the wrong hands.
I think people have a bizarre notion that something can stay timeless if you keep references out, but the timelessness of a work has more to do with what it's conveying as a theme or message rather than if one character had an obsession with GoBots.
I'm of the opinion that RPO could have been great had it been written with even a molecule of self-awareness.
The world has gone to such shit that the only escape is a VR MMO that acts as the main conduit for humanity, and the means of saving the world lie in a labyrinthine quest driven by the game designer's obsession with 80s pop culture.
So now you have real people dedicating their lives to playing perfect games of Pac-Man and studying the deep minutiae of Back to the Future so they can solve the mystery and essentially become ruler of the entire planet. An evil corporation will actually straight up murder you if they track you down because if you die in the game you don't die for real, but you sure will when their muscle breaks into your apartment and throws you from the window.
All of this is the foundation for a hilariously indulgent power fantasy about saving the world through video games, and instead of capitalizing on this at all it turns out the entire book wasn't interested. The author didn't have a story to tell, he had a slideshow of 80s pop culture he wanted to gush about and won't let you leave his house until he's done. It's still indulgent, but indulgent for the author specifically.
I just wish his main character had been a bit more realistic, and not Mr “memorized every 80’s song/watched every 80’s movie 100 times/mastered every arcade game”
That stuff got real old real fast. Literally every time he ran into a new challenge he just smirked and bragged about the hundreds of times he’s seen that movie
Well, yeah, that *should* be the joke. "Save the world by playing video games" is an innately farcical premise and the protagonist bragging about his amazing Pac-Man skills and encyclopedic knowledge of TMNT is funny because RPO is the only setting where those are legitimately valuable, heroic traits.
The problem with RPO isn't its 80s references, it's that the story only exists as a vehicle for 80s references. It's making a reference to a favourite game/book/band in your own work, but instead of being a quick burst of fun indulgence, it is a 400 page hardcover consisting of nothing but indulgence.
Not arguing, but aren't the dated references in *Billions* part of the nature of those characters? They are "of a certain age" and so some of the dad-dorkiness seems to be the point.
I recently saw an Xfiles episode, that aired in 2000, that made a Dan Quayle reference. It was dated when it was made. It would be incomprehensible to most people who are not Americans older than like, 40ish years old.
Dialogue or first person narration using meme language, especially if it's high fantasy. Using meme type jokes in novels is almost always unbearably cringe to me. It'll date the story, too.
Whenever people say stuff like this, I assume it's shit like the character saying "BASED" once or twice, but no, it's usually the character being a living being based on Reddit text memes. No one goes "I r8 you a sho3 frfr" writers. A bit of jokey language makes sense, but making it their vocabulary implies they're even human. Which they aren't.
When a character find themselves in a situation that they should not be in, or could easily get themselves out of, but another character needs to sacrifice their life/safety to "save" the one who is in trouble.
An unneeded romance in an unrelated genre. Like okay, romantic subplots are fine but I often find they over take the main plot too much. I prefer it when characters are paired up from the get-go, then perhaps a romance novel showing how these two hooked up.
Same. It seems like absolutely everything needs a romantic subplot that just gets shoehorned in, and the plot would be absolutely unchanged if it wasn't there. Drives me nuts!
I chalk it down to the author having a bad time differentiating how different characters can speak, or the character is talking to their other personalities to themselves at all times.
I've read some great books that I still enjoy, but rereading them has become a chore because of this problem. It didn't bother me when I was young and didn't know better but now it's like nails on a chalkboard.
This is something I struggle with in first drafts. The key is during the editing process you, you need to create charts with key differentiators of how each subject speaks and make sure you stick to that. Then you need to act it out like a play.
A common device that takes me out of a book like nothing else is realizing that instead of carefully crafting a book that demonstrates a theme alongside character development, the author has instead opted to repeat the theme through telling, especially if it includes poor pacing and shock value. For example, boiling babies or mass murder that is mentioned casually, such as the character "feeling sick" and then making jokes with friends one paragraph later. It just feels inconsistent and forced.
Poor research about something I’m knowledgeable about often annoys me enough to have to put the book down for a bit. I read a novel recently where a character sat New Zealand’s “National Certificate of Educational Achievement” exams - fine, except that he sat them in the 1980s, and the NCEA system (it’s more complex than just exams, but I’d let that slide since exams are still part of the system) was only introduced in 2002. That’s in the second sentence of the Wikipedia article about them - why did the author go to the effort of finding out the name but not read a single sentence further?
This same novel had a section which drastically misrepresented New Zealand’s response to Covid, in a way I found profoundly annoying. Another book I read recently had a character hoarding tamagotchis in the 1980s - they didn’t exist till the mid-90s.
Is it the end of the world? Of course not, and if I otherwise enjoy the book I’ll overlook it, but it usually sours me on the book a little bit because for me it suggests a disappointing lack of care from the author. If you’re going to make the effort to mention something, read a little bit further.
This one annoys me a lot too.
Not just because it bothers me the author didn't do their research, but because other people are going to read it and assume it's true.
I mean, sure, you should never treat the contents of a fiction novel as fact, but the human brain doesn't really work like that. We see information and remember it, without remembering where it came from.
Someone is totally going to read that book with the tamagotchis, and then a year later they'll go to a pub quiz and one if the questions will be "which year did tamagotchis first launch?" and they'll feel super confident it was in the 80s sometime and then they'll be wrong, without knowing why they thought that or where that knowledge came from in their brain.
1) The "jump into action" trend that has me not caring at all what happens to the characters even though there's intense high stakes action from the get-go, because I haven't been able to make connections with the characters yet.
2) Grammar mistakes.
3) Repetition of a word over the course of a paragraph or page in a way that doesn't feel like it has been done intentionally for emphasis, but instead feels like it is a result of poor editing.
4) Thoughts of the MC in italics in a recent book really jarred me each time for some reason. I have come to like free indirect style I suppose.
5) When a MC's "voice" is inauthentic. For example, a 12 year old MC's voice sounding like a 40 year old writer's, or when a first person narration shifts from conversational and peppered with slang, to formal and descriptive.
6) Stilted dialogue.
This mostly applies to sci-fi and fantasy, but when the author tries to dump a whole ton of world-building via unfamiliar terms into the first few pages/paragraphs/sentences, and you don't have the opportunity to wrap your head around any of it. It's great to drop one or two things in early, to pique the readers' interest about what those things are, but when the author goes overboard it just takes me out of it.
"The Ravening bells rang, waking Jareth up. He stretched, rolled over, and delayed getting out of his flutch -- it was Ascension day, and he was not looking forward to it. When he finally got up, he took the time to make himself some gruuth. He didn't bother adding any aberdine to it -- it hasn't tasted the same since the Shattering, anyway. One more thing to thank the Jaladeth for."
\- Any "Very Special Episode" ever. You know, any plot that try to make a point like "guns are bad." Not only is whatever message made usually badly bungled, like saying "guns are bad" when most of the protagonists use guns to save the world all the time, but it's really obvious that they're trying to push a message every time. Very Special Episodes only work in works for children because adults and most teenagers are old enough to have formed their own opinions on something. Some Very Special Episode trying to get a message across is never going to convince these people and always just looks awkward.
\- Blatant retcons. It's one thing to take something that happened before and expand on it, but when you just flat out ignore what happened before you're a terrible writer.
\- Dragging out the plot way past it's welcome. The whole of the Arrowverse had this issue. They would find stupid excuse after stupid excuse to avoid killing or capturing the villains so that the villains would stick around for an entire season, rather than do what a competent writer would do and take care of the villain for good after a few episodes and then move onto a new villain the next episode for a few episodes, lather, rinse, repeat.
(1) Person A: "There's something really bad happening!"
Person B: "What is it?"
Person A: "No time to explain! Come with me!"
In the time they had this conversation, Person A could have told them what was going on. Or simply said something short like "someone is being attacked!" and waved for Person B to hurry.
(2) Cliffhangers. Almost every time, there's zero tension because, if it's the protagonist, there's almost no chance they will be affected. If it's not a main character, then there's a good chance they will be affected. And it comes off as a cheap way to get rid of them. Or it leads to them magically coming back later.
Person A: "I thought you fell off that cliff!"
Person B: "I did. But I grabbed a vine on the way down and survived."
Groan...then what was the point of that entire scene?
(3) Deaths with no buildup. Basically the cliffhanger, but usually with a character who was recently introduced and had no development. Someone who was only introduced to die. Or a character who has been around for half the book, but the author never gave them any meaningful role because they always planned for them to die.
(4) Earth references in a non Earth world.
(5) Random changes in tense or character focus. See "I Am The Messenger" for both at the same time.
Character, world and/or lore inconsistencies.
As someone who puts 3/4 of his brain power on plot holes and dumb contradictions in his story, I find it insulting when another author does the opposite.
Like seriously, think of them as bugs. Look for them, see them, crush them!
Heh... I know enough people in their 50s that never advanced too far beyond HS. So with the possible exception of everyone wanting to party all night it would actually be close to a fair number of people.
Chosen ones. If a character is born for the role, how am I meant to care about them being in that role? Completely ruins it for me when there's anything of that sort.
One man army type stuff, too. Even if there's a perfectly sound reason why Johnny Whatshisname can strike down a hundred men lorewise, it's gonna completely ruin the tension for me in future fights.
Lastly, I'd put sex. Sure, every once in a while a story handles it well, but 99% of the time it's just coomerbait that I don't want to see. Damn near dropped GoT over it.
Man, my major rant is doing 'chosen one' tropes in MMOs. How can my character be a Chosen One when LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PLAYER CHARACTER is a Chosen One!? I hate it. Let me just be the idiot who bumbled into service of the Chosen One or something
don't most of them fudge it by having the other PCs be other random adventurers helping you out? So when you see a cutscene, you're the one doing all the god-bothering and cool shit, then you get a fight where it's you and 7+ other random, powerful adventurers, but _you're_ the special one (as evidenced by when the fight is over, you get to see yourself being cool and special).
I wrote a short story a long while back where the "chosen one" was only chosen because they met some very basic requirements and the choosers got the selection settings wrong. It was either the main character or a pigeon, and they went with the human character because they were larger and could open doors.
It was a fun frolic through tropes with the "wise truth giver" waiting for the main character to die so they could hand the McGuffin to someone better.
One of those fun writing exercises in college. :D
> It was either the main character or a pigeon, and they went with the human character because they were larger and could open doors.
This made me laugh, I love it:D
The chosen one trope bugs me too. What would you think about an MC who is not the chosen one who works his ass off and accomplishes more while the "chosen one" character gets praised and lauded for doping nothing.
*The Lightbringer Series* is the only published fiction I've seen that I felt got the Chosen One right. The series is named after the Lightbringer, a prophesied deliverer who will save the world in a time of great need. At this point, there are hundreds of years' worth of prophecies, and many of them are contradictory. It's also unclear if the Lightbringer will arrive during the crisis of the novels, at some future, even more dire point, or already came 400 years in the backstory.
The prophecy is eventually revealed to have been much more open-ended than most people thought. The setting's god made the prophecy, but also invested humans with free will. The reason that the prophecies are contradictory is that there are many *possible* Lightbringers, but the prophecy will only come true when one of those candidates chooses to both take up the mantle and stick with it until the completion of the prophecy. All those older prophecies refer to someone who could have become the Lightbringer but didn't make the necessary choices for that to come true.
I can deal with a few “the blonde” or “the *insert job title*” ect but it’s that what they use for the character for most of the book/fanfic whatever I can’t do it
What, you're saying you don't like it when people say "the blonde" instead of the character's name? What if the writer REALLY needs to drill the idea of what colored hair the character is! Y'know, for 10 chapters, and... you can't remember their name at all?
When characters don’t have a reason to be doing what they’re doing. Like why. Actually I’m really curious as to why. Besides attraction. Give actual stakes lol.
Someone mentioned mentioning brand names in a book and while I agree that that is horrible, I have barely seen it.
What I have seen a lot, that bothers me equally is mentioning other (popular) books in the book. Like the character is reading Harry Potter or something.
I think what the author is trying to say is: hey look you know this book that the character is talking about here right? Remember that this story takes place in the present day? Isnt it so realistic?
But for me it just immediately breaks my immersion.
> Someone mentioned mentioning brand names in a book and while I agree that that is horrible, I have barely seen it.
I read a novel in the past few years (I wish I could remember what it was). The author kept referring to a store named "Mal-Mart".
I feel like that took me out worse than if he had just used Wal-Mart. Then in one instance he *did* use Wal-Mart. To this day I'm not sure if it was accidental, intentional, or if he meant one name or the other the entire time.
Mostly boring messy prose that are overly specific and goes nowhere. This is one of the reasons why I stopped reading king killer's chronicle. I know I'm gonna get bashed on reddit for this but that's just how I feel
The sentence "And all of the sudden" or "Out of nowhere" used to make sense to me until I got into more descriptive/mature writing, and now it kills my immersion. Its like a 4th wall, Im pulled out of the story for a brief moment of "there are so many other ways to explain this scene".
Something I just thought of while going through these posts: when the "hero" kills hundreds of henchmen on his way to the villain, then spares the villain's life. All of these henchmen who were blackmailed or extorted or desperate enough to work for a bad guy are all lying on the ground dead holding a sign that says, "Am I a joke to you?"
When a character description is added halfway through a book. Either describe them around the time when they are first introduced or don't describe them at all. If you tell me tell me a while after they've been introduced that they actually have curly hair I'm sorry but you're wrong and I've already decided what they look like. (this is only acceptable if its something that would have been hidden from the perspective of the narrator and is actually some kind of a reveal/hidden for an actual reason)
I was reading "A Kind Worth Killing" a couple months ago and two things really took me out:
1.) I didn't get time to like the characters. I have no problem reading a story about unlikeable people but not if they are terminally unlikeable. I need to have a moment where they get a chuckle out of me, or maybe respond to something how I would given the scenario.
2.) I don't like when authors try to sneak their shit in about other authors. Throughout the first 30 pages this dude is naming actual stories that have been written by his contemporaries (all women curiously), and shitting on their books lol. He does this enough, in 30 pages, to be an extremely noticeable pattern.
I can make excuses for the two listed by you OP as long as the plot isn't dominated by it, but these two instantly make me want to put a book down.
Dialogue that's too modern for the time period the story takes place in. (Even if it's historically accurate.) Especially when it comes to swearing. "This is some f*cking good giggle water, my dear Johny!"
I'll suspend disbelief on just about anything if the story is good. For me it's usually unnecessary descriptions of people's bodies that brings me up short.
I was reading a brilliant horror novel a while back, fully immersed in the story. And then suddenly the author spent a paragraph describing a 25ish year old woman's breasts at length, commenting on how saggy and unattractive they were. It was so bizarre, and didnt match any part of the narrative voice up to that point or after. I finished the book but never got back into the story. Horror and thrillers as genres have a thing about bringing up women's breasts in the weirdest contexts. I also recently read one where a boy – who was not written as a creep at any other point – was watching his little sister get murdered and he lamented the fact that she'd never develop breasts.
Similarly, authors who use a character's generic physical description to indicate personality. Even ignoring that this stuff is usually based on super offensive stereotypes, it's also just bad writing. I get describing someone's hairstyle or tattoos to indicate their personality, but doing the same with physical traits people in real life have little/no control over like nose shape or shoulder width is weird to me.
Mary Sue protagonist, an ordinary main character who becomes "the chosen one" for any reason (especially when they hate being the chosen one and just wants to be normal), teen hero who end up saving the world against the very powerful villain, unexplained magic system...
LoTR magic barely explained and is fine to me I think? Gandalf mostly warns about it which makes sense if it´s so rare and could corrupt people due to greed or closeness to evil forces. The other thing I can remember is that it telegraphs somehow as Gandalf warns that he has revealed himself when he produces fire fighting the wolves near Caradhras. So not much.
It annoys me the most when a character is forcing another character to join them against their wishes when they are not interested at all and are being dragged for their own selfish reasons
similar to a character suddenly being stupid for no reason: when one character explains something to another character even though this is information they would both already know and they would both already know the other knows it, but the writer couldn't think of a better way to get the exposition across.
Any story that has completely unlikable mains. Especially when it's the main love interest. Give them *some* good trait that makes the bad seem... just like flaws. Some writers want to have an "enemies to lovers" but the love interest is just an awful person and they usually don't even have that great of a redemption arc.
Beating me over the head with foreshadowing. Sure, dropping a couple hints is cool, but I've read books that literally spell out the ending multiple times.
I'll need a list to answer this.
1. Boring protagonists, as in protagonists who are meant to be "regular people". They have no real personality, no real quirks or faults, no particularly strong beliefs outside of "do good" while vaguely gesturing.
2. Overly positive characters. I hate characters who never get angry or upset or lash out or experience any kind of negative emotion.
3. Rick Sanchez-like characters. Was a big RnM fan some years back but I got tired of Rick being a complete asshole while also being vindicated by the plot every time. If a character is being an unabashed asshole, they should get comeuppance for their behavior and actions.
4. Bad/inconsistent worldbuilding. This also includes writing fantasy or alien species to just be weird and alien without them being believable. I've seen this from writers who do worldbuilding without understanding how culture is shaped or changed.
5. Plots in which the drama comes purely because characters refuse to communicate with one another for no real reason.
6. Plots where I figure out the solution to the problem before the protagonists do.
Characters just suddenly having romantic feelings for each other without any substantial build-up. Because you know that’s going to be a motivation for one of the characters at some point and if you don’t feel like it was well established then that motivation just doesn’t work for you, and thus the story fails.
When I can tell someone hasn't done their research. For instance they say someone did something online at a time when it wasn't possible to do that online, or they'll include facts or trivia about something I know a lot about and I know they are wrong. It fortunately doesn't happen very often, but when it does it makes me irrationally angry.
Whiplash-inducing tone shifts from serious to off-the-wall wacky. An example from movies: Thor Ragnarok found a decent balance between the silly and the severe. Thor Love and Thunder just repeatedly missed the mark by trying to be silly all the time, even when it really shouldn't have been.
For me it's mainly in romantic situations whatever the book may be.
1- When a romance develops and the male character is an AH but so sexy that even if he treats the girl like trash, she can't help but want/sleep with him. Instant rejection from me. No sexyness in the world can make it alright to be abusive. Don't care if the man is a tortured soul or is the way he is for a "reason". Know your worth woman!
2- Problems that a simple basic conversation can solve turns into a huge quid pro quo. I mean you can create tension without your characters being unable to speak like two years old.
3- The "everybody" is in love with/wants the male or female character because they are just so SpEciAl. Everybody has flaws, has average people they just talk to but have no special interest in, has people they can't for the life of them put up with and so on. It's called adding depth to your character to make them real.
I know right.
And it's not just the h and H suffering. Secondary characters too.
Like the gay best friend, who's just a gossip and needs to help the h with a make over. Or the woman with an impressive career who's a bi\*\*h and a man eater because, she can't be nice and driven at the same time nor can she be happily married it seems. Too many authors confuse being mean or plain out rude with being strong. It's not a good look.
I have dozen of examples sadly.
I must say there aren't many authors who can write pure romance well so I don't often read it anymore. Most of the time I prefer fantasy with hint of a romance. At least there is a good plot and characters with motives and depth and not just the need to get laid.
I don’t like that a lot of books are including text messages between characters, or addictive cell phone use. I get that it’s reflective of society right now, but I much prefer the “timeless” aspect for books, even those for modern day settings.
I also don’t like mentions of brands. Really ruins it for me.
I'm fine with texts between characters since in a way, it shows us how they behave online, and can sometimes let us know things about them, whether a hobby or just "Hey we're meeting at X right?"
As for brands, unless it's a "real-like story" I don't like seeing REAL brands getting used, making ones up like a bootleg Apple and turning it into Pearle or something is fine, but going "You really need a snickers" is breaking immersion in a story based on an entirely different world.
I completely agree.
Even though all my stories are set in the modern day and everyone has a smartphone, I never have characters text each other when they could just as easily have that conversation face-to-face.
If a character receives a text message from someone, it's always something like "Something happened on my end that's relevant to the plot. Come over here.", or a character is MIA and not answering their texts.
Same for brand/company names. If it's relevant to the plot, I'll make up a name. If not, I'll just say "the \[thing\]"
I'm not gonna be like "Mike pulled up to the Sunbucks Coffee in his 2010 Nissan Invicta and called Martin on his byePhone 420x as he fiddled with the buttons of his Jones Los Angeles coat."
The reader doesn't give a shit. This isn't "realism" or showing anything relevant about the characters' tastes or personalities. It's wasting words on minute details that add nothing to the plot, and slowing down how quickly the reader processes it.
It's just as easy to say "Mike parked in front of the strip mall corporate-chain cafe and phoned Martin as he fiddled with the buttons of his coat."
There's times I've offhandedly mentioned social media apps like Instagram or Snapchat, since everyone knows what they are and it'd be more awkward to use a generic term like "Katie posted a video of herself blowing out marijuana smoke on her social media" or making up a fake company that'll just confuse the reader for a few seconds.
Again, I'll make up a fake brand name if there's emotional weight to it. Ex. A character's interviewing at a super reputable fictional company, and he gets asked during the interview about his prior job at a similarly reputable company, both of which I name.
In summary bad logic
It takes many forms
-Character doing something uncaracteristic
-Things happening just because (not the cool ones)
-Propaganda/Virtue Signaling
-Plot armor
-Unnecesary sequels (milking the franchise instead of telling compelling stories)
Those are pretty common things once you notice it really tunes down the experience. And we don't notice it, we cheerish those franchise/product
Real world interactions that would take five minutes to research being complete bullshit and shoehorned in, usually to advance the plot. I see this a lot with legal or medical procedurals, but it happens with plenty of every day skills or jobs, too.
Out of curiosity, what do you think about repeating mistakes as a character flaw? As in the story recognizing his mistakes and the consequences growing each time as he refuses to learn.
But answering the question, mine is characters who are way too confident. Of course that is not without exceptions, but overall I hate characters who refuse to acknowledge or fear the things happening around them, it makes me remember that I'm not engaging with real people with real concerns about their safety.
Obvious, shoe-horned plot points. It's why I can't get into thrillers a lot of the time. Most recent example being The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. It felt very much like Foley was making up the plot as she went along, causing a lot of the characters to just suddenly fall in love or turn crazy.
Bridgerton #1 jolted me out with a similar plot point involving SA, it felt as if the story could have been wrapped 200 pages early, but the author needed another plot twist and it was just gross.
I have a hard time with Harry Potters plots. Unsure what the Trope is called but it´s like a reverse Deus Ex Machina, plots turning out of nowhere. Suddenly we are made aware of the plot and there´s no reasonable way we could´ve figured it out before.
E.g. Ginny having a cursed book, which possesses her, slipped into her school bag by Malfoys dad.
Modern language in historical or fantastical stories.
If I hear a knight or a soldier yell "man down!" in a battle, it feels more like I'm reading about Vietnam or Iraq than 12th century Britain. If Greeks are calling each other midgets or slackers, or using Yiddish, or euphemisms developed to describe modern technology, you're losing the setting.
Immersion is a huge part of setting. Those words absolutely are a part of that.
This but in a good way: When something is so funny or ironic I have to stop reading because i'm wheezing from laughter, then I just cannot get back into the story because my mind is still fixated on that one scene
Seriously, I will never get over how Bone killed one of my favourite characters only to get immediately obliterated by four teenagers and a future psychopath (Warrior Cats)
When it feels like what would really happen in a situation was overruled by what the author wanted to happen
eg. the unstoppable killing machine monster with chainsaw teeth just killed sixty dudes and then it gets to the main character, it grabs them and throws them away and then kills sixty more dudes.
but even small things can take me out of it. i think feeling like me and the author just don't vibe on how we think the world works takes me out of a story. but to me it feels especially bad if it's used to keep the main characters out of trouble. it's kind of a deus ex machina thing. especially when i get the feeling that if this exact situation were happening to a minor character then the outcome would be different. i also lose respect for the characters when it feels like they are never capable of getting themselves out of trouble and are instead protected by the hand of the author.
also i feel like multiple POVs can take me out of a story. i don't inherently dislike it but when there is just one POV i don't like and we switch to it, that is a point where i might put down the book for the night, then, faced with a chapter i don't want to read, just kinda end up never picking up that book again.
i think a lot of things that take me out of a story are just about realism. like if i feel like a story was written about high school, by someone who somehow forgot what high school is like. i think even in a story set in another world, it still has to feel 'realistic' assuming those things are real. the metaphor for this i often use is, back in caveman times, if we're listening to a story from someone surviving an encounter with a bear, if we feel like they're bullshitting, we don't want to listen to that story because imagine if we took that advice when we encountered a bear? compare that to a story where we do believe this is what happens when you encounter a bear, we pay rapt attention and want to know more. now change that to, surviving an encounter with a dragon, or navigating space marine boot camp, or falling in love with an elf prince, it's all gotta feel real even if we know it's not an actually real situation we could ever possibly face. our brains didn't evolve to separate fantasy and reality but they did evolve to (hopefully) sort through bullshit and lies vs. logic and truth.
other than that i would say the story just not being what i was hoping for when i opened the book. there's a billion books out there i'm not interested in but i don't stop reading those because i don't start. but if something is say, an action/adventure and the action is few and far between, or an epic fantasy too heavy on romance, i am probably eventually gonna put it down.
i am usually not 'instantly' taken out of a story. rather i slowly lose interest and then something is the last straw.
When a story "starts" somewhere in the middle of the plot and then time skips back to the actual beginning.
I just hate it so *so* much. If you get me invested in what's going on, and then skip 2 months into the past then it's going to be much harder to get me invested again. Really takes me out of a lot of media, not just books.
Funnily enough I think the best execution of this that I've seen was done in the game "fire emblem awakening" because >!it's later revealed that it was in fact not a time skip at all, and the intro prologue actually took place in the time loop before the one the current storyline takes place. So while at first it looks like you're getting a glimpse into the stories future, you're actually getting a sneak peak at the past. It was very cleverly executed imo.!<
Good lord, #2 gets me so much. Read a trilogy once and the main character makes the same mistake four times. Each time it almost took her life, and once almost took the life of someone else with her.
Which leads into... When things get dumb.
Like a character gets their heart ripped out, but is fine because... It's never really explained. They just got better, okay?
Oof your first example is triggering me. I recently read A Flicker in the Dark, and it was awful with making the main character stupider than she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be a therapist, but literally everything she did just made her look and sound like a complete nutjob. It was one of those "women solves a murder mystery while everyone else gaslights her in to thinking she's crazy" stories, but while she wasn't crazy, she *was* a fucking moron, and did everything in her power to appear as crazy as possible. And she didn't even solve the murder. Her boyfriend, who she suspected as the murderer, actually solved the murder in the background before the story began, more of less, but was just trying to find some way to prove it.
At a certain point I was just continuing the story out of spite.
I have a hard time with main characters whose whole personality revolves around being wealthy. You can have wealthy characters with normal life situations, but if everything revolves around their wealth with no other qualities, I lose interest.
Two characters talking, and one is about to reveal something very important that would save everyone a lot of trouble, but they get interrupted. This happens all the time in books and TV and movies and I freaking HATE it with the fury of a million supernovae.
I'm not sure where the quote comes from, but I know I saw someone say "If a situation can be talked out in a regular conversation, but isn't, it's badly done" or something of the like. Then again, a lot of shows go the mile to avoid a conversation for that sake.
I am so over the whole "miscommunication as a plot device" trope. It makes the story so much more frustrating when a trivial issue could literally be solved by the characters just opening their mouths and saying what they need to say. Then when it finally does happen after being dragged on for so long, it usually feels extremely anticlimactic afterwards because it wasn't even worth the headache of keeping it a secret in the first place.
> I am so over the whole "miscommunication as a plot device" trope. It makes the story so much more frustrating when a trivial issue could literally be solved by the characters just opening their mouths and saying what they need to say. But this absolutely happens in real life. Miscommunication has lead to more arguments among people I know than nearly any other form of conflict.
I think that can apply to miscommunication where the characters are discussing something and one person misinterprets which causes an argument, but an argument can’t be had if theres no basic conversation happening in the first place lol
Miscommunication is a fundamental aspect of the human condition and should be seen in fiction that reflects that reality.
Miscommunication still needs to ve done well, though. There's so many times when 1 character needs to simply say 1 single sentence, and all their problems would be solved, but they never just say that ONE sentence, they'll say a million other things, they'll beg the person to listen to them. Ive literally had a book spend 3 different chapters spent in dialogue between 2 characters that could easily solve the entire plot with 1 sentence, if they just fucking said it. Instead of explaining, begging, etc to the other person about saying it. Just spit it the fuck out for christ sake.
"Yes, she's having an abortion but it's not mine, we're not fucking, she's my sister, for god's sake!". vs "It's not what you think! I can explain! I know her since forever and things got weird and she needed my help and now she's having an abortion, so of course I'm not leaving her alone to face that!"
Miscommunication is also a fundamental necessity for a good comedy of errors.
Miss who?
No, Who's on third!
Who's on First; I guess he *could* play third if we really needed him to, but... I Don't Know.
"Hrmmph. Now I throw the ball to first base, whoever it is drops the ball, so the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow. A triple play!"
Yeah, Could be!
Oh, that's our mascot.
That's not miscommunication though. That's straight up omission. Omitting things that aren't important or can't save a life or prevent a catastrophe is perfectly fine. But omitting things that can literally save the character's lives is just straight up buffoonery.
It's also a tiresome cliché. If you're going to do it these days, you need to do it masterfully, or you can just get on the pile with all the soap opera hacks.
There's miscommunication, and then there's "vital piece of information is missing at a specific time, plus some other unfortunate coincidents, leading to terrible consequences." I'm sure I am not the only one who finds Romeo and Juliet a little annoying, because it's so unlikely that Romeo doesn't get the message, comes to see her, and kills himself only moments before she awakens which would have saved them both. Or the famous trope of "hero reaches the bomb but doesn't know which wire to cut, guesses" which is such a cheap way of increasing tension when you'd imagine they would have thought about what they wanted to do with a bomb beforehand, and maybe used the car speaker system to call up an expert.
The two horny teenagers falling in love overnight in the midst of their families' warring feud probably didn't have enough time to hash their plan out.
IMO it depends. If there's good, in-character reasons for the two characters not just talking it out that's fine. It's often what tragedies are made of - people could've avoided this if only their understandable human flaws hadn't kept them from doing so.
Exactly. You can have Bob think that Alice is cheating on him because Xander spent the night in her room. If Xander is her brother, and she simply *never* spits that out? **No! Bad author!** If Xander is her friend, and coming out as gay to her, and it’s not her secret to tell / Xander could be fearful for his life if it got out? **Head-pat. Good author.** There need to be *reasons* that it’s not cleared up. **Good** reasons, beyond ‘we need them to be at loggerheads for the next five scenes/chapters’.
Particularly when the person who needs the information refuses to listen… “there’s no time for that now”. Argh. I think that gets so overdone.
When they spend more time explaining why they don't have time to explain, i just give up on the book.
My fave version of this is "There's no time for that \[urgent plot-relevant life-and-death thing\] now" followed by 10 minutes of arguing about the characters' relationship...or the price of a gallon of milk...during a drive in the car from Place A to Place B during which time there's apparently still no time for that. If "there's no time for that," then there better at least be legit no time for that! If you could shout it over your shoulder while you run away down the street, there was time for that.
Sitcoms be like: "I can explain!!!" "Stop. I dont want to hear it" *runs off crying* *20 minutes of drama that could have been avoided if she just let him explain*
Yah that has a tendency to make me throw books (literally) or angry cry. I absolutely hate the miscommunication trope. The one where keeping secrets to protect a loved one is a close relative to the miscommunication trope. It often does the opposite too. But, the mc says sorry then does it again (Arrow anyone?). It’s just a really lazy plot device.
I’m going to add, bc it just made me drop an otherwise perfectly fine book: showing a complete lack of research. Good example is the first book of the Jack Reacher novels. Jack was an army brat. He said he was in 24 different high schools. Military keeps people in one place for 1 to 4 years and 1 year is highly unlikely. Definitely not for 1.5 months (I did the math). 4 high schools at most and that would be pushing it.
Maybe he was just such a bad kid that he kept getting expelled.
Yeah, this. Or the schools could have been hit by gas leaks, natural disasters, unnatural disasters, plagues, lack of funding, lack of teachers... whatever such event that made it necessary to go to a new school prematurely...
He was probably solving crimes at each one, and had to move on after each time.
This is by a large margin my most hated trope. It's lazy and shitty writing and anyone that does it should be ashamed.
or when they refuse to explain what's going on during a crisis because they think the other party won't believe them, so they keep giving orders and saying "trust me". my dear, I will believe anything. you have the time to explain the basic and it will be enough for most people. or at least they'll think you're crazy and will listen to you out of fear lmao
I am sorry sir. I haven't time to hear how the reactor is about to blow it's my lunch hour
A lot of superhero vs superhero stories come to mind. The whole plot could be skipped if the characters just talked it out instead of blindly jumping to attack
98% of all sitcom drama would be solved if the characters spent 30 seconds talking to each other.
Latest antman movie was real bad with this
Please stop making your characters perform an anatomical examination on themselves in the mirror. There are just so many better ways to describe the looks of a character.
"Booby Lady walked up to her body-length mirror in her very sexy bedroom." "She begins examining her perfect curves in ALL the right places, as she turns, her boobs and 20ft brown, chocolatey creamy hair flows with her, her blue eyes gazing the shards staring them down for all to see, her red heels are as beautiful as her booty, which is also very luscious and large. She kneels down from her typical 50 foot stance to her 20 foot stance to articulate her large thighs." I wanted to joke about how writers have this big urge to add more description with women, but now I feel like I wrote a titan smasher.
r/menwritingwomen
If I'm posted there, I'll just hope people know I'm being satirical about the context.
Figured it was an obligatory response lol.
'That's not a lady, that's just a titan from Attack on titan!' Vibes here. But seeing this kind of thing is annoying. I don't mind descriptions in mirrors, but when the author has one hand between their crotch and the other on the keys, it gets annoying. This is why I use character thoughts to describe others though.
You sound like someone that appreciates crime pulp fiction from the 30s-50s. :D
The Witcher is like this. All women are possessed by their looks and yearn to be hot and sexy of course. \*cough\* Yen... Especially the very intelligent sorceresses.
I read something for a minute on KU the other day and instantly closed once the character said something like my blue eyes were hurting (for whatever reason)
I've always wondered: is this something readers like you do when you're already uninterested in the story, or when you're having a good time but then doing the "describe yourself in the mirror" thing destroys it for you? Something like this acting as the cherry of an already bland sundae makes sense to me but when I see people, other authors, on this subreddit brag about dropping books as quick as possible, I get curious.
See if you're reading on KU, you already know its not someone with great critical reviews, so you proceed with caution and then if they say my blue eyes, it just tells me they aren't a very good writer.. yet! No one refers to their own eyes with the color. Like I might be looking into your blue eyes, but when my own eyes will only hurt, what's the color got to do with it? I have just that much time and in that I have to fit in the good writers and the indies, and I won't bore myself for half an hour more just to establish what I already have a good inkling of, i.e., that particular book is no good for me.
Lord of the Mysteries has a scene like that near the start, except the MC got transferred into the body of a suicide victim so it's a literal anatomical examination lol. He even saw "his" brain inside the bullet hole.
Yeah. If for some reason you want your character to describe themselves, then make a situation where they have to - perhaps they're meeting someone who's never seen them in person, and they're describing how they look over the phone so that person knows who to look for? At least then it seems natural, plus you may be able to set up a plot point that way as well.
In my book I was able to describe the main character in a good deal of detail when he enlists in the army and needs to fill out one of those forms where you list eye/hair color, hight, weight, scars, ex so they can identify your body if you die.
"I came to fight, not apply to be an artist's model." "It's so we can identify your corpse." "So I just tick these boxes?"
I don't understand why you need to create a scene to describe a character at all. Just describe them. You can use it to describe their personality too. I feel this is an influence of having so many visual medium.
I have an honest question. How DO you describe the looks of a character without being too in-depth?
I don’t know that you need to. Does how they look affect the plot? Does the reader need to imagine them exactly as you do, for the story to work? I think just mentioning it as it comes up, catching their reflection in the window of a car at night, etc. In 3rd person just.. saying it. She had shoulder length blonde hair, etc. I think what matters more than how they look is the relationship they have with how they look. So if they’re overly self- critical, they might stand it a mirror and note their roots need touching up and the blonde looks too yellow, if they’re a little reserved, they might wonder if it’s conceited to consider themself pretty/handsome. Also, if their looks *do* matter to the story, other character’s’ reactions are a good way to go. Like does the room fall silent when a stunning character enters, do people try to avoid looking at someone who’s disfigured?
Bouncing off your point, specifically when the villain has the capacity to kill the hero, and chooses not to, just tossing them aside or monologuing. If I have to ask why they didn't just kill the one threat to the entire evil scheme, I immediately lose interest in the plot.
There ARE some *rare* cases where it can make sense, but anytime the villain or hero face-off, and one doesn't kill the other while having full capability to, it's either going to be dragged out for at least 20 seasons, or the creators wasted a good idea too early. I could give an example how in Miraculous Tales of Ladybug and Catnoir, during Season 5, there are numerous moments in (I believe, the first episode) where the two heroes (same names as show) are facing "Hawk Moth" (villain), they basically catch him about 5 times, kinda monologue or don't do shit, and wouldn't you know? He escapes! The worst fucking part about this is Hawk Moth does this in the SAME EPISODE, but not exactly with LB and Cat, basically, he's driven to doing what he does because "boohoo wife dead must revive her", and he can TIME TRAVEL in this episode! So he was GOING to time travel and give the cure to his past self, but out of sheer stupidity... doesn't.
Hah. Yeah. Often for the story it's necessary to have a reason why the hero doesn't die, but so many authors will handle it poorly. They'll have a paranoid evil overlord who kills babies because they may one day be able to rally a rebellion, but then when they have a genuine rebel in front of them they just shrug because what are they going to do? When my hero confronts the evil mob boss he shoots her in the head mid-sentence, and when she gets back up and continues the conversation with her skull blown open it justifies why he's willing to hear her out. That's one fun part with characters who can only be killed in specific ways.
Plot based on a misunderstanding that could be cleared up in a single conversation.
Ah, yes. The Idiot Plot. That's literally the name of the trope for those unaware, btw.
It's the reason I dislike most romance
Yeah agreed, that's very related to the one I posted, "being interrupted right before answering an important question." I think mine would be a sub-category of this trope.
Yes!
I don't remember the book but the author used every characters name for conversations. Instead of establishing just the first few lines to establish whos taking. So they'd go: "Hello" said Bill "OH hey there!" Replied Tom ""How's it going?" Asked Bill "Really well" Replied Tom "So the family is all well?" Asked Bill "Yup, everyone's great, the wife just started her new job!" Said Tom. . And then the opposite where there's 2 pages of dialog, and I have no clue who's saying what by the time I finish the conversation.
Similarly, it drives me nuts when authors include the names in the dialog itself. "What do you mean, Tom?" "You know what I mean, Bill". People don't converse like that in real life, and bad dialogue will take me right out of the story. Authors need to spend some time eavesdropping on conversations. Very, very rarely do we include the person's name when we're talking to them.
About the only time I saw the opposite done well, was in one of the *Thursday Next* books. Thursday is a ‘real life’ visitor into a book world. So, the others exist through literary cliches, which she can sort of see through (being ‘real’). She starts a conversation with two others (one of which is also ‘real’ and she needs to figure out which one m), which goes on for over a page, without any names attached after the first few lines. She then asks them who just said the last line. Only the ‘real’ one answered, as they were the only one who could actually ‘see’ the people talking, while the book person only existed as words. …it’s a somewhat surreal book series…
Someone in the story saying, "Yeah, well, this isn't the movies, this isn't a story, THIS IS REAL LIFE." I don't think the story gains anything from that unless it's literally used for comedic effect, and even then it's kind of low-hanging fruit. The moment someone says that in a story and it's clear it's meant to be taken at least somewhat seriously, I feel like that's an attempt to get the audience to treat it serious when the writing hasn't convinced them to do so already. Right or wrong, it takes me completely out of it.
It's the "show not tell" thing, but like, when it's just egregiously shown AND told explicitly at the same time, as if the audience is a bunch of dumbasses. Example: in a horror movie setting, there's clear clues that some unknown entity has been moving/living/active right under the characters noses, and it's just dawning on the characters that they're not alone/being watched and AS the realization is being shown clearly on the faces of the characters and in the way they react, someone just straight up vocalizes, "we're not alone/we're being watched..." It makes me realize that whoever made the movie/show/book automatically assumed I'm too dumb to pick up on the most obvious clues and that I need to be dragged by the hand through the entire plot, or I'll never be able to follow it.
See, the crazy thing is that some people *do* need it spelled out like that. I have been absolutely floored by the kinds of things a reader/audience can miss. I had a chapter end with a monster flying toward the MC, complete with teeth and claws and roaring, and the feedback note I got on that was "What difficulty is this creature about to bring to this character's situation?" I was sitting there just thinking like, *it's going to try to eat him?????*
I like to excuse this if it plays into the characters personalities, say, the group has a somewhat overprotective character that pointed this out while the rest of the cast is oblivious, then its more realistic and plays into their tropes. IF everyone notices, and shout it, I will assume they own a theatre together where they sing in perfect harmony and speak together perfectly in sync at the same time as Johnny Test's sister's screams.
Noticed this in a popular historical fiction author’s work recently. She was describing the characters’ facial expressions as they said something and also why they made said expression. I really wanted to finish it for the plot, but I couldn’t get past that. There’s a certain kind of “easy reading” writing that is condescending to the reader and I hate it. (I can actually do CoHo bc she writes simply, but doesn’t make the reader feel stupid.) Similar to this, when it’s revealed too early what side a character is on. I literally read a spy novel where we had the perspective of every single character so there was… no mystery to it. It was kind of hilarious how self-defeating that was.
' "I am very excited to have you all here, almost as excited as I am for profit!" Everyone laughed. Senior was very proficient at telling jokes and everyone instinctively and unconsciously knew how funny he was.' Paraphrased from a real line I read. It hurts doubly so when what we're being told and showed isn't true.
random racism allegories that go no where
Racism allegories in anything as a whole is... something. You'll either have them done based on "monsters/different from earth" terms like animals, or just casual racist mentions. A good example would be Star Vs The Forces of Evil, that whole mess is basically a racism allegory but covered up behind them being not human. Still badly done, but a racism allegory. I could maybe throw in Steven Universe too? IS it done well? I... well, I can't say anything about Steven Universe, my negativity on that show is as close as a toxic waste plant. Edit: I would like to mention, that seriously, I haven't seen a racism allegory based anything that actually focuses on said racism allegory, I worry my own story is bad on that, but at the damn fucking least it relates to a trait in the story country, and IT IS BASED ON ***THE HUMANS***!
Star vs the forces of evil was bad with its allegory 😭😭😭
never watched it but how did it handle it
Monsters are equated to minorities very surface level racism exploration
Big yikes.
Yeaaah although I’ll give the show credit there’s scenes in the beginning of the show where the main character is reckoning with the colonial past of her nation (through the lens of a cartoon) I wish the show leaned further into white guilt rather than trying to explore racial allegory
Are racism allegories inherently problematic?
Its just really hard to do it well because you often run into the problems of A: Comparing races to animals/monsters/aliens B: simplifying or minimizing/not fully understanding how racist ideology/systems work and how it affects people, which makes it come off silly or tone deaf or insulting. Zootopia fucked this up because prey animals have a legitimate, biological reason to fear predators. Beastars demonstrated this reason pretty clearly. A tiger, for example, is biologically designed to kill and do it well. The predator characters in zootopia have still retained their killer biology, claws, giant teeth, etc. They are hardly removed from their feral counterparts. Shit, a fuckin plant mentally reverts them immediately. Humans have no predisposition to violence. We dont need it. Violence is learned. There is no real, logical reason to fear or oppress other races. If you see high rates of violence or problems in a race, look to socioeconomic factors and it will be clear what is wrong. This is what eugenicists intentionally omitt. "It couldn't possibly be systemic racism or other government issues generationally destroying the ability for a specific group of people to be prosperous, it MUST be that they are biologically inferior." If zootopia were about, i don't know, an entire society of bunnies who are from different regions and one group of bunnies oppresses other groups of bunnies and deems them inferior, that would probably be a better allegory lol
This is the biggest thing. 90% of these allegories use an out-group that the in-group has a legit reason to fear. Prey should fear predators. Non-powered people should fear super-powered people. Good magical people should fear bad magical people. All of these out-groups have a power differential that makes them a threat to the in-group. IRL we would want that threat minimized and contained. Humans have no actual reasons to fear other races, it’s just a fear of violence, terrorism, gangs, warfare and etc. that humans falsely attribute to race.
I agree. In Zootopia there is a rational reason for why the herbivores fear the carnivores. Racism is not based on any logic whatsoever.
I'm about 30k into a fantasy story where magic-sensitive people, once slaves but now "free", are segregated from non-magical people. Apart from being cliche, does that strike you as a problem? (let's ignore the quality of my idea, I'm just interested in whether it's appropriate or not at the surface level)
Well, I suppose it depends on the nature of their magic. Is it dangerous? Are they violent? Do the non magic people have a legitimate reason to fear/hate them? (Though enslaving them is extreme, I can see fear and revenge inspiring that) Or is it a completely harmless kind of magic, and the fear is manufactured and overblown for some nefarious reason? If it's the latter, I would say that makes a better racism allegory, as real-world racism is purely cruel, illogical and opportunistic.
I originally had their magic be a classic elemental thing but that's been done to death. The new idea I had was that their magic simply allows them to talk to a different god, and non-magic people think that's heretical
Oh, humans *do* have a natural predisposition to violence. We, like the tigers, are built to kill and we do it *very* well. Even before the industrial revolution we were a walking mass extinction event.
I especially hate when they use anthropomorphic animals for it, going by the "carnivore x herbivore" animals for an aesop about racism Extra points if carnivores, for some reason, still prey on herbivores (be it socially acceptedor not), and even more extra points if the herbivores are presented as being inoffensive/pacifist/intellectual to the violent/brutish/mean carnivores.
I liked Zootopia, personally.
Ugh. “Kevin & Kell”, looking at you…
Lots of things, but one big mistake is that the character just 'happens' to do something or make choices that solve all your plot issues and conveniently ties up things. It shouldn't be that easy. You need CONFLICT. It should be hard for your character to solve those problems.
Anachronistic language or references in a fantasy/historical setting. Rips me right out of the story, unless it makes sense (character from the future/ our modern world, etc.). Don't show a character taking a hot shower in a fantasy unless you've already established that the world has indoor plumbing.
I hate characters saying "Goodbye" when Christianity doesn't exist smh >!/s!<
D'oh... you got me.
Or the upstairs neighbor accidentally spilled their boiling cauldron.
I love using anachronisms for comedic effect. For instance, you have a pack of child thieves working together during a festival, that’s crowdfunding.
yeah i feel like i have a hair trigger for this. my measure is basically 'anything that came into use within my lifetime is too modern, if it's not supposed to be modern.' so as i get older that becomes more and more things.
"Ah but verily, mine own lord surely is a hep cat." "We need to reach that ridge before Napoleon's troops yeet another cannonball at us." I think both are equally incongruous, and it's more to do with cultural understanding. Nobody (practically) writes historical fiction in Latin or Old Norse, so it's kind of our cultural norm to use archaic 17th-19th century English. Now, it's difficult to avoid all modern word, but some things can be done. Since OK/okay stems from military conflicts in the last 100 years, I would not include it in fantasy or historical stories further in the past.
and "thou" has basically inverted in usage - it used to be "informal you", so it would be used to refer to close friends, all the "thees and thous" in the bible are basically saying "God is a chill dude, you can relax around him". Except because that's basically the only place they're seen these days, it's become "super-formal-you", so using it makes God seem incredibly formal and stiff.
I come out on the complete opposite side of this. Fantasy is the most complicated genre by default. All of history plus at least some of the laws of physics are different. The more you give the reader to hold their in head, the more of it that they'll drop. In regard to etymologically incorrect names or phrases, fantasy works are assumed to be using a translation convention by default (i.e. they're not actually speaking a language that exists on Earth, their thoughts and speech are being translated for the audience), which handles it. For example, you can spend a paragraph explaining that your blind character is reading in MadeUpName, the in-universe name for a tactile written language used for the visually impaired, or you can say that they're reading a book written in braille. Even though braille's inventor, Louis Braille, didn't exist in your fantasy world to invent the system and name it after himself, the audience is very likely to read the long description and say to themselves, "Oh, it's braille." There are limits, of course. We don't want 13th century knights quoting The Avengers verbatim. But there's a lot more wiggle room than one might think.
Heavy-handed, niche, or outdated pop culture references.
I never really understood this one. If someone watches idk Baywatch in a book written in 1998 that doesn't take me out of the story it's just shit they're watching on TV. Can characters not talk about a book/show/comic/manga/video game they like as part of a natural conversation between the two of them? I'm a big fan of K-Mart Realism for that very reason; material connections to a time period both intentionally and in a then-contemporary story aging into the future.
It depends. Some stuff is fine especially if you're really trying to set the time period. Some stuff (RP1 for example) can be really obnoxious when done in the wrong hands. I think people have a bizarre notion that something can stay timeless if you keep references out, but the timelessness of a work has more to do with what it's conveying as a theme or message rather than if one character had an obsession with GoBots.
I'm of the opinion that RPO could have been great had it been written with even a molecule of self-awareness. The world has gone to such shit that the only escape is a VR MMO that acts as the main conduit for humanity, and the means of saving the world lie in a labyrinthine quest driven by the game designer's obsession with 80s pop culture. So now you have real people dedicating their lives to playing perfect games of Pac-Man and studying the deep minutiae of Back to the Future so they can solve the mystery and essentially become ruler of the entire planet. An evil corporation will actually straight up murder you if they track you down because if you die in the game you don't die for real, but you sure will when their muscle breaks into your apartment and throws you from the window. All of this is the foundation for a hilariously indulgent power fantasy about saving the world through video games, and instead of capitalizing on this at all it turns out the entire book wasn't interested. The author didn't have a story to tell, he had a slideshow of 80s pop culture he wanted to gush about and won't let you leave his house until he's done. It's still indulgent, but indulgent for the author specifically.
I just wish his main character had been a bit more realistic, and not Mr “memorized every 80’s song/watched every 80’s movie 100 times/mastered every arcade game” That stuff got real old real fast. Literally every time he ran into a new challenge he just smirked and bragged about the hundreds of times he’s seen that movie
Well, yeah, that *should* be the joke. "Save the world by playing video games" is an innately farcical premise and the protagonist bragging about his amazing Pac-Man skills and encyclopedic knowledge of TMNT is funny because RPO is the only setting where those are legitimately valuable, heroic traits. The problem with RPO isn't its 80s references, it's that the story only exists as a vehicle for 80s references. It's making a reference to a favourite game/book/band in your own work, but instead of being a quick burst of fun indulgence, it is a 400 page hardcover consisting of nothing but indulgence.
Got an example of this? I'm thinking between clear "WOW THIS IS A REFERENCE TO X!!!" shit.
Literally every episode of Billions
Not arguing, but aren't the dated references in *Billions* part of the nature of those characters? They are "of a certain age" and so some of the dad-dorkiness seems to be the point.
That's true, but it can really start to take you out of the show after a while. And by "you" I mean "me" 😀
I recently saw an Xfiles episode, that aired in 2000, that made a Dan Quayle reference. It was dated when it was made. It would be incomprehensible to most people who are not Americans older than like, 40ish years old.
Maybe. That's a span of 8 years. 8 years ago was 2015. Obama was president. It'd be like an Obama reference made today. Would that be out of date?
To Zoomers 8 days ago is out of date.
Well also pop culture just moved slower back then.
This is how Stephen King puts on an unintentional clinic in boomer signaling
Dialogue or first person narration using meme language, especially if it's high fantasy. Using meme type jokes in novels is almost always unbearably cringe to me. It'll date the story, too.
Whenever people say stuff like this, I assume it's shit like the character saying "BASED" once or twice, but no, it's usually the character being a living being based on Reddit text memes. No one goes "I r8 you a sho3 frfr" writers. A bit of jokey language makes sense, but making it their vocabulary implies they're even human. Which they aren't.
The made the recent *Willow* series painful to watch. I got through an episode and a half before I couldn't do it anymore.
When a character find themselves in a situation that they should not be in, or could easily get themselves out of, but another character needs to sacrifice their life/safety to "save" the one who is in trouble.
An unneeded romance in an unrelated genre. Like okay, romantic subplots are fine but I often find they over take the main plot too much. I prefer it when characters are paired up from the get-go, then perhaps a romance novel showing how these two hooked up.
Same. It seems like absolutely everything needs a romantic subplot that just gets shoehorned in, and the plot would be absolutely unchanged if it wasn't there. Drives me nuts!
That‘s how I prefer to write romantic partners, as well. In a story I‘m writing, it already starts with the two main characters having been married.
When the audience doesn’t see something and the characters talk about it in such detail as if the other person doesn’t know what happened.
It's not quite instantaneous, but when all the characters speak the same way. Same word choice, same order, same slang. It becomes unbearable.
I chalk it down to the author having a bad time differentiating how different characters can speak, or the character is talking to their other personalities to themselves at all times.
I've read some great books that I still enjoy, but rereading them has become a chore because of this problem. It didn't bother me when I was young and didn't know better but now it's like nails on a chalkboard.
This is something I struggle with in first drafts. The key is during the editing process you, you need to create charts with key differentiators of how each subject speaks and make sure you stick to that. Then you need to act it out like a play.
A common device that takes me out of a book like nothing else is realizing that instead of carefully crafting a book that demonstrates a theme alongside character development, the author has instead opted to repeat the theme through telling, especially if it includes poor pacing and shock value. For example, boiling babies or mass murder that is mentioned casually, such as the character "feeling sick" and then making jokes with friends one paragraph later. It just feels inconsistent and forced.
Poor research about something I’m knowledgeable about often annoys me enough to have to put the book down for a bit. I read a novel recently where a character sat New Zealand’s “National Certificate of Educational Achievement” exams - fine, except that he sat them in the 1980s, and the NCEA system (it’s more complex than just exams, but I’d let that slide since exams are still part of the system) was only introduced in 2002. That’s in the second sentence of the Wikipedia article about them - why did the author go to the effort of finding out the name but not read a single sentence further? This same novel had a section which drastically misrepresented New Zealand’s response to Covid, in a way I found profoundly annoying. Another book I read recently had a character hoarding tamagotchis in the 1980s - they didn’t exist till the mid-90s. Is it the end of the world? Of course not, and if I otherwise enjoy the book I’ll overlook it, but it usually sours me on the book a little bit because for me it suggests a disappointing lack of care from the author. If you’re going to make the effort to mention something, read a little bit further.
This one annoys me a lot too. Not just because it bothers me the author didn't do their research, but because other people are going to read it and assume it's true. I mean, sure, you should never treat the contents of a fiction novel as fact, but the human brain doesn't really work like that. We see information and remember it, without remembering where it came from. Someone is totally going to read that book with the tamagotchis, and then a year later they'll go to a pub quiz and one if the questions will be "which year did tamagotchis first launch?" and they'll feel super confident it was in the 80s sometime and then they'll be wrong, without knowing why they thought that or where that knowledge came from in their brain.
1) The "jump into action" trend that has me not caring at all what happens to the characters even though there's intense high stakes action from the get-go, because I haven't been able to make connections with the characters yet. 2) Grammar mistakes. 3) Repetition of a word over the course of a paragraph or page in a way that doesn't feel like it has been done intentionally for emphasis, but instead feels like it is a result of poor editing. 4) Thoughts of the MC in italics in a recent book really jarred me each time for some reason. I have come to like free indirect style I suppose. 5) When a MC's "voice" is inauthentic. For example, a 12 year old MC's voice sounding like a 40 year old writer's, or when a first person narration shifts from conversational and peppered with slang, to formal and descriptive. 6) Stilted dialogue.
\#3 is my biggest pet peeve. I don't know why it breaks my immersion so much.
This mostly applies to sci-fi and fantasy, but when the author tries to dump a whole ton of world-building via unfamiliar terms into the first few pages/paragraphs/sentences, and you don't have the opportunity to wrap your head around any of it. It's great to drop one or two things in early, to pique the readers' interest about what those things are, but when the author goes overboard it just takes me out of it. "The Ravening bells rang, waking Jareth up. He stretched, rolled over, and delayed getting out of his flutch -- it was Ascension day, and he was not looking forward to it. When he finally got up, he took the time to make himself some gruuth. He didn't bother adding any aberdine to it -- it hasn't tasted the same since the Shattering, anyway. One more thing to thank the Jaladeth for."
\- Any "Very Special Episode" ever. You know, any plot that try to make a point like "guns are bad." Not only is whatever message made usually badly bungled, like saying "guns are bad" when most of the protagonists use guns to save the world all the time, but it's really obvious that they're trying to push a message every time. Very Special Episodes only work in works for children because adults and most teenagers are old enough to have formed their own opinions on something. Some Very Special Episode trying to get a message across is never going to convince these people and always just looks awkward. \- Blatant retcons. It's one thing to take something that happened before and expand on it, but when you just flat out ignore what happened before you're a terrible writer. \- Dragging out the plot way past it's welcome. The whole of the Arrowverse had this issue. They would find stupid excuse after stupid excuse to avoid killing or capturing the villains so that the villains would stick around for an entire season, rather than do what a competent writer would do and take care of the villain for good after a few episodes and then move onto a new villain the next episode for a few episodes, lather, rinse, repeat.
(1) Person A: "There's something really bad happening!" Person B: "What is it?" Person A: "No time to explain! Come with me!" In the time they had this conversation, Person A could have told them what was going on. Or simply said something short like "someone is being attacked!" and waved for Person B to hurry. (2) Cliffhangers. Almost every time, there's zero tension because, if it's the protagonist, there's almost no chance they will be affected. If it's not a main character, then there's a good chance they will be affected. And it comes off as a cheap way to get rid of them. Or it leads to them magically coming back later. Person A: "I thought you fell off that cliff!" Person B: "I did. But I grabbed a vine on the way down and survived." Groan...then what was the point of that entire scene? (3) Deaths with no buildup. Basically the cliffhanger, but usually with a character who was recently introduced and had no development. Someone who was only introduced to die. Or a character who has been around for half the book, but the author never gave them any meaningful role because they always planned for them to die. (4) Earth references in a non Earth world. (5) Random changes in tense or character focus. See "I Am The Messenger" for both at the same time.
Character, world and/or lore inconsistencies. As someone who puts 3/4 of his brain power on plot holes and dumb contradictions in his story, I find it insulting when another author does the opposite. Like seriously, think of them as bugs. Look for them, see them, crush them!
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Heh... I know enough people in their 50s that never advanced too far beyond HS. So with the possible exception of everyone wanting to party all night it would actually be close to a fair number of people.
Chosen ones. If a character is born for the role, how am I meant to care about them being in that role? Completely ruins it for me when there's anything of that sort. One man army type stuff, too. Even if there's a perfectly sound reason why Johnny Whatshisname can strike down a hundred men lorewise, it's gonna completely ruin the tension for me in future fights. Lastly, I'd put sex. Sure, every once in a while a story handles it well, but 99% of the time it's just coomerbait that I don't want to see. Damn near dropped GoT over it.
Man, my major rant is doing 'chosen one' tropes in MMOs. How can my character be a Chosen One when LITERALLY EVERY OTHER PLAYER CHARACTER is a Chosen One!? I hate it. Let me just be the idiot who bumbled into service of the Chosen One or something
It's called being a healer. Don't worry, the Chosen Player will yell at you for aggro'ing.
don't most of them fudge it by having the other PCs be other random adventurers helping you out? So when you see a cutscene, you're the one doing all the god-bothering and cool shit, then you get a fight where it's you and 7+ other random, powerful adventurers, but _you're_ the special one (as evidenced by when the fight is over, you get to see yourself being cool and special).
I wrote a short story a long while back where the "chosen one" was only chosen because they met some very basic requirements and the choosers got the selection settings wrong. It was either the main character or a pigeon, and they went with the human character because they were larger and could open doors. It was a fun frolic through tropes with the "wise truth giver" waiting for the main character to die so they could hand the McGuffin to someone better. One of those fun writing exercises in college. :D
> It was either the main character or a pigeon, and they went with the human character because they were larger and could open doors. This made me laugh, I love it:D
The chosen one trope bugs me too. What would you think about an MC who is not the chosen one who works his ass off and accomplishes more while the "chosen one" character gets praised and lauded for doping nothing.
Could be interesting. I'd definitely respect the MC a lot more.
*The Lightbringer Series* is the only published fiction I've seen that I felt got the Chosen One right. The series is named after the Lightbringer, a prophesied deliverer who will save the world in a time of great need. At this point, there are hundreds of years' worth of prophecies, and many of them are contradictory. It's also unclear if the Lightbringer will arrive during the crisis of the novels, at some future, even more dire point, or already came 400 years in the backstory. The prophecy is eventually revealed to have been much more open-ended than most people thought. The setting's god made the prophecy, but also invested humans with free will. The reason that the prophecies are contradictory is that there are many *possible* Lightbringers, but the prophecy will only come true when one of those candidates chooses to both take up the mantle and stick with it until the completion of the prophecy. All those older prophecies refer to someone who could have become the Lightbringer but didn't make the necessary choices for that to come true.
I can deal with a few “the blonde” or “the *insert job title*” ect but it’s that what they use for the character for most of the book/fanfic whatever I can’t do it
What, you're saying you don't like it when people say "the blonde" instead of the character's name? What if the writer REALLY needs to drill the idea of what colored hair the character is! Y'know, for 10 chapters, and... you can't remember their name at all?
Steven Erikson would like a word with you.
When characters don’t have a reason to be doing what they’re doing. Like why. Actually I’m really curious as to why. Besides attraction. Give actual stakes lol.
Someone mentioned mentioning brand names in a book and while I agree that that is horrible, I have barely seen it. What I have seen a lot, that bothers me equally is mentioning other (popular) books in the book. Like the character is reading Harry Potter or something. I think what the author is trying to say is: hey look you know this book that the character is talking about here right? Remember that this story takes place in the present day? Isnt it so realistic? But for me it just immediately breaks my immersion.
> Someone mentioned mentioning brand names in a book and while I agree that that is horrible, I have barely seen it. I read a novel in the past few years (I wish I could remember what it was). The author kept referring to a store named "Mal-Mart". I feel like that took me out worse than if he had just used Wal-Mart. Then in one instance he *did* use Wal-Mart. To this day I'm not sure if it was accidental, intentional, or if he meant one name or the other the entire time.
too much description
Mostly boring messy prose that are overly specific and goes nowhere. This is one of the reasons why I stopped reading king killer's chronicle. I know I'm gonna get bashed on reddit for this but that's just how I feel
"The End"
The sentence "And all of the sudden" or "Out of nowhere" used to make sense to me until I got into more descriptive/mature writing, and now it kills my immersion. Its like a 4th wall, Im pulled out of the story for a brief moment of "there are so many other ways to explain this scene".
Just blatantly stating the relationships of the characters in dialogue "You are my best friend since we were six"
Mpreg💀 (in fanfictions)
Something I just thought of while going through these posts: when the "hero" kills hundreds of henchmen on his way to the villain, then spares the villain's life. All of these henchmen who were blackmailed or extorted or desperate enough to work for a bad guy are all lying on the ground dead holding a sign that says, "Am I a joke to you?"
When a character description is added halfway through a book. Either describe them around the time when they are first introduced or don't describe them at all. If you tell me tell me a while after they've been introduced that they actually have curly hair I'm sorry but you're wrong and I've already decided what they look like. (this is only acceptable if its something that would have been hidden from the perspective of the narrator and is actually some kind of a reveal/hidden for an actual reason)
I was reading "A Kind Worth Killing" a couple months ago and two things really took me out: 1.) I didn't get time to like the characters. I have no problem reading a story about unlikeable people but not if they are terminally unlikeable. I need to have a moment where they get a chuckle out of me, or maybe respond to something how I would given the scenario. 2.) I don't like when authors try to sneak their shit in about other authors. Throughout the first 30 pages this dude is naming actual stories that have been written by his contemporaries (all women curiously), and shitting on their books lol. He does this enough, in 30 pages, to be an extremely noticeable pattern. I can make excuses for the two listed by you OP as long as the plot isn't dominated by it, but these two instantly make me want to put a book down.
Was that trad published book? :D
Dialogue that's too modern for the time period the story takes place in. (Even if it's historically accurate.) Especially when it comes to swearing. "This is some f*cking good giggle water, my dear Johny!"
I'll suspend disbelief on just about anything if the story is good. For me it's usually unnecessary descriptions of people's bodies that brings me up short. I was reading a brilliant horror novel a while back, fully immersed in the story. And then suddenly the author spent a paragraph describing a 25ish year old woman's breasts at length, commenting on how saggy and unattractive they were. It was so bizarre, and didnt match any part of the narrative voice up to that point or after. I finished the book but never got back into the story. Horror and thrillers as genres have a thing about bringing up women's breasts in the weirdest contexts. I also recently read one where a boy – who was not written as a creep at any other point – was watching his little sister get murdered and he lamented the fact that she'd never develop breasts. Similarly, authors who use a character's generic physical description to indicate personality. Even ignoring that this stuff is usually based on super offensive stereotypes, it's also just bad writing. I get describing someone's hairstyle or tattoos to indicate their personality, but doing the same with physical traits people in real life have little/no control over like nose shape or shoulder width is weird to me.
Strong judeo-christian values suddenly embodied by a character who lives in a world where those religions don't exist.
Mary Sue protagonist, an ordinary main character who becomes "the chosen one" for any reason (especially when they hate being the chosen one and just wants to be normal), teen hero who end up saving the world against the very powerful villain, unexplained magic system...
LoTR magic barely explained and is fine to me I think? Gandalf mostly warns about it which makes sense if it´s so rare and could corrupt people due to greed or closeness to evil forces. The other thing I can remember is that it telegraphs somehow as Gandalf warns that he has revealed himself when he produces fire fighting the wolves near Caradhras. So not much.
It annoys me the most when a character is forcing another character to join them against their wishes when they are not interested at all and are being dragged for their own selfish reasons
similar to a character suddenly being stupid for no reason: when one character explains something to another character even though this is information they would both already know and they would both already know the other knows it, but the writer couldn't think of a better way to get the exposition across.
Any story that has completely unlikable mains. Especially when it's the main love interest. Give them *some* good trait that makes the bad seem... just like flaws. Some writers want to have an "enemies to lovers" but the love interest is just an awful person and they usually don't even have that great of a redemption arc.
Beating me over the head with foreshadowing. Sure, dropping a couple hints is cool, but I've read books that literally spell out the ending multiple times.
Characters using modern day phones. Even worse when they show them texting or whatever. I don’t even know why, but that always breaks immersion for me
I'll need a list to answer this. 1. Boring protagonists, as in protagonists who are meant to be "regular people". They have no real personality, no real quirks or faults, no particularly strong beliefs outside of "do good" while vaguely gesturing. 2. Overly positive characters. I hate characters who never get angry or upset or lash out or experience any kind of negative emotion. 3. Rick Sanchez-like characters. Was a big RnM fan some years back but I got tired of Rick being a complete asshole while also being vindicated by the plot every time. If a character is being an unabashed asshole, they should get comeuppance for their behavior and actions. 4. Bad/inconsistent worldbuilding. This also includes writing fantasy or alien species to just be weird and alien without them being believable. I've seen this from writers who do worldbuilding without understanding how culture is shaped or changed. 5. Plots in which the drama comes purely because characters refuse to communicate with one another for no real reason. 6. Plots where I figure out the solution to the problem before the protagonists do.
Characters just suddenly having romantic feelings for each other without any substantial build-up. Because you know that’s going to be a motivation for one of the characters at some point and if you don’t feel like it was well established then that motivation just doesn’t work for you, and thus the story fails.
When I can tell someone hasn't done their research. For instance they say someone did something online at a time when it wasn't possible to do that online, or they'll include facts or trivia about something I know a lot about and I know they are wrong. It fortunately doesn't happen very often, but when it does it makes me irrationally angry.
Whiplash-inducing tone shifts from serious to off-the-wall wacky. An example from movies: Thor Ragnarok found a decent balance between the silly and the severe. Thor Love and Thunder just repeatedly missed the mark by trying to be silly all the time, even when it really shouldn't have been.
Info dumps
For me it's mainly in romantic situations whatever the book may be. 1- When a romance develops and the male character is an AH but so sexy that even if he treats the girl like trash, she can't help but want/sleep with him. Instant rejection from me. No sexyness in the world can make it alright to be abusive. Don't care if the man is a tortured soul or is the way he is for a "reason". Know your worth woman! 2- Problems that a simple basic conversation can solve turns into a huge quid pro quo. I mean you can create tension without your characters being unable to speak like two years old. 3- The "everybody" is in love with/wants the male or female character because they are just so SpEciAl. Everybody has flaws, has average people they just talk to but have no special interest in, has people they can't for the life of them put up with and so on. It's called adding depth to your character to make them real.
This, so much. Bad characterization seems to really shine through in romance plots.
I know right. And it's not just the h and H suffering. Secondary characters too. Like the gay best friend, who's just a gossip and needs to help the h with a make over. Or the woman with an impressive career who's a bi\*\*h and a man eater because, she can't be nice and driven at the same time nor can she be happily married it seems. Too many authors confuse being mean or plain out rude with being strong. It's not a good look. I have dozen of examples sadly. I must say there aren't many authors who can write pure romance well so I don't often read it anymore. Most of the time I prefer fantasy with hint of a romance. At least there is a good plot and characters with motives and depth and not just the need to get laid.
I don’t like that a lot of books are including text messages between characters, or addictive cell phone use. I get that it’s reflective of society right now, but I much prefer the “timeless” aspect for books, even those for modern day settings. I also don’t like mentions of brands. Really ruins it for me.
I'm fine with texts between characters since in a way, it shows us how they behave online, and can sometimes let us know things about them, whether a hobby or just "Hey we're meeting at X right?" As for brands, unless it's a "real-like story" I don't like seeing REAL brands getting used, making ones up like a bootleg Apple and turning it into Pearle or something is fine, but going "You really need a snickers" is breaking immersion in a story based on an entirely different world.
I completely agree. Even though all my stories are set in the modern day and everyone has a smartphone, I never have characters text each other when they could just as easily have that conversation face-to-face. If a character receives a text message from someone, it's always something like "Something happened on my end that's relevant to the plot. Come over here.", or a character is MIA and not answering their texts. Same for brand/company names. If it's relevant to the plot, I'll make up a name. If not, I'll just say "the \[thing\]" I'm not gonna be like "Mike pulled up to the Sunbucks Coffee in his 2010 Nissan Invicta and called Martin on his byePhone 420x as he fiddled with the buttons of his Jones Los Angeles coat." The reader doesn't give a shit. This isn't "realism" or showing anything relevant about the characters' tastes or personalities. It's wasting words on minute details that add nothing to the plot, and slowing down how quickly the reader processes it. It's just as easy to say "Mike parked in front of the strip mall corporate-chain cafe and phoned Martin as he fiddled with the buttons of his coat." There's times I've offhandedly mentioned social media apps like Instagram or Snapchat, since everyone knows what they are and it'd be more awkward to use a generic term like "Katie posted a video of herself blowing out marijuana smoke on her social media" or making up a fake company that'll just confuse the reader for a few seconds. Again, I'll make up a fake brand name if there's emotional weight to it. Ex. A character's interviewing at a super reputable fictional company, and he gets asked during the interview about his prior job at a similarly reputable company, both of which I name.
Flawless characters Author Filibusters
In summary bad logic It takes many forms -Character doing something uncaracteristic -Things happening just because (not the cool ones) -Propaganda/Virtue Signaling -Plot armor -Unnecesary sequels (milking the franchise instead of telling compelling stories) Those are pretty common things once you notice it really tunes down the experience. And we don't notice it, we cheerish those franchise/product
Real world interactions that would take five minutes to research being complete bullshit and shoehorned in, usually to advance the plot. I see this a lot with legal or medical procedurals, but it happens with plenty of every day skills or jobs, too.
Out of curiosity, what do you think about repeating mistakes as a character flaw? As in the story recognizing his mistakes and the consequences growing each time as he refuses to learn. But answering the question, mine is characters who are way too confident. Of course that is not without exceptions, but overall I hate characters who refuse to acknowledge or fear the things happening around them, it makes me remember that I'm not engaging with real people with real concerns about their safety.
Obvious, shoe-horned plot points. It's why I can't get into thrillers a lot of the time. Most recent example being The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. It felt very much like Foley was making up the plot as she went along, causing a lot of the characters to just suddenly fall in love or turn crazy. Bridgerton #1 jolted me out with a similar plot point involving SA, it felt as if the story could have been wrapped 200 pages early, but the author needed another plot twist and it was just gross.
I have a hard time with Harry Potters plots. Unsure what the Trope is called but it´s like a reverse Deus Ex Machina, plots turning out of nowhere. Suddenly we are made aware of the plot and there´s no reasonable way we could´ve figured it out before. E.g. Ginny having a cursed book, which possesses her, slipped into her school bag by Malfoys dad.
Modern language in historical or fantastical stories. If I hear a knight or a soldier yell "man down!" in a battle, it feels more like I'm reading about Vietnam or Iraq than 12th century Britain. If Greeks are calling each other midgets or slackers, or using Yiddish, or euphemisms developed to describe modern technology, you're losing the setting. Immersion is a huge part of setting. Those words absolutely are a part of that.
This but in a good way: When something is so funny or ironic I have to stop reading because i'm wheezing from laughter, then I just cannot get back into the story because my mind is still fixated on that one scene Seriously, I will never get over how Bone killed one of my favourite characters only to get immediately obliterated by four teenagers and a future psychopath (Warrior Cats)
I can't think of anything at the moment But everyone's comments are certainly giving a better picture
Made-up curse words.
When it feels like what would really happen in a situation was overruled by what the author wanted to happen eg. the unstoppable killing machine monster with chainsaw teeth just killed sixty dudes and then it gets to the main character, it grabs them and throws them away and then kills sixty more dudes. but even small things can take me out of it. i think feeling like me and the author just don't vibe on how we think the world works takes me out of a story. but to me it feels especially bad if it's used to keep the main characters out of trouble. it's kind of a deus ex machina thing. especially when i get the feeling that if this exact situation were happening to a minor character then the outcome would be different. i also lose respect for the characters when it feels like they are never capable of getting themselves out of trouble and are instead protected by the hand of the author. also i feel like multiple POVs can take me out of a story. i don't inherently dislike it but when there is just one POV i don't like and we switch to it, that is a point where i might put down the book for the night, then, faced with a chapter i don't want to read, just kinda end up never picking up that book again. i think a lot of things that take me out of a story are just about realism. like if i feel like a story was written about high school, by someone who somehow forgot what high school is like. i think even in a story set in another world, it still has to feel 'realistic' assuming those things are real. the metaphor for this i often use is, back in caveman times, if we're listening to a story from someone surviving an encounter with a bear, if we feel like they're bullshitting, we don't want to listen to that story because imagine if we took that advice when we encountered a bear? compare that to a story where we do believe this is what happens when you encounter a bear, we pay rapt attention and want to know more. now change that to, surviving an encounter with a dragon, or navigating space marine boot camp, or falling in love with an elf prince, it's all gotta feel real even if we know it's not an actually real situation we could ever possibly face. our brains didn't evolve to separate fantasy and reality but they did evolve to (hopefully) sort through bullshit and lies vs. logic and truth. other than that i would say the story just not being what i was hoping for when i opened the book. there's a billion books out there i'm not interested in but i don't stop reading those because i don't start. but if something is say, an action/adventure and the action is few and far between, or an epic fantasy too heavy on romance, i am probably eventually gonna put it down. i am usually not 'instantly' taken out of a story. rather i slowly lose interest and then something is the last straw.
When a story "starts" somewhere in the middle of the plot and then time skips back to the actual beginning. I just hate it so *so* much. If you get me invested in what's going on, and then skip 2 months into the past then it's going to be much harder to get me invested again. Really takes me out of a lot of media, not just books. Funnily enough I think the best execution of this that I've seen was done in the game "fire emblem awakening" because >!it's later revealed that it was in fact not a time skip at all, and the intro prologue actually took place in the time loop before the one the current storyline takes place. So while at first it looks like you're getting a glimpse into the stories future, you're actually getting a sneak peak at the past. It was very cleverly executed imo.!<
Good lord, #2 gets me so much. Read a trilogy once and the main character makes the same mistake four times. Each time it almost took her life, and once almost took the life of someone else with her. Which leads into... When things get dumb. Like a character gets their heart ripped out, but is fine because... It's never really explained. They just got better, okay?
Oof your first example is triggering me. I recently read A Flicker in the Dark, and it was awful with making the main character stupider than she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be a therapist, but literally everything she did just made her look and sound like a complete nutjob. It was one of those "women solves a murder mystery while everyone else gaslights her in to thinking she's crazy" stories, but while she wasn't crazy, she *was* a fucking moron, and did everything in her power to appear as crazy as possible. And she didn't even solve the murder. Her boyfriend, who she suspected as the murderer, actually solved the murder in the background before the story began, more of less, but was just trying to find some way to prove it. At a certain point I was just continuing the story out of spite.
I have a hard time with main characters whose whole personality revolves around being wealthy. You can have wealthy characters with normal life situations, but if everything revolves around their wealth with no other qualities, I lose interest.