Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers
What kind of writing techniques do you think are completely dirty and should be avoided?
What kind of things would make you slam a book shut and throw it straight into the trash, and proceed to take your opinion of the author to the internet?
I'll keep my list abridged since my list of things that tick me off are longer than my arm.
One thing that bugs me is overly-graphic sex scenes (not what I meant by completely dirty in the thread title by the way). The book Kiss me while I Sleep is about an assassin and a good read. Three quarters into it though, it has a really graphic and completely-unneeded sex scene. A lot of Japanese visual novels also have some graphic sex scenes that aren't needed, and often very poorly written and usually have no reason to exist (outside of dating sims like Yume Miru Kusuri). Then you get hilariously-bad sex writing that makes it sound more epic than it actually is, but that's good for a laugh at least. If anything, using sex to sell is just demeaning and pretty pathetic. 99% of the time it's not needed, .9% of the time it's an excuse, and .1% of the time it's a legit plot point (like in Saya no Uta).
A second thing is how kids never seem to die. There's a trope name for this and it often bugs me because most kids in movies and books deserve a violent death because of constant screaming. War of the Worlds' movie adaption was very guilty of this with whatshername being the #1 cause of the main protagonist being in constant danger rather than the alien invaders. I feel that this is something that should be avoided since the death of a kid has genuinely more impact than the death of an adult. I'm not sure if this is because it makes the author uneasy or if they fear backlash, but either way it's overused.
Thirdly, deus ex machinas. Deus ex machina is Greek for "God from a machine", and it refers to something being absolutely perfect and also an analysis. Which is formed from the root word "anal" and the word "lysis" meaning roughly "To seperate" to play with English. I think that any author who relies on this needs to go back several chapters and start over, because it's just a very cheap trick and very poor writing.
Lastly, when things aren't detailed. Being I'm a D&D player and I sometimes run a game, I do improvisational writing. There is a major difference between "lol shot u w/ a crossbow" and clearly describing how the bolt speared through the back of the victim's head and out the eye. Some of my players were rather horrified (in a good way) at how explicitly I describe violence. There's no point in describing action if you're not going to detail the effects about it and just imply someone got hurt nastily.
I was going to abridge this and it's probably my longest post here. Yeesh. So what writing techniques and tropes do you roll your eyes at?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ann Rodela on
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Looking at this list I may have to edit my manuscript with a heavy hand. Ouch! :)
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Permalink Reply by halim abdelrahman on
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i know what you mean about unneed sex sences, i once read this about based in the middeleast, and i think it was written by one too, and near the end he, for no reason jumps on her and... lets just say it wasnt preety.
another thing that bugs me is when the author thinks its cool to have the mainstar make fun of some one. the author writes this because he thinks that by bringing down one of the characters it`ll raise the apeal toward the mainstar, such idiots, an exmple of this behavior, read twilight, the way bella makes fun of the charater mike newton, it a good book over all, but some chocies with the characters were not wise.
only really two things, i might grow a pet pev to something as i get older, but for now thats it
from fourteen-year-old hailm
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That's a good point Halim. Picking on someone to raise one's own status is not cool or even intelligent.
My pet peeve includes discovering the fiction to be a lesson in ethics! The adult reader knows between right and wrong!
My other pet peeve includes excessive display of back story. This slows the story to a crawl.
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Permalink Reply by Sean Noonan on
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My pet peeve is overuse of the descriptive when the action has begun, or even excessive use of flowery language before can be a bore. Too much moaning and negativity also seems pointless to me, the Stephen Donaldson illearth sagas hero, he moaned so much someone should have put him out of his misery, preferably the athor. but that's only my opinion, some of my brothers loved those books... you can never tell...
Better thoughts are what do you like in a book, what raises your interest and spurs on your mojo... I am reading the Belgariad books again, brilliant stuff, highly entertaining. Unreal characters, but uashamedly good adventure. I like books that make me smile and feel good.
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Permalink Reply by Aries on
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Yeah, and done to death. I've been known to come up with some very interesting moral choices in my D&D games however. For example, in my universe there is a very, VERY lecherous cambion (half-incubus) called Lann, who has no qualms with repeated and perverse actions of sexual harassment directed at just about everyone, including nobles and royalty. Of course, being a natural at magic from her demonic bloodline means she's a useful ally to have on your good side.
There exists a spell that eliminates all knowledge of sex from someone's mind, and you can use it to keep her under control so she's not groping you every ten minutes just because she got bored due to being artificially made asexual for a time. Now, the question is, is it even right to control her like that? It's akin to forcing a hyperactive kid to take drugs in my book. Way more interesting than the usual drivel of "Don't be racist" or things we should know already.
Ann Rodela said:My pet peeve includes discovering the fiction to be a lesson in ethics! The adult reader knows between right and wrong!
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Permalink Reply by scribbler on
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I can't stand it when a book has two simultaneously running storylines and rather than conveying what's unfolding in each of them in alternating chapters, the writer does it paragraph by paragraph and short ones at that. So you get a few lines about story #1, and then a switch to story #2, then back to story # 1...maybe four or five times jumping between them in a single page. Argghhh! It gets so confusing.
The worst offender of this I remember reading was It by Stephen King. I can't recall if it was the whole book or just towards the end but it got on my nerves.
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Fate/Stay Night did something similar. Throughout the entire Unlimited Blade Works route, Shirou appeared to be having dreams about a field of swords, piles of corpses, and a hopeless tragic hero. Late in the route, it was revealed that Rin was the one having the dreams.
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Permalink Reply by Garry Edward Lewis on
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I think for me it would have to be something totally gross and distasteful. A lot of random things that just would not make any sense at all. For me if the book doesn't catch my attention right at the first, I usually will not keep reading. The synopsis would have to be a good one to, or chances are I wouldn't even purchase the book. It would have to be in a genre that interest me also. I'm not into mushy romances, however a story like Note Book, now that was a love story I truly enjoyed. A book with a story line like that one, would most certainly keep my interest. I'm not a big romance fan, but that one had a great story to tell. Especially if you have a loved one with Alzheimer's as I do. Garry It brought tears to this old boys eye's that's for sure! The ending was the way you hoped it would be, but not realistic. But they had to bring closure so I guess with that in mind it ended the way you hoped it would.
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I think love scenes that leave it to your imagination are more sexy then those that just throw it in your face. I like it when the writer gradually builds the love scene and then leaves the rest to your imagination.
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A writer that does the research, nice. A dying breed and it really does make me want to scream my head off when people get things wrong. I'm 22 and I have no PhD., so if I know it, and you don't, something has gone wrong.
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Permalink Reply by Callie Leah on
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I'm a bookworm, I live for books and there's almost nothing that could turn me away from one.
Almost.
Only one thing could make me throw a book in the trash: insulting. If you open a book and anywhere in it it insults anything I believe in.
(That includes freedom of speech, equality for all (and by all I mean women, men, african-americans, jewish people, gays, etc. EVERYONE!), and equal rights for all. Stuff like that. If someone insults something that could offend someone outright, it's just wrong.
There are other things that I wouldn't necessarily love reading about, but that's the only thing that could make me shut a book without reading the last letter on the last page.
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Permalink Reply by Matt T. Schott on
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I agree Callie but there is an old saying, "Give them enough rope and they'll Hang themselves" although I probably wouldn't read the book ether.
Keep writing,
matt
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