MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Things that are common in fiction but not in your real life

Quoth · 03-17-2021, 08:20 AM

I've not read books with women dressed in yellow, or people having tomato soup and cheese toast, or pinching their nose.

We used to have tomato soup and cheese toast at home growing up.
I've known some women that wore yellow. One in the late 1980s never wore any other colour.
Some people with sinus trouble do pinch their nose.

But there are things I read in books that are unrealistic:
1) Bang on head for unconscious. It might just enrage the person, give them brain damage or kill them. Not a useful knockout technique and all non-fatal drugs are too slow. Get dosage wrong and it might just make subject woozy or kill them. Body weight is used as a dosage guide. Same with Chloroform, very dangerous and the subject needs restrained for a while.
2) People getting knocked over by a bullet from a pistol or revolver. They may collapse from the injury or shock but anything without its own rocket fuel would knock over the person firing the bullet.
3) People just asking for a beer, whiskey. They use brands. They MIGHT simply ask for a Martini, sherry, port, glass of red house wine etc as an ordinary bar or ordinary restaurant might not have varieties.
4) Books that list the brand for each item of clothing every time we meet a character. Reads like badly made TV/Cinema with product placement. I put one USA Boarding School Teen Romance book in bin for that.
5) Amazing recall of detail of the car in an incident. Like model, year, most of number plate. Real life: I think it was a small red one. … No, I'm not sure if it had rear doors. Maybe a hatch back. In Ireland now, maybe they might get the year and county since that changed to being on the number plates.

Unrealistic and unfeasible speech tags due to writer trying too hard to avoid said.

03-17-2021, 08:20 AM	#18
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,437 Karma: 107078855 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	I've not read books with women dressed in yellow, or people having tomato soup and cheese toast, or pinching their nose. We used to have tomato soup and cheese toast at home growing up. I've known some women that wore yellow. One in the late 1980s never wore any other colour. Some people with sinus trouble do pinch their nose. But there are things I read in books that are unrealistic: 1) Bang on head for unconscious. It might just enrage the person, give them brain damage or kill them. Not a useful knockout technique and all non-fatal drugs are too slow. Get dosage wrong and it might just make subject woozy or kill them. Body weight is used as a dosage guide. Same with Chloroform, very dangerous and the subject needs restrained for a while. 2) People getting knocked over by a bullet from a pistol or revolver. They may collapse from the injury or shock but anything without its own rocket fuel would knock over the person firing the bullet. 3) People just asking for a beer, whiskey. They use brands. They MIGHT simply ask for a Martini, sherry, port, glass of red house wine etc as an ordinary bar or ordinary restaurant might not have varieties. 4) Books that list the brand for each item of clothing every time we meet a character. Reads like badly made TV/Cinema with product placement. I put one USA Boarding School Teen Romance book in bin for that. 5) Amazing recall of detail of the car in an incident. Like model, year, most of number plate. Real life: I think it was a small red one. … No, I'm not sure if it had rear doors. Maybe a hatch back. In Ireland now, maybe they might get the year and county since that changed to being on the number plates. Unrealistic and unfeasible speech tags due to writer trying too hard to avoid said.