What kills a book for you?

[theducks]

I dislike books the read like a RPG rule book.

Supporting staff 'just happens to have...' packed in one of the steamer trunks

Books that 'telegraph' the plot in the first chapters

Love last minute GOT'CHAS, just when you thought you had it figured

[Ea]

With dialogue the author has to find the right balance between what is readable, what works on the page, and actual speech. Just like theatre and film dialogue it can't be like the way people actually talk, but has to pretend. It's a fine line to walk.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Ea

With dialogue the author has to find the right balance between what is readable, what works on the page, and actual speech. Just like theatre and film dialogue it can't be like the way people actually talk, but has to pretend. It's a fine line to walk.

This is a fascinating subject!

I would allow myself to recommend this book, that I found referenced in several sources.
Discourse Analysis (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics) by Gillian Brown Paperback $40.34

Spoiler:

Discourse analysis is a term that has come to have different interpretations for scholars working in different disciplines. For a sociolinguist, it is concerned mainly with the structure of social interaction manifested in conversation; for a psycholinguist, it is primarily concerned with the nature of comprehension of short written texts; for the computational linguist, it is concerned with producing operational models of text-understanding within highly limited contexts. In this textbook, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse, but base their own approach centrally on the discipline which, to varying degrees, is common to them all - linguistics. Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, they offer a lucid and wide-ranging account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context. The discussion is carefully illustrated throughout by a wide variety of discourse types (conversations recorded in different social situations, extracts from newspapers, notices, contemporary fiction, graffiti, etc.). The techniques of analysis are described and exemplified in sufficient detail for the student to be able to apply them to any language in context that he or she encounters. A familiarity with elementary linguistics is assumed, but the range of issues discussed in conjunction with the variety of exemplification presented will make this a valuable and stimulating textbook not only for students of linguistics, but for any reader who wishes to investigate the principles underlying the use of language in natural contexts to communicate and understand intended meaning.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by Ea

With dialogue the author has to find the right balance between what is readable, what works on the page, and actual speech. Just like theatre and film dialogue it can't be like the way people actually talk, but has to pretend. It's a fine line to walk.

@ beppe: it doesn't come cheap

[beppe]

Originally Posted by maianhvk

@ beppe: it doesn't come cheap

No it does not, and it is also rather old. But I found that it is referenced in several modern contributions in Italian. It is also sold by the Italian amazon. It means that it is currently in use.
I saw that Amazon carries some ebooks on the subject.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by beppe

I saw that Amazon carries some ebooks on the subject.

I think reading books that you have to read it over and over again (textbooks, or language guiding books, for instance) on ereader is tiring. It requires so many clicks. I prefer them in paper. But $40 + shipping a fortune to me

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Ea

With dialogue the author has to find the right balance between what is readable, what works on the page, and actual speech. Just like theatre and film dialogue it can't be like the way people actually talk, but has to pretend. It's a fine line to walk.

I was recently in a largish stage production, and I was given some lines, not many, but 1 or 2 in few scenes. The leads of course had pages and page of lines. Being that I only had a few I was able to watch how the leads worked through their scripts. The script was written in correct English, the type that would get you good grades in school BUT it was nothing like anyone talks. So every line in the play at some point a long the line got changed to more normal speech. They kind that you would get bad grades for in English papers. Dialog needs to fall closer to what people speak, but your doing it in writing.

[anamardoll]

I hate Chekovs Guns that get forgotten about halfway through the story.

I read an Aliens novel last year that had something like that... the first chapter elaborately setup the fact that the main character had the ability to basically federalize this civilian outpost that he was going to investigate. He gets there, crap starts hitting the fan, and.........the author just sort of forgot the authority he'd vested in the character in the first chapter because it would be a better story if the guy were alone and helpless.

A good editor really should have caught inconsistencies like that, but I don't think books are really edited for content anymore.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I hate Chekovs Guns that get forgotten about halfway through the story.

Not heard that expression before. Based on your post it is something power/weapon/ability that is introduced then forgotten about?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Not heard that expression before. Based on your post it is something power/weapon/ability that is introduced then forgotten about?

Ooh, trope time!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...lexn9xzsjd5fif

Chekhov's Gun is a literary technique whereby an element introduced early in the story becomes significant later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious necklace that turns out to be the power source to the Doomsday Device, but at the time of finding the object it does not seem important.

Although many people consider the phrase "Chekhov's gun" foreshadowing, the statements the author made about it can be more properly interpreted as "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story."

[outlander78]

What I meant by "phonetically-spelled" was words that are written as they sound, in an accent. For example, my algebra prof pronounced "vector" as "wecter" - his ESL accent didn't bother me at all, but if a novelist decide to write up a classroom scene and had him saying "wecter", it would annoy me no end. If a Scottish character says "I don't know", I'd like it written that way, not "I dinna ken". I'm Canadian, and don't spell about aboot, or end written sentences in "eh". And so on.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by outlander78

What I meant by "phonetically-spelled" was words that are written as they sound, in an accent. For example, my algebra prof pronounced "vector" as "wecter" - his ESL accent didn't bother me at all, but if a novelist decide to write up a classroom scene and had him saying "wecter", it would annoy me no end. If a Scottish character says "I don't know", I'd like it written that way, not "I dinna ken". I'm Canadian, and don't spell about aboot, or end written sentences in "eh". And so on.

ahh, this is it. I hate it too! thanks for pointing out

[twowheels]

Maybe it's already been said, but I hate when books have a lot of characters with very similar names -- I'm constantly struggling to remember who is who, possibly because I have a tenancy to skim over long and uncommon names and read them as Mr. Sag-----, so if another Mr. Sag--*--- shows up I'm in trouble.

A similar problem is when they switch back and forth between referring to the character by first or last name... if I missed the connection the first time it takes me a long time to realize that they're the same person, and then I often miss a lot of important details.

[benham]

And they do not have to be particularly long names, just similar. One will always be a good guy and the other a bad guy.

[Xanthe]

What kills a book for me:

• When the main character physically resembles the author's photo on the back of the book
• Multiple, explicit, gratuitous sex scenes that do not advance the plot
• Excessive descriptions of the landscape the characters are merely passing through
• Obvious and frequent foreshadowing
• Mary Sue characters
• Forgetting that air is a commodity on a space station and that there has to be some means of generating gravity
• Dragons
• Books that start off with a poor peasant boy taken under the wing of a magician/sorcerer/seer
• Handsome, smart, police detectives who are inexplicably attracted to scatter-brained heroines in cozy mysteries
• Non-fiction books where the footnotes take up more of the page than the actual writing.
• Multiple spelling mistakes
• Characters whose moral code does a 180 midway in a series when the author's personal life changes
• Centaurs
• Mysteries where the villain is clear by the 50th page due to the process of elimination
• Books in which children are tortured and murdered in the first chapter
• Books that begin with the tragic ending of the book
• Characters that prefer to live in poverty rather than touch their trust fund money