Things in books that annoy you

[lotuzzdiabetes]

Is there anything that irritates you when you come across it in books? Somthing in the title, plot, cover, method of writing, character trait, or anything else? For me it is love triangles. I hate them with a passion. I am a big believer in polyamoury and seeing a pointless stupid love triangle can ruin a story for me. I will still read it but I am never happy about the added useless drama. They are way too common since the "success" of twilight and a lazy writing gimmick. And they are always with a straight woman in a middle. Never with LGBT characters. Also, It would still be dumb even with that but at least they would get points for originality. And it isn't realistic. The attraction for someone in real life is only very seldom split between two people equally. The characters typically have so many more important things to worry about. So what irritates you?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by lotuzzdiabetes

Is there anything that irritates you when you come across it in books?

If I sense that something is almost impossible -- that it goes against human nature -- that will probably stop me reading the novel. Maybe that's why I mostly read non-fiction.

Originally Posted by lotuzzdiabetes

I am a big believer in polyamoury . .
.

I think it takes all kinds to make up a good and decent world. But, just to give my purely personal reaction, without any claim to correctness or otherwise --

[barryem]

Originally Posted by lotuzzdiabetes

Is there anything that irritates you when you come across it in books? Somthing in the title, plot, cover, method of writing, character trait, or anything else? For me it is love triangles. I hate them with a passion. I am a big believer in polyamoury and seeing a pointless stupid love triangle can ruin a story for me. I will still read it but I am never happy about the added useless drama. They are way too common since the "success" of twilight and a lazy writing gimmick. And they are always with a straight woman in a middle. Never with LGBT characters. Also, It would still be dumb even with that but at least they would get points for originality. And it isn't realistic. The attraction for someone in real life is only very seldom split between two people equally. The characters typically have so many more important things to worry about. So what irritates you?

Why so much passion about a story element? Why is love pointless? And if it's pointless to you why not accept that it's important to others. I'm an atheist but I have no problems with characters in books with religious beliefs. I'd hate to read only books about people like me. I've read some beautiful novels about religious people. In fact "The Robe" by Lloyd C Douglas is one of my favorites. I was a teen when I first read it and I've probably read it at least every 4 or 5 years since the mid 1950's. It's a beautiful book.

I suggest you consider the various adjectives you're using to describe most of the people in this world. Some might be good people. Some might even be interesting people.

Authors tend to write about what they know and most authors, like most people, are straight and have encountered love triangles. So they write about them. And others read about them. That's probably one of the most successful story elements of all. It must have something going for it.

I have no problem with gay characters or situations in books. I've encountered them quite a few times. All I ask is that the stories be good and the characters be interesting.

Barry

[frahse]

Originally Posted by lotuzzdiabetes

Is there anything that irritates you when you come across it in books? Somthing in the title, plot, cover, method of writing, character trait, or anything else? For me it is love triangles. I hate them with a passion. I am a big believer in polyamoury and seeing a pointless stupid love triangle can ruin a story for me. I will still read it but I am never happy about the added useless drama. They are way too common since the "success" of twilight and a lazy writing gimmick. And they are always with a straight woman in a middle. Never with LGBT characters. Also, It would still be dumb even with that but at least they would get points for originality. And it isn't realistic. The attraction for someone in real life is only very seldom split between two people equally. The characters typically have so many more important things to worry about. So what irritates you?

Sloppiness in the details and even worse pointlessness! Not just "what the hell?" but "why the hell?"

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by lotuzzdiabetes

Is there anything that irritates you when you come across it in books? Somthing in the title, plot, cover, method of writing, character trait, or anything else? For me it is love triangles. I hate them with a passion. I am a big believer in polyamoury and seeing a pointless stupid love triangle can ruin a story for me. I will still read it but I am never happy about the added useless drama. They are way too common since the "success" of twilight and a lazy writing gimmick. And they are always with a straight woman in a middle. Never with LGBT characters. Also, It would still be dumb even with that but at least they would get points for originality. And it isn't realistic. The attraction for someone in real life is only very seldom split between two people equally. The characters typically have so many more important things to worry about. So what irritates you?

I could write a book on irritating things but my big irritation in romance is getting back together with an ex. I usually quit reading at that point because to me the author is being lazy and doesn't want to come up with a new character.

[GrannyGrump]

Over-use of ellipse ...
Over-use of mdash—
Over-use of exclamation !

I guess this might be considered "writing style"...
but personally, I feel these forms—of punctuation—should be used sparingly, or they lose their value as attention-getters!!!

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Over-use of ellipse ...
Over-use of mdash—
Over-use of exclamation !

I guess this might be considered "writing style"...
but personally, I feel these forms—of punctuation—should be used sparingly, or they lose their value as attention-getters!!!

Oh, if only you had been around when Turgenev was writing! Or at least when Constance Garnett et al were translating...

[GrannyGrump]

I'm working on ten Dr. Dolittle books now, and the man was an mdash maniac. 10 children's books with total of over 16,000 mdashes. Oh, my.

(I know this because I was doing batch-editing of all in Notepad++. I am not really so compulsive as to SEEK for this statistic!)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

I'm working on ten Dr. Dolittle books now, and the man was an mdash maniac. 10 children's books with total of over 16,000 mdashes. Oh, my.

(I know this because I was doing batch-editing of all in Notepad++. I am not really so compulsive as to SEEK for this statistic!)

Hmmm … He invented the pushmi-pullyu which makes me willing to forgive many grammatical sins. Strictly speaking the character name is em dash with — being the HTML entitly name. It could be worse—years back in an English class, we were forced to read a book from the 1840s about a British author's travels in North America. The author loved en dashes, em dashes, 2 em dashes and 3 em dashes though he was two-timing them with footnotes.

[theducks]

1) Homophones used Grrr: Brake vs Break, lose vs loose
2) Technical errors: Spark plugs in a Diesel
3) Planet based terms in space (SF) Ground floor of a Space ship
4) Vulgarity for Vulgarity's sake. Does nothing to define the character or move the story forward (ex Navy here, I do not have tender ears )

[Barbara1955]

The F*CK word in almost Every Sentence! WTF!! This was a book from a Popular Author!

Bad Directions! Cant Authors use MapQuest!!!

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by theducks

1) Homophones used Grrr: Brake vs Break, lose vs loose

AAARGH!!! Kill it with fire! Nuke it from low orbit!

<pant>. Sorry, I feel better now

[rcentros]

Getting beaten over the head with political correctness.

"Explain-itis" where nothing can be left "unexplained" -- which in SF and Fantasy is really annoying.

An ending where suddenly we're expected to suspend disbelief over and over again to make the ending "upbeat."

Horror stories where the evil (whatever) simply can't be killed, rendering the whole book a waste of time. (If the protagonists never had a chance, why bother?)

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Barbara1955

The F*CK word in almost Every Sentence!

I like the way Dean Koontz doesn't use that word, but let's you know the thugs in his book do. He's makes it comical.

[JSWolf]

I know one thing that irritates me, is poor formatting.

The book club read Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers and the anti-semitism in the book rather bothered me. There were ways to say things without being so rude. Also, the book bothered me because the solution given was given in a letter by the guilty party and it was way too detailed for us to have figured everything out. Yes, you may have been able to figure out who did it, but not all the details.

I dislike dry boring writing such as found in a lot of pre-WWI classics. Jane Austen is one such author who's works are dry and boring.