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Stop Me Ten

Ten Things That Make Me Stop Reading a Novel

Author as Character: One of Stephen King's unforgivable narcissistic writing sins for me was when he added himself as a character to that gunslinger fantasy series. As in Stephen King the author shows up in the story. No. Just no.

Detailed and Horrific Torture Scenes: Most torture scenes like this are too much for me, but I can usually skim the one-pagers. The twenty-pagers, not so much -- and they creep me out over the author, too.

Grated: One popular vampire romance writer who shall remain nameless used this word as a dialogue tag for her hero so often in one book I developed a violent allergy to it and never read her stuff again. Grating is for cheese, lemon zest and whole nutmeg. If you want me to read your story just write said, please.

Ignoring Punctuation: A fluctuating style trend that infects writers every couple of years; the literati especially love it. Me, not so much. I end up mentally editing instead of reading.

Internet-Influenced Writing: This is hard to describe, but I know it when it gets in my face. The use of too many acronyms and buzzwords, herd language, social media references, etc. in fiction is tedious. If I want to be entertained by the internet, I'll go read the internet.

Lectures: Subjecting the reader to a vicious shaming over some belief the author holds fanatically dear (especially in regard to the environment) is super bad manners, as not every reader is a shameless offender. Stop trying to tar everyone with the same brush.

Knock-offs: Reading yet another version of Pride & Prejudice alerted or skewed just enough to sound original without actually being that deeply annoys me. Leave poor dead Jane Austen alone and go write your own stuff.

Personal Politics Disguised as Fiction: God, I hate writers climbing onto soapboxes in their stories almost as much as I despise politics. No matter how they try to veil it I am immediately kicked out of the story.

Saving the World in Bed: Using the destruction of the planet as justification for characters to have sex (aka the only way to stop it) is so over the top it skims the stratosphere. Why can't they just do it because they want to? Grow up already.

Writing Workshop Brainwashed: If the author uses four hundred synonyms for the word blue rather than just writing the word blue, they've attended too many writing workshops, and I can't read their work. P.S. I have a thesaurus, thank you.

What stops you from reading? Let me know in comments.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

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nightsmusic said…
I got through the first three chapters (I think) of a book whose author made it clear in his character's banter, that he was not a fan of conservatives. Okay, there are a lot of people who are not fans of conservatives but if I want to read about that, whether conservative or liberal, I'll read the political cartoons or listen to the news, thanks. And I don't. Not in my fiction that should have nothing to do with politics according to the blurb. So that one got deleted from my stash. Money wasted there. I read one book, or tried, where the author used 39 'hads' on the first page and a half. Thirty-nine!! That one too got deleted from my stash. When I start counting them, there's just way too many. So sometimes, it's not just the characters.
September 8, 2021 at 5:04 AM
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