It’s late at night. I’m in bed, opening a book I’ve been dying to get my hands on. I read the first chapter, then the next. I’m growing more and more involved in the book. And then I start to notice something. A pattern. It’s one of those uh-oh moments. The author has stopped being clever and has started playing it safe. Maybe it’s because it’s the middle of the novel and they aren’t sure what to write. Maybe they think they’ve lost you somewhere. At any rate, disaster lurks.
It’s one of those uh-oh moments. The author has stopped being clever and has started playing it safe. http://t.co/c3EgGqNdw3
— The Indie Exchange (@IndieExchange) June 5, 2013
Suddenly their scenes are weak and diluted. If I could close my eyes to avoid these scenes, like I do in the theater, I would. But in a book you never know when these incidents might occur. I call these my ‘Don’t you hate it when writers…” scenes. As a writer myself, I’ve been guilty of probably all of them. Still, as a reader it’s something I don’t want to see. It’s not a long list, but it can make or break a novel for me.
So, on that note, I’ve compiled a list of eight things I call, Don’t you hate it when the author:
Leads the reader. This is the bread crumbs plot structure. The author plants clues along the way, making them so obvious I’m surprised the protagonist isn’t tripping over them. Oh, so that woman owns the exact same knife the murdered man was killed with, hated the murdered man since he rejected her advances at the Jr High School dance, and was seen snubbed by him just the day before his death? This is all well and good, if these are red herrings, meant to make me believe that this woman is the suspect when in fact she is not. But I’ve seen several books where the all to obvious person in the story, turns out to be the perpetrator after all. Kind of like a twist on a twist.
The same goes for the more subtle leading. The author has an ending in mind and will hammer you over the head with it long before the climax, just in case you fail to miss it at the end. The woman will kill herself by driving over a cliff at the end. The writer plants way too many clues leading you up to the finale: the woman buys a red car, talks about how wonderful it would be to experience the freedom of flying, and says to her best friend about five times ‘ever think of driving over a cliff?’
In my opinion a good writer will give you clues, then let you forget them. It’s up to us as readers to put some things together. Let us exercise our mind muscles since we are probably not exercising our body at the moment.
Doesn’t lead the reader at all. There are a few things I’ve read (and seen on TV a lot lately)that gave me absolutely no indication of what was coming. So, the murdered woman was killed with a candlestick in the bakery? Why weren’t we alerted to the fact there was a bakery in town or that she had a penchant for rare candles until the very last three paragraphs of the book. In this instance, I feel like I’ve been jilted. It happens more often on crime scene TV but it occurs in books. Clever endings are one thing, bait and switch is another. In the end it might be a ‘yeah, that’s kinda cool,’ moment, but it won’t stick with me. Give me some real reason to believe.
Throws in some gratuitous sex. Sex is hot right now. I get it. But trying to stuff in sex scenes in the middle of a well-written can be jarring. Worse, trying to fix a bad novel with sex just makes the whole thing laughable. Keep the sex contextual. Let it develop naturally between the players in the book. And don’t overdo it. I don’t need to read the hardcore stuff when just a bit of heat between the protagonist and her love interest will do. Conversely, I want to read about the details when the plot necessitates it. Make the sex scenes natural. They are more interesting that way and I will remember the novel, along with that scene, long after I put the book down.
Presume that I have read their other books. I’m guilty of picking up, and starting, novel three in a five novel series. This mostly happens when I’m in an airport or a supermarket and I see a cover that catches my eye. I read the back and throw it in my cart. I don’t like jumping into a book and immediately feeling lost. If this is the second book in a series give me a brief overview of what has happened in the last one, but don’t swamp me with the details. Fill them in during the first few chapters so that I can acclimate naturally. Keep it simple and keep it relevant. If I liked this one chances are I will go back and read the others. I once read an entire series backwards because there was just enough there regarding the previous book to tantalize me into buying it.
Kill off beloved characters. Ala Downton Abbey. This is the cool thing to do right now, I even took a writing workshop on it. But sometimes, when a character I love dies suddenly and unexpectedly, I stop reading the book. I couldn’t read the last three chapters of Game of Thrones because I was so disgruntled by the fact that my favorite characters, the characters I had spent hundreds of pages learning about and coming to admire, were offed. Some readers love this. I don’t. So yeah, a personal quirk of mine. Get rid of the secondary characters but not the main characters. I don’t want to spend time floundering around, trying to figure out who I will love next. I want to love the character I started the journey with (unless the sacrifice was really worth it, which is totally fine, especially when it falls near the end of the book, but that’s a whole other article).
Never lets their love interest characters get together. Ever. Sure there is conflict in the unresolved sexual tension which will keep a reader turning pages, but there comes a point when I, as a reader, am like good grief, the things that are keeping them apart don’t even make sense anymore. If two people are really meant to be together they will move mountains to get there. Purposely keeping characters apart with arbitrary situations is just silly, and wearing. It makes me think their relationship isn’t worth it if they aren’t even going to try for it. I would rather have a taste of them getting together, so that I can see how meant they were for each other, only to be ripped apart (of course this also requires a good reason).That’s strong writing. And heart wrenching. And very human. Don’t toy with me for seven books just to keep me reading. I won’t appreciate it and I probably won’t read past book three.
Reveals the character only through action. So, in writing, there is a theory called ‘show don’t tell’. Basically, it says anything that can be shown to illuminate something, rather than told, is better. This is especially true with characters. If someone is afraid of heights we will see him sweat whenever he looks out the window of his 42nd level penthouse window. If he hates fish he will avoid sushi restaurants. This is great and the reader gets the sense of what is going on. But when I read a book where there is no inner dialog, no real reveal about the character beyond what we can see, I feel like I might as well be people watching in a subway. I’m not a reader. I’m a voyeur. Writers should let us in sometime. Otherwise, the character feels too guarded, too unreachable. It’s okay to let the reader know the characters deepest, darkest secrets. We need this to feel some empathy. I have no interest in following a caricature around for three hundred pages. I want to follow someone real.
Give the characters unnecessary quirks. Sure, I know, keep characters interesting. But do writers really need to go to extremes to accomplish this? These days, most every character I read about is: haunted, traumatized, obsessive-compulsive, psychotic, bulimic, or sleep deprived. Yes, these are all real conditions, but I don’t think an interesting character is dependent upon a nervous tick or an eating disorder. An interesting character is human, complex, good and bad, and not necessarily in need of psychiatric treatment. Stu Redman from King’s The Stand comes to mind. In the myriad of crazy characters King created for that book, Redman’s simplicity and humanity made me identify with him more so than any of the others. He was interesting because he seemed real.
I realize some stories warrant this type of character, Lord knows I’ve written my share of eccentric personalities, but other stories are better left without them. Let me find out about the character through his hopes and dreams, friends and relationships, loves and disappointments. That makes him interesting. That’s what I want to read about.
What does an author do that takes YOU out of a story?
