[Lawtan]

*Looks through* *Realizes I am not sure how many things I do/do not trip over in writing*
...Overuse of Symbolism. I am tired of extreme emphasis on symbolism, to the point of distracting from the actual story. To me, symbolism should be more akin to the "easter eggs" you find in a game that unlock the "true" ending.
Symbolism is often iffy, because the meaning of symbols changes over time, and people's mindsets/experiences interpret them differently. A train down the tunnel - entering purgatory, sex, factual information, or what?

-------

...Hopeless stories/"Cathartic" stories - The sort of story where the main character is forced into a "deterministic" doom in the end or where everything is pointless rubs me very wrong. I don't really understand how reading about another suffering makes you feel better or "released/refreshed" - catharsis.
In truth, I never really consider such stories finished. Things don't just "end" with tragedy in real life, and I see this ending as more a repetitive frustrating cliffhanger.

[Kenai]

21. Reading a longer post typed entirely in lower case.

Saying so might make me a jerk. But upper case makes it easier to separate sentences and break down all the information so I can understand you. This is why it bothers me. Plain and simple.

[Salone]

22. Seeing the exact same event from different third person perspectives.

This one doesn't come up a whole lot, but there is a certain book series that turned me off because of this. While sure, it describes the event for each character, the reader is forced to read through the same events over and over. It's even worse when it goes on to describe the physical event again and again. The biggest offender I've seen had a record-setting six different viewpoints on the same thing. And it just repeated itself with each new event.

While it's accurate for your characters, please insert me in to the story at the point that is after the event has happened but before they have responded to it. It's like watching a youtube video repeat in slow motion 6 times every time.

This isn't what I wanted, book. This isn't what I wanted at all.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I've read a book that did that fairly well, but the character where separated enough that, although they were visiting the same locations and sometimes saw the same thing happen, it was fairly different each time because of time separation or other information a person had that made it different enough that it didn't feel like the same scene on repeat from a different angle.

[Salone]

See, the big offender was a war fiction series. My first mistake was buying the first three without reading the first one, well...first.

The gist of it goes that a few modern aircraft carriers are part of a program to test teleportation. Instead of moving though, they go through time and wind up popping in to WW2. So I'm expecting fun stuff with the implication of modern technology used in brutal ways and Nazi helicopters and maybe Soviets on the moon and stuff. Oh no, no no no.

In the first real scene, one of the aircraft carriers warps in to the same spot currently occupied by an American battleship. So the ships are fused together, body parts just end at walls, things like that. Unfortunately there are about 6 'main characters' at this point, all mixed from different time periods. Unfortunately, I have to see the exact same event from all of their points. It's like every year in history, you were taught about the nomadic tribes crossing the land bridge in to North America. I get it. Let's move on. A ship appeared. Do not tell me six times. Unfortunately, the book continuously abuses this mechanic. I could not make it through it.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

23. "Cool (insert monetary amount here)"

Didn't used to bother me, but in the past week almost every time I've come across some statement or other about how much money a person made or paid for something, the word "cool" needs to be stuck in front of it. It's getting to the point where it's not just a knee-jerk "ugh." I want to punt something.

[Kenai]

Can I get an excerpt Quiet man? It just sounds so weird when I try to read it my head.

[Salone]

"Slim McJones wasn't sure if he was okay with what he had done. However, a cool fifty bucks in his pocket bought his silence like a new muffler. Besides, how could he talk while his mouth was busy drowning his sorrows in a cool fifty bucks worth of cheap domestic beer?"

Along the lines of things like that. I know what Quiet is talking about. It has extremely saturated the crime/mystery genres.

[Witchchylde]

Maybe if one said "olive bark", rather than just 'olive', the color thing would be more relevant? Skin-like barks and bark-like skins...

[SolarCat]

Originally Posted by Salone

22. Seeing the exact same event from different third person perspectives.

This works better in television or movies, not books.

I actually saw a hilarious television episode who used this with great effect...
The first perspective you watched showed a rather hilarious disaster of a party complete with the hosts throwing expensive food on the floor and the guests fleeing the house due to a fire and an insect infestation. The later perspectives each added one piece to the puzzle of WHY that happened (which turned the craziness into logical events), and showed events occurring simultaneously to the others from different rooms, with some artful overlap to tie it all together. As a result, it was several different stories that happened to overlap with dire consequences. THAT worked, and the results were absolutely hilarious.
But the thought of reading the same situations, instead of watching them occur over a half-hour television show...? NO WAY. It wouldn't flow as well. That's too much juggling of information.



As for things that drive me nuts when reading?

24. Changes of tense within the same paragraph (unless it makes sense, like someone doing one thing while remembering another). It doesn't flow well if the events are on the same timeline, and actually makes things sound choppy.

25. Misuse/overuse of pronouns because it gets really confusing to try and keep track of things.
If there are many people of the same gender talking to each other, there has to be some way to differentiate which one is which, if it matters. If it doesn't matter (or you're trying to accentuate confusion in, say, a barfight or something), you don't have to use pronouns at all.
Likewise, the misuse of "they" makes me think there are at least two people involved, and I get lost looking for the non-existent person I missed, rather than paying attention to the story.

[Awen Moonshine]

This is one that really bugs the hell out of me...
26. Misspelling or incorrect use of words in printed books. Especially when it is established authors that do so. Either way there is no need for it to happen as there should be at least one person that reads it beforehand. It makes me wonder if they proofread or get anyone else to proofread before it gets published.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I can excuse a few errors, since I know from experience it's really easy to miss simple errors and to have other people miss them. It is jarring though, and sort of reminds me that I'm reading a story that came from someone's head. It breaks the immersion, so to speak.

[CycloneKira]

27. "Bwa-ha-ha" villains. I'm sick and tired of them. There are way too many of them, they're cliche, don't you think? Why can't there be different kinds of villains? Why not the "unwilling" kind or "festered mind" kind? Those aren't so bad, are they?

[Madame-Aiko]

28. The really cheesy basic romance novels, like Twilight. Gah it's like reading the same book, over and over again.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by CycloneKira

27. "Bwa-ha-ha" villains. I'm sick and tired of them. There are way too many of them, they're cliche, don't you think? Why can't there be different kinds of villains? Why not the "unwilling" kind or "festered mind" kind? Those aren't so bad, are they?

I think it's more that the concept of "villains" in general has become stale. They're the artifact of a simpler, more archetypal type of storytelling that our postmodern sensibilities have largely moved past, as a society. It is absolutely possible for a story to have an antagonist without that antagonist falling into some sort of exaggerated caricature of a human being for the sake of making them easily-identifiable as the "bad guy". Readers deserve a little more credit than that, we can understand complex personal motivations. (Almost) no one in real life is "evil"; people who do terrible things have desires and beliefs that lead them to feel that they should or must hurt others in order to achieve their goals. While a worldview like that isn't something most readers will respect or agree with, it's one that can be understood, which turns the "villain" from a two-dimensional plot device into an actual person that the reader can experience on a human level. In my view, that makes for far more compelling fiction.

...surprised I never gave that particular rant before in this thread. Oh well.

29. "Relatable" Characters

I think I may be in the minority on this one, but I do not understand the need to be able to identify or empathize with a protagonist or any other character in a work of fiction. Maybe there's something wrong with my concept of escapism, but I'm generally not thinking about myself at all when I'm reading. Whether *I* personally would like a character in fiction is an absurdly meaningless proposition to me. I care if they're interesting to read about, that's pretty much it.

As an aside, audience-proxy characters need to go die in a fire. I'll flounder about in new fictional worlds all on my own, thank you; I don't need a doltish dunce of a protagonist asking idiotic questions at every turn for me to figure things out. Give me characters who've actually lived in the world they inhabit, kthxbai.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Well you gave that rant now...

I think the idea of calling a character "relatable" is assuming a lot of your readership. I'm sure there will always be people out there who don't relate.