I hate authors' who use vengeance as a legitimate and morally correct solution to a problem. This is one of my many gripes with the Eragon series. Vengeance is an emotional craving that satisfies nothing. It should be a present element, something a young or impulsive character should likely desire, but we need the "sage-characters" (like Yoda) to explain why it is a bad decision.
I hate onbnoxiously presented agendas. I don't mind authors trying to use their fiction to share their perspective or emphasize things they feel are important. But I don't like it when the science of the very planet revolves around something that is politically arbitrary but shown in the story to be either black or white. Good or evil. (This isn't a problem for something that is universally frowned upon, like murder) but for things like "Recycling" or "environmentalism," fiction is not the place to push those agendas.
What do you hate. Let's have a ranting.
Unpronounceable names and conlang. I understand that some stories require a certain amount of conlang when it comes to names or other words—I even like conlang—but I hate it when it's something that's difficult or impossible to pronounce. Maybe that's because I read adult fiction out loud way more than the average citizen (at least an hour and a half a week... I've got a roommate who has to do a boring physical therapy thing for life, and I've been reading to her 5-6 evenings a week since early '00), so I tend to hear the words in my head as I read them more than most people do, so it's a real niggle when I run into one I can't 'hear'.. Anyway, that's probably number one.
An overabundance of gross redunandcies (which also generally means a vast amount of over-explanation to the reader, thus insulting said readers intelligence) is another big turnoff. Tell me once. Maybe twice if something is vastly important to the plot, but I don't (just for an easy example) need a detailed explanation of why a character has a phobia every time the phobia comes up in the plot. I couldn't not read Jean Auel's Shelters of Stone... I've followed that series too long... but the level of gross redunancy (steadily climbing as the series progressed) is absolutely horrendous (and this after waiting more than ten years for the book!!). I would guess that at least 15% of the whole novel is basically gross redunancies. It's really sad how downhill her writing/editing has gone over the course of her series, and that's one of her biggest downfalls. But I still had to see what happens to Ayla next, even if there could have been a lot more actual story (or a lot less actual pages) than there actually was (were).
Books without a single character I can admire come next (not perfect, but at least more admirable than not). I think Samuel Delaney is an extremely talented writer, and Babel-17 would probably make a personal top-6 most awesome and significant works of SF list, but Dhalgren was interminable because while there were a lot (understatement) of strange/quirky people who I guess might be phychologically interesting to some folks, not a single one seemed truly admirable to me. It was very difficult to really care what happened to any of them. I almost didn't finish it, and I almost never fail to finish a novel once I've started it.
Those are the first three things that come to mind anyway.
Regards,
SharonID
[This message has been edited by SharonID (edited March 10, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by SharonID (edited March 10, 2007).]
1. What I'll call artificially snappy dialogue. What I mean by that is characters that constantly launch little one-liners at each other, playful little insults. The best example I can think of are David and Leigh Eddings books, especially the later books, where there always seems to be a male and female lead that engage in this back-and-forth when there's no true conflict behind it. Don't get me wrong, a little can be enjoyable, but three times per page for 450 pages will make me puke.
2. Characters that think too much. I've found this in what people call the "literary genre". That's not to say all books of this type are bad--many are great, but there seems to be a line somewhere where a fifty line rumination on meaningless topic like why a character never fails to floss before bed makes me long for a John Grisham book. I bet it could be done in 40 lines, or 20, or ten, or two.
3. When all character internal thoughts are put in italics. It makes me feel like I'm being jerked back and forth between close and distant third person POV.
4. "Look how much research I did!" - Books where you get info dumps on topics so the writer can convince you he did lots of reaserch--something like a fast-paced suspense story that grinds to a halt while you get a five page treatise on how to make your own bullets, or how a GPS correlates satellite signals to calculate a position. Sometimes the stuff is even interesting, but it can be like switching over to the Discovery Science Channel in the middle of The Shining.
5. The infamous head-hopping. If you have any interest in having me enjoy your novel, at least start a new scene when you change POV's, or preferably a new chapter. If you want to really make me happy, take a look at how George Martin handles the Fire and Ice books.
Those are all just personal quirks.
I also extremely dislike books that happen mostly in the character's head. Internalizations slow the pace of the story, which is fine in moderation or when you want a breather in a fast-paced action novel, but AS the story? No. Which also doesn't mean that I haven't read novels where that technique worked, but it's very advanced writing and should not be engaged in by most writers. In my opinion, of course.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited March 10, 2007).]
The one at the top of the list, though, is Illogical Suspension of Disbelief: something that usually occurs because the author is too lazy (or too much in a hurry) to think things through.
Here are two recent, real-life examples from bestselling authors (whom I, for the record, did not edit):
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Example #1: A woman in financial trouble inherits over 80 million dollars from a despicable relation. At the end of the book, she takes out a loan to deal with her finances and donates the entire inheritance to charity (so as not to tarnish her mother's memory).
a.) 80 million dollars is never handed over in large suitcases. People worth 80 million dollars usually have assets tied up in land, stocks, bonds, etc. that are not quickly and easily liquidated. By the time the heroine got rid of the money, she would have made enough in interest to live comfortably.
b.) If I was her dead mother, I'd be yelling at her from beyond the veil to take the worthless sod's money and spend it as frivolously as humanly possible. Don't make your life HARDER, for goodness sake...stupid, proud girl...
******************************
Example #2: Our shape-shifting heroine is whisked away by the rich hero on a "date" to a secluded island. When she laments that she had no time to prepare for the journey, the hero tells her not to worry -- his maid has bought her a bathing suit, and it is up in her room. The bathing suit is a size six, and fits like a glove.
a.) Any woman who has ever gone bathing suit shopping knows that it is easier to climb Mount Everest than it is to find the perfect bathing suit. There is NO WAY that one woman could buy another woman a bathing suit HAVING NEVER LAID EYES ON HER and have it fit. Huh-uh. Forget it.
b.) Hello? Our heroine is a SHAPE-SHIFTER. Would it not have made more sense to have her SHIFT herself so that the suit fit perfectly? I might have chuckled at that scene and kept reading...instead of putting the book down at that point and never picking up that author again.
******************************
I am a genre reader. I have no problem willingly suspending my disbelief. But even magical, escapist worlds are still subject to certain rules of common sense and logic.
Don't insult your reader by ignoring them.
(Of course, these books still went on to sell buckets of copies, without my two cents...)
I hate getting to the end and saying, "what was the point of that?" This seems to be worse with short fiction than with novels. I can't tell you how many short stories I've read -- literary and genre, by the way -- where I have an investment in the characters, I'm interested in the plot (or, if there's no plot, at least the vignette or the idea), and when I get to the climax, I say, "was that all? What are they trying to say?" Or worse, "Who cares?"
Maybe I feel that way because I'm an unsubtle simpleton, but I often feel like I've wasted my time. I don't need resolution, by the way -- just a point.
There's a podcast called "The Writer's Block" that did that to me a lot. I stopped listening when I discovered that only one out of every ten readings actually had a point.
I hate when prose is so full of technical jargon that it becomes like reading an instruction manual.
Or when four pages of beating around the bush interupts a character's hurried walk to a necessary destination.
And when the author makes stuff appear when the hero needs it, using the tag that he had gotten in town or that she gave him before he left.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 10, 2007).]
quote:
And when the author makes stuff appear when the hero needs it, using the tag that he had gotten in town or that she gave him before he left.
no doubt, especially when you consider that in most cases, you can backfill the information into an earlier scene. Case in point, my character needed duct tape in a recent short story. I gave it to him five pages earlier, lo, he has it when he needs it.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited March 10, 2007).]
What i dont like is when the book gose on and on and on, like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it rambled to much, also Jane Eyre that book made me want to burn down england.
OMAGAOFTHEALPHA
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited March 10, 2007).]
In fact, the Hatrack River Writers Workshop is not the place for your politics.
The topic of this forum is writing.
Please stay on topic.
I'm not helping am I.
But there are fictions and there are fictions. I would like to continue the polite fiction that we can control ourselves around here and stick to the topic.
I hate cliff-hangers that are inserted just for the sake of cliff-hangers, especially when the next chapter jumps to an entirely different set of characters who have had their own cliff-hanger a few chapters ago.
I hate giving someone feedback on something that is not working and being told that they did it that way on purpose (they honestly wanted it to "not work" in that particular way? yeah, right).
I don't exactly hate stories where something is supposed to have a particular impact on me as a reader, and that impact is not earned by the writing, but I stop reading them and never manage to get around to finishing them. (For example, I have put down books that other people find hilarious because while I can see quite clearly that the things in the story are supposed to be funny, they just don't make me laugh. And the writer doesn't make me care about the characters in any other way, either.)
And that's probably enough from me for now.
There are a couple of things I would use the word Hate for.
I hate work that graphically describes evil for entertainment.
I hate books and TV that promote socially destructive behaviors as normal. Society IS destroyed by moral decline. Nobody ever overthrew the Roman Empire it destroyed itself through moral decay. As an example, most men don’t want a threesome but “Friends” made an entire generation believe that it’s every man’s desire and not really that abnormal.
Tracy
there has been a lot of thinly-veiled political chest-thumping here lately.
One thing I don't like in a story is when you feel like you're never going to be surprised, like everything is going to go plodding along in predicatble patterns all the way to the end.
PS: On KDW's last point. Me too. won't mention 'discworld'.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited March 11, 2007).]
What I hate most, though, is that the story is encaptivating enough that I want to run out to the bookstore and buy the next one right now. 
I also dislike it when a character has contradictory natures to him. That's not to say that he doesn't have contradictions. Contradictions can be in the nature of a character. A character who believes in the ten commandments, but justifies theft of food for his troups has an inner contradiction. But a man who outwardly protects and cherishes life, yet slaughters every man, woman, and child in a village has a contradictory *nature*, and unless he is obviously insane, he is not a credible character to me.
I once tried to make a character of a family man who had complete integrity within his family, but was full of larceny on the outside. That is pretty extreme and it at least flirts with a contradictory nature. I had to scrap the character. It would take an exceptional writer to accomplish it, I think. (Or at least a much better writer than me.)
I can only recall one time when these kinds of extremes didn't hurt the story, and that was in a novel written by a Nobel Prize laureate.
I generally agree with oliverhouse regarding the "say what?" factor of some stories. The exception is when a story leaves me with a strong sense of mystery and/or wonder. But that only happens when the story is very exceptional, and most of the time authors that try to do that just come off as pretentious to me.
I also hate gratuitous anything. Gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence, gratuitous gazing, gratuitous suspense, gratuitous surprises, gratuitous angst, gratuitous fuzz, etc.
I hate it when the villain's motivation is simply because he's "evil." I used to like Mercedes Lackey, when I first began reading her Valdemar series. But eventually she degenerated into cookie cutter heroes and villains. Same with Anne McCaffery.
I hated the last couple of books in Jean Auel's Earth's Children series because she kept repeating the same basic (and non-essential to the plot) scenes over and over again. That last book was so bloated with repetitive scenes that didn't move the plot forward, it was ridiculous. I put the book down and won't go back.
I hate it when an author tries to impose their own cadence of speech into the text through italics. It's so annoying when the author uses italics for artifical emphasis in the dialog. Really.
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited March 11, 2007).]
I hate it when I read a book---fiction or non-fiction---where I come up to a stated fact that I know beyond any doubt is wrong. Sometimes I can't ever get back into the flow.
"your mind makes it real..."
that's just plain ridiculous for so many reasons!
And what is "arms akimbo?"
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited March 11, 2007).]
An ASCII silhouette of "arms akimbo" might look like
<||>
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited March 11, 2007).]
7||>
I dislike intensely logorrhea. I have it, so I can't say I hate it. I just dislike when an author uses 10 words to say something that could have been said in 5. I'm all for description and painting the environment for us, but there's a limit! I've read two authors recently who seem to have this problem. One uses excessive technical/academic lingo and very long words to communicate himself and it drives me bananas. The other seems to have the repetition thing that others have mentioned on this thread. Yes, she feels badly that she's going to be leaving her parents, we get it. I think I counted 4 cases of foreshadowing of that emotion in 1 page alone!
I dislike cliffhangers, only because I'm slightly obsessive compulsive about my reading and therefore must read the remainder of the volume(s) just to get to the conclusion.
I don't like endings with a twist unless I truly saw them coming. I like a little forewarning. None of this "and then I woke up." garbage!
I dislike it when writers don't include a diagram or map of their invented worlds, yet seem to expect us to know the lay of the land. Diagrams or maps aren't always needed or necessary, but if you're going to spend a lot of time telling us about the mountain range that is West of the Deep, Dark Woods and north of the Ice Palace, draw it out for us. I've had to sketch my own more times than I can remember. Curse of being a visual learner. If it doesn't matter where something is, don't bother making a big deal out of it.
I dislike completely invented, not-based-in-anything-you-can-relate-to fantasy or sci-fi. I have trouble w/sci-fi set 1M years off in the future, and fantasy where the sky is orange and melts. I think part of the enjoyment of reading comes from mentally situating oneself in the story. Environments that are that foreign are too hard to situate myself into. I give up easily.
I also echo the gratuitous violence point someone else mentioned. I will put down a book/walk out of a movie that relies upon violence to the exclusion of actual plot, character development, themes, ideas. Seems worse in movies, but I think it's a cheap shot in general. Most people's lives are not filled with violence day in and day out. Why is it such a common element in our culture and media? Even fear and fright. I've read a lot of books lately that seem to be playing heavily on fear as the primary tension/conflict. It's annoying me to the point where I probably won't continue on reading one particular author's books (odd for me, I tend to read author-by-author as much of their work as I can put my hands on. Obsessive, did I mention?) Since my own life has little fear and fright as a daily thing, I have trouble situating myself into a story/imagined world where this seems to drive all of the characters. Isn't there something a bit deeper you can tap?
I thought when reading this thread originally that I wouldn't have much to add but apparently I've had some bones to pick. LOL
Karen
[edit: haha never mind, I see the joke now]
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited March 12, 2007).]
Excessive use of cursing, I hate it in real life, I hate it in writing. If you are clever then create your own sayings and words, not simply change one word and phrasing.
Another one of mine is when an author explains every, little damned detail about the action that's taking place, where "his foot slid on the curved side of the rock that jutted out from the sand" or "when his sword fell from his hand after being hit in the back of the head where his neck meets his head, the sword missing his little toe."
And my last gripe is people who expect to know every word in the theasaurus and actually know what the word means. I like to keep my writing simple, easy to read so that a person who may not be all that entirely knowledgeable can actually understand what I'm conveying.
That's about it.
Profanity. Graphic violence. Pornographic scenes. Pushing the line for its own sake with any of the above, rather than pushing the line for more creative endeavors. If certain characters have to indulge in certain actions, cut away! I am not a voyeur. Allow the character some privacy.
Other than that, I'd say: badly executed 3PO.
Also- I hate it when the storyline follows every step of the Hero's Archetype. (Eragon drove me crazy)
I hate fantasy that has the medieval setting but no magic.
I hate stories that are just there to push thru a political point.
I hate SF in which I get to the end and think, OK, so it took place on another planet. Why didn't they just set it in Cleveland? It would have worked fine.
I hate people who list more than four things that they hate in a single post.
I hate any writing that draws attention to itself. Don't mess with style thinking you're cool. Just write the book.
I hate books that don't go anywhere. I read Orphans of Chaos, and the story ended as it started: a bunch of orphans with super powers are still imprisoned. The sequel, Fugitives of Chaos, implies by its title that they escape, but shouldn't something have happened in the first book? At all?
BTW, I have a hard time putting any book down, no matter how bad. I don't know exactly why, but maybe it has to do with the idea that I've already invested my time in it and I want to finish. If a book does let me down, I won't read anything else by that author. John C. Wright (author of Orphans of Chaos) has been black-listed. I will never read anything by him again.
Matt
quote:
I hate fantasy that has the medieval setting but no magic.
Funny, I haven't read too many like that. It impressed the hell out of me when George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones limited its magic to almost nil. I don't think fantasy needs to be just Swords&Sorcery--in fact--I think it's more difficult to believably conclude the plot without magic.
quote:
BTW, I have a hard time putting any book down, no matter how bad.
I definately don't have that problem. I'll drop a book in a minute, if it starts sucking.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 12, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by spcpthook (edited March 12, 2007).]
Changing characters' hair or eye color inexplicably. Hasn't the author pictured the character any better than that? I see them as clearly as I can see an actor on a TV screen at least. And why don't editors catch these things?
Writers who stretch credulity when they're not even trying to be funny, they just don't know how certain things work in the real world.
Main characters who are just mean! Ever tried to read Sidney Sheldon's work?
Characters who are shallow. I know that's not fair as it reflects so many people in real life. I just don't want to read about 'em. This and poor construction of prose and scenes spoil John Jakes's work for me.
Twisting history to fit a fictional work. Maybe that's just me. I'm not sure the excellence of the work ever justifies it. I haven't made a close study of their works vs. the real events, but as I understand John Jakes is pretty respectful of history and Larry McMurtry is just terrible.
Writers who sell a gazillion copies whose work is so bad I can't even force myself through one book of theirs. Unfortunately this includes most of the bestseller list.
Not that I'm completely innocent of this crime. Of late I've decided to step back from making use of characters in military or quasi-military settings---I've never been in the army (or navy, or marines, or airforce), and my work lacks that kind of reality that comes from an intimate knowledge of that kind of world. (I know a great deal about working for the government, though---but things aren't organized in the same way.)
Terry Pratchett does this and it works 'OK' because its satire, but when Robert Jordan does this, I spend 20 min thinking about why and how it ruined my emersion in the story.
I also hate the word gelding. Most people don’t know a stallion from a gelding. If my horse is castrated, what difference does it make to the story, unless you have a problem with your stallion trying to mount every mare he sees. At least give me a reason for it, otherwise just say, "He road a horse".
[This message has been edited by Alye (edited March 13, 2007).]
The things I hate are:
-Details that are the focus of or important to a scene that are not correct.
-When the author writing a POV character who Knows Something but does not let the reader know what that is. The book I'm thinking about had the POV obsessing about the Green Item but didn't let the readers know what it was until halfway through the book.
-Novels that delibrately end with a cliffhanger to make readers buy the next book.
-When the author kills off a main character that the reader has grown to love because 'someone has to die.' That death must become a major driving force in the story (the MC's reaction to the death changes something) or I just get angry.
-Rather than having the MC deal with the natural consequences of her or other people's action, the author drops various calamities and sorrows on the character just to have some adversity. Don't give her an injury, kill off her kids before her eyes while she's unable to do anything, and have her husband kidnapped and presumed dead when we know that she would have risked her life to help others even if this hadn't happened. And a depressed character isn't much fun.
-Politics/Morals taken too far in the story. If you want your characters to sleep around all the time, fine. If you set up the world so that the 'other' characters refuse to have sex with anyone except their marriage parnter and so will be destroyed by the invading army without the MCs help AND the MCs refuse to help 'those backward dolts,' you've lost me as a reader.
And that's my 2 cents.
[This message has been edited by DebbieKW (edited March 13, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by Alye (edited March 13, 2007).]
(Be forewarned that I LOVE the following two authors, and will finish the series in question, but they have gotten on my last nerves in their last few books)
Example 1: The Wheel of Time
The first few books were pretty darn good, and I really enjoyed reading them, but as the series ground on, there were too many characters, too many plots to follow, and not enough resolution happening. It has gotten to the point that in order to read the newest release in theseries, you have to read the rest of the series again and take notes, just to keep up with what is happening. I don't recall which book it was, but one of the last few to come out was nothing but over-explained filler. I honestly think the entire book could have been summarized in a couple of chapters because NOTHING HAPPENED, and then he added more plots!!! AAAUUGH!!
There are also way too many ultra-powerful characters with no respect for anyone else. They all seem to think that they know better than everyone else, an that drives me NUTS.
Example 2: The Sword of Truth
I really loved this series at first, but the constant separation of the two main characters, and the harping on about the hoplessness of their situation makes me want to scream. If you're going to give two characters love, don't make it impossible for them to enjoy that, or even have time together.
Again, too many all-powerful beings. Gimmie a break.
No one talks to anyone else. Despite countless times when someone has proven themselves to be right, no one listens to them, or shares information. That's probably just a lame pet peeve of mine, but if one person has information, and he/she knows the other people very well, doesn't it stand to reason that he/she would share that information???
I am sick to death of the endless gory descriptions of the evil deeds of the Imperial Order. You don't have to repeatedly and lovingly rehash every single detail of the rape, torture, murder, and whatever disgusting bit of brutality you have already described, and then add some more lurid descriptions of whatever sick ways to hurt and kill everyone from infants to the elderly that you can possibly imagine. Goodkind goes on for entire chapters in this manner and frankly, it's pointless and sickening. I got more than enough of it when the order was first introduced, I got the picture, really.
Don't pontificate or preach at me. Goodkind's most recent book went on for two or three CHAPTERS about why the order was bad, and why their thinking is faulty. Yeah, I get it that they are seriously screwed up in the head, and I understand - from the book centered around the Imperial Order's way of life - how their line of thinking works. You don't need to beat me over the head with it. I get it already.
With both series I will read the last books because I've come this far and want to see how it ends, but I will never read anything else either author writes. (God forgive me for being so critical of poor Mr. Jordan. I sincerely hope the man beats his illness.)
Ok, I'm sorry if that all sounded venomous. It just really honks me off! lol
Gratuitous sex scenes. There's one well-known author who basically just writes porn now instead of the genre that made her famous. 200 pages of sex with maybe 25 pages of plot.
The same author also would just cut and paste descriptions of her characters from previous books to her current when they made their first appearance in the current book. Why couldn't she come up with something new to say about the character? She literally plagiarized herself. Drove me up the wall.
I don't read her books anymore.
[This message has been edited by Hunter (edited March 13, 2007).]
quote:
Actually, Alye, I think most people do know what a gelding (horse) is.
What's a gelding? Seriously, never heard the word. I don't know if I'd be able to tell from the text what it was either. I agree with Alye, if it's a horse, tell me it's a horse, unless the fact that it's a gelding actually matters. If so, then tell me that a gelding is a horse. I promise not to feel patronized.
Matt
On the point of details, it's true that an author can't be an expert on everything and will get some details wrong. I generally don't have a problem with that. It's when a person makes a big deal out of something--like these barbarians ride horses before the can walk and are infinitely better riders than the city folk--and then tell IN DETAIL horse riding practices that would make it extremely difficult for the rider to stay on the horses back (and I'm not talking about riding bareback) and horse care practices that would kill the horses. These things didn't even need to be explained in detail in this book, so it was annoying that the author made such a big deal about them and then got the details wrong. There is another book were a main character was a blacksmith. I'm a journeyman blacksmith, and it annoying me how many details about blacksmithing that this author got wrong. In another book, an author had obviously book-researched a lot about old glass-working techniques and such. She added a 'tour of the glassworks' to the book just to show off--it wasn't relevant to the book. The problem is, she got a lot of details wrong because she never talked with a real, life glass-maker and ended up repeating a lot of myths. THAT is the type of thing I hate.
Yes, when adrenaline hits, people can do extraordinary things for a short time. But too many people take that too far. You can stretch my imagination, but don't break it.
Matt
I get peeved at stereotyped characters. Also too many threads in a plot (where I'm bound to have some less-favorite characters to tromp around with).
- "I hate it when you do that!" he shouted angrily, as wrothful spittle flew furiously from his mouth.
- He extended a friendly hand. (What, is the rest of him not friendly? It's just his hand?)
- Seen recently in a YA-ish novel: Torrents of rain fell like watery molasses. (What in the crap does that mean?)
- Abused MacGuffins: more than one MacGuffin (unless very well done), MacGuffins that aren't the focus of the plot, etc.
- When all the characters have a deep, dark secret.
- Women who write men like women, and men who write women like men.
- Writing every character who doesn't follow your political ideals as evil or idiotic. (I'm looking at you, Heinlein.)
- Villains who are villainous because of some dumb thing you'd expect a normal person to get over. This is fine if you also show that the villain is not exactly normal. In other words, the "it could have been you!" school of villain writing makes me want to puke, or at least go on a wholesale slaughtering spree at the nearest elementary school.
quote:
or at least go on a wholesale slaughtering spree at the nearest elementary school.
Matt
quote:
"it could have been you!" school of villain
1. Psychopathy. A person just seems to be born without any capacity for empathy. Think Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Eric Harris (from Columbine).
2. Us vs. Them. This is somewhat related to #1, but everyone is capable of it, and does it to some extent. People who are "us" are human, and "they" are not. It's fairly easy to justify atrocity with this world-view. Think terrorists. They love their children, but hate yours. Yours are cattle, or less.
3. Genuine clash of goals. When two rival factions fighting over the same resources, the "other" leader is the villain to your side.
The "it could have been you!" school of villain writing thinks these aren't interesting enough, or don't have enough emotional impact, or something. In particular, they reject #1 as shallow and hard to identify with, and try to inject humanity into the villain by showing how his villainy came about, but generally without regard to traits specific to the villain. If they do regard specific traits, it's usually something common in the population.
Some of them even do it to make you afraid of yourself, which is where I get the name from.
George Lucas is the latest perpetrator of this nonsense. Really, if you had been Anakin, would you have choked your wife? Really? And all it takes is these circumstances and a person who is "unwilling to let go"?
I see it as a pendulum swing away from the classic mustache-twirlers. It's just as wrong.
The media played this up with the Columbine tragedy. Pick on a goth kid enough, and he might snap. It could be your kid. Well, we know better now, but this hasn't been popularized:
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002115.html
It just doesn't have the same impact. Eric Harris just didn't have a trace of empathy? Is that all? How is the public supposed to identify with that?
When things are too easy for the main character. Two examples of this in classic children's literature are "Dobry," by Monica Shannon, which won the Newbery medal, and yes, the author did get some details wrong as to how certain things work, and "Swiss Family Robinson," which I only just got to recently. Excellent book except the main characters have it WAY too easy--it seems they are stranded on a deserted island with the resources of every continent on earth, everything they find is useful, and they're well-read enough to know HOW to use it. I can at least admire them for being prepared (ever see the movie "Mountain Family Robinson," about idiots who know nothing of wilderness life just going out and hoping for the best?) but honestly, "that was just a little bit too easy."
- I hate it when people write a whole paragraph where ever starting word of each sentance is the same... Usually the word "The." I know there is are some that believe the word "the" is one of those invisible words, but believe me, I've read enough bad fiction, some of which every sentance in the story begins with the word "the," and after a while you begin to notice. You can't tell me there isn't some other perfectly conventional way of tossing up the word order of a paragraph so that every beginning word isn't the same.
- I hate first person narative. I know its a legitimate thing to use, but unless it's somebodies actual biography, it just annoys the crap out of me. Probably because I'm not a fan of biographies.
- Clive Cussler. I loved Sahara the movie, I never read that book, I read the one on Atlantis. And he is the perfect example of the author who writes his heroes just TOO PERFECT. That novel also brings up:
- The use of Nazi's as your main villian in a present day era novel, and catagorize that as not being science fiction. Where do you get off?
- On that note, I hate the mainstream belief that just because a book is characterized as Science Fiction means its not worth reading. I swear, people just don't get what Science Fiction really is. Desperate Housewives is science fiction so long as it continues to be narrated by a dead person.
- I hate long chapters. I like to end my reading times at the end of a chapter, and if someone puts in a great cliffhanger I cannot help but continue to keep reading. Three days later, as my wife is giving me the evil eye...
- I hate cookie cutter characters. Neil Gaimon's American Gods was full of these. Gaimon failed miserably to convince me his character Shadow could convey any legitimate emotion, and the whole plot seemed to revolve on such a huge suspension of disbelief, I think the only character anyone could connect with in that novel was the Native American lesbian.
- I hate main characters that have wierd, arbitrary names, like "Shadow," or "Dirk Pitt."
- I hate characters with wierd alien names that are difficult to pronounce. I know on some elitist "Proper Science Fiction" level and you're writing about aliens, they ought to have alien names. But be logical about it. If they've got a mouth and a tongue, chances are they might have some version of vowels. So you're character Kjltxsx, while that sounds exotic, the rest of us normal people trying to read your book are going to be constantly stopped at that and going "How the **** do you pronounce that??
- I hate it when authors write a great book and then sabotage it with an ending that undermines the importance of what was just said in the climax. And this one will get me in trouble because it's directed at Orson Scott Card over Ender's Game. If the Buggers could telepathically reach Ender through the Ansible and recreate the Giants Drink... Isn't it logical to assume that they had the capability to read EVERYONE's thoughts at the Battle School, and thus determined what was about to happen to them, and done something to stop it? Now granted I haven't read anything else in the Ender or Bean series, but that really ruined for me what was otherwise a great book.
I'm sure I could think of these all night, but I'd rather be happy with the 102 words I managed to pull for the day (I know, pathetic... my attention has not been where it should have been... One of these days I'll figure out that all I gotta do is take out the wireless card, and TADA! Productivity!) and be off to bed.
- I do dislike excessive swearing, but I have to admit, Joe Lansdale makes it work.
Firtsly, the excessive use of capital letters. One sentance must have had ten or twelve capital lettered words which made it difficult to get my eyes around.
The second is the use of the character's complete name every time he/she says something. "How are you?" John Smith said. "I'm fine, thank you," Mary Brown replied. It's driving me nuts!
See? Ugh. I have the comma curse.
I thought it was a good line until he used it again about 2/3 the way through. I can't remember anything else about that book.