If
you’re an author, you read. And if you
read as an author, you’re bound to be more critical than Jane Doe who’s just
picked up a book for enjoyment. Or maybe
not…. I’m not sure because I’ve taught
English Language at university level, been an editor, and
worked for Simon and Schuster so being critical is really ingrained in me. You can probably therefore guess that my pet
peeves include bad grammar and lousy punctuation. Over the years, I’ve loosened up on the
amount of commas necessary in a sentence for clarity, but I remain fairly
strict. I’ve been told that in fiction
we should use emdashes instead of semi-colons, but that doesn’t sit well with
me: an emdash is for an interrupted thought;
a semi-colon is for a secondary idea of the same thought expressed in the
sentence. Yup, it gets complicated.
But
now, I’ve got new pet peeves. I hate,
hate, hate anachronisms in historical books.
For me, it’s sloppy research and there’s no excuse for it. When writing an historical book I work with
the on-line etymological dictionary. Of
course, you have to think, ‘does this word need to be looked up?’ and mistakes
happen. But did someone really think a
woman would refer to a man’s abs in the 1880s?
Or discuss accessorizing a
dress? And then there’s referring to a song in the 1860s when the song wasn’t
written until the 1920s. But then maybe I shouldn’t be so annoyed about that;
I’ve been watching the series, ‘Underground’ about the underground railway
prior to the Civil War, and they keep playing ‘Summertime’ penned by Gershwin
in 1935.
Someone
once criticized a book of mine because I had a character briefly speak. like. this.
We do it to emphasize what the character is saying and how he/she says it. Personally, I don’t see a problem but this
obviously annoyed my reader. My publisher has a stipulation that the hero and
heroine should generally meet within the first four pages. An author friend told me she disliked books
where the h/h weren’t described early on, and another author wrote she hated reading about "a single tear" making its way. She demanded, 'who has a single tear?' And then we ask ourselves what’s the inner conflict? What’s the goal/motivation/conflict of the
story? Is there character development?
Does the story move along and make sense—is it properly constructed? Goodness, there’s a minefield out there of
things to dislike. And that’s before we even get to the love/sex scenes and how
they’re described and their length (OF THE SCENE!)
But
as I’ve learned from being in three anthologies now, some things will eat at
one reader and not in the least bother the next, while the book will hit the
wall in the room of yet another reader.
So
what are your pet peeves? What do you
absolutely hate to find in a story when reading, whether it is in the basics of
good English or the construction of the story itself. And please let me know if any of them are in Bad
Boy, Big Heart.
I
aim to please.
 |
| Available at https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Big-Heart-Book-ebook/dp/B072MKG48B/ |
11 comments:
You make so many good points, Andi. Especially the abs in the 1880s reference. Love your title. Best of luck with it.
I don't read historical romance but I imagine those same things would drive me crazy. Cliches bug the heck out of me. Or in romance, certain phrases have become cliché. Romance can be ripe with them and I know I'm guilty on my first draft. I try to go back and find a new way to say the same thing on my first edit. How many ways are there to describe the emotion of a kiss, for instance.
My pet peeve? Said tags that aren't necessary and for sure ones used after a question mark. "What do you mean?" she asked. A question mark only had one function. One. So why insult the reader's intelligence by slapping on an "asked tag"? By adding an action tag, you can give the reader a visual and maybe an insight into the speakers personality. "What do you mean?" Eva touched the diamond stud in her ear.
I'm the worst sort of critic when reading...to the point of picking apart everything. It makes reading far less enjoyable. I'm currently working on copy edits where the copy editor added a MILLION commas. I swear to God. It's making me a little crazy. I've entirely cut dialogue tags from my writing. My editor added some back in and told me the small, repetitive action tags were over the top. Apparently, it's a fine line we have to walk in every aspect of writing. And I have a feeling what one publisher wants is very different from the next.
Margo, I'm glad I'm not the only annoyed by the 'abs' reference!
Brenda, you're so right about the cliches in Romance. Sometimes I think if I read about the 'musky smell' of a man one more time... I don't even know what that describes, quite honestly.
Ah, Vonnie--you've hit another one of my faves. I recently beta-read something full of 'said's, had to highlight how many there were to bring it to attention. Bad habit.
Jannine, you and me both--terrible critic. I try to shut off but it's nigh on impossible. And we must've had the same editor who put in those commas. My ms. looked like it had a bad case of measles.
I've become so critical it's hard to read for pleasure any more. If there are multiple spelling and/or grammar errors, I can't continue. If the characters and story don't engage me, I do something I never would have done before I started writing--abandon the book half-finished, even if it's by a "big name" author. My biggest pet peeve with romance these days is the forced and extraneous sex scenes. I don't know if editors are requiring them or authors are putting them in because sex sells, but I find them unrealistic, boring, and distracting. In the middle of true crisis, people do think about other things.
Alison, you made me laugh. I agree--and someone else commented on my FB page she doesn't like sex scenes that go on for more than a page and a half, she doesn't need every little detail. But we're all different I guess in what we're looking for in the book and I believe some readers like prolonged sex scenes. As for yr comment about nowadays not finishing a book if you don't like it, I'm beginning to learn to let go but so far there are only 2 books I can think of that I didn't finish, both from 'literary lions' . I shall try to follow your lead.
Congrats on your new book, Andi! I'm with you about anachronisms, but because I write modern romantic suspense, I am less troubled by historical references (Except for LIE CATCHERS, when I had to reproduce a crime solved in 1932...in Alaska...when it was a territory! What a foolish thing to undertake!.) My pet peeve: cliche's and oft-used phrasings/descriptions. I'm working toward 'fresh!" My goal...if the description was easy for me to to come up with, it was probably an overdone phrase. (We are SO hard on ourselves.) I'm also with you on semi-colons. I love them; I will never let them go.
Rolynn, sooooo pleased to find a fellow grammar-lover of semis. thank you!
Great post, Andi! I'm a terrible critic as well, and I join you in anachronism annoyance. It throws me right out of the story and makes me think the author just doesn't care. One of the reasons I read historicals is because I enjoy immersing myself in a different time and culture; I don't want to be blasted with the familiar while I'm trying to escape!
One of my biggest pet peeves is head hopping, and it really irks me when one of the big names does it. It's jarring and unnecessary.
Sorry I'm late. I've heard that fans of historical fiction are the worst critics. They know their stuff and, by golly, you'd better get the facts right. One of the hardest things to do is slough off a bad review. We forget all the good ones. Shame on us. Accentuate the positive.
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