What Bugs Me As A Reader
I finished a novel last night and I hated it!
It began well, great characters with potential. Then, halfway through, the main character is shot dead. The family moves away and the husband heads off somewhere foreign to start a new life, leaving his two little kids with an aunt who never featured before.
The story continues, some twenty years later when the children are grown up. It has none of the previous characters or settings and no continuity whatsoever. In fact, it’s like two completely different story lines joined together by a dead parent who is never discussed, and one who has obviously never heard of emails and Skype.
It has to be the second worst book I have EVER read!
I’m not going to gain any fans by saying this, but it smacked of being self-published and needing a good edit. It broke all the rules and left me totally dissatisfied as a reader. But convinced she had a good book in her she self-published. And now my friend is going to expect an honest critic from me….
Years of reviewing books has sharpened my senses to what I like and don’t.
Let me be clear, I’m not anti self publishing by any means. Goodness knows an awful lot publishers put an awful lot of rubbish on their lists, but I think there should be a few basic rules, no matter who you are, or aspire to be.
The first question to ask is – is it a story at all?
The second – can I tell it?
And most importantly – do I know what I’m writing about, or can I source the relevant material?
Stick to what you know, or can find out accurately. It’s better to keep it brief than to show your ignorance about something, no matter how much you want you main character to be a space explorer or a hospital matron.
I know nothing whatsoever about deep sea diving other than that people shoe-horn their bodies into rubber, or is it latex, or some other composite, wet suits? They strap packs on their back – of oxygen or is that some other gas? They fix connections to their face-masks or helmets? They put on flippers and hurtle themselves off boats, often backwards. Or do they simple roll over gently into the water?
It’s much easier to say something like – ‘Adie watched the rituals as the divers prepared for their descent to the waters below.’
I don’t like when facts are so wrong that you know the reader hadn’t a clue, or didn’t bother to try and verify them, or both.
I read a story recently that was supposedly set in the 1800s where the woman decorated her Christmas tree, the main one, (yes she had two – the one was in the sitting room!!!) with tartan bows, representing the different branches of her new Scottish family. In the 1800s! Was there a Hallmark shop in the village? She didn’t tell us that.
This writer referred to the hoi-polloi several times – meaning members of the upper classes when in fact it means the masses.
Another irritant as I read is where characters names in a story begin with the same letter, Janet and Jean, Jennnifer, or Derek, Desmond and Damien, or where they all end in the same sounds, Maisie, Candy, Sandy, Gracie.
Try to avoid making the mundane important.
‘I’ll put the kettle on’ is enough to suggest that cups of tea or coffee are sure to follow. We don’t need to see Aunty Thelma setting the tray with an embroidered cloth, her best china cups and saucers, the tiered cake stand and the bone-handled cake knife that belonged to her grandmother – unless the cake knife is going to turn out to be a murder weapon later on.
One edit I did recently had the two main characters making/drinking tea 25 times and opening/pouring wine 42! It also had a character on a luxury 50ft yacht with a butler, a cook and three other crew members. She was trailing her hand in the water as she reclined on deck watching dolphins frolic. She must have had some very long arms.
I don’t need to know that ‘Joe’s alarm clock rang at precisely 6.45. He reached over and turned it off, got up, stretched, went into the ensuite, showered, shaved and splashed on some cologne before getting dressed. He got his gym bag and locked the door behind him. He’d have a croissant and coffee at his desk later.’
‘Joe’s alarm rang. Fifteen minutes later he grabbed his sports bag and headed to the gym. He’d have breakfast at his desk later on.’ By pruning this, not only does it read with a better flow, it also gives Joe more character – and suggests a man who is busy, motivated and organised, as opposed to one who is not.
These are all only little things I know, but once you notice them they begin to annoy you, and they may make the difference between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with a picky editor!!
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Muriel Bolger is a Dublin-based best-selling writer and award-winning travel journalist. Her latest novel, Out of Focus, has just been published. It’s an emotive Irish adoption story that effects four generations of the same family.
Her other fiction titles include, Intentions, The Captain’s Table and The Pink Pepper Tree. Her non-fiction work, Dublin, City of Literature won the 2012 Travel Extra Best Guide Book Award.
She was a runner up in the Stringybark Short Story Competition 2014 (Australia) and her entry appears in No Tea Tomorrow.
Muriel is currently working on her next novel.
Follow her on twitter @MurielBolger
Visit her on Facebook www.facebook.com/pages/Muriel-Bolger
Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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What a good article, I enjoyed reading it and agree with so much of what you say.
If only more self publishers would invest in a good editor, if only to save themselves the heartache of reading bad reviews.
The name thing! I could hardly believe it, at last someone shares my opinion regarding names beginning with the same letter being confusing, it’s not just me then.
I’m a bit surprised though that some of the commenters seemed to miss the point
Wow, you really were angry after reading that novel.
I have had all the same reactions at one point or another, and I do think that self publishing is the biggest part of the issue. In my imagination I divide Amazon.com it into three universes: Not Books, Books, and The Wild West — the last one being the Self Pubbed part of Kindle Universe. I rarely venture in there. You can’t trust the reader reviews, and I’ve come to the conclusion that if something really wonderful in hiding in the depths, it will rise to the top in the end, and that’s soon enough for me to read it.
Four or five times a year I find myself having to tell somebody that their work is not publishable. I have kind of a set response that I hope helps them understand, but I also know that a few of them will go stake a claim in that Wild West, no matter who tells them what’s wrong with the work.
Here’s what I say: Picasso could draw. He could draw detailed, life-like portraits. He understood (in his case, without having to work much at it) and mastered basic principles: perspective and line, negative space and all the other technicalities that go into representational art. On that foundation he went off on his own and created some incredible work that some might say violates every basic rule. Because he knew the rules, he could twist them and come up with something fantastic. So if you want to write a novel, you have to start with the sentence and the character and the million little technical issues that make the story come alive. You have to master point of view, the story arc, the nature of conflict as well as things like research that will keep you from stumbling, in particular to avoid anachronisms. (My personal most outraged moment was the novel set in Norman England where the knight told the lady in distress not to worry, he could handle the crisis: it’s a piece of cake.)
I try to make the point that the best idea for a story still needs the wings to lift it off the page, and few are born with wings. Most of us have to work very hard to build our own.
I wouldn’t blame it entirely on being self-pubbed. I felt exactly the same way about Stephen King’s 11-22-63. After reading on and on and on about a man who goes back in time and becomes an English teacher and drama coach, I realized this was NOT the book I expected. A story about preventing JFK’s assassination shouldn’t start that far into the book. The teacher/coach thing was like a second book. One that didn’t interest me in the least. I was very disappointed and never did finish it.
Yes yes yes, to all of these! My main complaints are characters with names beginning with the same letter, boring domestic and dialogue detail, head-hopping, lack of research. They all come second, though, to my main one which is lack of feasibility – like you mentioned at the beginning, a family member who moves to a different country and ceases all contact, for no particular reason. I read a novel recently (traditionally published, too), in which a professional, outgoing, highly paid woman working in London married a man who refused to reveal anything about his past. She didn’t even Google him or look him up on Facebook, so never found out the secrets upon which the plot hinged. Despite working within journalism, she had no friends who said “Don’t you think it’s a bit weird that he won’t tell you anything about his past?”
I’m a self-published author, and I also review a lot of books – I come across these features often, particularly with debut novels. Then there is the historical fiction where the writer just guesses what life in that period was actually like. Oh, I could go on…
I think at this point the publishing method is irrelevant — I’ve cringed through enough errors in trad-published books to say that. I knit, and am always amazed at how often this commonly-practised, easy-to-research craft is glaringly mis-portrayed.
Having said that, the general point about skipping the inaccurate and the irrelevant is an excellent one!
Thank you for your comments
Yep..basic writing errors can creep into the best told tales..I have seen both self and BIG pub books with things that made me wince. And the other day, listening to a radio play set in the very early 17th century, a character referred to all the books she’d read .. first novel wasn’t published until 1712. I think it boils down to not spending enough time revising and re-reading ones manuscript. As a self-published writer, it is all too tempting to rush to print. As a trad published writer it is equally tempting to rely on an editor to have spotted errors. Writing a book, as well ALL know it bloody hard slog! I do constant re reads (aloud) and print out the entire book twice, to make sure it ‘flows’ as correcting from a screen just doesn’t work.By the time the book comes out,it has been gone through line by line 6 times. And I’m still sure a picky reader could find mistakes.
Muriel, you have written in crystal clear language about some of the challenges in reviewing any book: poor story, sloppy writing, desperate need for editing (and proofreading). This colleague may have made a pretty good start, but if she asks you, I believe you need to tell the truth – possibilities, needs, a couple of good points. To have spent all the time and energy writing a manuscript, I surely want to publish only my best. I do not see this as an indictment at all of self-publishing. @LatelaMary
Wow, a lot of anti self publishing rhetoric today. You know, some of us don’t want to wait years with rejection after rejection before publishing. My book was professionally edited, and she did a fine job. I didn’t like a recent best-selling novel, because I thought it tedious, boring, and predictable, but hey, it was traditionally published, so I guess that makes it OK.
I liked reading this, especially the opening line. You made some good points.