Saturday, July 8, 2017

PET PEEVES


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:

Margo Hoornstra said...

You make so many good points, Andi. Especially the abs in the 1880s reference. Love your title. Best of luck with it.

Brenda Whiteside said...

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.

Vonnie Davis ~ Romance Author said...

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.

Jannine Gallant said...

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.

Andrea Downing said...

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.

Alison Henderson said...

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.

Andrea Downing said...

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.

Rolynn Anderson said...

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.

Andrea Downing said...

Rolynn, sooooo pleased to find a fellow grammar-lover of semis. thank you!

Leah St. James said...

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.

Diane Burton said...

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.