What NOT to do 2

I've collected a few more of these, so here for your reading pleasure is What NOT to do part deux, alternatively known as Please Authors, I beg you, don't ruin a good book by doing these things. Maybe before reading this post you should go back and read What NOT to do 1 if you haven't already.

As before, I'm leaving out general problems like poor characters or plot. Here are some specific things I've been picking up on recently. Again, I'm not trying to criticise specific books so anything in quotation marks is paraphrased by me.

Show that a Lord in a historical fiction book is a nice guy really by having him always address his servants like ‘if it isn’t too much trouble, would you be so kind as to fetch Miss Moore some tea and refreshments?’ – I don't care how nice a guy he is, it wouldn't occur to him to be so polite to his servants all the time. Plus it gets annoying very quickly. Show how nice a guy he is by making him rescue kittens or something instead.

Heroines who are absolutely gorgeous, but charmingly unaware of it. – Generally seen through the eyes of several males just so the reader realises she’s beautiful (because charmingly modest heroine has told the reader that she’s not beautiful and we can’t have the reader believing that their heroine is plain!) before moving back to her point of view. On the same note, heroines who have a childhood friend desperately in love with her, several men along the way in love with her, just about anyone who meets her, in love with her.

Quests whose success balances upon knife edges/hangs on single threads – Questers are frequently reminded of this by random wise people along the way even when they’re not in immediate danger of any kind.

Questers seek wise/knowledgeable person to shed light on their quest. Wise person falls over himself being friendly and generally wise yet doesn’t say anything useful, despite knowing stuff. Finally, he wishes questers luck on their quest, telling them that he can say little (and why is that exactly? ) but this ... proceeds to speak cryptically and in verse even though he managed normal conversation moments ago. At the end of the poem, wise/knowledgeable person can say no more (other than you have very little time, usually) and reminds questers of Knife Edge/Single Thread mentioned above – Questers and reader alike can then spend most of the book trying to figure out the cryptic poem, which adds a fun element. Hey, it’s interactive! Then they can feel stupid at the end when all is revealed. How obvious! Everyone say ‘of cooouurse!’

Have a character called Cat – I’m not being critical if you ALREADY have a character called Cat, that’s fine. I have nothing against the name, or your books. But authors take note! There are now enough Cats in YA literature to last us a while. And Kat is not a whole different name. Same applies. I know two Cats in real life. I have read about more than fifteen. Why is this?

Have a boy who turns out to be a girl in disguise at the same time as the Princess disappears – WE KNOW IT’S HER!!! Just because author has ever so casually mentioned how Princess has one colour hair and girl in disguise has a different colour hair doesn’t fool your discerning readers. Some of us have heard of wigs before.

Some cryptic verse making up a treasure hunt to treasure which an eccentric, but extremely wise old person hid centuries ago (it is generally unexplained why such crazy-but-genius old people are always in possession of priceless treasures) - said eccentric knows, of course, that the treasure must be hidden well, so only one who is worthy/really needs the treasure/is noble of heart can find it. They don’t consider how if it’s important, maybe they shouldn’t bury it/ hide it in that secret compartment in the loft/ build a house on top of it. If it’s so important, maybe someone will need it in a hurry and not have time for a treasure hunt. Invariably, it’s a close-run thing, but treasure is found in the nick of time to avert disaster.

Explain every action of a character to show how good they really are. If someone was shooting at us/chasing us/trying to kill us in some horrible way, most of us would have no qualms in retaliating. You don’t have to explain why it’s alright for character to fight back – ‘I know violence is wrong and all, but I firmly believe that in self-defence it is occasionally the only action and I’m no pushover despite being peaceful and full of goodness. So I pulled my arm back and punched him’ is unnecessary.

Decide to branch out into young adult books and create a series (*cough franchise cough*). The necessity of an actual plot is reduced and the writing doesn’t have to be as good because after all the readers are younger. We won’t even give them a satisfactory conclusion at the end because then we will have the impressionable youngsters hooked for life – I hate to break it to you, but the choice in YA lit is more diverse than ever before. There are some excellent books out there and teens are harsh critics. Just because a few teen series have been huge recently does not mean that you will win at this. You probably won’t.

Make your book seem ‘classic’ and your newly created world rich in history by sharing it all in a dry and unexciting manner – Yes, that reminds us of a history book. Yes, we believe in your world as a real place. No, we are not still reading because the dry and unexciting voice sent us to sleep.

That's it for today. What about you? Any pitfalls you find authors falling in to far too often? Any irritating little problems that stop a good book from being a great book?

What NOT to do

Most books aren’t perfect. Everyone understands this, usually we will notice a mistake and then ignore it. I’ve read a lot of books recently that have really annoying problems that pull my attention away from the story. What’s even worse is that most of these are good books! Yep there are worse faults in books – poor editing and an unbelievable plot spring to mind. But when a book is so nearly there it's almost worse. These things are so basic, so easy to avoid! I've written a list of the most recent that I've read, leaving out more general problems, like having characters who don’t act their age. I don’t want to mention any names or point fingers, but I do want to share these with the world.

Things that authors shouldn’t do but seem to far too often:

Have an ‘expert’ spy make loads of mistakes. Like every now and then pausing and instinctively feeling that someone is following her, but not being able to see someone and shrugging. No matter, I have more important matters to deal with. – I get that this is to show the audience something the character doesn’t know – uh-oh, someone must be following her! But a master spy just wouldn’t repeatedly ignore their instincts. Especially when they have just been set up for murder by another expert spy and are running for their life. Such a spy would think, maybe it’s the person who set me up! They are following me. It is because they are an expert spy who can manage to set me, another expert spy, up, that I can’t see them, not because there is no-one and I’m just feeling a little jumpy.

Having a ‘positive’ ending being that ah well, the guy she loved has died, but they’ve defeated the bad guy and for the last page we suddenly move to the point of view of a completely different man whose point of view we’ve never seen before. He is thinking ‘I’m glad we’ve survived because I’ve been in love with her since first I saw her.’ – There was NO CLUE to this through the entire book. And this is supposed to make me feel better. Yay, the main character has a chance at love after all! That guy was interested in her the whole time!

Having aforesaid guy feeling happy in the last page of the book that he has a chance with her. – Erm, he has a chance because HIS FRIEND WHO SHE WAS IN LOVE WITH HAS JUST BEEN MURDERED!!! This is maybe one or two days after the death. And it’s supposed to make the reader feel that the ending was positive. Also, Aforesaid guy, you should concentrate on more immediate problems, like getting down off that roof.

Having main character children realising that adults have a secret that somehow involves them. They then get into (life threatening) trouble trying to discover the secret. The finale is that the adults come and rescue them – The children have essentially accomplished nothing. Granted, the adults admit the truth in the end, but I’d like the kids to play an actual role.

Main characters arriving in a new and (inevitably) very dangerous world where everyone they meet is suspicious and not to be trusted. By coincidence, the first person they meet is a nice person who helps them and warns them about not trusting anyone else – Usually this person goes far out of their way to help these random strangers, like going on a whole quest with them. Quite often by more sheer coincidence, the person’s past is somehow linked with the quest that the main characters now face. They may not remember this past but then a chance clue will show them that everything is somehow linked.

A sweet lovely family of kids with the oldest looking out for the youngest since the mother died – The dying mother usually extracts a promise from her eldest child to take care of the baby. Often if you work the ages backwards, this oldest child was about eight at the time. There is a perfectly acceptable father, yet the mother feels compelled not to ask him to take care of the kids, but to make an eight-year-old promise to do it.

Character’s who are ‘klutzy’ and therefore knock over everything in their path (and sometimes out of it too) and can’t control anything that comes out of their mouth – this is more of a personal pet peeve. There’s just too many of these characters in teen fiction.

Characters who are geniuses and therefore are inevitably socially incompetent. They will get nervous whenever they experience human interaction, quite often actually forgetting how to speak, putting words in the wrong order or something – I understand not being able to think of anything to say. But forgetting how to speak entirely? Every time anyone speaks to you? This isn't someone just not knowing what to say, this is people going 'there I'll over put it. I mean I'll put it over there.' These characters almost always get the cute, popular guy/girl, who finds their lack-of-speech-ability amusing and endearing rather than strange.

Historical fiction books where the character will ask a question that they would know the answer to just so the author can explain it to the audience – example being a person in Henry VIII’s reign asking what attainting is. Anyone in that time would know because it happened on a regular basis, there’s no way a teenager of the time would have no clue. It’s simply done for the audience today, who can’t be expected to know what attainting is because it doesn’t happen now. But for anyone who already has good knowledge of whatever time period the story is set in, this stands out badly.

Having books start with letters along the lines of; ‘dearest mother, I can’t believe I haven’t seen you for three months, ever since you went to London with my elder sister Primrose in the hopes of finding her a husband. We have visitors. As you know, our modest country house has enough room to hold ten visitors quite comfortably so the group of thirty staying with us presently is causing problems. My childhood friend James and I have been visiting my Uncle...’ – Information overkill! Can’t the author find a better way of setting the scene? Straight away I know it’s out of character before I even know the character. (I completely made that particular opening up as I’m sure you can tell. I’ve read too many books that start similarly though).

I'm sure there are lots more, but I can't think of any right now and I don't want to carry on finding fault. Without exception, all of these were taken from books that I've enjoyed, (even with the more general problems, I've liked books that are guilty of them) some directly from books that I've loved. Please authors, you've written a wonderful book, don't let me get distracted by little things like those! I want to carry on loving your work, not feeling critical.

Rant over =)

Any specific problems you've run into recently? (please don't turn this into a shooting match though. I don't want to know the name of every book you hate, just any problems that have stopped a good book being a great book for you)