{"id":10269,"date":"2023-02-13T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10269"},"modified":"2023-02-14T07:44:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T12:44:39","slug":"how-to-annoy-your-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10269","title":{"rendered":"How To Annoy Your Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What pet peeves set readers\u2019 teeth on edge? Washington Post<\/em> writer Ron Charles wrote about them in this recent article<\/a>. He asked members of the Post\u2019s Book Club newsletter to let their opinions fly, and, he says, \u201cThe responses were a tsunami of bile\u201d from hundreds and hundreds of readers. In case you\u2019re working on a book now or even thinking about it, you\u2019ve been warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers don\u2019t like dreams. And why not? Is it because as you\u2019re starting to get a mental grip on what\u2019s going on in the story, you suddenly hit that \u201cand then I woke up\u201d line that means you have to mentally erase what you just read? Or, is it as one respondent said, \u201cThey are always SO LITERAL.\u201d One example where this type of thing was handled very well was in Paul Cleave\u2019s latest book, The Pain Tourist<\/em> (my review here<\/a>). There was never any confusion about whether you were in the comatose boy\u2019s dream-mind, and he put together reality (what was going on around him in real life) and his mind\u2019s protective mechanisms (the illusion that masked the horrible events that led to his coma) was quite astonishing and revelatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you\u2019d expect, readers take offense at historical anachronisms and factual inaccuracies. In essence, \u201csay, dear reader, blah-blah-blah.\u201d Too jarring. At the same time, unless an author is writing for twelve-year-olds, they shouldn\u2019t avoid the occasional word that might send some readers to the dictionary. Not to be pretentious, but because it\u2019s exactly the right word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers want authors to write with authenticity. One respondent warned that \u201ctaking a cruise to Alaska is not enough to write a novel about the Last Frontier.\u201d You can take the cruise and write the book, of course, if you bolster that with a lot of additional research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typos and grammar errors. Oh, boy. I confess I look up \u201clie\u201d and \u201clay\u201d nearly every time I use them (this was one of the errors singled out, along with popular misused homonyms). I\u2019ve read it wrong so many times I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s correct any more. It\u2019s worth the twenty seconds to check, so I don\u2019t lie (ha-ha) awake at night, wondering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, I read a UK thriller where the author repeatedly used the wrong pronoun case. \u201cHe gave it to him and I,\u201d \u201cthe book was for her and I,\u201d etc. I was fuming. That\u2019s something he should have learned in junior high. If you turn the sentence around, you see how bad it is: \u201che gave it to I and him.\u201d And, while this particular error might be forgiven in dialog, because people do make mistakes while speaking, it kept appearing in the narration. This particular book was also, alas, morally bankrupt, so there was a lot not to like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers complained about books that are simply too long. Especially books by best-selling authors Do they think \u201cevery word they write is golden and shouldn\u2019t be cut?\u201d one respondent wondered. And it isn\u2019t just the book that\u2019s too long, so are the prologues, chapters, descriptions, and everything else in them and especially<\/em> those italicized passages. It seems italicized paragraphs hit a nerve with readers. Don\u2019t do it, they say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat Readers Don\u2019t Like” \u2013 Part 2 WEDNESDAY<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What pet peeves set readers\u2019 teeth on edge? Washington Post writer Ron Charles wrote about them in this recent article. He asked members of the Post\u2019s Book Club newsletter to let their opinions fly, and, he says, \u201cThe responses were … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Readers reveal the author quirks that annoy them most. (The same things that annoy us as writers too!)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2FD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10272,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10269\/revisions\/10272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}