Totally with you. Been driven nuts lately by the sheer ineptitude of many much-praised novels. It got so bad a couple of months ago that I had to spend a couple of weeks reading books from the 80s and 90s—maybe even one from the 60s?—to cleanse my palate, and to check that it really wasn’t me, it was the new books that were just failing on matters of basic craft. Ugh.
Authors who assume negative space is a matter of text formatting. Phrases taking up their own lines. Fragments. Like this. Important. Heady. Like poems, fragments.
Thanks for this great post. I am one of those who has to constantly battle against the tendency to pull my main character back from the brink of asking that important question. Worse, these places in the manuscript seem invisible to me, even during revisions. When I let the information come out on its own schedule, it works so much better, and there always seems to be some new conflict that arises from the resolution of the one I was afraid to confront.
I found 3 of those issues in Chapter 1 of The Hunter by Tana French, an acclaimed literary crime writer. I didn’t get beyond Chapter 2 for that reason. But if your sentences are short enough and you’ve established your name, maybe you can get away with it.
Another amazing post, Devon. I have additional pet peeves, but these are really good ones, and I've noticed them too. As someone pursuing traditional publishing, it's frustrating to see these things in books on the shelves, but all I can do is try to avoid these mistakes to increase my chances of finding an agent. And if I ever get published, I really do hope that an editor will save me from myself if they see these errors!
For me it’s the strong start followed by a rapid nose dive in plot, language, pace, characterization, everything. Sometimes the cliff is near the end and sometimes it is chapter two. Presumably the team working on the book runs out of time or motivation beyond a certain point, and anyway figures consumers are buying based on the first pages so beyond that doesn’t matter much. Cynically, I think there is a good chance no one on the team, besides the author, actually reads the whole thing. Because some of the cliff dives I have seen…oof. It’s wild.
It's even more fun when the cliff dive is obviously marked by an upswing in the number of typos. It's like a neon sign announcing: EVERYONE STOPPED READING HERE.
It amazes me that even Big Five published books will have these problems, though I probably shouldn't be surprised. The "not asking the question" point, reminds me of the cheesy misunderstanding trope. A certain 18th century literary classic, took almost 900 pages to resolve a simple misunderstanding between a couple, sigh. I had so much more patience as a reader back then, that I still enjoyed the book. XD
A huge pet peeve of mine, is when I see several dialogue speeches in a row, with no tags or other obvious clues of the speaker. So I get confused and have to go back and COUNT the dialogues to see who's saying what. This happens so often even in bestselling novels. I'd rather they tag excessively but still clearly tell me who the speaker is, lol. (If it's not obvious from the quote or context itself.)
Another thing I find annoying, is when an author introduces many characters at once on the first page. A certain famous literary classic, which was made into movies, does this. It's too much for a reader to keep track of all these new names on the first page. Even more so if they have a group conversation, and I quickly lose track of who's saying what, sigh.
Great post. I used to feel guilty for not reading more contemporary fiction in upmarket or genre (I also do not usually like historical, thriller or romance) but I became tired of feeling I had just spent hours I’d never get back on, at best, overhyped and thus incredibly disappointing fluff or at worst, crap. Giant plot holes, one-dimensional characters with WAY too many female protagonists only having a few vaguely adorable (in theory) minor flaws (I automatically despise any character described as plucky or sensitive), a lumbering reliance on deus ex machina and only two choices in sentences, either Just Rambling Here or I Should Win Every Literary Prize.
I also get disproportionately pissed off at popular books that champion eliminating one kind of stereotype or cliché only to employ another one and use a subject/field as a plot device but can’t be bothered to make sure what they’ve written about it isn’t wildly inaccurate. I have a small rant I keep on repeat: Not every book has to be short-listed for the Booker but a tree shouldn’t have died for nothing.
Thank you for pointing out the need for space, for breathing room. I tell writers (if I’m doing some editing or structural work, NF only) that the reader really wants to take this hike with you, they’re happy they are keeping up, but occasionally they would like to sit on a bench and admire the view for a minute or two, let important things churn and process in their minds, before resuming the journey with a refreshed, “I’ve got this” confidence.
Would love to see you go through a paragraph and highlight sentences as "Just Rambling Here" vs "I Should Win Every Literary Prize." Probably the average paragraph goes something like: ramble ramble ramble ramble PRIZE-WINNING MIC DROP
Or it would go ‘ramble, ramble, ramble’ and then a sentence that divides opinion whether it is prize-winning and surreal or is just more rambling but rambling now generated by AI that’s had way too much data to drink today. I’m looking at you, Commonwealth Short Story Prize! We live in interesting times.
Thank you for such solid advice. If publishing is so competitive, you’d think it would improve quality! (Btw, do you have any advice on how to start taming a bloated and very unruly first draft? (I know - word by word..))
The hard part in publishing is getting read. You need leverage or social status to convince people it’s worth time to read your manuscript—actually read it, not skim it looking for a reason to reject.
Truly bad text can turn a yes into a no, but about 80 percent of the time, the decision is made before a single read is read. If you have a platform or social status, they want you to win; if you’re someone they’ve never heard of, they want a reason not to have heard of you.
Publishing is sort of like college admissions in that way… It’s super competitive to get in, and then once you’re in, anything goes!
Re: bloated first drafts (wow do I have a lot of experience writing those), I think one good move is to send it to a friend and say: I don’t want any feedback on how to fix things, I just want you to tell me which parts you found interesting and which parts felt flat or dead to you. Usually when I do this, the parts other people find interesting have almost zero overlap with the parts I was most excited about. (You mean you *didn’t* like my 40-page stream-of-consciousness section?) But I try to trust the reader, and I pare the novel down to just those sections that are interesting, and then I look at what I have and see how I can stitch it together into a new draft.
Thanks for the suggestion to send it to someone else to read. I’ll bite the bullet and do that (once I’ve tidied it up a little bit!) Good luck with your novel ☺️
Totally with you. Been driven nuts lately by the sheer ineptitude of many much-praised novels. It got so bad a couple of months ago that I had to spend a couple of weeks reading books from the 80s and 90s—maybe even one from the 60s?—to cleanse my palate, and to check that it really wasn’t me, it was the new books that were just failing on matters of basic craft. Ugh.
Wowzer! The prose isn't just bad, it's Bulwer-Lytton bad. Thanks for the lesson.
Tell me you are writing about Yesteryear without tellling me you are writing about Yesteryear😎
Characters all talking the same and all thinking the same is, in my experience, the biggest stylistic issue with new fiction.
But I liked that purple prose sunset description, so what do I know
Excellent post Devon! (as always)
The author breaking the meaningless dialogue scene with lots of backstory made me crack up 😂
But also, I find dialogue so hard, so yeah, I’m sure I’ve been guilty of doing the same.
I’d love to see a post from you about great dialogue, if possible.
Thanks for all you do!!
Authors who assume negative space is a matter of text formatting. Phrases taking up their own lines. Fragments. Like this. Important. Heady. Like poems, fragments.
Thanks for this great post. I am one of those who has to constantly battle against the tendency to pull my main character back from the brink of asking that important question. Worse, these places in the manuscript seem invisible to me, even during revisions. When I let the information come out on its own schedule, it works so much better, and there always seems to be some new conflict that arises from the resolution of the one I was afraid to confront.
I found 3 of those issues in Chapter 1 of The Hunter by Tana French, an acclaimed literary crime writer. I didn’t get beyond Chapter 2 for that reason. But if your sentences are short enough and you’ve established your name, maybe you can get away with it.
Another amazing post, Devon. I have additional pet peeves, but these are really good ones, and I've noticed them too. As someone pursuing traditional publishing, it's frustrating to see these things in books on the shelves, but all I can do is try to avoid these mistakes to increase my chances of finding an agent. And if I ever get published, I really do hope that an editor will save me from myself if they see these errors!
Thank you for sharing this!
For me it’s the strong start followed by a rapid nose dive in plot, language, pace, characterization, everything. Sometimes the cliff is near the end and sometimes it is chapter two. Presumably the team working on the book runs out of time or motivation beyond a certain point, and anyway figures consumers are buying based on the first pages so beyond that doesn’t matter much. Cynically, I think there is a good chance no one on the team, besides the author, actually reads the whole thing. Because some of the cliff dives I have seen…oof. It’s wild.
It's even more fun when the cliff dive is obviously marked by an upswing in the number of typos. It's like a neon sign announcing: EVERYONE STOPPED READING HERE.
It amazes me that even Big Five published books will have these problems, though I probably shouldn't be surprised. The "not asking the question" point, reminds me of the cheesy misunderstanding trope. A certain 18th century literary classic, took almost 900 pages to resolve a simple misunderstanding between a couple, sigh. I had so much more patience as a reader back then, that I still enjoyed the book. XD
A huge pet peeve of mine, is when I see several dialogue speeches in a row, with no tags or other obvious clues of the speaker. So I get confused and have to go back and COUNT the dialogues to see who's saying what. This happens so often even in bestselling novels. I'd rather they tag excessively but still clearly tell me who the speaker is, lol. (If it's not obvious from the quote or context itself.)
Another thing I find annoying, is when an author introduces many characters at once on the first page. A certain famous literary classic, which was made into movies, does this. It's too much for a reader to keep track of all these new names on the first page. Even more so if they have a group conversation, and I quickly lose track of who's saying what, sigh.
If an author ever finds themselves thinking "my characters are so distinctively written, my readers won't even NEED speech tags!", they are wrong.
Yes! It's sad that even famous authors, best sellers and even international best sellers, often fall into this trap. :( It's pretty annoying.
Yes! It's sad that even famous authors, best sellers and even international best sellers, often fall into this trap. :( It's pretty annoying.
These were great! My other complaint is books that fall apart at the 3/4 mark
Not every sentence can bear the weight of Your Entire Imagination 😂
Love this so much, will be thinking of it the rest of the day. Thank you for another amazing post Devon!
Great post. I used to feel guilty for not reading more contemporary fiction in upmarket or genre (I also do not usually like historical, thriller or romance) but I became tired of feeling I had just spent hours I’d never get back on, at best, overhyped and thus incredibly disappointing fluff or at worst, crap. Giant plot holes, one-dimensional characters with WAY too many female protagonists only having a few vaguely adorable (in theory) minor flaws (I automatically despise any character described as plucky or sensitive), a lumbering reliance on deus ex machina and only two choices in sentences, either Just Rambling Here or I Should Win Every Literary Prize.
I also get disproportionately pissed off at popular books that champion eliminating one kind of stereotype or cliché only to employ another one and use a subject/field as a plot device but can’t be bothered to make sure what they’ve written about it isn’t wildly inaccurate. I have a small rant I keep on repeat: Not every book has to be short-listed for the Booker but a tree shouldn’t have died for nothing.
Thank you for pointing out the need for space, for breathing room. I tell writers (if I’m doing some editing or structural work, NF only) that the reader really wants to take this hike with you, they’re happy they are keeping up, but occasionally they would like to sit on a bench and admire the view for a minute or two, let important things churn and process in their minds, before resuming the journey with a refreshed, “I’ve got this” confidence.
Would love to see you go through a paragraph and highlight sentences as "Just Rambling Here" vs "I Should Win Every Literary Prize." Probably the average paragraph goes something like: ramble ramble ramble ramble PRIZE-WINNING MIC DROP
Or it would go ‘ramble, ramble, ramble’ and then a sentence that divides opinion whether it is prize-winning and surreal or is just more rambling but rambling now generated by AI that’s had way too much data to drink today. I’m looking at you, Commonwealth Short Story Prize! We live in interesting times.
Great post Devon. I am always interested in your take on craft, especially when you identify bad craft.
Thank you for such solid advice. If publishing is so competitive, you’d think it would improve quality! (Btw, do you have any advice on how to start taming a bloated and very unruly first draft? (I know - word by word..))
The hard part in publishing is getting read. You need leverage or social status to convince people it’s worth time to read your manuscript—actually read it, not skim it looking for a reason to reject.
Truly bad text can turn a yes into a no, but about 80 percent of the time, the decision is made before a single read is read. If you have a platform or social status, they want you to win; if you’re someone they’ve never heard of, they want a reason not to have heard of you.
Publishing is sort of like college admissions in that way… It’s super competitive to get in, and then once you’re in, anything goes!
Re: bloated first drafts (wow do I have a lot of experience writing those), I think one good move is to send it to a friend and say: I don’t want any feedback on how to fix things, I just want you to tell me which parts you found interesting and which parts felt flat or dead to you. Usually when I do this, the parts other people find interesting have almost zero overlap with the parts I was most excited about. (You mean you *didn’t* like my 40-page stream-of-consciousness section?) But I try to trust the reader, and I pare the novel down to just those sections that are interesting, and then I look at what I have and see how I can stitch it together into a new draft.
Thanks for the suggestion to send it to someone else to read. I’ll bite the bullet and do that (once I’ve tidied it up a little bit!) Good luck with your novel ☺️