Always striving to improve my writing, I make notes when readers complain about what they don’t like in a story. I reviewed my notes recently because I’m working on a rewrite of a new novel. Here’s a long list of dislikes from readers on a mystery listserv I participate in:
- portents, particularly the “had-I-but-known”
- cliffhangers at the end of the chapter or the book
- an abundance of coincidences
- too little character background for series protagonists (assuming the reader has read the previous books in the series)
- clumsy dialogue that doesn’t sound natural
- insufficient sense of place and/or time
- characters that are TSTL (too stupid to live)
- rushed endings, particularly done with exposition rather than actually solving the clues to solve the crime
- abuse to women, children, or animals…done for shock value
- a prologue that either isn’t really necessary or that diminishes the impact later of the plot
- characters with similar names
- hackneyed plots
- thin characters
- an unconvincing voice
- weak, bland prose no matter what the style
- pretentious prose no matter what the style
- stylistic repetition that seems lazy
- badly edited texts
- deja vu: “I’ve read this before”
- the author trying too hard at whatever
- the author seeming to revel in cruelty
I’d like to think my stories don’t fall into these patterns, but I confess, I occasionally use a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter.
Readers: What can you add to this list?
Writers: When and why do you break these “rules” in your novels?
This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers‘ Write First, Clean Later blog.