Author Topic: Pet Peeves  (Read 64888 times)

Russell Nash

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Reply #25 on: February 17, 2007, 01:15:46 PM
"Once we lived in peace.  But that was in The Time Of Peace.  Then there was ... The Coming."

And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons).  This is probably more common in television and movies, but it happens all the time in prose, too.

The Harry Potter books are a major offender here.  Entire forests would be alive today if the adults had been willing to talk straight with the kids, or Harry wasn't having a snit with Ron, or whatever.  Order of the Phoenix could simply not have happened if Dumbledore had, in the first couple chapters, scheduled a meeting with Harry in his Day Timer.  (I won't even get into the major character who died because Harry got a package halfway through a book and forgot to open it.)

I don't want conflict because people are stupid.  I want conflict because people are smart.  It's far more enjoyable, and it doesn't make me want to reach into the page and throttle characters.

That's what I've thought while reading everyone of the books. The one good thing about the HP books though is that they're written on recycled paper, so not that many trees bought it for the francise.



Brian Reilly

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Reply #26 on: February 17, 2007, 03:37:54 PM
Here's another peeve.

Plots that depend on the characters failing to notice something that is bloody obvious.

For example, you have a saboteur and can see the evidence that it is them, but none of the charcters can. I'm not talking about a situation where the author has chosen to reveal information to the reader that the charcters do not know, but situations where the facts are obvious but the characters don't see it because the plot demands that (for example) they trust a certain person.

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Jonathan C. Gillespie

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Reply #27 on: February 17, 2007, 04:45:03 PM
That one is so easy to fall into.  It usually takes the form of the Unknown but Necessary Stranger the characters are "forced" to rely on for a little while.

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Reply #28 on: February 18, 2007, 06:38:04 PM
And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons).  This is probably more common in television and movies, but it happens all the time in prose, too.

I don't know if it rises to the position of peeve with me, since people often fail to convey critical information to one another and I have been known to enjoy books using this tactic (Harry Potter books included), but it did at least irk me in Melusine, which is the place where I've found this particular dead horse plot most recently.

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Russell Nash

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Reply #29 on: February 18, 2007, 10:05:10 PM
I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing.  Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.

When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.

In this book one of the main charators was taking a two-person submarine down to engage the enemy.  We don't know if they're going to kill her straight out or if she can do what she wants to do.  The writer kills 2 pages talking about claustraphobia and fear of the dark.  Then he goes metaphorical.  He writes that the submarine is just like a particle in the ocean and describes the 1000 year journey a particle in the ocean would take before it can back to the same place.  Then he describes the 80 million year journey a piece of ocean bottom would make during the cycle of the single continent (last one was Pangagea) breaking up and then reforming.  It was the only time in my life I thought of not finishing a book when I had less than 20 pages left.

The whole thing was a marvel of bad writing. 



SFEley

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Reply #30 on: February 18, 2007, 10:11:37 PM
I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing.  Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.

When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.

Heh.  I'm reminded of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books.  (Wow, that takes me back...)

The whole series was padded extensively, but at one point there were several chapters of tunnels.  Just one of the characters wandering in the dark, alone and frightened.  Nothing actually happens to him -- just lots and lots of tunnels.

By the end I was devoutly wishing for a grue.

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wakela

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Reply #31 on: February 18, 2007, 11:38:17 PM
This is a rare one, but it was in this weeks podcast, {N + 1, N-1}.
When a character can somehow absorb a mysterious power from another character.  I think powers should work pretty much like the powers that we already have.  I cannot give my power of seeing things to a blind person or my ability of abstract thinking to a cat.   

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Reply #32 on: February 19, 2007, 08:12:46 PM
Mike "Jurassic Park" Crighton peeves me with 10+ pages of expo at a time.  It's his research poured out , nicely written well informed, but fundamentally boring.  I have found myself ,skipping, pages when he gets in his stride.

Incidentally his best book is "Airframe" but I dont think it'll ever be made into a film, and that kind of peeves me too.


Russell Nash

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Reply #33 on: February 19, 2007, 08:27:31 PM
I just finished reading a book last night that really p***ed me off with one thing.  Which brought up my biggest pet peeve.

When the writer needs to build suspense, but has nothing related to the plot to talk about; The writer starts just BSing to fill space.

Heh.  I'm reminded of Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books.  (Wow, that takes me back...)

The whole series was padded extensively, but at one point there were several chapters of tunnels.  Just one of the characters wandering in the dark, alone and frightened.  Nothing actually happens to him -- just lots and lots of tunnels.

By the end I was devoutly wishing for a grue.


Padding in general I can stand. It's only when it's used to make pseudo suspense that it really gets me.



Roney

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Reply #34 on: February 19, 2007, 10:54:30 PM
Prologues annoy me.  The ones that begin hundreds or thousands of years before the plot, or that insist on dumping world exposition on you before anything happens to make the world worth knowing about.

I'm a bit of a sucker for them, but only when they work the other way around: when the prologue's an intense burst of action that makes up for the fact that the first few chapters are slow scene-setting.

Quote
Or even prologues that give you some random schmoe's point of view in some 'development' scene before you find out who the protagonist is.  (China Miéville does this in Perdido Street Station, which I'm reading right now and is otherwise excellent.)  I want to know, on page one, who I'm supposed to care about, and I want to see them doing something.

Oh, that one's deadly.  I love the book to bits but even when I re-read it and had a better idea of the relevance of that character's introduction in the prologue, I could barely concentrate from one sentence to the next.  Not that there was really any one character that I cared about by the end of the book.  Well, maybe the slake-moth runt.

I was struggling to think of any pet peeves until I read the other posts on this thread.  Then I remembered that "yeah, those things are annoying" and worse "I've seen that far too often".

To throw another couple into the mix:

Non-genre authors who write inept genre fiction where basic well-trodden concepts are treated in laborious detail, but insist that it's not SF because it doesn't have spaceships in it.

Magic with no underlying logic, no apparent rules or restrictions on when it can be used (except to put the hero in peril for a bit, when he can't use it or forgets that he has it) and no apparent rules or restrictions on the extent of its power (so it can get the hero out of any peril when the author can't think of a cleverer resolution).  The rules don't have to be explicit, I just have to have some confidence that they exist and are adequately consistent.

The phrase "magic realism".  Usually seems to describe "gratuitous symbolism".  This one may be a bit off-genre, but I'll justify it with an aphorism I've seen attributed to Iain Banks: "Magic realism is just fantasy written by someone the critic knew at university."



Mfitz

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Reply #35 on: February 20, 2007, 07:37:04 PM
Quote
Also, poor people--especially Southern poor people--being portrayed as idiots.

So, true.  If any writer wrote Blacks, Asians, or women, in the stereotyped way people in the SF/Fantasy field write Appalachian men 99% of the time, they would be burned at the stake.

My pet SF peeve is making people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, the bad guys.  I'm not a religious fanatic by anyone's standard, but this really gets on my nerves.  Not everyone who has their butt in a church on Sunday is a raving, child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic but you wouldn't know that from reading most SF and much Fantasy.

My biggest pet peeve in fantasy is out of place ethnic names.  Either a real well done original fantasy universe with characters names Bill and Suzy, or far more common a non Celtic universe full of Brans and Meaves and MacWhatevers.  Why does everyone in Fantasy World seem to lust for Celtic names?
« Last Edit: February 21, 2007, 11:51:12 AM by Russell Nash »



Alasdair5000

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Reply #36 on: February 22, 2007, 03:53:44 PM
This applies to basically any story in any genre, but I hate it, HATE IT, when writers write accents phonetically into a story.

As soon as I see something like: "Oi Whot! Aie dere Guvnur'" I go into a kind of killing rage.

Books have gone hurtling across the room, pages flapping, for this kind of offense.

   I don't quite have the words for how much I agree.  Back when I ran a comic and game store, we used to have a running joke about the 'Marvel comics three letter accent'.  If a character was foreign then it would always be portrayed by a three letter word that people of that nationality would, allegedly, use.  This is why Wolverine always said 'bub', why Maggot always said ''Mon' and every English character they had always said 'luv'.  Along similar lines I remember one particular issue where the main character, a Superman-type, asked a question of an English police officer and he responded with 'Well, wanker...'
   As for my own pet peeves, as Brian pointed out earlier in the thread, I can't stand characters being required to be incredibly stupid to further the plot.  The worst offender I saw for this recently was an episode of CRIMINAL MINDS which established in short order that:

-The killer knew where the agents lived.
-The killer had a medieval fixation, evidenced by a body being found with a broadsword driven through its chest.
-The youngest character's mother is a scholar of medieval literature.
-The youngest character receives a key from the killer whilst visiting his mother.
-The killer sends a message to the other agents saying 'The youngest holds the key'.
-The killer then sends another message couched in faux medieval language.

   So of course, no one thinks that the 'key' might be symbolic as well as actual and that they might actually be in some real physical danger.  Cue female character going home, being held hostage immediately and Al's respect for the series dropping several points.



ClintMemo

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Reply #37 on: February 22, 2007, 04:50:02 PM
This applies to basically any story in any genre, but I hate it, HATE IT, when writers write accents phonetically into a story.
As soon as I see something like: "Oi Whot! Aie dere Guvnur'" I go into a kind of killing rage.
Books have gone hurtling across the room, pages flapping, for this kind of offense.

The first time I saw that (when I was maybe 9? :P) I thought it was kind of cool, but it gets old VERY fast. I think anything that makes the text more difficult to read is probably a bad idea.

Also? I hate stories where women are killed/raped/hurt repeatedly just to move along a man's character development. ::cough:: Heroes ::cough::

I remember reading fantasy trilogy several years ago (can't remember the name - sorry) that did a nice job of turning that stereotype inside out. It was a standard "someone from our world gets magically taken to a sword and sorcery fantasy setting" series where the two of the main characters were a female college student working on a masters in history and a similarly aged biker/slacker who's just hanging around.  Unexpectedly, she is the one who has the natural talent for swordsmanship and he ends up becoming the wizard.  Further, she ends up saving everyone by using her research talents to figure out what the cause of everyone's problem is coming up with a solution.  I remember reading it and thinking "wow! the librarian saved the day!"

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Mfitz

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Reply #38 on: February 22, 2007, 05:16:29 PM
I think that's Hambly's Dark is Rising series, but I'm not sure.

It was not a typical fantasy on a bunch of levels.



ClintMemo

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Reply #39 on: February 22, 2007, 05:35:55 PM
I think that's Hambly's Dark is Rising series, but I'm not sure.

It was not a typical fantasy on a bunch of levels.

Yup! That was it. Thanks for reminding me.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


SFEley

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Reply #40 on: February 23, 2007, 07:22:56 PM
Moderator's Note: As the "sexism in the TV show Heroes" subthread was rapidly taking over the topic, making it difficult for anyone to continue to discuss pet peeves in literature, I have scrunched up my face and exercised my power over time and space, splitting it into a new topic.  I hope nobody minds.

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Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #41 on: February 26, 2007, 04:25:03 AM
And, come to think of, this probably is my biggest pet peeve, the one I complain about most: plots where all of the problems stem from characters being totally unwilling to communicate with each other for no reason (or for utterly inane reasons).

I tend to give authors/writers/creators a bit of leeway with this one.  I fancy myself to be something of a "keen observer of human character", and almost every problem currently plaguing people stems from some kind of stupid or inane communication breakdown.  I have several tedious examples I could share of friends or family members who spent years pointedly not talking to each other because each thought the other was angry at them.  And then there's that whole "Palestine" thing...

But there is a line between allowing characters to react stupidly because they are human, and making them act unnecessarily dumb for the sake of a weak plot.  Smallville is a good example of both sides of the line.  There were some good stories highlighting the parallels between Clark and Lex and their relationships with their fathers (biological or not) in the second and third seasons.  After that story arc peaked, though, they turned back into stock "hero" and "villain" cutouts, with much jaw clenching and posturing.  (Why couldn't the folks who wrote Spider-man 1 & 2 write Smallville, too?)


Mike "Jurassic Park" Crighton peeves me ....

...by waiting until I get a really great idea for a story, and then churning out one of his formulaic term-paper as fiction shite-burgers with MY idea -- gutted and devoid of any soul -- to feed the pap-swilling masses.

Okay, I may be overstating, and I can't seriously accuse him of plagiarizing me, since I haven't yet written something he could plagiarize.  But, I had a really cool idea brewing for a story that revolved around nano-molecular "Smart Dust" (which does exist, BTW), and he went and grunted out "Prey".  My story ended up as my rejected <300 word story for the <300 word story contest.  (It is here, if you would like to compare them: http://happyphuntime.blogspot.com/2007/02/ask-dust.html .)


My pet SF peeve is making people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, the bad guys.  I'm not a religious fanatic by anyone's standard, but this really gets on my nerves.  Not everyone who has their butt in a church on Sunday is a raving, child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic but you wouldn't know that from reading most SF and much Fantasy.

I have a similar pet peeve regarding books where people of faith, any faith but especially Christians, get to cluck and shake their heads smugly as the rest of us are plunged into some kind of fiery retribution for our lack of faith.  My mother, upon hearing my excitement over discovering Asimov, tried to make me read the first Left Behind book.  I tried, but after three chapters of chest-beating survivors crying "Why, oh why didn't I listen to all of those wonderful, good-hearted Christians?" I started to detect a note of divine smugness.

In a similar vein, I recently picked up Robert Sawyer's Calculating God, which uses the story of the first arrival of aliens on Earth to frame a set of arguments in favor of intelligent design.  The aliens all believe in the existence of the creator, and the protagonist, a paleontologist, gets to agonize throughout the book over his lack of faith.  I kept waiting for him to realize that a) believing the evidence presented by the aliens that "God" exists did not in any way invalidate his beliefs about evolution, and b) evidence of the existence of God does not validate any one particular religion... in fact, it makes the petty differences between them all the more ridiculous.  (The book delivers on this, though subtly.  And by the way, the Big Scary Villains in the story are economically disadvantaged U.S. Southerners who also happen to be raving, Luddite lunatics.  But Sawyer, a Canuck, didn't try to write in the heinous accents... much.)

My point is that there is science fiction out there that deals with religious topics, and some of it actually tries to handle those topics in a way that reflects well on religion.  It is hard to find because it is hard to write; and it is hard to write because people of faith already have a (IMHO) fictional universe with set rules and conventions that they don't like writers tampering with.

One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures.  Remember Chaucer?  Shakespeare?  I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time.  Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.

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JaredAxelrod

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Reply #42 on: February 26, 2007, 06:54:32 AM
One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures.  Remember Chaucer?  Shakespeare?  I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time.  Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.

Well, there is a difference between Chaucy-Boy and Willie the Shake drawing out a nice villian hiding within the church and folks building straw men because they've got nothing else to burn.  Considering the scope and reach of the power the church had during both men's lives, those characters my be more analgous to the sinister goverment agent in modern fiction than the "child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic" Mfitz is decrying.  Villians come from power more than from derision.

Though dersision is good too...

Adding to the Pet Peeve list:

Shopping lists.  Really, I don't want to know what's in your suitcase/car trunk/bag of holding unless you're going to use all of it later.   The only writer who could pull these sort of lists off was Hunter S. Thompson, and only then because some of it was too bizzare to ignore.

Polysyndetonic syntax, or Cormac McCarthy Syndrome.  Hemmingway may have popularized replacing a good period with "and," but it's McCarthy who beats the thing until it bleeds.  Run-on sentences don't make you sound erudite or poetic, they make you sound like the crazy guy on the street corner.



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Reply #43 on: February 26, 2007, 11:08:08 AM
One last point on this subject: it's not just sci-fi that deals harshly with religious figures.  Remember Chaucer?  Shakespeare?  I seem to recall they took their swipes at the "corrupt priest" from time to time.  Piety begs mockery, and false piety begs utter derision.

Well, there is a difference between Chaucy-Boy and Willie the Shake drawing out a nice villian hiding within the church and folks building straw men because they've got nothing else to burn.  Considering the scope and reach of the power the church had during both men's lives, those characters my be more analgous to the sinister goverment agent in modern fiction than the "child raping, woman bashing, Luddite, lunatic" Mfitz is decrying.  Villians come from power more than from derision.

Though dersision is good too...


An excellent point, Jared, and probably more along the lines of Mfitz's complaint; it is always frustrating when you count yourself among a group of people you believe to be good and noble while the rest of the world chooses only to see them in a negative light.  (That seems to be how many muslim folk feel these days.)

I still counted myself a Southern Baptist when I started reading Stephen King's novels (we're going back a ways, now) and I remember being bothered that he always had a dangerously addled fundamentalist in his cast.  Of course, part of what was making me uncomfortable with it was the fact that I recognized some of those character flaws in the people of my congregation... not dangerous psycopath flaws, mind, but they did share many of the prejudices and "non-PC" attitudes that King was playing up in his books.

These days I don't count myself among the numbers of any particular group, and Mr. King tends to develop his religious characters with more sympathy (and attributes their dangerous psycopathies to things other than their faith), so he and I get along a lot better.

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Mfitz

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Reply #44 on: February 26, 2007, 04:48:08 PM


*** I recently picked up Robert Sawyer's Calculating God, which uses the story of the first arrival of aliens on Earth to frame a set of arguments in favor of intelligent design.  The aliens all believe in the existence of the creator, and the protagonist, a paleontologist, gets to agonize throughout the book over his lack of faith. ***

I've read that book and although Sawyer makes no secret which side of that debate he think is right, [Calculating God  as some of the most intelligent discussion/debate on the topic I've ever seen. As a long time volunteer at a natural history museum and a hobby paleontologist, I've been on the front line of that battle more than once so I've seen a bunch of ranting and raving on the topic from both sides.

I also love the alien's final definition of God as the ultimate unexplainable natural phenomena.



JaredAxelrod

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Reply #45 on: February 26, 2007, 08:09:16 PM
An excellent point, Jared, and probably more along the lines of Mfitz's complaint; it is always frustrating when you count yourself among a group of people you believe to be good and noble while the rest of the world chooses only to see them in a negative light.  (That seems to be how many muslim folk feel these days.)

Its just lazy characterization, really.  Crusaders, be they heroes or villians, carry a motivation coupon: God told them to it.  This is not to say that compelling stories about people motivated by god can't be told, just that their motivation coupon is too easy to slip in and never elaborate on.

I remember a villain from the old Denny O'Neil QUESTION comics who was a one-note religious crusader until it was revealed that he believed God told him he had to corrupt the world so horribly it would need to washed away like Noah's Flood.  A nice twist, but still a motivation coupon.

Adding to the pet peeves list:

Motivation Coupons: simple motivations--"God told me," "it is my destiny," "my parents are DEAD!!!" that are given, never elaborated on, and taken at face value.  Most often used for villians, but also for supporting characters, and most egregiously, main characters by authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.



Mfitz

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Reply #46 on: February 26, 2007, 08:28:22 PM
... authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.

Is that possible?



ClintMemo

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Reply #47 on: February 26, 2007, 08:31:37 PM
... authors who have watched STAR WARS way to many times.

Is that possible?

Phantom Menace? Yes.
Empire Strikes Back? No.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


Mfitz

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Reply #48 on: February 26, 2007, 09:06:13 PM

Of course. :)



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Reply #49 on: February 27, 2007, 12:25:43 AM
I've read that book and although Sawyer makes no secret which side of that debate he think is right, Calculating God  as some of the most intelligent discussion/debate on the topic I've ever seen. As a long time volunteer at a natural history museum and a hobby paleontologist, I've been on the front line of that battle more than once so I've seen a bunch of ranting and raving on the topic from both sides.

I also love the alien's final definition of God as the ultimate unexplainable natural phenomena.

I was pleasantly surprised with it, myself.  I was constantly braced for the "conversion moment", and what came was not what I was expecting.  I did have some discomfort with the two Yanks (as it relates to this thread, I suspect most here would probably object to them on the same grounds), but the debate was handled well.

There is another good PP (that this book mostly avoided):

Polemic disguised as debate: When the whole point of the story is to set up an outrageous setting that justifies an extreme view, just so the author can pretend to be an intellectual.  (I've gone back and forth on how many of Heinlein's books fall into this category.)

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