What makes me quit reading mid-story.

[SimonDoom]

I seldom quit reading mid-story. It usually takes me only a few paragraphs to decide if I want to read the story or not (usually not), but if I make it to mid-story I'll likely finish it.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'll bring up a positive reason, if the story is so hot, you decide to go find the other half to take the edge off so you can finish reading.

 

[Britva415]

What about when the first dozen paragraphs, written in first person, don't effectively convey the gender identity of the narrator.

Then halfway or more down the page, you find out they're not what you thought they were.

Of course, this is enough of a peeve that I often will quit even before discovering the bait-and-switch.

It's bad writing, and usually not the only manifestation.

 

[Britva415]

Maybe we need neopronouns for "gendered I".

Or maybe authors just need to provide more clues about just who the hell the narrator even is.

 

[SimonDoom]

How are you doing with Ulysses?!

Ouch. Dont rub it in!

Slowly. I haven't quit.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

What about when the first dozen paragraphs, written in first person, don't effectively convey the gender identity of the narrator.

Then halfway or more down the page, you find out they're not what you thought they were.

Of course, this is enough of a peeve that I often will quit even before discovering the bait-and-switch.

It's bad writing, and usually not the only manifestation.

Sometimes it's just that the author is less bothered about such things being important. I'm bisexual, will happily read about both male and female protagonists getting it on with whatever sexes, and really don't care much.

But my first beta readers pointed out that 99% of readers will care a lot. A lot of the time I'm trying to lure readers out of their comfort zones, so I'm happy to humour them in this respect and provide info about the protagonist in the first few paragraphs.

It's one reason I liked writing a story about a genderless immortal hellbeing.

 

[alohadave]

It's one reason I liked writing a story about a genderless immortal hellbeing.

Have you read the Murderbot series? It features an asexual robot as the main character.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Repetitive phrasing and words, makes me want to stop reading. Also, a few authors love to pepper their stories with exclamation marks, like confetti. That can feel a little jarring, like the characters are all shouting at each other.

 

[Britva415]

Sometimes, the narrator cannot be pushed in boxes. For one story (N and N), I deliberately kept it vague in the beginning, name included, because they didn't consider it to be something that determined them.

Well, that's a good reason.

And if you were able to write it in such a way that the importance of the non-identification was foreshadowed or hinted at somehow, you probably could have held my attention long enough to get what you were doing.

 

[Britva415]

Sometimes it's just that the author is less bothered about such things being important. I'm bisexual, will happily read about both male and female protagonists getting it on with whatever sexes, and really don't care much.

But my first beta readers pointed out that 99% of readers will care a lot. A lot of the time I'm trying to lure readers out of their comfort zones, so I'm happy to humour them in this respect and provide info about the protagonist in the first few paragraphs.

It's one reason I liked writing a story about a genderless immortal hellbeing.

It's not that I even care, I'm bisexual too.

Hell, I don't care if it's an agendered person.

But I do not like it when an author takes so little care that I have to guess, and then it turns out I guessed wrong, and this is not a dramatic element.

You're not talking about doing it because you couldn't take the care. You're talking about stories you wrote where it was the story.

If someone's going to lure people out of their comfort zones, which I am not against:

(1) that's a deliberate narrative choice, not carelessness, and as such, it's not what I'm talking about at all, and

(2) I would hope that such an author would actively lead them down the garden path before surprising them, rather than simply overlooking the entire subject until you feel like getting around to maybe mentioning something outside the comfort zone.

If the writing's good enough that I'm compelled to read even though I don't know what gender the protagonist is, or even though I assumed a gender which wasn't actually conveyed explicitly, then great, they have me.

But that's what it will take for me to not quit reading.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If someone's going to lure people out of their comfort zones, which I am not against:

Can you explain this notion that somehow writers set out to "lure people out of their comfort zones"?

You're not the first to suggest that writers somehow "trick" people to go down a path they don't want to go down, read content they don't want to read; as if it's the writer's fault they don't know what your squicks are.

At least you say you're not against it, but to me it seems such a crazy notion. I'm not "tricking" anyone when I write what I want to write. If folk don't like it, they can back out, but to tell me it's my fault? That's just odd.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Can you explain this notion that somehow writers set out to "lure people out of their comfort zones"?

You're not the first to suggest that writers somehow "trick" people to go down a path they don't want to go down, read content they don't want to read; as if it's the writer's fault they don't know what your squicks are.

At least you say you're not against it, but to me it seems such a crazy notion. I'm not "tricking" anyone when I write what I want to write. If folk don't like it, they can back out, but to tell me it's my fault? That's just odd.

I think Britva was verbatim quoting Kumquat:

But my first beta readers pointed out that 99% of readers will care a lot. A lot of the time I'm trying to lure readers out of their comfort zones, so I'm happy to humour them in this respect and provide info about the protagonist in the first few paragraphs.

 

[Britva415]

Can you explain this notion that somehow writers set out to "lure people out of their comfort zones"?

Ask the person I responded to.

They're the one who proposed it.

 

[Britva415]

You're not the first to suggest that writers somehow "trick" people to go down a path they don't want to go down, read content they don't want to read; as if it's the writer's fault they don't know what your squicks are.

I didn't say anything about what readers want. This entire thing was predicated on what the writer wants to do.

Did you never read any story with a twist? Or any other unexpected revelation?

When you do, do you protest because it wasn't what you wanted?

At least you say you're not against it, but to me it seems such a crazy notion. I'm not "tricking" anyone when I write what I want to write. If folk don't like it, they can back out, but to tell me it's my fault? That's just odd.

What's your fault, now?

I'm not following.

 

[Britva415]

At least you say you're not against it, but to me it seems such a crazy notion. I'm not "tricking" anyone when I write what I want to write. If folk don't like it, they can back out, but to tell me it's my fault? That's just odd.

What's your fault, now?

I'm not following.

I think we're both saying the same thing, kind of.

You write what you want to write. Readers are with you or they aren't. No big whoop.

But for real, this idea that fiction doesn't contain the unknown is ... "just odd". Nobody would read it if they knew what was going to happen.

[ I'm not making fun of you by quoting "just odd." I'm winking at you ]

 

[ElectricBlue]

Ask the person I responded to.

They're the one who proposed it.

You're right, they're not your words - I didn't go back far enough, so apologies. Obviously you can't explain a notion that wasn't expressed by you .

 

[Britva415]

Obviously you can't explain a notion that wasn't expressed by you .

All I can say is, I understood what they meant, but

 

[Bramblethorn]

Have you read the Murderbot series? It features an asexual robot as the main character.

Love that series.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

But I do not like it when an author takes so little care that I have to guess, and then it turns out I guessed wrong, and this is not a dramatic element.

You're not talking about doing it because you couldn't take the care. You're talking about stories you wrote where it was the story.

No, i mentioned early stories of mine where I didn't mention sex of certain characters merely because I didn't think it important. Not as a dramatic element. I didn't mention their looks in detail, either.

You're the one saying "I have to guess". Why? Why do you? Not picking on you in particular, because clearly people who think the sex and/or gender of characters is important are the vast majority on Lit and elsewhere, but why do you feel the need to go beyond what a story tells you?

Can you explain this notion that somehow writers set out to "lure people out of their comfort zones"?

You're not the first to suggest that writers somehow "trick" people to go down a path they don't want to go down, read content they don't want to read; as if it's the writer's fault they don't know what your squicks are.

At least you say you're not against it, but to me it seems such a crazy notion. I'm not "tricking" anyone when I write what I want to write. If folk don't like it, they can back out, but to tell me it's my fault? That's just odd.

As the person who said it: I think there's two different things. One is simply for clarity: I write in British English, with the exception of a couple American characters. If I want to avoid that putting American readers off (others seem to cope), I need to make my story as clear as possible so they can figure unfamiliar phrases out from context. Same with cities or organisational structures or recent past time periods that readers may not be familiar with.

Separately, there's my personal kink of getting people out of their comfort zone, mostly characters but therefore also readers. So a straight guy with two women and another man in the room gets enticed into a blind blow job experience - can he tell the difference between the three of them? A guy goes back to a woman's hotel room only to find she's still wearing a strap-on from earlier (and no, it doesn't turn into a pegging story). Various stories playing with bits of BDSM in the background.

I wondered how much reference to actual psychological effects of incest I could put into an Incest story on Lit. I thought about having one character messed up from realistic father-child abuse before the siblings got together, but decided I didn't want to write it, so reduced it down to a couple paragraphs. Readers didn't seem to care - they commented positively or otherwise on the story being in Scotland.

(Just lost the rest of this comment... argh!) I love comments like "I'm a straight vanilla guy so this story isn't for me sexually but I love these characters and their lives". Or "I never thought about doing X before..." But that's a very personal kink to me, and not the same as just not thinking someone's sex is important until it's relevant to the story. When I edit I have to go back and insert a ref to the narrator's sex within the first three paras, that's less clunky than "Let me tell you about myself." Where did that clichéd line come from, anyway?

 

[Duleigh]

It is a very personal thing. Yes 'I felt' too often can jar, but sometimes it is the scenario. If you cannot retain belief in the story, for example if it explores a fetish that desn't appeal, you will back click.

I'm going agree with ogg - a scenario or fetish that I just don't like. That and just bad writing. The kind of writing that makes you wonder if they graduated middle school. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, I'll continue if the central idea is good, but there comes a point where the story becomes unreadable to me, and I'm not a grammar purist by any means, I know my work makes plenty of people cringe, but, dude! there's resources available! Click the editor button!

 

[Stimtheone]

Repetition is indeed something unpleasant in written text. Especially if it happens one after the other. I read the word piss about seven times in one paragraph that made me want to go and hit the guy with a thesaurus. You gotta have an arsenal of terms for each and every thing. Not just boobs, breasts, tits... but jigglymuffins, love pillows, milk bags, fluffy stress balls, motherly medals, soft mounds and them delicious honkers. If I read "boobs" five times in the span of five minutes I will assume the writer has no idea what they are.

Also, I have a distaste for first person point of view stories. Most use them as a means to make writing their fantasy and it seems to suggest a lower quality. It is also fraught with a lot of repetition.

But the worst offender might be those that just jump into things. No build-up, no warming, no... arrival. Just "my name is ned and I'm fucking my sister". I can tolerate that as a description, but not the extent of what the entire two first pages are about.

 

[Britva415]

why do you feel the need to go beyond what a story tells you?

If you strongly feel that in your particular story the gender of the protagonist is not important, write your story that way.

Readers feel what they feel.

If you want them to feel the gender is unimportant, or it's important not to gender them, you could write your story that way - clearly signaling that non-gendering is important to your story.

If you don't, you can't blame or question "the vast majority" of people for either forming an impression which might turn out to be wrong, or for actively wanting to know.

I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't write a story that way. I'm just saying that if you don't care to do so, you aren't giving readers a reason to not fill the vacuum with their own thoughts about the protag's gender, perceived or otherwise.

 

[Britva415]

So, if I read you correctly: "If gender is unimportant, it is important to signal that the gender, being unimportant, is important for you."

Nah; too deep for me.

Good thing the other author is the one it was intended for.

I don't know, maybe it's too deep for them, too, but they put skin into talking about their stories with agender protagonists (which I haven't read) and their feelings about the unimportance of the reader's perception of gender in stories with protagonists who might actually be gendered but they as the author don't want the reader to care what it is.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Bad grammar is the killer for me. Especially if English is obviously the writer's first language. I don't mean li'l typos and the rare or occasional glitch with tense, but just bad, lazy grammar.

Also, I lose interested when third parson narration makes the character(s) sound like a test subject. If it's dictated like the present tense narration in a Russ Meyer movie like 'The Immoral Mr. Teas', my eyes glaze over quickly.

I don't mind third person narration, but it needs to feel personal, not clinical.

 

[nice90sguy]

What makes me stop after a page or so (rather than after a few sentences) is when I've gotten into the story enough to decide that I don't really care what happens to the characters, or what they get up to.