BlackShanglan
Silver-Tongued Papist
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2004
- Posts
- 16,888
Amen to everything on the Doctor's list. #1 on my list is of backclicks is:
(1) "I had to write this because this really happened!"
Recounting actual events has a way of making authors (including me) forget all of the rules of good story-telling and start throwing in dull, pointless, aimless detail simply because "it really happened."
(2) Other author commentaries prefacing the text.
Agreed, the "you must read these other 14 chapters first" is particularly annoying and appears self-important, but I also shy away from most other author comments. The thing is, this is supposed to be a story. It's meant to charm and engage as a story. An author's note begging me to overlook specific flaws, trying to give me background the author couldn't figure out how to incorporate, or trying to introduce him/herself as an extra "character" for undisclosed reasons simply reads as an admission that that author could not do his or her job. I've felt the urge to explain in an introduction myself, and I've always fought it for that reason. The only exceptions I've made myself are dedications - which should be brief - and once a note identifying a work as fictional because the central character was a real person.
(3) Egregious spelling and grammatical errors.
If you can't master the comma, what are the odds that you've got switching third person narration down pat?
(4) The dreaded ellipses.
Amen to that. Excessive use thereof reads trite, dull, and incredibly slow. A good author must learn to use such devices sparingly and to construct prose that establishes a rhythmn through more subtle means.
(5) The numerical, everything-at-once, let's-get-it-out-of-the-way description.
Like others, I find the numerical description annoying and uncommunicative - especially, as CD points out, when it is physically incredibly unlikely. (And I would add to that any "too perfect" description - the dazzling sapphire eyes, the perfect, pouting little breasts, the radiant strawberry-blond hair, etc. It reads like a bad fantasy novel crossed with the masturbatory fantasies of a teenager.) But any character description that occurs in a big block with no purpose, no real point of view or perspective, and no contribution to the plot is a major turn off. For an especially annoying way to do this, see (6).
(6) The mirror scene.
Anywhere. I think that to date one author has managed to walk me past the dreaded mirror without a terminal balk on my part. It's the extended version of Dr. M's comment on vain narrators; not only does the narrator wax rhapsodic about his/her gorgeous body, but does so while staring gooey-eyed into a mirror, enrapt in the spectacle of the adorable self. This usually occurs when the character is dressing or after bathing, and appears to be a narrative device designed to let the author shove in a character description and get it all over with at once. References to "working out" and looking "ten years younger" are apparently obligatory.
The sole reason that this is not my number one backclick is that it usually occurs further into the story.
And might I add that titles are a major source of "never-clicks"? There's an art to making a good title that has appeal and suggests something new and interesting. I don't have this art, unfortunately, but I do know it when I see it.
Anything with a title like "My First Threesome," "Gigi Goes Anal," or "At My Mistress's Feet" reads like filler in the list of stories. Why click on a story whose title pretty much covers all of the information and simultaneously conveys a thorough lack of imagination?
Shanglan
(1) "I had to write this because this really happened!"
Recounting actual events has a way of making authors (including me) forget all of the rules of good story-telling and start throwing in dull, pointless, aimless detail simply because "it really happened."
(2) Other author commentaries prefacing the text.
Agreed, the "you must read these other 14 chapters first" is particularly annoying and appears self-important, but I also shy away from most other author comments. The thing is, this is supposed to be a story. It's meant to charm and engage as a story. An author's note begging me to overlook specific flaws, trying to give me background the author couldn't figure out how to incorporate, or trying to introduce him/herself as an extra "character" for undisclosed reasons simply reads as an admission that that author could not do his or her job. I've felt the urge to explain in an introduction myself, and I've always fought it for that reason. The only exceptions I've made myself are dedications - which should be brief - and once a note identifying a work as fictional because the central character was a real person.
(3) Egregious spelling and grammatical errors.
If you can't master the comma, what are the odds that you've got switching third person narration down pat?
(4) The dreaded ellipses.
Amen to that. Excessive use thereof reads trite, dull, and incredibly slow. A good author must learn to use such devices sparingly and to construct prose that establishes a rhythmn through more subtle means.
(5) The numerical, everything-at-once, let's-get-it-out-of-the-way description.
Like others, I find the numerical description annoying and uncommunicative - especially, as CD points out, when it is physically incredibly unlikely. (And I would add to that any "too perfect" description - the dazzling sapphire eyes, the perfect, pouting little breasts, the radiant strawberry-blond hair, etc. It reads like a bad fantasy novel crossed with the masturbatory fantasies of a teenager.) But any character description that occurs in a big block with no purpose, no real point of view or perspective, and no contribution to the plot is a major turn off. For an especially annoying way to do this, see (6).
(6) The mirror scene.
Anywhere. I think that to date one author has managed to walk me past the dreaded mirror without a terminal balk on my part. It's the extended version of Dr. M's comment on vain narrators; not only does the narrator wax rhapsodic about his/her gorgeous body, but does so while staring gooey-eyed into a mirror, enrapt in the spectacle of the adorable self. This usually occurs when the character is dressing or after bathing, and appears to be a narrative device designed to let the author shove in a character description and get it all over with at once. References to "working out" and looking "ten years younger" are apparently obligatory.
The sole reason that this is not my number one backclick is that it usually occurs further into the story.
And might I add that titles are a major source of "never-clicks"? There's an art to making a good title that has appeal and suggests something new and interesting. I don't have this art, unfortunately, but I do know it when I see it.
Anything with a title like "My First Threesome," "Gigi Goes Anal," or "At My Mistress's Feet" reads like filler in the list of stories. Why click on a story whose title pretty much covers all of the information and simultaneously conveys a thorough lack of imagination? Shanglan
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