Overused Devices

[Shinysavage]

Songs. My God, songs. They rarely if ever add anything more than a bit of background colour to the book, and while that can be a good thing, I'm sure there's better ways to do it than a two page song that, if I'm honest, I'm either going to skip or get incredibly frustrated with while I try to think up a tune/rhythm for it. Just stop.

Also, the tendency to have the hero spend two hundred pages wandering around the country, just happening upon important people. It is possible to skip that part.

[ray243]

Another thing that annoys me in fiction is too many writers like to portray every scientist as an omnidisciplinarian/Renaissances man.

Very rarely did we see a scientist deferring to other specialist when he cannot answer a scientific question.

[Zombie]

Female protagonist in an Urban-fantasy setting. Like Weather Warden Series, Mercedes, Anita Blake, Southern Vampire. They're all fucking dumb, usually involves some cunty sex scene that turns the book into tension between the fem!protagonist, and the male antagonist. And forgoes any semblance of plot.


Who did it right: Sandman Slim, male protag, with the right balance of everything and Iron Druid did a decent job of it as well. Again Male protagonist.

Just too many books out there with women trying to empower themselves, but they don't, because they turn into whores.


I got tired of expansive space battles in sci-fi. I like world building, as well as character building within the world. Hamilton does a good job of that in his Pandora Star trilogy, and subsequent books that follow that, and Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space. However, the primary detractors from each one is this "super alien species thats set out to conquer huamnity cause they can." Blobs in Pandora and Judas unchained, and the Wolves or whatever they are in Revelation Space.

Charles Stross's Glasshouse is great in how it does character building, as well as giving a glimpse at the larger world. As well as making humanity their own personal enemies who set out to conquer each other not through grand space warfare, but through subversion. I think what I'm trying to say is that I hate that books lack subtly. Like how the Monster in the monster movies used to go unseen while he was murdering all the teenagers and then they gave you a face to know what you were up against, and then tried to make them all the more disparaging because of how "evil" they were supposed to be perceived.


Got more, but I gotta run, will edit with more later.

[Heather_Sinclair]

Originally Posted by Zombie

Female protagonist in an Urban-fantasy setting. Like Weather Warden Series, Mercedes, Anita Blake, Southern Vampire. They're all fucking dumb, usually involves some cunty sex scene that turns the book into tension between the fem!protagonist, and the male antagonist. And forgoes any semblance of plot.

Am I wrong in noticing those particular authors and series are all in the Paranormal Romance genre?

There is a difference between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Try looking the proper genre first. It's like saying you hate popcorn because of all the damn butter they put on it. Quit asking for the butter.

I might suggest Bloodhound Files, Deadtown, or Walker Papers series. They're more UF and less PR, or I should say that any romance sub-plots are secondary to the story if they exist at all.

[Taure]

Lots of stuff has been touched upon here already. A few highlights:

1. Overly epic storylines. Saving the world, demon armies, apocalypses, and so on. I prefer my conflicts to be more localised, human, and personal.

2. Magic systems where the main purpose of magic appears to be combat/fixing the problems created by the existence of magic in the first place (such as combating magical creatures). If magic barely effects the wider world, what's the point of having it in the story?

3. Heroes. Here I mean the typical plucky protagonist, especially in stories with a significant magic element. These individuals have great magical potential but are untrained. They're powerful, but lack subtlety. They're practical people who disdain knowledge for knowledge's sake. In the end, they come out victorious because of some idea of strength of will, of being more determined than the other guy, or being able to take more of a beating and not give up, or because their enemy makes a stupid mistake, or simply by virtue of their moral righteousness. Fuck heroes.

Give me a smart character who isn't necessarily morally pure. Not an anti-hero. I dislike those too. I just want someone who isn't a character sheet. Real people aren't heroes or anti-heroes. They're not universally nice or universally a dick. How they treat people depends on their mood, on their relationship with that particular person, on what they ate for lunch, on their financial situation... a million other factors. Real people can't be captured with a few adjectives.

4. As Heather said, emo characters and angst. I'll add to that hardasses and smartasses - at least in the teenage male conception of the idea. You know the type: we see it in indy!Harry fics. The idea that strength is accompanied by open aggression, rebelliousness, coldharded ruthlessness regardless of context, lack of respect for authority figures, and rudeness in general. Basically, immaturity. It's entirely possible to be a polite hardass. It's entirely possible to be strong yet not be a sociopath who wants to drink the blood of your enemy's children.

5. Speaking of such, inhuman antagonists. Not just in terms of species, but also in terms of character. Give me a bad guy with a family. Give me a bad guy who is capable of love.

6. "I need to stop the suffering" motivations for bad guys.

I probably have more, but I'll leave it there for now...

(The great thing about Kingkiller: it avoids these things).

[Zombie]

Originally Posted by Heather_Sinclair

Am I wrong in noticing those particular authors and series are all in the Paranormal Romance genre?

There is a difference between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Try looking the proper genre first. It's like saying you hate popcorn because of all the damn butter they put on it. Quit asking for the butter.

I might suggest Bloodhound Files, Deadtown, or Walker Papers series. They're more UF and less PR, or I should say that any romance sub-plots are secondary to the story if they exist at all.

They're labeled under urban fantasy, my b. Don't get too mad. Every search I've done for Urban Fantasy has brought them up in it.

[Heather_Sinclair]

Originally Posted by Zombie

They're labeled under urban fantasy, my b. Don't get too mad. Every search I've done for Urban Fantasy has brought them up in it.

I think Amazon has a specific label for PR that might help filter out those that you find offensive. At least it did the last time I was looking. Though that was several months ago.

I agree that the PR books focus way too much on the romance and not enough on the story. Anita Blake, for instance, is just pure porn with the occasional crime or problem to solve thrown in as a very minor subplot to break up the sex scenes.

Pure Urban Fantasy like Sandman Slim or Dresden are better examples of the genre.

I might suggest as well:

Kim Harrison's - Hollows series. Still going strong.
Vicki Pettersson - Signs of the Zodiac. This became rather predictable by the third book, but it was still decent.
Lilith Saintcrow - Jill Kismet

[Immet]

Are you really recommending Lilith Saintcrow? One series had the main character with a violent case of the Stockholms, where her teacher beat her viciously under the pretense of teaching while having a sexual relationship with her, and she thought that he beat her to show how much he loved her. Just... fuck that shit.

I thought that Mercedes Lackey wasn't bad. I mean, it is complete bullshit that she's !SPOILER! Coyote's daughter, but she is skilled at her job, is normally competent and sensible, has one fully developed relationship which leads to marriage, and the plots don't revolve around her sexuality. Its not even on the same scale as Anita Gets-Power-From-Kinky-Undead-Sex Blake.

-----

One thing I hate in stories is when the protagonist goes on a monologue. Especially when its just to further the author's viewpoint or politics.

Bonus hatepoints if they espouse politics or governments that the character came up with themselves with no reference to history or discussion with others, or if people who should just laugh instead change their whole mindset because of the monologue.

[Heather_Sinclair]

Originally Posted by Immet

Are you really recommending Lilith Saintcrow? One series... blah blah blah.

First: If you notice, I didn't rec that one. God forbid an author learn from his/her mistakes and write a better series at a later date. We all weren't born to write the perfect story from the start.

Second: Mercedes Lackey is a Cyberpunk fiction author (for the most part). The person you should be speaking about is Mercedes Thompson, a character in a series of Paranormal Romance books which you obviously like enough to read since that revelation wasn't revealed until the latest one. Though I consider that particular series more on the UF side until the last couple.

Third: {Spoiler} {/Spoiler} <~~~ This is the way you write spoiler notices, except with brackets instead of braces.

Fourth: Lurk moar. Think before typing.

[Iztiak]

My god, in fantasy books in particular, I absolutely hate how everyone wants to have this high-fantasy, epic storyline told from the point of view of at least 27 different characters, possibly more.

I complained about this before in the Official Books Recommendation thread, but it fits better here.

I'm seriously sick of starting a supposedly good book and every single chapter it changes to be told from someone else's POV, and they're all listing names off like I should have some earthly idea what they're thinking about, and then by the time it cycles around to the interesting character it's fucking chapter 15 and I've forgotten what the hell is going on, or the 14 chapter break was enough to kill any tension the scene had going for it.

One character. Not three, not ten, just one.

Nothing irritates me more than picking up a book, enjoying the setup, the main character, and the world... And then Chapter 2 switches to a much less interesting character, with really nothing going for him.

"Well, maybe the main character will be back in chapter three..."

No, he's not. It's a new new character, even less interesting than the first new character. Great.

Thus beginning the chain of progressively less interesting characters going about their thoroughly boring lives, while I begin to skip more and more of the story trying to find the only interesting one out of the lot of them.

I know some people enjoy writing styles and stories like this, but I seriously hate it.

[Menace]

Originally Posted by Iztiak

words

I'd say it varies. I'm sort of okay with A Song of Ice and Fire (so far, at least) but Codex Alera was just painful to read at times.

[CheddarTrek]

I'm somewhere in the middle of that I guess. I actually like multiple POVs but I prefer that ~80% of the story be told from the protagonist POV (max of two "protagonists"). The remaining 20% can be split between half a dozen other characters just to give us a bit wider view of what's going on.

[Agayek]

Yea, I'm kinda with Cheddar on this. I don't mind multiple points of view, and in some cases it makes the story significantly better, but the story as a whole should primarily focus on a single character or perspective. It makes things flow so much better.

ASoIaF and Wheel of Time I simply can't read because of the number of different perspectives they follow, made all the worse because between the two series maybe 5 characters are actually interesting.

[Iztiak]

I'm not saying I'll put down a book just because of multiple points of view... A good enough writer can pull it off. If all of the characters are at least bearable, for instance. Most of the time they're not.

I've really enjoyed the main character of some books, but had the book ruined by having large portions of the story told from the POV of a character or characters that I absolutely can't stand.

But hell, if the author is good enough to make every character at least interesting, it isn't a bad idea at all. Again, that rarely happens, but occasionally there's a few badass authors that can manage it.

Also, if they can't manage how many characters they're going to use. Some people start adding new POVs... And never stop. Ever. By the end of the book there's like fuckin' 300 of them, and they're all addressing each other by name. Clusterfuck of characters ruining an otherwise good idea.

It just adds a layer of difficulty for the writer, in my opinion. Sure, he's managed to write ONE awesome character, but can he write seven? Can he manage seven? Do you read from their POV according to how important they are to the story, or does the author add 16 chapters about the maid's daily life.

But yeah, in clarification, there's nothing wrong with multiple points of view if the writer is good enough to pull it off. More often than not, however, the author torpedoes his own story.