Hate when authors do this

[thinkponk48]

Don't get characters ages correct. In the book I'm reading a female character has been to university, worked as a teacher for a bit, met married and bought a house with someone and then had a child.

Eventually her son moves abroad for a job and she's an empty nester at 38! So ridiculous should be at least 45.

I know it's a silly thing but it's ruined the book for me

Oh this assumption that every country works the same as America ruins so many shows and books for me. Especially when it’s a historical romance and American society rules get applied to stories set in London, or where everyone is a duke but none of them are working royalty. I just have to stop reading at that point.

A couple of years ago, there was a spooky sort of program on Netflix like that, it even seemed to have a British cast and I was stunned that no one noticed the script was 90% americanisms. I gave up after one episode.

Not a continuity mistake in a book, but I was listening to the Something Was Wrong podcast recently. As part of the "true" story the woman talked about getting bacterial vaginosis and being told by the doctors that it was a STD and definite proof that her partner had cheated. Not true at all that's it's a STD and it bothered me so much that I had to stop listening. Dangerous misinformation to be spreading around and made me doubt the whole tale.

Everyone went to Oxford or Cambridge.
Everyone is married to someone they met at uni.
Teenagers in 2020 called Simon and Kathleen.

Agree with the age thing. Surely it's easy enough to write down key dates in character's lives. Another one is when it's still light outside in England at 6pm in December. Australian author.

My Simon was 17 in 2020 and "went out" with a Kathleen the same age for a while!

I get annoyed when books that are set in real places give totally incorrect directions e.g. driving out of one town in the wrong direction to get to another town. Also, when basic research is not done - I read a book set around Edinburgh where the father was stating that he had supported his daughter through her GCSEs. I am willing to be told that are schools in Scotland where pupils sit those exams but I expect it's not many.

I stand corrected 🤣

Americanisms are the ones that get me. For some unknown reason the word ‘gurney’ being used instead of ‘trolley ‘ in a hospital scene drives me batty!

I hate it when the cover illustration dies it match the description of the characters in the book.

I make book covers. There are two types of authors:

• ones who give you absolutely no clue what the character looks like or miss out major plot points
• ones who give extremely detailed descriptions about the character's appearance and expect exact, detailed images, usually without being willing to pay for the models.

Yes, editing doesn't seem to be much of a thing nowadays. Agree about 'One Day', there was a detail about Dexter's mother's age - he'd made her too young and the timeline made no sense. Such sloppiness, if you can't be bothered to make your plot and characters believable then why should I be bothered to read your book?

Historical inaccuracies, sorry to say that John Boyne is quite bad for this (like in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) although I like some of his stuff, the one about the Catholic priest was good. I suppose as that was set in Ireland in recent decades he was writing about what he knew, so I think that is true principle.

So many American writers attempting historical fiction set in the UK, and they can't be bothered to get the speech patterns and details of everyday life right. I suppose they just don't care, or assume it will be the same as in the USA. I took a sample on my Kindle of a historical/fantasy novel by an American set in Victorian England, the author had racoons running around the English countryside! Sample deleted, it just really annoys me and puts me off everything else they might write.

The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997. Nothing very improbable about a Dean born in the 1980s.

On the other hand, 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' is supposed to involve best friends born in 1966 and called Grace and Tilly. One out-of-era name, maybe. But both? Why aren't they called Jackie and Alison?

I was born in 1966 and went to school with a Grace and a Tilly (short for Matilda) as well as a couple of Jackies. I don’t think I met an Alison until I was at university.

Did anyone read the third Brigit Jones book, the one that didn't get made into a film? Colin Firth had married her, fathered two children, then died. Brigit was having a hot affair with a younger musician. She had two primary school aged children, but was 51, which would have meant she waited 10+ years before having children, and in the first two books she was meant to be in her 30's already, wasn't she?

The book was called Mad About The Boy and I think Helen Fielding wishes she had never written it.

I KNOW Brigit isn't a real person, but I became irrationally annoyed by this book 😞

I'm listening to a series at the moment that I quite like, but I nearly stopped when there were bears stuffing themselves with salmon on their way to spawn high up a river in early January near Anchorage. I have no particular knowledge of bears, salmon or Alaska but it sounds pretty unlikely to me.

We're supposed to believe parents would name their children Lily and... Petunia.
There's also too much nominative determinism in the wizarding world.

Bridget!

I'm an editor/proofreader by trade, so mistakes in books naturally irritate the merry fuck out of me. I know budgets are being cut at publishing companies, but I charge £700 to proofread a novel as a freelancer; that's a drop in the water for a big publisher.

I know right?!

I've meticulously sense-checked and proofed my own writing, and I know it would need an editor too, but it doesn't actually encourage me into mainstream publishing seeing the crap that gets put out there without very basic checks.

🤣🤣

@PollyAmour didn't that tragically happen to Helen Fielding in real life though, I thought? She met the love of her life, a bit later in life, had kids and then sadly he died? Poor Helen.

Fair enough! There certainly weren't any round our neck of the woods.

And that is why you need to write a plan before you start. Bloody hell it’s the basics, we all learn it at school!

Ah yes, scrawling our first drafts in pencil in our dog-eared jotters. Editing is so much easier now, that there’s less of an excuse for errors.

Love kindle books for this sort of thing.
Was reading a series where some of the characters names changed and then changed back.

The worst book I read (didn't finish) was about a Mum trying to get her young PFB into I think grammar school, but it might have been private into y9 I guess. Apparently he had done his Gold Duke of Edinburgh. I couldn't get past that.