Stupidities and irritations in novels

[UnquietDad]

What are the things which annoy you most in fiction? Things characters do, assumptions authors make, etc?

I think my number one has to be the "affluence assumption", where people who are supposedly worrying about money still "have" to send Jonty and Jocasta to the lovely little prep school and violin lessons. (Mind you, there's enough of that on here.)

DW has just finished reading these, which feature such laughable idiocies as a state primary school where people talk about "first years" and "second years" and which has its own dedicated science block and music block.

There are an awful lot of thirty- and forty-something women writing novels these days who are out of touch with any reality beyond their cosy little London mums-and-coffees-and-gym circle. And - surprise, surprise - they are books about cosy little London mums-and-coffees-and-gym circles.

Oh, my all time favourite that was very popular 10 years ago: the concept that writing 'erotic novels' could earn you an embarassing amount of money. Writing erotic fiction won't even earn you a living.

Agree passages can work but a whole book in present tense? I suppose if it was gripping/ descriptive enough but I have an aversion

DW and I often have fun making up "Maverick Detectives" based in cities we visit. We did a whole treatment for a series based around Portsmouth Harbour with an amnesiac detective once. It would feature the Spinnaker Tower and Gunwharf Quays heavily in the opening title sequence, and lots of motor-boat chases of drug-smugglers.

solidgold, did you ever write for Black Lace? (only know about them because I knew the editor in another context - honest!)

liked tipping the velvet but that's about as erotic as i have read...

Lorrie Moore's Self-Help has some good stories written in the second person. Don't think I've ever read a whole novel written in it though.

Label-references done as auto-pilot mise-en-scene "'I'm late,' he said, as he looked down at his Rolex ..." - blame Ian Fleming and actually, weirdly, Mishima, the 80s fad for whom gave the style a high-culture currency. Thereafter you get Jay McInerney etc. (also a culprit of 2nd person writing)

But the worst bete noire is that At Least One Flip One-Liner of Snappy Wit Per Para style novelising (see Rachel Johnson, and yes, the Bridget Jones woman too) as seems to be obligatory for chick lit. I SO hate it.

Oh, more, italicised single-sentence paragraphs which reveal the inner thoughts of your protagonist. See Dan Brown.

I'm hard to please. However I have just discovered, a bit belatedly, Richard Ford and his genius makes it all OK.

The main girl doesn't know it, but everyone knows she is very beautiful. and men swoon and fall in love and are very good looking. It upsets her that she thinks her friends secretly think he is better looking than her.

Her best friend, who she whines is a perfect size ten, is spontaneous and frivious and probably sleeps with many men.

Whatever artistic pursuit they try to follow they will be successful, photography, design, interior design and they will make alot of money.

| was given a free swirling-writing-on-the-front book god it was shite. Still read it though.

any books which are meant to show real life scenarios, but in a totally unrealistic way, e.g. schools, doctors, etc. Also HATE childbirth scenes, as they always seem to be over in about 5 minutes, whereas I started with contractions 11 days before DD finally arrived.

Whilst a lot of books (not litereature - that's a different thing) are meant to be escapist, they still need to be far more grubby to be realistic.

dh bought me a book for chrimbo which looked really promising - NYTimes best novel, author has loads of awards & grants etc, but it just exactly fits Flossie T's comments from earlier. Just not doing it for me - even the 'poor' people have designer clothes (just one good suit)and a studio flat they've transformed to feel womblike. Pah! I'm not poor, but have never had a designer anything.

Dan Brown has a lot to answer for; namely, putting the most obvious 'clues' in his novels, mostly of a difficulty akin to those Usborne puzzle books for kids (it takes them a chapter to work out something's in mirror writing, ffs) and leading the people who read his books to think they're clever because they worked it out all by themselves.

lol at "free swirling-writing" - yes, sometimes you can reject a book just on the font of the title

I also hate anachronisms. I've never really studied history but as a fairly well-read person I spot blatent anachronisms all the time - you'd think someone writing an historical novel might actually think to check whether, for example, a brand new under-housemaid would turn up to her first job with her belongings in a leather suitcase.

I've never understood why people say you can't judge a book by its cover - you totally can. Sometimes I like a bit of swirly writing though

marshabrady - don't forget the obligatory gay best friend, who would be the perfect man for her apart from the small matter of his preferring cock.

The gay best friend must, however, be either essentially sexless (a bit of "ooh he is dreamy" dialogue permitted) or happily shacked up in as near to a heterosexual relationship as possible by the end of the novel (one's a high-powered businessman, the other works in an art gallery and so on). There will be no gay sex in the novel, thank you very much.

Yes and the gay best friend has absolutely nothing going on in his life, well other than possibly having a simply divinely cute boyfriend somewhere, so he can dedicate his whole time round at her bijou flat listening to her boyfriend, career, mother dramas and drinking white wine.

UQD, there IS a series of Maverick Detective-ish novels set in Portsmouth, by Graham Hurley. Not been televised, so no opening sequences, but Spinnaker Tower and Gunwharf DO feature quite a lot. I quite like them though, they feature concerns about budgets for murder investigations, and reinforcements get called in from hotspots like Meon and Warsash.

slightly overweight (size 14!)female central character starts new job in magazine/gallery/television studio in a new town and meets evil, nasty, but ruggedly handsome male collegue, who is a swine with women, by page 10. married (divinely! happily!)by penultimate chapter.

gakkkkk!

yep, and without even noticing she has magically lost weight just by magic.

Why do chick lit novels always assume women love shopping and have a weakness for shoes? Cannot relate to something as vacuous. Apart from that, I have not been able to turn the pages of enough chick lit without throwing it down in disgust to be able to comment sensibly.

Will steer clear of Rachel Johnson, whoever she may be, if the stick figures on the cover don't already give her away.

Rachel Johnson is Boris's sister. Telegraph journo and "novelist". Features in articles about upper-class scruffiness.

Don't forget that the resolutely childfree one of a group of friends will always have changed her mind by the end.

And the knackered mum of 2 (or 3) will always think her husband is having an affair but mostly he isn't.

DCMB - you know, I'm sure someone has told me about those Portsmouth novels before. Maybe it was you!

A fellow writer of mine (published novelist) had her character shopping in the local corner Spar and was asked by the editor to change it to Waitrose so it was more "aspirational". It's beyond parody.

Oh, I've got another - "geography shorthand". You know, where a particular area - or even road - in London is used as an indicator of what the characters' environment is like, in lieu of actually describing it in an interesting way. Sometimes we are even expected to know what particular streets are like just from the name.

There are 50-odd decent-sized cities in the UK! If you want an urban novel why the hell does it have to be set in London??! Why not write about somewhere more people won't know about?

I suppose the problem is that a lot of novels are written by journos and meejah folk, who want their heroes to be journos and meejah too, and so they can't convincingly be anywhere other than London. There was a Mil Millington book I read recently where it was all set in Edinburgh - the main character was an actress's ghostwriter, and you could tell it was straining and creaking a bit to justify not being set in London.

A little devolution would be good, though. After all, the BBC has a big base in Cardiff now and is going to move a lot to Manchester in the next couple of years.