You know a book is bad when... · 11:27pm Oct 10th, 2014
...the plot kickoff requires something so extraordinary to happen in the main character's life that he completely ignores it for ten pages so he can talk about his food service job.
...character background and personality traits are treated as 'Here is a character's name. And here is up to ten pages of biography.'
...establishment of setting (physical and temporal) is mostly accomplished by alternately beating you to death with an atlas and calendar.
...you see two people speaking in the same paragraph as a sign that the writer is improving.
...you could rewrite some of the location descriptions by checking Wikipedia and looking at a picture of the place being described, which puts you one step ahead of the author.
...if you treated punctuation as a blindfolded dart throw, you might do better than this. No, wait. 'Would.'
...the best laugh you got out of the entire book was from the sales description of 'historical fiction'.
...when describing what's supposed to be an extremely plush office, the writer apparently expects you to be the most impressed by the following sentence: "Wall units were built right into the wall."
...a character just shouted 'Yippie'. With six Ps.
...in contrast, a character just said 'G-d' and you're trying to figure out how to pronounce that.
...the author does not have Tracts. The author has a Land War In Asia.
...the book's credits list an editor and you decide that makes it fiction.
...you know all those finger-slip and eye-slide mistakes you never catch on your own work during the first pass? They're all being caught here. Not by the author or 'editor'. By you. Well, maybe not all of them, but since there seems to be at least one per page, you're afraid to go back and look again. Mostly because it would mean rereading.
...you have a window open on the book's Amazon listing and your mouse pointer hovering over the star rating, right on top of the 1. And it keeps trying to go left.
...you are completely certain you have personally had more intensive interactions with a voicemail menu.
...the author is so proud of the semicolon, it's pretty much featured as a character. Sadly, it's used about as effectively as the rest of them.
...you are not questioning whether the writer is a native English speaker. You are questioning whether the writer has ever been present at an actual human conversation in their life.
...it's a good thing that the book is set within one of the greatest disasters in States history, because that means an increased chance that some of these jerks are going to die. (This may even mean they'll stop talking. There's always hope.)
...wrong.
...after waiting forty minutes on their help line, you are truly sad when Amazon tells you there's no way to edit your purchase history.
...you start to spot that when someone is addressed as Mr. or Mrs, the 'editor' will frequently start a new paragraph on the spot. You're very proud to have spotted this trend because it means you made it through another chapter with at least one neuron firing.
...the omitted word count threatens to overtake the written one.
...seriously. 'Of.' 'A.' 'The.' Repeat.
...you no longer have a problem with any character's inner thoughts being displayed at any time, regardless of current viewpoint. You have a problem with the concept of anyone in this story being able to think.
...the 'X minutes left in chapter' elicits a scream of "NOT FAST ENOUGH!"
...you use the Percentage Remaining feature to track what's left of your sanity.
...the ending isn't a Hail Mary deux ex machina: the ending is every holy book ever written with sugar, sprinkles, and virgin tears poured over it. And even with all that going into it? Still not credible.
...upon careful consideration of the sounds which emerged from your mouth the last time you were violently ill, you realize that you have in fact puked a better book.
...there are formulas scribbled across your walls in desperate expression of reincarnation math because you needed to figure out the chances of returning into a life where you would have to read this book all over again.
...you would have been better off Suffering The Feature Box.
I don't know what I'll say tomorrow, but I'll try to keep it from including the word 'bludgeon'.
And that's when I burned his house down.
...
I can't promise the last three were less destructive.
That's how I feel about a lot of For Buy literature.
Say, does this happen to have anything to do with that "recommended" book?
2524352
Just finished it.
I would have said 'It just finished me,' but I think the continued breathing means I won.
Wait, was this an independently published book, or did an actual publishing company proudly plant their logo on the front cover? Will someone actually pay me to write poorly structured stories riddled with grammatical errors and cliches? Sign me up right now!
I once made the mistake of editing a fiction manuscript for a friend. It was a murder mystery in a high-rise, high security building. Our victim was shot and fell out a window, and the mystery was trying to figure out who shot him.
It was not so much bad as not good...now, I know this person is not dumb, but just the grammar errors alone were driving me to distraction. There were pages that were soaked in red ink (and, I do mean soaked...there's a reason why I had a Cheerlee scene where she edited Twilight Sparkle's shipfics and the pages bled...).
They had no practical knowledge of firearms. Or basic police procedure. Or basic security concepts. In a story that required a lot of knowedge of all three.
And, I figured out who did it a quarter of the way in, realizing that there were only four possible suspects (out of the eight he wrote about), and he'd set up three with solid alibis right away.
Last I heard, he was still trying to get a Big Name Publisher to buy his manuscript, WIthout too many changes...
2524381
Published through Amazon's ebook program. I'm pretty sure you can get signed up for that without any problems, but I can't promise much for the pay.
2524383
On the plus side, it sounds like you got through the experience while keeping him as a friend.
For negatives, this could mean Second Draft: The Semicolons Strike Back.
2524403 There is that...
There is also the fact that I didn't give into temptation and beat him to death with the manuscript. No jury in the world would have ever convicted me once they tried to read the first chapter (skipping between first, second and third person in the same chapter).
(There are some good books that use second person. Halting State is most of them. This random Turning test, this monkeys-on-meth-and-typewriters experiment, this...thing wasn't it.)
I have to give him credit for this much, he tries so hard...and, at the very least, he isn't trying to self-publish or publish on Amazon.
I'll take the spookysprite for 500.
Posts like this give me hope that I, too, might one day be a published author.
'Would'.
Period goes inside the quotes if I remember right.
dues ex machina:
duex please. I have no idea what that translates to in Latin. The machine who pays dues?
You know, I think I read a book by this author's father when I was in high school. The teacher just love, love, loved it, and the rest of us just wondered what pills she was taking. Too bad he reproduced. Just a reminder that we need to keep our hack writers neutered and spayed, or things like this happen. Now there is hope. From rumored history, the original of The Princess Bride was like this before being brutally trimmed into something readable (caveat: This may just be urban legend).
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” – Dorothy Parker
Or, my personal favorite:
"Mainlining tetraethyl lead would be more fun [than reading this book], and the mental damage would be no worse." – Tom Easton, from a particularly scathing review of L. Ron Hubbard's 'Battlefield Earth'
Dude:
Whatever forced you to finish that book if you just couldn't stand it? Or do you work for a newspaper or something and were commissioned with writing a review of it?
When I find that I can't stand a book, I drop it and continue on my merry way. Much better for my blood pressure.
Worst non-fiction book I have ever bought was "Seaweed and Plant Growth". I bought it for a thesis on algae farming, so I found myself 'disappointed' when I got the book and found that (A) the pages weren't actually numbered (they were ordered on a weird system of chapter-title), and (B) the book didn't even touch the subject of algae growth, concentrating on plant growth and how to elaborate fertilizer out of seaweed.
Last bad book I finished was "Mars Life", by an author whose name sounded like John Bove, Joss Bode or something. The book was actually quite thrilling, but I suddenly started to notice that I was running out of book with no ending in sight. Turns out that the author decided that the best way of ending 250+ pages of anti-scientific terrorism and pro-fundamentalistic political plays was for the two protagonists to find a solution on a two-page conversation.
Ever heard of being blue-balled by a techno-thriller? I experienced it!
Same way you pronounce '-ing'.
I love the semicolon myself, but it must be used appropriately. The semicolon is much better as a doorman than as the hero of the story.
2524477
"Deus ex machina" means "God through the machine"
It's origins lie in ancient Greek theatre, where they would use machinery to bring an actor playing one of the gods of the pantheon onto the stage in order to solve all of the problems the characters were having.
Today, it is used in reference to when the author of a story resolves all of their characters' struggles in an unsatisfying manner, usually by giving one the characters superpowers where there was no prior evidence or motivation for them to have them, or by introducing a new character who has superpowers.
They have such a poor reputation since they are often used by inept authors to finish their story when they can't think of a satisfying conclusion that wraps up all of the issues presented within and the various plot threads brought up. So they instead make a heretofore unknown wizard poof into existence and wave his wand to cause everything to become perfect.
I think I described it decently, but if anyone wants to correct me or add anything in then feel free.
2524477
Y;know, true comedy would have been to say something like 'I see you've been going over your own work again'.
Besides, Google swears it's 'deus'.
Big Stephie King will confirm that legend on request. But only after he uses about a hundred pages to describe someone packing for a trip.
(I think Buttercup's Baby was my first introduction to literary vaporware.)
2524536
See the second half of this blog post.
Your page count problem... I generally think of that as Last Commercial Syndrome: either the creators are about to pull out a multi-parter or -- frequently, something else you would generally pull out from somewhat lower down. It's generally annoying. I blame television. Also society.
I am trying to come up with the female equivalent of 'blue-balled'. 'Milk duct blocked' just doesn't have the same ring to it.
2524553
Fair enough. (I do recognize that it's a rule for some religious sects: I just seldom see it in print.)
2524602
If I ever got around to Celestia and Luna writing their histories, I would probably wind up with the elder staring at the parchment while muttering "...and I still have no idea where the semicolons are supposed to go."
Oh, I needed the laugh.
I laughed so hard it hurt.
The way you describe things Estee. Never change.
Very few things in life have made me laugh this hard.
Well done.
In all seriousness, your writing is a gift that you must share with the world.
Keep it up.
2524663
...seriously?
If so, Google is dead wrong. The word is Latin, meaning "a god", and is very definitely spelled d e u s.
2524682
I fumbled there: yours is correct. I meant they insist it ends on the 's', when so many people seem to use 'x'.
If I may ask what is this supposive book so that I may avoid?
2524689
Oh no. I'm not taking any chances on Bile Fascination, and no one has done anything to justify that level of vengeance.
*considers*
No one here.
*reconsiders*
Right now.
2524699 Let me get that piano back out...
2524685
Ahh. No doubt, the same people who think "lose" is spelled with two 'o's, that possessive pronouns like "its" and "hers" get apostrophes, and that "taut" is spelled with an 'n'. (As in, "The rope was stretched taunt between two pillars.")
2524699 wow that bad eh...yeah Ill pass then
2524381 Why not? Hollywood does it all the time! :D
There is at least a "do not use this for recommendations" option buried somewhere around that site (I think you have to wait until you get a recommendation based on it, hit the "why?" link, and that will let you flag it).
2524706
That's only marginally better than the metaphorical rope being stretched 'taught' between the two pillars.
2524658
I'm pretty sure 'ex' also means out of. Lovely shades of meaning are apparently present in other languages as well.
2524663
I read that blog and feel it for you.
Don't forget to be honest about your impression on the book. Brutally honest.
It wouldn't: most girls would want to think of heavy breasts as "my baby is hungry", rather than compare it with a denied orgasm.
Besides, "blue balls" relate to having been denied orgasm right when on the home stretch. On a biological level, I remember it deals with the short amount of time between the seminal vesicle, the vas deferens and the prostate mixing up the semen, and the contractions that actually propel it out. And as male orgasm is much easier to attain than female orgasm, to be blue balled has a strong connotation of having been used. Plenty of guys will speak of it being painful, but my own experience (when learning to have non-ejaculatory orgasms) is that, physically, is not painful, but only an uncomfortable, distracting pressure similar to waiting outside a bathroom while you have moderate diarrhoea. Most pain, IMHO, would therefore be emotional.
(How comes that Taoism apparently treasures the experience is a mystery to me.)
In Spanish, an equivalent female expression is 'being left very little dressed and very much interested'. Would it work in English to say 'not even bothering to fake it'? 'Married to Mr Five Minutes'? 'Heavily teased'?
2524553
I wasn't aware "G-d" was pronounced "ing."
The book sounds like fun; possibly almost as good as Vogon poetry.
Of course I may be biased; as I am a fan of Jim Theis' 1970 story The Eye of Argon; and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford.
Should I; have slipped; a few more; semi-colons in there?;;; Nah.
Then you realize that this makes your own work look so good in comparison, and you slump happily back in your chair with a smile on your face.
2524424
> (skipping between first, second and third person in the same chapter).
Dang it, now I'm tempted to try that, just to see if I can make it work.
I won't, because I still have some sanity left, but I'm tempted.
Huh. Given how many issues this story has, I thought it would have more articles.
...I'll just show myself out. Get well soon, Estee.
Sometimes you read a book, sometimes a book is inflicted upon you.
What the hell are you talking about.
What is the title of this atrocity? (So I can avoid reading it.)
...
(Also so I can mail a copy to my brother.)
SMBC put a thing out today (well, yesterday, technically). I feel like it belongs here.
smbc-comics.com/comics/20141025.png
(original)
Wow... this book makes "The Spiderses" look like something from Kurt Vonnegut.
Seriously, go read "The Spiderses". It's the best trollfic ever written.
2524602 I know someone who has very large... tracts of land...