Dealbreakers
This seal does not want. I do not want either.
I think this little seal is going to make some more appearances on my blog. Say hello to the Do Not Want Seal because he will probably turn up again and again as I start refining my editorial/reading preferences.
Today’s post is inspired by Forever Young Adult’s dealbreaker post and my list is simultaneously more specific and more vague than theirs. My list also applies to all genres, not just YA. You already know about my thoughts on books with FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS, so without further ado, here are the others.
Let me preface this list by saying that I don’t have strict dealbreakers, but any one of the following in a novel or a manuscript has to work a bazillion times harder for me to fall in love with it.
Idealized Romantic Heroes
There are two types of idealized romantic heroes which bother me:
- The Preternaturally Beautiful Yet Mysteriously Brooding and Angsty Hero (who will eventually be saved by the Power of Love)
- The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I’ve said my piece about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but my thoughts about the PBYMBAH are all over the place. I will also admit to being more tolerant of the MPDG, possibly because she is a bit more rare (relative to the PBYMBAH, that is). And let’s face it, I used to cultivate the MPDG aura myself, so I tend to be a little more forgiving of this trope.
But the PBYMBAH (otherwise known as The Angst Muffin according to Sarah Rees Brennan). Oh how I loathe him. PBYMBAH, I am not interested in your pain. I am not interested in how beautiful you are, even if you think I should be. I hate how you generally turn girls into martyrs and I especially can’t stand that you have SEEEEEEEEEEEECRETS that must be kept at all costs!
Now in principle I don’t have problems with characters who are stoic; I rather like stoic. I understand stoic. It’s the Inner Pain I don’t understand. Most people have emotions and secrets that torment them, so I don’t see why the PBYMBAH should be treated any different. What is so special about your Inner Pain, sir (aside from the fact that it always appears to be capitalized)?
Secrets in and of themselves aren’t bad either. Everyone has them. Everyone has reasons for keeping them. But if we’re limited to a single person’s POV (and it’s usually not the PBYMBAH’s POV), then by virtue of said POV we cannot know who this character is. This is what bothers me the most about the PBYMBAH: I usually have no word but the heroine (and the author)’s that this person is worth knowing. This is more of a problem in the YA novels I read–many of which have very close POVs–but can be troublesome in other genres as well.
Even if I do get scenes from the PBYMBAH’s POV, I often still have to refrain from rolling my eyes. I like my characters to be at least a little self-aware. A sense of humor goes a long way with me, and unfortunately, it seems to be mutually exclusive with brooding angst.
We Are Fated To Be Together!
No, just no.
The “lovers because we’re meant to be” trope NEVER sits well with me. Please see: my hatred of THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE. Whatever happened to free will?
Fairies, Vampires, and Werewolves, Oh My!
This isn’t really a dealbreaker so much as “Oh dear Lord, I am so sick of this please don’t send me any more.”
I have placed no such restrictions on zombies.
X For The Sake Of Being X
This applies most often to science-fiction/fantasy. I’ve said elsewhere that I generally shy away from contemporary settings, but that doesn’t mean I will swallow just any speculative setting either. I hold my science fiction/fantasy to a pretty high standard, meaning I want the fantastic setting to say something about the times we live in. The best speculative fiction novels answer “What if?”, but there would be no “what if?” if there wasn’t something to comment on.
So just because it’s cool to have hoverboards or dwarves doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be in your novel. In HARRY POTTER, the Mudblood vs. pureblood debate is an interesting comment on racism. My favorite dystopian novels are often about the question of the individuality of the human spirit vs. the utilitarian ideals of government (e.g. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley and THE GIVER by Lois Lowry). For me, it’s not enough that the setting is cool. It has to be “cool” for a reason.
Get Off Your Soapbox, Please
Books that ostensibly have a “message” make me twitch. With rage. I’m a firm believer of the “takeaway”; that is, the reader should take something away from the novel, whether it’s emotional satisfaction or intellectual revelation. But it should be done with subtlety because the last thing any reader wants is a “message” shoved down his/her throat. Or at least, it’s not what this reader wants.
You shouldn’t read books because they’re “good” for you; you should read books because you want to!
Adultery
This is a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery fine line for me. It won’t make me throw books across the room, but my regard for a character will immediately plummet if s/he cheats. Call me a prude, but this is one area that makes me really uncomfortable. I try to reserve moral judgment for characters (Humbert Humbert is a pretty despicable pedophile, but hey, I still love LOLITA), but adultery/cheating is where I draw the line. I have no idea why.
I can stomach a lot of things in my fiction. Violence, incest, rape, drugs, sexual deviants, beloved animals being killed off, etc. But this is my list of vague, yet specific “dealbreakers”. I’m sure more will come up as I continue to read, but for now, what are your dealbreakers? What makes you stop reading and throw the book across the room?
A big dealbreaker for me is predictability. Now, I don’t mean this to the extreme – being able to call a few things happening, small little things, throughout the book is fine. But when I can tell EXACTLY what the climax of a story is going to be and EXACTLY how this is going to pan out completely like, 2 chapters in, it really sticks in my craw.
I have made exceptions for this. For example, in HP5, I knew Sirius was a gonner from like, Chapter 3. But because the rest of the book was so good and there were other surprises, I let that go.
A good example of predictability that I can’t tolerate:
http://www.bmoca.com/
This book was so highly offensive on so many levels. I feel like points of my IQ were getting sucked out through a straw and squirted at dinner companions. For starters, let’s look at the names of the characters, shall we? Dermot? Giselle? Neela? REALLY?
We know EXACTLY who the killer is and WHY he does what he does like 5 pages in, but the whole book is supposed to be OMGSUSPENSE! And WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN? And is written all DRAMATICALLY! With PAUSES! And OMG WHAT’S AROUND THE CORNER NEXT?
Um, I can tell you what’s around the corner. I can also tell you what the climax is. Because THIS IS FUCKING PREDICTABLE.
Add on top of that just really, really, REALLY HORRENDOUSLY AWFUL writing, and everything about this book just made me cringe. Shove over, Dan Brown. Shane Briant’s in town. You don’t even know what sophomoric prose IS until you’ve read this book.
So yes, in general, my dealbreakers:
1.) Over-predictability. Especially when the writer doesn’t know it or think he’s being all surprising.
2.) Sophomoric writing with trite character names.
3.) The 18th-century style of writing in general, where it takes 16 pages to describe walking up a hill. Um. Pass. (But we’ve had this talk before).
I love the DO NOT WANT seal!
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I don’t mind predictability–my job is somewhat dependent on me being able to “predict” things in books, no? :) There are only a handful of stories in the world and they all follow specific story patterns–if they’re done right, that is. Well, I ought to predict the “big things”. Small details can still surprise me.
Of course, thrillers/mysteries are different and I’ll admit that I’m not well-versed in that genre. But I’ll agree that if I can figure out who the killer is in the first 2 pages (like, ahem, PLAIN TRUTH by Jodi Picoult), then I’m pretty peeved.
Unusual names bother me less, but I’d rather characters in contemporary settings NOT have names that would have gotten them pulverized on the playground.
I have trouble with 18th century prose myself, but NO DISSING ON THE 19TH CENTURY NOVEL. ;)
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…um, yeah. Totally meant 19th century. Typo!
::RUNS OUT OF ROOM::
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I agree with you on most of these. Don’t know if I’d for sure call them dealbreakers as in the original post’s example, though. I tend to be open to giving everything a 5-page chance.
I’d expand on the Fated To Be Together to include This Book Is Fated To Play Out Exactly As It Does. Y’know, the ones that go, “There’s this prophecy that MC must defeat A to save the world! Knowing they’re the only one who can fulfill said prophecy, MC does exactly as foretold, and behold, wins!” A little bit of fate is fine, but if it’s the driving force, blargh. That’s kind of what I love about the series I’m currently editing with my author; she has shapeshifters and one of the facts about them is that they mate for life. But their mate isn’t preordained. They don’t have a certain smell or something like that; mating depends on a whole bunch of different factors so that two shifters who might be mates under one circumstance won’t even date in another situation. And one of those factors is choice. If a shifter is dating someone and realizes that they’re going into mating mode, they can stop. It’s a reworking of the concept of love, and it so works for me. :)
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For me, the absolute dealbreaker with historical novels is when women who temporarily held power are portrayed as lying harpies. I came across this gay romance novel about Philip II of Macedonia a couple of weeks ago. It sounded so deliciously silly I’d happily have spent 16 bucks on it – if it weren’t for the part about his “lying wife”. … um, NO. Just NO. D:
(Um, hi! First time poster, long time lurker!)
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Hello and welcome!
Another pseudo-dealbreaker I ought to have included is the anachronistic heroine. You know, the one who wants independence in an age when independent women were either courtesans or…you know, otherwise outcasts from society.
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I have to admit, I don’t think any of these are dealbreakers for me, perhaps because I’ve seen them all done relatively well. (Hmm, except the Manic Pixie Dream Girl…) BUT they do knock a few points off my tolerance level. So if there’s any of these, PLUS some other major issue, I probably won’t finish the book.
For me, the biggest dealbreaker is if I don’t believe the author. In some cases (like memoir) I may mean that literally — i.e., I think the author is lying. For fiction, it’s more like… bad acting. As in, the characters’ motivations don’t make sense, or their dialogue is cheesy, or whatever. I’m not talking about bad prose — I can totally forgive that — but rather, lack of authenticity. If the story doesn’t come to life for me, if I don’t believe it *could* happen even though I know it didn’t, then I put the book down and find another one that can do the job.
(Haha, I’m not as much of a reading hard@$$ as this makes it sound…)
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Totally agree on the “We are fated to be together” dealbreaker. I *hate* when lovers go for each other strictly because of fate with no other glue holding them together. Fate makes for crappy glue. Gnargh.
I also put Forever Young Adult’s dealbreaker at the very top of my list: weak-ass heroines. If a fictional girl needs saving at every turn (and always by a boy instead of some other girl), and looks “plain” and/or fragile but manages to get random beautiful boys to fall in love with her plainness and fragility, I tear my hair out in chunks. Where are all the girls who laugh manically while flying a F-22 in a sky-high dogfight?? (Not to be confused, though, with heroines that are financially or socially dependent on men….girls who do their best with what society hands them are strong enough to me. Griet from GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING is one of my fav heroines, and so are both Mary and Anne Boleyn from THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. :) )
Another one for me is bad character names. This is pretty subjective, so it’s not really any author’s fault….but sometimes, a name bothers me so much that I can’t read the book without distraction. I’m trying to read this one book that is actually pretty good, except the names of the characters are things like “Wrath”, “Rhage”, “Vishous”, and “Zsadist”. So every time Rhage appears on the page, my brain pronounces it Ruh-HAIJ and I have to stop and push down the irritation. :) It won’t stop me from reading a book, but it makes it that much more difficult.
I also hate fantasy book covers with bikini-clad warrior women wearing illogical battle armor. But that’s not the author’s fault and is even sort of nostalgic to look at…sometimes. :D
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