Don't you just hate it when...

[Mike Burke]

Don't you just hate it when an author leaves you hanging like those
old-time movie serials back in the day? To be continued in the next book
in the series.

Don't you just hate it when an author pads his stories with page after page
of trivial "business", mere padding, eg painful step by step procedures
such as going to the cupboard finding coffee cups, laboriously preparing a
pot of coffee then pouring it into the cups and passing them around to
people present. Or parking their car in the driveway, opening the door,
getting out, crossing the yard to the front door, inserting the key in the
lock, opening the door, entering, closing and locking the door, and so on
and on, from one location and scenario repeating the detailed actions of
every plot scene in the book.

I'm currently reading such a book. No name, no pack drill, because despite
everything the story is pretty good. It's just the writing that's
horrible.

Mique

[Nyssa]

Post by Mike Burke
Don't you just hate it when an author leaves you hanging
like those
old-time movie serials back in the day? To be continued
in the next book in the series.
Don't you just hate it when an author pads his stories
with page after page of trivial "business", mere padding,
eg painful step by step procedures such as going to the
cupboard finding coffee cups, laboriously preparing a pot
of coffee then pouring it into the cups and passing them
around to
people present. Or parking their car in the driveway,
opening the door, getting out, crossing the yard to the
front door, inserting the key in the lock, opening the
door, entering, closing and locking the door, and so on
and on, from one location and scenario repeating the
detailed actions of every plot scene in the book.
I'm currently reading such a book. No name, no pack
drill, because despite
everything the story is pretty good. It's just the
writing that's horrible.
Mique

Oooooooohhhhhh, YES!

I especially hate it when the author decides to basically
retell all of the information/action from a previous
book in the series by copying huge swaths of text from
said previous book. Putting a few lines in to help readers
who have not read the previous book is fine, just to
set the scene, but it can easily be overdone just to pad
the word count.

An example of this is the Yooperwoman Chronicles where
an entire emergency rescue scene is repeated, and not as
a flashback or as relevant information to the current
story. It literally was the entire scene as if the EXACT
SAME EMERGENCY EVENT OCCURRED TWICE! Yeah, sure the victims,
circumstances, and rescue approach by the EMT team happened
twice in the sparsely populated Upper Michigan Peninsula.

Argh!

Ditto on the step-by-step how to scramble eggs or whatever
other trivial normal day activity that can be inserted into
the flow of text to waste time and pad word count.

As for the cliff-hangers, I really resent those as the
literary equivalent of a bait-and-switch scam. I buy a
book as I would buy any other product, thinking it is
complete within itself. I wouldn't buy a t-shirt with
one sleeve missing or a carton of eggs without the full
complement of eggs, so why shouldn't a book contain the
FULL story? Teasers are fine for "coming next week" TV
shows since you have a quantifiable time period that's
reasonable in order to get the payoff, but with a book,
you NEVER know if or when an author will get around to
publishing the follow up and resolving the ending. If
ever. Or if the next book will simply retcon the previous
book's action (it was all a DREAM!) or worse.

Or the author could die before finishing the next book.

Nope, don't like any of those, and they all happen all
too often especially in these days of SPAs with poor or
no outside editors taking a second look at the pre-
publication manuscript.

Nyssa, who is a hard sell and has high standards that
too many authors don't even begin to meet

[Mike Burke]

Post by Nyssa
Oooooooohhhhhh, YES!
I especially hate it when the author decides to basically
retell all of the information/action from a previous
book in the series by copying huge swaths of text from
said previous book. Putting a few lines in to help readers
who have not read the previous book is fine, just to
set the scene, but it can easily be overdone just to pad
the word count.
An example of this is the Yooperwoman Chronicles where
an entire emergency rescue scene is repeated, and not as
a flashback or as relevant information to the current
story. It literally was the entire scene as if the EXACT
SAME EMERGENCY EVENT OCCURRED TWICE! Yeah, sure the victims,
circumstances, and rescue approach by the EMT team happened
twice in the sparsely populated Upper Michigan Peninsula.
Argh!
Ditto on the step-by-step how to scramble eggs or whatever
other trivial normal day activity that can be inserted into
the flow of text to waste time and pad word count.
As for the cliff-hangers, I really resent those as the
literary equivalent of a bait-and-switch scam. I buy a
book as I would buy any other product, thinking it is
complete within itself. I wouldn't buy a t-shirt with
one sleeve missing or a carton of eggs without the full
complement of eggs, so why shouldn't a book contain the
FULL story? Teasers are fine for "coming next week" TV
shows since you have a quantifiable time period that's
reasonable in order to get the payoff, but with a book,
you NEVER know if or when an author will get around to
publishing the follow up and resolving the ending. If
ever. Or if the next book will simply retcon the previous
book's action (it was all a DREAM!) or worse.
Or the author could die before finishing the next book.
Nope, don't like any of those, and they all happen all
too often especially in these days of SPAs with poor or
no outside editors taking a second look at the pre-
publication manuscript.
Nyssa, who is a hard sell and has high standards that
too many authors don't even begin to meet

Another variation on the same theme is the ever-present, uber-boring car
rides. Robert Crais and Michael Connelly are perennially guilty of this,
to name but two. Admittedly, setting their stories in the grotesquely
enormous conurbation that is Greater Los Angeles necessarily leads to a
certain amount of that but, like persisting with increasingly geriatric
heroes from the VietNam War, has gotten very old indeed.

Mique

[Nyssa]

Post by Mike Burke

Post by Nyssa
Oooooooohhhhhh, YES!
I especially hate it when the author decides to basically
retell all of the information/action from a previous
book in the series by copying huge swaths of text from
said previous book. Putting a few lines in to help
readers who have not read the previous book is fine, just
to set the scene, but it can easily be overdone just to
pad the word count.
An example of this is the Yooperwoman Chronicles where
an entire emergency rescue scene is repeated, and not as
a flashback or as relevant information to the current
story. It literally was the entire scene as if the EXACT
SAME EMERGENCY EVENT OCCURRED TWICE! Yeah, sure the
victims, circumstances, and rescue approach by the EMT
team happened twice in the sparsely populated Upper
Michigan Peninsula.
Argh!
Ditto on the step-by-step how to scramble eggs or
whatever other trivial normal day activity that can be
inserted into the flow of text to waste time and pad word
count.
As for the cliff-hangers, I really resent those as the
literary equivalent of a bait-and-switch scam. I buy a
book as I would buy any other product, thinking it is
complete within itself. I wouldn't buy a t-shirt with
one sleeve missing or a carton of eggs without the full
complement of eggs, so why shouldn't a book contain the
FULL story? Teasers are fine for "coming next week" TV
shows since you have a quantifiable time period that's
reasonable in order to get the payoff, but with a book,
you NEVER know if or when an author will get around to
publishing the follow up and resolving the ending. If
ever. Or if the next book will simply retcon the previous
book's action (it was all a DREAM!) or worse.
Or the author could die before finishing the next book.
Nope, don't like any of those, and they all happen all
too often especially in these days of SPAs with poor or
no outside editors taking a second look at the pre-
publication manuscript.
Nyssa, who is a hard sell and has high standards that
too many authors don't even begin to meet

Another variation on the same theme is the ever-present,
uber-boring car
rides. Robert Crais and Michael Connelly are perennially
guilty of this,
to name but two. Admittedly, setting their stories in the
grotesquely enormous conurbation that is Greater Los
Angeles necessarily leads to a certain amount of that but,
like persisting with increasingly geriatric heroes from
the VietNam War, has gotten very old indeed.
Mique

The car ride thing reminds me of an absolutely horrible
stage play that haunted me in high school. First I was
forced to read the danged thing in a literature class,
then it ended up as part of a drama class where we
actually had to perform the thing in class. ARGH!

The title was "The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden"
and luckily I cannot remember the playwright's name.
The centerpiece of the abomination was a family's car
ride and the inane conversations that took place as
they made the trip from their home to a family member's
home in a nearby town. Set in the 1920s or 30s so the
trip that would be trivial today was a Big Deal back
then. The whole play would be considered worthy of a
soap opera. Ugh.

Picture people sitting in regular chairs on stage and
chatting back and forth about stuff and commenting on
scenery passed while occasionally bouncing up and down
as though they were traveling over a rough road instead
of in a set made up to look like a car.

Nyssa, who wonders how they got people to actually pay
real money to see that turkey when produced in the first
place

[Carol Dickinson]

Post by Nyssa

Post by Mike Burke
Don't you just hate it when an author leaves you hanging
like those
old-time movie serials back in the day? To be continued
in the next book in the series.

YES! And even my favorite author, Diana Gabaldon, does that. She ended "Drums" in the middle of a day, took FOUR YEARS to publish the next volume and continued from that same day.

Post by Nyssa

Post by Mike Burke
Don't you just hate it when an author pads his stories
with page after page of trivial "business",

YES! That exactly why I stopped reading Daheim. All the
characters do is find a clue, eat and discuss the clue,
then think about the clue while doing the padded stuff,
then repeat.

Post by Nyssa

Post by Mike Burke
I'm currently reading such a book. No name, no pack
drill, because despite
everything the story is pretty good. It's just the
writing that's horrible.
Mique

I dunno. Can't compute good story, bad writing.


Putting a few lines in to help readers

Post by Nyssa
who have not read the previous book is fine, just to
set the scene, but it can easily be overdone just to pad
the word count.

Agreed. I can see it in a 2nd book, but the exact same
repeated stuff in book 10 is overdone. If you want to
start in the middle of a series, well ok, but just realize
there is previous stuff and if you like the author enough
or if you want to find out the back story, go back and read
it.

Post by Nyssa
As for the cliff-hangers, I really resent those as the
literary equivalent of a bait-and-switch scam. I buy a
book as I would buy any other product, thinking it is
complete within itself. I wouldn't buy a t-shirt with
one sleeve missing or a carton of eggs without the full
complement of eggs, so why shouldn't a book contain the
FULL story? Teasers are fine for "coming next week" TV
shows since you have a quantifiable time period that's
reasonable in order to get the payoff, but with a book,
you NEVER know if or when an author will get around to
publishing the follow up and resolving the ending.

I have in my lifetime read two such books that were really
enjoyable and wanted to go on to the next volume only to
find that although it had a title and even a promised
pulication date, it never appeared.

OTOH, John Jakes writes serials, such as North & South
Trilogy and The Americans which is I think 7 volumes.
And my favorite author, Diana Gabaldon has been writing
the one story for 25 years and we still have 2 volumes
to go. I do hope she lives to finish them, because it
looks like at least 6 more years if she can keep on
schedule, but she's very busy with the TV series now
and 9 is somewhat delayed. I wouldn't worry if she
was younger but she's almost my age and I'm officially
a senior, and elder or old as dirt depending on which
community I"m with at any given moment.

Post by Nyssa
Nyssa, who is a hard sell and has high standards that
too many authors don't even begin to meet

Me too, which is why I so often whine here about the
bad quality of whatever I've just read.

Carol