What Ticks You Off?

[Steerpike]

Oh, I don't know, I can think of some great books with thoroughly dislikeable protagonists. For fantasy, Ian Graham's Monument, where the protagonist has no real redeeming features or anything to make one like him.

In Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert is at least witty and engaging, but he's a thoroughly disgusting human being.

I have other examples, but those two come to mind first.

 

[Gurkhal]

To me its predictability (is that a word?) and boring main characters.

When I can predict what will happen and heroes generally pull victories out fo their asses that puts me off, and so does boring main characters. A hero can be as good, nice and righteous as he wants. But if he, or she, is boring I will not care for that character.

And when I think about it, the same goes for a boring struggle. If the heroes walks from one triumph to another I will throw away my book. The heroes should struggle, bleed, cry and lose things they value forever before they can reach victory, and look back on a hard struggle knowing it was something they had to struggle for. A struggle in which nothing was sacrificed is in my eyes boring and uninteresting.

 

[FifthView]

If it's direct thoughts, I'm cool with that. Only italics I dislike are for emphasis.

But how do you really feel when you encounter it?

For me, I think—this is only from solid memory of a handful of experiences plus some other dimly remembered cases—emphasis with italics introduces the feeling of a) authorial or narrator intervention and possibly b) a bit of humor.

Maybe this is why I usually think of YA and humorous novels when I try to remember specific examples of italics being used for emphasis—although, I think that other types of writing that are in first person can do it without seeming humorous. (The narrator intervenes, yes, but has been doing so all along after all.)

In comments here, I'm not in the least bothered by such emphasis. You see what I did there? That's authorial intervention. There's a person behind that choice to emphasize. I mean, why choose to emphasize that particular word and no other? (I mean, why choose to emphasize that particular word and no other?) See what I mean?

Anyway, that's the feeling I get.

RE: humor. I've encountered frequent emphasis in humorous or light novels, and there's this sense of ha, ha, the writer and I are in on the joke together. So it's the same thing, an awareness of the author being present, a co-conspirator. But even in novels that are not intended to be humorous as a whole, sometimes only a particular character is meant to arouse a feeling of hilarity. The character is meant to be mocked, laughed at.* For instance, the hysterical or over-emotional character:

"What do you mean by that?" she shrieked.​

When I encounter this, I feel that same ha, ha shared with the author or the nameless narrator. If I'm immersed in the story, I may not have a conscious sense of a hand behind the writing. But if I examine how it makes me feel, I do.

*Edit, afterthought: Perhaps it's not always the character, per se, but the character's situation or predicament that is intended to arouse this feeling.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

In fiction, I never like it, but it would take an overuse to keep me from reading. This would also depend some on what words are being stressed. Okay! So, let's take a look at someone guaranteed to poorly use italics for emphasis, IMO, but I am not picking on Mr. Sanderson, because I promised to never do that again. I pull up the first book of his that shows on Amazon, check the sample, and there we go, page 1 of the Prologue!

"That was unprecedented."

Really? As if the word, one of a whole three words in a sentence, and the last sentence in a paragraph no less, needs emphasis? Is it the worst ever? No, but still obnoxious to my brain. So let's move on, all the way to the top of page 2...

"...which quite distinctly pointed toward the sphere lamp on the wall nearby."

Now, of these the most forgivable is this toward as it emphasizes something incongruous with nature... so, I get this one. It points out to someone who might be skimming the first pages of the book to see if they want to buy it, that something is up.

Now mind you I am probably different than some folks, italicizing a single word makes me slow and amplify the word in my head, it breaks me from the read with its emphasis. That annoys the crap out of me.

Same page, father is italicized... wah! Enough already! But I will torture myself with one more:

"another land, another time, another... something."

Really? Not only is this the final word of a sentence and paragraph he feels the need to italicize it? Come on.

I know what he's doing (or at least think I do, but then he tends to do this a lot with different characters... so, I may be giving him too much credit for the character voice) and I hate it. Now I must add, that in some print books the italics are less distinct and easier to just "read over" than digital or larger print versions. So, this does get kind of funky in my brain, LOL. But if they had a valid reason, ok, I'll suffer. Simply put, most do not have a good enough reason to exist.

Do you mean that you never (sorry, couldn't resist) want to see italics for emphasis? Or you don't want to see it overused? I.e. are there situations in which italics for emphasis would be acceptable?

 

[FifthView]

I know what he's doing (or at least think I do, but then he tends to do this a lot with different characters... so, I may be giving him too much credit for the character voice) and I hate it.

Yeah I suppose that's it. In a tight 3rd POV, trying to interject that character voice; or rather, letting that character voice intervene in the natural flow. So beyond the humorous uses, this is introducing ambiguity, indecision, uncertainty, and so forth. It shows the character becoming "hung up" on a particular idea, turning it around in his head.

If one isn't sufficiently immersed, then there might be a feeling that the author is stepping between reader and narrative, although this might depend on the reader.

 

[Steerpike]

Only time I use italics in writing is for emphasis, and even that rarely happens. I have to really want to offset a word or give it a certain inflection. I don't remember every using them in dialogue, and I don't use them for internal monologue.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

There are some things you would only do in dialogue. When you write in the first person, as I often do, some of those things can carry over into the narration, because it's the character's voice.

 

[Peat]

Oh, I don't know, I can think of some great books with thoroughly dislikeable protagonists. For fantasy, Ian Graham's Monument, where the protagonist has no real redeeming features or anything to make one like him.

In Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert is at least witty and engaging, but he's a thoroughly disgusting human being.

I have other examples, but those two come to mind first.

There is a reasonable chance I would not find them great books.

Bear in mind that I think the Flashman books are fantastic. A character can be pretty immoral yet still register as a like for me - although not utterly immoral. Better witty and engaging than dull and worthy.

I can read a book with boring protagonists though. Protagonists I actively dislike kill it for me.

 

[Steerpike]

I can read a book with boring protagonists though. Protagonists I actively dislike kill it for me.

Yes, I think it is all going to come down to a personal reaction. When you lead with "stating the obvious," the implication to me seemed to be that everyone should know/agree with the idea that protagonists have to be likeable. But there are a number of books where they aren't. Monument was well-received, and Lolita of course regularly appears on lists of best novels. When it comes to dislikeable protagonists, I think there are some readers who simply won't go for it, which is fine, but there are plenty who will provided the book is well done and the author manages to pull it off. Pulling it off seems to me to be harder than if one has a likeable protagonist.

 

[Peat]

Yes, I think it is all going to come down to a personal reaction. When you lead with "stating the obvious," the implication to me seemed to be that everyone should know/agree with the idea that protagonists have to be likeable. But there are a number of books where they aren't. Monument was well-received, and Lolita of course regularly appears on lists of best novels. When it comes to dislikeable protagonists, I think there are some readers who simply won't go for it, which is fine, but there are plenty who will provided the book is well done and the author manages to pull it off. Pulling it off seems to me to be harder than if one has a likeable protagonist.

Aye. This is incredibly subjective. Both in that everyone likes and dislikes different things, and in that people have a different threshold of how much they can put up with things they dislike, and in that we possibly mean different things by dislikable.

By dislike, I mean think they're a waste of ink that the author would be better off killing on the next page. I do think I'm stating the obvious to say that if a reader finds themselves feeling that way about a protagonist, that will ruin the book. Doesn't mean authors shouldn't write books with protagonists people may dislike - the completely likeable character doesn't exist in any case.

Also I didn't meant that implication. I'd argue that it is possible for a protagonist to be neither one nor t'other - say a character who's too reprehensible to be likeable but too interesting to be dislikable. I'd suggest that often, the nastier a protagonist is, the more likely they are to be sufficiently interesting to escape being dislikable. Truly dislikable protagonists, in my book, tend to be more annoying than anything else. Maybe I should have said annoying to begin with.

 

[Steerpike]

Yeah, Peat, I think that is generally the case. In almost all examples I can think of, it is. The aforementioned Humbert Humbert being a prime example. Monument pushes closest to that line that I've seen. The protagonist, Ballas, is a drunken, belligerent, and not particularly intelligent jackass. There were more than a few times where if someone had just killed him, I would actually have been happy about it. But I found the book as a whole to be quite good. That's about the best example I can find of such a protagonist who isn't even really very interesting. Every other example I can think of, Lolita, Thomas Covenant, and a handful of others, there is a lot of interest built around the protagonist, and in the case of Lolita, where this vile person is actually the first-person narrator, it is sheer wit, word-play, and a somewhat morbid fascination that carries the reader through the work (in other words, he's interesting). Great book

 

[caters]

Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?

In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"

This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.

And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".

 

[SaltyDog]

Ok, finally decided to add my two cents to the jumble, lol.

What really ticks me off is random character killings, though I do it myself. Can't be helped, though as the reader it annoys me. Writer, I enjoy it.

Crappy made up languages.

Oh and terrible chapter endings. Like as an example, one chapter of a book ended with such a sudden stop that it wasn't even a cliff hanger, more like the writer had been told to stop there and continue with the next chapter.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?

In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"

This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.

And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".

I don't think it's wise to completely eliminate any option that's available to you in writing; there's a time and place for everything, including swearing (and passive and adverbs and telling not showing)...however, it seems easy to use swearing as a cheap substitute for intensity in dialogue.

Also, you can have your characters swear without actually using swear words, i.e. "He swore/cursed," "he hurled profanity at so-and-so's retreating form..."

But, I'm not sure it's *always* possible to avoid swearing since in real life people do swear.

 

[SaltyDog]

I don't think it's wise to completely eliminate any option that's available to you in writing; there's a time and place for everything, including swearing (and passive and adverbs and telling not showing)...however, it seems easy to use swearing as a cheap substitute for intensity in dialogue.

Also, you can have your characters swear without actually using swear words, i.e. "He swore/cursed," "he hurled profanity at so-and-so's retreating form..."

But, I'm not sure it's *always* possible to avoid swearing since in real life people do swear.

Very true, you can try playing around with your own curse words, ones not as strong as our normal ones, but ones that d convey the same message.

Me? I use curse words. Bloody, Damn, bastard. Nothing like the fbomb, or sbomb, that's a little too strong for me.

 

[SaltyDog]

Curse words, I hate them in reading and speech. It is bad for anyone to say these words so how did they even get into English or any language for that matter?

In fact I try to stop this bad word trend by using no bad words in my writing. Instead of using "This ******* hurts!", I say "This hurts so much I could scream" or "Lisa screamed in pain as she gave birth" or "I am crying in pain"

This gets the same message across(that this person is in extreme pain) but in a way that is much more all ages friendly.

And I never remember bad words if a person says them. So I would say to anyone wanting to write bad scenes "Don't use curse words. They are bad to use in any form".

If your targeting a younger age, your method works and is fine. Older? I would say curse words are an important part of life and the stories.

 

[Steerpike]

I disagree that one conveys the same message with or without profanity. It may be a similar message, but it's not the same one. This reminds me of the case of Cohen V. California, during the time of the Viet Nam war, where a man was convicted of wearing a shirt that said F*** THE DRAFT. STOP THE WAR. He could have used any number of words apart from the f-word, but didn't. The U.S. Supreme Court, in considering the case, noted the following:

"Additionally, we cannot overlook the fact, because it is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force."

In other words, the Court recognized that the inclusion of profanity conveyed something different than the lack of it. Something perhaps related, but not at all the SAME message.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

For me the number one detractor is poor plotting. Plots that make me go - what the bloody hell did he do that for?! Recently I watched two series that fell flat in part because of this.

The first was a superhero series - Powers - which was otherwise excellent but which fell apart because of an utterly unecessary climax. In essence one of the antiheroes of the book, a guy who could teleport anywhere, with someones head in his hands if he liked making his ability truely deadly, wants to kill the big bad Wolf in his jail cell. Problem is the cell has a power draining device in it, which would mean he could teleport in but then be trapped. So he has to create this entire elaborate plan to break into the prison, cut the power etc and then finally kill Wolf. The truly appalling mistake in logic is that he could simply teleport into the cell with a weapon - say a shotgun, and of course a mask so he can't be identified, blow Wolf's head off, shoot out the power draining device and then leave. It'd take five seconds! Of course it'd ruin the story's climax where Wolf escapes because of what they do and then terrorises the city with mass murder etc. But that seems like a poor reason for someone not to do what is utterly simple and effective.

The second was in the series The Magicians - which sadly had a whole lot of other problems with it which I'll try not to dwell on. But the ridiculous was captured in a battle scene where our hero wizards battled bad wizards, and of course they were at a disadvantage because they hadn't practised their battle magic. So at one point one of them pulls out a gun and shoots the bad guy, and makes this snippy speech about it, which is actually fine. It could almost have been Indie on the bridge with the sword swinging nutter and had me laughing out loud. But unfortunately it wasn't.

Why wasn't it? Because the writers decided they didn't want typical spoken spells, and instead magic was performed by series of complicated finger twirling exercises. - I can live with that. It's actually interesting. But the one thing it also is is slow. Pulling out a gun and shooting some is much, much faster. So the scene makes me wonder, why the bloody hell weren't they all using guns! It's the smart thing to do. It doesn't matter how powerful your magic is, if it takes you ten seconds to cast a spell after endless amounts of finger twirling - it's absolutely useless in battle. I mean the effects may look cool on tv - but what the hell else is the battle magic useful for. Pack a damned gun and shoot the baddies. The baddies of course should be doing the same. Anything else is simply stupid.

Writers need to think about their world builds and characters. Put themselves in their character's shoes, and then think to themselves, is this logical? Is it smart? Or does my character have to do something completely stupid in order to make the plot work - in which case you have to alter things so that there's actually a reason they have to do stupid.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Very true, you can try playing around with your own curse words, ones not as strong as our normal ones, but ones that d convey the same message.

Me? I use curse words. Bloody, Damn, bastard. Nothing like the fbomb, or sbomb, that's a little too strong for me.

I probably wouldn't use anything stronger than "hell" or "damn" in all but a small few cases. But, since this is a fantasy world with no contact with earth or earth languages, that opens up a whole new dimension of issues...

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I *am* kinda struggling with how to write a character of mine who is a complete potty mouth without swearing too much...

He's a narrator, too.