Common Criticisms In My Book Reviews

What Is This Page?

Like you, I’ve noticed many of my book reviews contain criticisms in common. Instead of explaining/describing my subjective criticism each time it’s encountered, it made more sense to collect them in one place so I can link to them from future reviews. This page is that list of common criticisms, dislikes, and/or complaints.

Here is a tl;dr version, with links to longer sections on this page:

Lack Of Physical Character Description
Character Descriptions Too Late
Skip-Ahead-And-Then-Go-Back-And-Explain
The Unusual Repeating Word
Failing To Have An Ending
Needlessly Complex Or Obtuse Prose
British English

No Character Descriptions

This one, I first noticed when reading fiction by John Scalzi; he studiously avoids describing what his characters look like. (He knows this.) As with most other criticisms, this one is subjective — I realize other readers aren’t bothered by it like I am. But I have a particular mental hangup regarding memory and appearance, in which I can remember things far better if I have a visual image attached to it. When an author doesn’t describe his or her characters in a story, I do what every other reader does and decide what those people look like. This works if there is a short character list, but does not work in books or stories with many characters, especially if those characters have similar personalities.

(Note on Scalzi, specifically: After having trouble differentiating between his many characters, due to his lack of physical descriptions and the fact that most of their personalities are very similar, I finally noticed that his main differentations between them are job descriptions, ranks, and background. Once I caught onto this, I was better able to keep track.)

On the other hand, I can think of a few reasons to avoid physical character descriptions when they don’t relate to the story:

More casting choices if the story is ever optioned as a movie/show
Efficient writing
Allows more readers to see themselves in particular characters
Ensures fewer types of people are excluded from the character list
Avoids accidental use of annoying tropes (“emerald green eyes” in fantasy novels, for example, or the hero with a “square jaw”)

Note: I have noticed in my own attempts at writing fiction that I also sometimes do this. Though I have a picture in my head of what a character looks like, I don’t always remember to put that to the page. Maybe it&rssquo; something I can work on, or think of a really good reason not to.

Character Descriptions Too Late

Not quite as annoying as the complete lack of character description is the mistimed or misplaced character description. Many times I have been reading a story and imagining a character in my head when the author adds later that the character has some feature that is completely at odds with my picture. Usually, in these cases, it’s too late; I keep using my original mental picture.

Skip-Ahead-And-Then-Go-Back-And-Explain

Most of us are accustomed to the storytelling trope wherein the author starts us in the middle of some action and then later goes back to explain how the characters arrived at that action. But a few authors use it far too often. I began noticing in Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, for example, that almost every chapter does this — starts with some unfamiliar location, people, and action, and then after a page or two he goes back to explain how we got there. Repeatedly.

I understand the temptation. Readers and viewers can be impatient and don’t want to slowly lead up to action scenes with a bunch of exposition. This is probably why so many movies use a similar device: open the movie with a climactic scene but then the next scene begins with “three days earlier”.

However, overuse of this tactic throughout a book just seems like lazy writing.

The Unusual Repeating Word

I first noticed this in a seven-book series by Kevin J. Anderson, in which he used “shudder” way too often. Yes, it’s a common enough word that we all know what it means, but not common enough that we use it every day. Some of us probably haven’t used the word in years. Yet Anderson used it almost constantly throughout a seven-book series, rarely choosing any possible synonym (bounce, bobble, convulse, flutter, jitter, quake, quiver, shake, shiver, spasm, tremble, twitch, and vibrate, just to name a few that would have worked). Then I started seeing similar things happening with other writers. I wish there was a name for this phenomenon, but basically: when one common-but-not-very-common word shows up abnormally often for no reason in a particular book.

This isn’t world-ending, but it does distract me once I notice it and it takes me out of the story.

(And, to be clear, I do not here refer to the well-woven stories in which authors intentionally use certain repeating words or phrases to tie together certain ideas or to overtly reinforce some point. I am referring to the phenomenon of an author unintentionally latching onto some words and using it willy-nilly to the point of distracting the reader.)

Failing To Have An Ending

This is usually seen in books that expect sequels and in very short stories, but either way it bugs me (less so in short stories, which are often intended to allow the reader to imagine what might have happened next). I don’t know who first thought of this, but the first time it stood out for me was in the second Matrix movie, which resolved nothing and required the viewer to return for the third Matrix movie, many months later. Since then, it seems to have become more frequent in movies and books that expect (are already contracted for) sequels.

This is just bad writing.

Everyone understands the “introduce this new bit right at the end in case there’s a sequel” gambit, and we’re all fine with it. And we also understand the idea of ongoing series or trilogies, which have an overarching story arc that can’t be contained in a single book. But in those cases, it is incumbent upon the author to resolve at least some of the subplots or character arcs, or answers at least some of the unanswered questions.

Needlessly Complex Or Obtuse Prose

Usually found in the writings of “intellectuals”, I can’t think of a reason to construct sentences in overly convoluted ways — if a simpler construction would yield greater understanding. To be clear, I’m a fan of parenthetical phrasing in my own writing, and I have been known to utilize highfalutin vernacular when it suits me — but I almost always deploy these devices when I think it helps the clarity of my meaning or intent. Sometimes this plan goes awry, and if such Hitchens-esque sentence structure forces the reader to go back two or three times to diagram the antecedents, relative clauses, prepositional phrases, and so on — it’s an example of poor writing (and poor editing in some cases).

British English

I do wonder whether readers in England sometimes get distracted by American spellings, styles, and other differences when they read books printed in the U.S. Because it bothers me when it’s the other way around. To a lesser degree, I do mean the usual grey/gray, colour/color, and organise/organize, though if not overused they’re not that distracting — mainly because we’re very accustomed to those spellings even from U.S.ians. But mostly I mean the spots where entire words are different. “I hid the gun in my boot” can have an entirely different meaning in the two countries, especially without context. “John checked his post” might refer to flipping through letters if the writer is English, but I would immediately picture a fence post, or some other vertical wood or metal stake in the ground. (In more recent years, I might think he was checking something he posted online, like a blog entry or Facebook comment.) Without context, these can be incredibly annoying.

And yes, I’ve noticed they do abbreviations differently, like “Nasa”, which to me might indicate the name of a fictional city or a person from another country, rather than NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Or “MP”, which has always meant “military police” in my experience, but turns out to be a legislator in countries with parliaments.

I do understand that some of this is due to my own ignorance, but I can often see a huge difference in British writers; some seem to easily avoid these distracting words and phrases while others seem to inject them frequently.

Even more distracting is when I know the author is British but they sometimes use American terms like “parking lot” (instead of the British “car park”) or I know the author is American but they occasionally use British spellings like “grey”.

Conclusion

I might add to this page later, but currently these are my most consistent complaints.

Again, I intend this page as something I can link to from reviews so that I don’t have to retype the same things over and over.