This week's Long & Short Reviews prompt asks us to consider the books, movies, TV shows, whatever, we don't want to revisit...fiction we were able to sit through once, but no more. There are a lot of them so, rather than embarrass one writer more than others, especially when so many of them have been forgotten, let's consider things about books that make me not want to revisit them. Today's Top Ten List might not be the same list I'd make tomorrow. There are a lot of ways to turn readers off...
1. All the characters are boring, shallow, conformist people. (Talking to you, Judy Blume.)
In the real world, there probably are whole social clubs of teenaged girls with nothing on their minds except how to fit into a group that never seem to talk about anything but the process of puberty. I never knew any, but that's not to say they don't exist. But unless you can tell a true story about how they changed or at least how people got them expelled from the school and/or run out of the neighborhood, there's not much excuse for writing about them.
2. All they do is break the Ten Commandments.
Thefts and murders have to be committed in order for detectives to solve them, and an occasional adultery may be worth mentioning as a motive for the murders, but the characters I read about should have a few wholesome thoughts of their own. (And a book has to be very good to keep me reading about characters who drink heavily or use other drugs. Sherlock Holmes can have his pipe, but people who are not Arthur Conan Doyle should create drug-free characters. Realistically written drug dependence is boring. Fantasies about people who can use drugs without the addictions or other side effects are stupid.)
3. All of them are extroverts, or want to be.
If people don't have things they do when they're alone, they're no treat to be with. I like characters who have personalities and talents. I don't positively root for extrovert characters to die, in fiction, but I always like it when introverts win.
4. All the sympathetic characters look like the writer.
In Gone with the Wind all the blond characters are repulsive except for Ashley, and he's not exactly the man people want him to be, either. To be admirable, in Margaret Mitchell's world, a person needed to have black or at least red hair. In Atlas Shrugged all the good people are blond. Those two blockbuster novels got away with breaking a lot of rules but, even for their authors, it would have been better to have written for a reasonably diverse cast.
5. People are discontented with their circumstances, but none of them does anything about it.
In real life nobody's situation stays perfect for long. People work out ways either to mitigate the unsatisfactory conditions of their lives, or to feel contented with them. Sometimes they do both--a character might not mind the cold wind on his face as long as he has a warm coat, boots, etc. Only in "Socialist Realism" do people passively sit around feeling discontented with their lack of wealth and never think of ways to raise money. "Socialist Realism" is sooo unreal. And boring.
6. All the characters seem to suffer from an obsession, probably because the writer does.
During what they have for spiritual experiences, they're still thinking about picking their noses. Or not just for the length of a short story about one game, but throughout a novel, they live for games and don't otherwise have lives.
7. Or all the characters of the opposite sex ever think about is the characters of the same sex as the writer.
Some writers' opposite-sex characters are nothing but sex objects. This often happens in clean romances where they're not actually having sex. Even so, we might be told that a character is a doctor but when he's allowed to speak for himself all the doctor tells us is about his attraction to the nurse who's the main character.
8. Child characters have "sexuality."
Some children and most teenagers do have sexual feelings, but why inflame pedophiles.
9. A teenaged girl's boyfriend acts as her counsellor.
Some teenaged girls may want to believe their boyfriends are founts of wisdom. Adults should not indulge them. Teenaged girls need to know that, no matter how fascinating hormones may make teenaged boys seem, they're still half-baked, hormone-raddled, and unlikely to be good sources of guidance for a dog.
10. The storyteller evades storytellers' traditional duty to reward good and punish evil.
The conflict in a story can be between goods, or at least between things that aren't evil. Should Jill marry Jack or Joe? Which team will win the trophy? However, if the team that cheats wins, the storyteller needs to do something about that.
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