What makes a book unreadable

[zolasdisciple]

i find the biggest mistke authors make is when they try to shock the reader into continuing reading.4 example the disgusting autopsy scene in the executioners song. what do you think guys:idea:

[Dark Muse]

Well I am not one who is usually easily shocked, grossed out, offended etc... by things that I read. For me what makes a book unreadable is if I find the plot boring, and I am not really drawn to any of the characters. If I have a blah, or neutral feeling about all of the characters in a book then it is difficult to read because I simply do not care what happens to anyone.

[Hobbes]

For me it depends on the story, but the real turn off
is if the protagonist is just following the plot, and the author does nothing to make them real to the situation or just living for the plot and no outside life.
This is usually with dramas and not comedies.

[Lady Marian]

It's wayyyy too rambly and the author cannot keep his mind on the plot. That said, I've read several books like that, just because the characters were so good.

[weltanschauung]

a horrible book is kinda like uglyness, really. you cant describe it exactly, but you know right away when youre facing it.

[Bakiryu]

unnecessary wordiness. I enjoy words and descriptions but when the book drags on and on and you feel like someone is trying to remove your spleen through your eyes....yeah. I also don't like books with shallow characters or over stereotypical.

[Cellar Door]

Predictability, cliches in writing, too sticky-sweet of a plot, too many mellow-dramatic scenes, poor character development, and when the book begins to take itself too seriously.

[weltanschauung]

man, i dont agree at all with that. jose saramago can describe the movement of a falling chair in 50 pages. and he can name characters as generic as "the doctor, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint"

[Ghuyuran]

Dan Brown. Enough said.

I will add that a writer who is trying a little too hard is just annoying to read.

Shallow characters, cliché storylines, predictability, and everything else that has been mentioned, also contributes in making a book unreadable.

Come on writers, give us something FRESH.

[djy78usa]

What makes a book unreadable? The word "Stephen" appearing anywhere near the word "King" on the cover...

I kid, I kid.

[LadyWentworth]

unnecessary wordiness. I enjoy words and descriptions but when the book drags on and on and you feel like someone is trying to remove your spleen through your eyes....yeah.
I was going to say something along these lines, but I like the way that Baki said it. So I will just quote her and agree with what she said. :)

[JBI]

Poor writing is the most obvious, poor delivery is the second most obvious, and predictability the third. Seriously though, poor writing is the worst mistake a writer can make.

[librarius_qui]

No book is unreadable.
There's book for every reader
& reader for every book.

There are different moments, as well.
Maybe something I don't (& that I CAN'T!!!) read now
will I stumble on it in some sort of future (near, distant, no matter ...)

Tricky question, though ...
Academically speaking, there may be "poor writing".

In Brasil, they speak a lot about Paulo Coelho,
who's a great success in France,
and really hated in Brasilian (academic) environments ...

His writing is something I hope never to read.
I avoid best-sellers & religious books of less than 100 years of age as well ...
Together with those manuals on "how to be happy/successful" &c..

That's me, anyways ...


librarius
:crash:

[JBI]

Yeah, but some books have one reader - the author.

[Drkshadow03]

Yeah, but some books have one reader - the author.

Oh snap! :D


-------------------------

Textbooks. Almost every textbook I've ever attempted to read is unreadable. Sometimes the history textbooks are passable and I won't count Literature texbooks since those are really more like anthologies of literary works rather than textbooks proper.

But trying reading some of the library science textbooks, blech!

[librarius_qui]

Yeah, but some books have one reader - the author.

These will be my books! ... I probably will die, and they'll never be read by anyone but myself! :lol: ay ... :crash: oh no! :bawling: :sick:


librarius
:D

[Cyanous-Lotus]

I am automatically turned off to anything that makes use of horrible clichés or overused plots. Especially vampires.


These will be my books! ... I probably will die, and they'll never be read by anyone but myself! :lol: ay ... :crash: oh no! :bawling: :sick:


librarius
:D
Ah, but almost all good writers are only noticed when they're dead. :D So you'll write them, read them, die, and THEN you'll be famous!

[Josef K]

A lot of things make a book unreadable but my primary problem is books that blatantly rip off other books. Fan fiction is great but should never be published. Eragon comes to mind here...

[Joreads]

When you know what is coming before you turn the page it is time to put the book down

[Indicate]

When the writer is a clumsy describer.

[absurda]

Boy, I tried to read Stephen King and Dan Brown, because so many people liked them, but I couldn't even finish those books! Now I see I'm not the only one... phew!
I used to like Anne Rice, but now her books are unreadable.

[mmaria]

I don't like the books which deal with horrible side of life. They can be good from the point of their literature qualities, even very good, but I don't read them.

[kelby_lake]

Things which are just put in purely to shock, and then it happens so often you get annoyed.

Big social commentary.

[kiki1982]

For me it is not so much the plot. The plot may have been beaten to death or predictable, if it is well written, you don't mind.
Clichés are indeed a nuisance, but not for a writer who actually uses them well. They can have a comical purpose, or can reference to another work, or can even have the oposite prupose (the knight sitting on the white steed being bad, and not vice versa).
The thing that has been mentioned about Saramago here ('the man with the squint' and such utterances), is not so much clumsy writing because the first one to do it was Homer. In the meantime it has become quite common, certainly for authors who wanted to give their tales a kind of epic nature...

I suppose the author that can't put a text together is a bad writer, no matter the plot, the clichés, the references, the descriptions etc. A text consists of sentences, both short and long and not of only short sentences that school kids can put together, or even sentences that are no sentences in the strict sense of the word. I suppose the primary meaning of a book is that it consists out of sentences in a certain sequence that make the reader understand at least what the book is about. If you fail in that respect, for me, you don't merit the name 'writer'.
That is what for me makes a book unreadable.

For the rest there is for every taste a book.

I do have particular authors in mind but I won't name them. We should wonder infinately why they were ever published...

[Babyguile]

I thought this would be easy to answer but it's actually not for me.

Though I would say:
- if the writer is obviously trying to indoctrinate the reader with their beliefs without using any literative skill or tact. This is what turned me off Dean Koontz' novels, he tends to be overly anxious to express his anti-science, pro-religious beliefs.
-ABOVE ALL is books that have REALLY short chapters (a couple of pages), each one beggining pretty much immediately where the previous one left off, almost finishing the next half of the sentence. It's totally unneccesary and totaly breaks the flow of the story.

[DeadAsDreams]

For me its when the author isnt very good at the writing part, of writing. This being closely followed by cliched plots, annoying characters and the plot structure of most modern day horror writers.

[kelby_lake]

An annoying narrator! Other characters I can escape but the narrator is inescapable!

[PabloQ]

Well I am not one who is usually easily shocked, grossed out, offended etc... by things that I read. For me what makes a book unreadable is if I find the plot boring, and I am not really drawn to any of the characters. If I have a blah, or neutral feeling about all of the characters in a book then it is difficult to read because I simply do not care what happens to anyone.
This encapsulates my response to this question. I will throw in predictability as another factor. But I don't need much to keep me reading a book to the end. Even one quirky character will keep me involved just so that I can see what whacky Uncle Joe is going to do in chapter 41. But having said that, I finish almost everything I start.

[maraki16]

a childish, predictable plot, lack of depth of the characters, a really complex writing that is hard to understand and makes me feel like the author was drunk and could not think before writing, or a writing that has nothing interesting to show by means of 'decoration' of the narrative or cannot make me feel something; fear,romanticism, anxiety, troubling etc...

[MorpheusSandman]

Things that make a book unreadable:

-It's written in invisible ink.
-It's written in some abstract code that nobody but the author understands.
-It's written in a language I don't understand.
-It's a book on tape/CD

Just some examples.

[Niamh]

What makes a book unreadable for me are the following;
Bad storyline that leads to nowhere, where the author places certain things into the story that the author could have used but didnt. what was the point of writing in the first place!!!
Badly written, under developed, stereotypical characters. just because a character is aware of the enviorment, doesnt mean they have to be a hippy!!! :rolleyes:
Bad structure. If the story, sentences etc have no structure, i cringe.
Too much descriptive. there should be a fine balance between descriptive and dialogue, or if teh write babbles on for ten pages and still hasnt gotten to the point they are trying to make.

[librosdesangre]

I think it depends on the genre. I can't stand predictability in horror novels or crime novels. Unpredictability is an essecial tool in this kind of books. do you imagine some Poe tales without those unpredictable ends? I can't. When a book is predictable, it is boring:as-sleep:. In this books the author is supposed to make you feel scared, frightened, he/she is supposed to make you face a mystery or something unknown... and it's impossible achieving this being predictable.

What I also don't like is when the author writes about things that don't go anywhere. When he/she doesn't get to the point. They write pages in which they don't tell the feelings, the thoughts or any other thing important to the story.

[morphicresident]

For me, it is difficult to find any particular strain of novel to be the "unreadable" kind. As long as there is a strong, original narrative voice, any style can be performed quite well.

The issues start to happen when a writer attempts to write in a voice that is not his. Of course, this is the inherent problem in teaching "Creative writing": you can't teach creativity.

[RG57]

Any story that rambles without a plot. I don't mind horror, drama or even a comedy but it has to something that makes sense within the first chapter. I always avoid celeb autobiographies/biographies as they are much the same - 'This is how I became famous and how you helped me!.

[librarius_qui]

I always avoid celeb autobiographies/biographies as they are much the same - 'This is how I became famous and how you helped me!.

HAHA!!! :lol:

If I ever become famous, I'll make my efforts to remember that!

(I'm actually kidding -- I'll never be famous!)


libr_q
:crash: