What Makes Me Stop Reading?

Like most librarians and writers, I love to read - novels, poetry, picture books, biographies. You name it. BUT, when it comes to critiquing somebody's manuscript, it's hard to read everything. Here are a few of my pet peeves in writing, sins that make me yawn or lose interest immediately and put a story down.

1. Stories that begin with a long, unpopulated description of a place. Unless you're writing a segment of The World Without Us, who cares? Put a living being in there, for god's sake, then perhaps I'll have a reason to keep reading.

2. Cliches. A work of fiction that begins with a character waking from a dream, starting at a new school, etc. or that opens with a cliche phrase, such as the infamous, "It was a dark and stormy night."

3. Too much backstory. I lack the patience to read through a lot of meandering background information. A little here and there is okay, but the opening chapter of a novel needs to pull the reader forward, not muddle around in the past. I want a story that begins with action and by that, I don't mean a violent or shocking scene that practically makes me wretch or one so bizarre I can only laugh, but one that makes me care enough about the characters that I want to read more.

4. Stock Characters. You know them -the jolly fat man or lady, the mad scientist, the wicked stepmother, the blond haired, blue-eyed hero or heroine, the world-weary reporter, etc. I don't want to read about the same old same old.

5. Too much description. Here's one sin I'm often guilty of. Sometimes the story gets buried under heaps of adjectives and adverbs and it's hard to know what's going on. The advice to use strong verbs instead of using adverbs to prop up your weak verb choices is a good one. And take it easy on the adjectives. Let the story speak for itself, when you can.

6. Poor grammar and punctuation. If you're not sure how something is spelled or punctuated, then look it up. Easy enough. A manuscript littered with errors is a big turn-off and no editor is going to wade through it to see if there's a story worth salvaging from the wreckage.

7. Talking heads. It's hard to follow a story when you don't know who's speaking. Use dialog tags (a simple "he said" is enough) or add another sentence that lets the reader know who's speaking.

8. Nothing happens. I've read lovely settings and been introduced to some interesting characters, but sometimes absolutely nothing happens in a first chapter, leaving me to wonder if it's a story at all. To keep me reading, you need to introduce a dilemma or conflict otherwise why bother?

These are a few of my biggest writing pet peeves. What are yours?

What's the Point?

Lately the administrators I work for - the superintendents and principals - have acquired a taste for picture books that tout a message. Not a subtle theme, mind you, but a heavy-handed "message" we're all suppose to swoon over or something. One recent picture book our superintendent drooled over was The Invisible String. I don't remember the author's name, but clearly this was one of those message driven books that teachers and administrators like and kids clearly don't. The book was about our interconnectedness. Certainly a good theme - a great one even - but kids don't want a book that's all about a message.

Kids want stories that pull them along head first, head over heels - characters they can empathize with and laugh with, cry with, worry over. After 20 years of reading many books to thousands of kids, I know kids love good stories with believable characters, not books whose primary purpose is to send a message, to moralize, to edify. Nothing will make a child's eyes glaze over more than a heavy-handed message meant to educate them. As Samuel Goldwyn said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." Not that children's books shouldn't have a theme - they should - but the theme should emerge organically, subtlety from the story, the story where we worry about the characters and only later realize we also learned a little something in the process.

A Deft Touch

The photo above is once again by my friend, Joan C. Jones and the flowers you see are bluebells. She took this photo on a recent visit to England. In clumps, even the humblest flower radiates a certain beauty. For me, this forest looks magical, like a setting for a fairy tale.