This post is based on a panel at Archon: Reader’s Block — What can make you put down a book and never pick it up again?

One million things, so how about sorting them out into FASTEST DNF and SLOW-AND-RELUCTANT DNF.

A) Fastest

Author lacks skill with the English language.

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

I had been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless.

Nothing has ever made me shut a book faster than tripping over the obvious wrong word “parameters” in the first two sentences of this book. I thought: Parameters? She’d been monitoring … the … parameters? Of the thicket? Does she have high-tech equipment, like a Star Trek scanner, with which she’s monitoring the parameters of the thicket? Which parameters is she monitoring? Number of life forms? Amount of biomass? Average ambient temperature? Gravitational fluctuations? What can she mean?

But no. That’s not what’s going on. She’s not doing anything at all with any parameters of anything. She’s just watching the thicket. The edge of the thicket, apparently. So she meant perimeter. Ooookay, but then why is the word plural? Because a thicket can really only have one perimeter.

Also, “had turned useless” is not really correct. It should be “had become useless.” That’s more subtle and wouldn’t have made me stop in the same way, but I would have noticed it. Anything awkward in the first few pages, any wrong words, any obvious mistakes — I don’t mean effectively breaking rules of grammar, I mean mistakes, that’s a hard no.

For me, any mistakes in the first few sentences causes the ultimate in fast DNF.

What about things that aren’t actually mistakes? Boring prose can do it almost as fast, but it takes a page or three for me to decide no, really, it’s boring. This happens faster in dialogue. It turns out that dialogue matters A LOT to me, so witty or fun dialogue can make me read past less-great expository prose. Here’s another example of boring prose where the dialogue in particular struck me as painfully cliched and boring. These are novels other readers have really enjoyed. I’m personally pushed hard away by boring, cliched prose unless something else pulls me forward. Though both obvious usage mistakes and boringness are probably equally likely to make me put a novel down with in two pages, the former is more objectively obvious and the second is more a subjective experience.

A subset of “boring” is “wooden.” If the characters seem to be wooden facades of characters going stiffly through the motions of actions and reciting pointless dialogue, I’m out. This particular extreme type of “wooden” prose is surprisingly common, more in self-published books (I think?), but also in traditionally published book. For example, here’s a tiny snippet from a self-published novel:

“Good morning, General.”

Chrys started. He hadn’t noticed the Great Lord Malachus Endin entering the briefing room. “Good morning, sir.” He gathered his notes, arranging each of them meticulously, and placed them in the sleeve of the leather book.

Malachus approached him. “How long have you been awake?”

“A while, sir.” Chris sat up straight. He adjusted the book so that it was lined up with the edge of the table.

“Is this about Iriel? I hear she is recovering well.”

“She is, sir. We were very fortunate.”

I’m waiting for someone to say something remotely interesting, except actually, sorry, I’ve stopped reading this book. Here’s another teensy snippet, from (I think) a traditionally published novel:

“Captain on the bridge!”

“As you were,” Jackson said with a dismissive wave. He climbed up into the raised command chair and began navigating through menus on the display attached to the left armrest. “Ensign Davis, what is the crew status?”

“All crew accounted for, seven still not aboard,” the short, shapely operations officer reported, consulting her display. “Those even are being brought to the ship by local law enforcement. A ship’s officer will need to meet them at the gangway to secure their release.”

“XO to the bridge,” Jackson said loudly. The computer would automatically ping Commander Wright’s commlink and inform her she needed to report to the captain on the bridge. “OPS, tell the marines at the main gangway that the new exec will be down shortly to deal with the locals.”

“Aye, sir,” Ensign Davis said, speaking into her handset.

This one is actually worse than the first example because the Ensign says “Aye, sir,” to her handset, not to her captain. Also, she’s “shapely,” and give me a break. But my actual feeling about both samples here is that that every motion and every word is fake. I don’t mean AI-generated. I mean that flat wooden puppets are going through the motions of acting out a story. That’s how it feels to me. Every single word and movement is boring boring boring.

Quiet openings do not have to be boring. I have absolutely no problem with a quiet opening. In fact, I have done extremely quiet openings myself.

An extremely cliched first page can do it. Just plain horrible writing can do it, even if the prose is not boring, because there are infinite ways for prose to be bad. I’m thinking of awful pseudopoetic prose. Basically, anything that makes the writing itself look bad on the first page or two.

B) Slower DNF

Grittiness exceeds my personal threshold.

You drag me through the gutter and shove me into despair in the first chapter, I’m out.

Did you with a prologue in which the pov character is tortured to death? I’m not making it to the first actual chapter, bye.

I’m a LOT more tolerant of grim elements if they are elided; it’s probably fine if this stuff is in the backstory. As long as what I actually see on the page are references to horrible stuff, it’s probably fine. If the horrible stuff is shoved in my face, well, kindly do not do that in the prologue or chapter one and I’m more likely to get past it and finish the novel.

C) Very late DNF

Intense, ongoing character stupidity has become an increasing problem for me. I can be 50% or 75% of the way through the book, and if the protagonist KEEPS doing insanely stupid things, I’m probably going to just quit. The SECOND time the protagonist in A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking decided to trot over to somebody in authority and tell this person all about the problem, I figuratively threw the book across the room and never went back to it. Naive and innocent is all very well, but good Lord above, there are limits.

Completely different: grinding, continual unkindness. I don’t have an example to link to, but there have been several books in the past few years where I kept thinking, Is anyone ever going to be nice to anybody else in this book? And when I give up on that happening, I just sort of peeter out. The book sits there and sits there, without my officially giving up on it, and after a year or so I give it away (if it’s a physical book) or it drifts down into the infinite Kindle pit of books I’ve forgotten about.

How about you? What elements make you super fast to toss a book on the discard pile? What, if anything, might make you stop when you’re more than halfway through a novel?

The post What makes you DNF a novel — and how fast? appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.