Jun 14 2009
Would you keep reading?
In the prologue, a beleaguered character takes the phone off the hook. Two paragraphs later the phone rings.
What if you read it twice to make sure you didn’t miss something? What if the next chapter was a new character/time/POV, so that your question as to whether it was another phone/cell phone/dream/imagination was not readily answered.
Not sure if I’ll continue because I can’t shake the fact that an author and agent and a slew of editors missed something very simple.
Would you keep reading?
Yeah, to make sure my sense of things being wonky was verified.
I think I’ll continue, Angie, simply because a friend of mine loved this book. She doesn’t read like a writer though!!
Ugh, that would drive me crazy. I read a legal thrilled last year where the lawyer’s partner was referred to as his ex-wife, then in the next chapter they were at home, sharing dinner on the couch, and OBVIOUSLY married. Drove me crazy.
As for your situation, I guess it depends on the book. I’m big on finishing everything I start so I’d probably give it at least another chapter.
^^^ thriller. Not thrilled. lol.
Once boring character who knows what they are doing beats seven exciting characters who aren’t consistent. Kinda like life.
Amy:
Here’s the thing, I think. As writers ourselves, we have got to turn off the internal editor a little if we are to ever read fiction (hence, as you know, my reading pile of astronomy and physics texts).
For me, it would depend. Do chapters one and two hold up? If so, I take it as a fluke. If not . . . too much other stuff in my TBR pile. But as a publisher author myself . . . I know I have a couple of flubs that have occurred through my own fault–but SOMETIMES because an inexperienced copyeditor changed something–and introduced a mistake . . . and then something happened (such as in Freudian Slip . . . I didn’t get to proof the galleys . . . it was LITERALLY on the press when it was discovered I never saw the copyedit and I had TWO DAYS to do it . . . ). It happens . . . sucks, but it happens. So I tend to be a LITTLE forgiving.
I have one copyeditor (Invisible Girl) who was too young to remember the Vietnam War. She wanted to change some things that I then showed her were correct . . .
E
I too would have problems with continuing to read as I would struggle with following the timeline/storyline. My step-mother just self-published her first book. I read the last page and it jumped all over the place – they were outside, then they were inside, it was summer, it was fall…made no sense whatsoever. I think she was trying to blend several endings together.
Guess it pays to have it read several times before print?