Editor's Notes #20: What Makes You Stop Reading a Book? Part 2 of 2

So in Part 1 of this topic, I told you all how I never allowed myself to stop reading in the middle of a book . . . until I started reading some really horribly written stuff when I got a Kindle a few years ago.

Now that I've given myself the okay to JUST STOP, I've found my tolerance level has gotten lower with each passing year and each subsequent novel. The hours in any given day are much too precious to waste on a bad book. I read for money when I edit. I read my Bible each morning. I read and correct my daughter's writing assignments. I read for my day job when my boss gives us a book for the management team to discuss, chapter by chapter. IF there is any time left between editing jobs or assigned books, I read for the sheer pleasure of it. Needless to say, if there's no pleasure involved, I'm not going to bother reading for long.

Here are a few things that will make me put a book down and never look back (unless I'm physically throwing it over my shoulder in the trash):

• No edits. This is a nonnegotiable item for me. If there are grammar/spelling errors, poorly constructed sentences, misuse of words, or worse (though I can't imagine what "worse" would entail), that book practically shuts itself.
• Characters that are caricatures or stereotyped. The bad guy who has no depth because he's always bad, and not even interestingly bad . . . just "B" movie bad. The protagonist who's good at everything: sports, school, parents love him, no zits . . . you get the idea. The mysterious stranger who's not even mysterious for a good reason. The wise elderly person. The clumsy beautiful girl with low self-esteem.
• If I have no desire to read beyond the third chapter. I need to care about someone—anyone—or something that happens in those first few chapters, or I'm done. If I find myself skimming to see if it gets better, then why continue?
• Unrealistic dialogue. If an author writes a seven-year-old child into a book, that child should act and speak as a seven-year-old child, unless it's a creepy book where the child is possessed by an ancient being who speaks like . . . um, an ancient being . . . and everyone knows this isn't the way that child would normally speak. 
• Plot inconsistencies. If I am confused, I tend to think that's everyday life. However, if I'm confused while reading fiction, I'll flip back through what I've read to see if I somehow missed a major plot point. If I haven't missed anything and I'm still confused, then I'm going to assume the plot somehow went from A to C without a Point B in the middle. This happens when an author makes major structural changes from draft to draft but neglects to look at the work as a whole to see if it still makes sense. Every detail matters, and that's where a good beta reader will be indispensable prior to a book's release.
• Believability. Even the craziest fiction has to have some degree of believability or the reader will be drawn out of the story time and again. I always think of Martyn V. Halm (whose Amsterdam Assassin novels are pretty terrific and incredibly well written, by the way) talking about verisimilitude and his insistence that things at least seem like they could be real in order to keep the reader immersed in the created world, no matter how out-of-the-box that world may be.

I'm sure I have many more peeves that cause me to be harshly judgmental* about a book someone may or may not have worked hard at writing, but these are the biggest ones that come to mind easily. *Let's face it: I'm only kind and tactful if I already like the person.

What makes YOU stop reading? Do you look for things I haven't listed here? What's your number one deal breaker that causes you to shout, "Enough!" I'd love to know so I can add it to my own list of things to gripe about. And if you've read the list above and recognize something you do in your own books, then my best advice is STOP IT. Stop it and get a beta reader to politely and tactfully tell you all these same things, only for money.

I've placed a good guideline below. If you get "BINGO" from any of your manuscripts, it's time to start rewrites so others won't stop reading.