immersion breaks

[l8rose]

Currency gets me as well. Especially when it could have been solved by just researching. I read a CN novel that kept talking about how poor the MC was in the 70s when she was making 70 yuan a month. For those who don't read a lot of Chinese stuff (or are normal and did not obsess about China in the fifth grade), the average household in China in the 70s would make around 300 yuan in a year (most made less though). That's a household. With multiple people working. I struggled to finish that one.

The soulmate/marking/whatever to an a-hole in Werewolf stories. Like, this is supposed to be a connection created by the god/goddess the people worship in this story but almost every single male half is downright despicable. They almost always do something horrible to the female before she goes off to find her happy ending with her real true love. Each story always describes this connection as super mystical and like the other person is their ideal other half. Yet, somehow, the first guy is always a douche canoe.

Slang and cuss words that don't make sense. I get it, the F bomb is one of the most universally known cusswords in the world but it just doesn't work in certain situations. Ancient China, for example, probably didn't use the f word. It gets the point across but it's kind of jarring. Same with using sayings that feel out of place. Sure, "Blood is thicker than water" sounds cool but it wasn't said in Ancient Greece.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Present tense narration. It adds literally nothing to a story. I'm not saying a good story can't be told with it, but any story that's good in present tense would equally as good or better in past tense. As it is, it's used almost exclusively by pretentious "I am not a mere author like you, I am an ARTIST!" types who desperately want people to think they're edgy and different, but aren't good enough to actually stand out, so they change "he walked across the room" to "he walks across the room" and then pat themselves on the back for how outstandingly out-of-the-box they are.

Wish I hadn't lost my horror novel Hunter's Moon; every chapter was first person present tense (and never from the same character two chapters in a row) It's the only way that the writer can leave the character's fate ambiguous until it happens (and was a lot of fun writing out how the characters experienced their deaths) - sadly, it got too dark (none of the characters had any redeeming qualities at all) so I could only work on it sporadically, and then the computer it was on died without any viable back-ups existing.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Poor/unnecessary descriptions and unrealistic/bad dialogue is what takes me out of most stories