good and bad writing techniques

[watervole]

The replies and comments to my poll about scientific accuracy in science fiction http://www.livejournal.com/users/watervole/139771.html#cutid1 were extrememly interesting. (If you haven't already filled in that one, I'm still reading replies to it - I'm tempted to do another poll focusing more on sociological and biological factors.).

Please could you try this one on writing techniques and expand on your replies in the comments. What writing habits annoy you the most in stories you read? What will make you put down a book before finishing the first page? What makes you hit the back button when reading fiction on the web?

[Poll #652911]

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

POV: I prefer third person limited, with no more than one POV per scene or chapter. I have a strong aversion to omniscient, and don't want to read first person unless the voice is spot on.

Tags: A majority of dialogue should be tagless, 'said', or 'asked'. Any other tags should be carefully chosen with characterization or plot (rather than just delivery) in mind, and kept to a minimum.

Accents: The accent shouldn't baffle the reader. Most of it should be word choice and sentence structure, but I don't mind an occasional dropped 'g' (goin') or elided word (gonna). When I write Jarriere, I skate right on the edge of what I think is acceptable, but that's primarily for what I hope is humorous effect.

Backgrounds: No info-dumps. Background of any kind should be trickled in, apart from brief scene-setting, though I'd make an exception in the case of an author whose voice is so interesting that the background becomes interesting as a result. But that's up to individual taste, of course, so in general, I prefer to read background a sentence here, a sentence there.

Spelling and grammar: Honestly? If a writer can't be bothered to either learn the tools of the trade, or find a good beta/editor, then they don't care about the reader's enjoyment and I'm not interested in their fic. Forget three or more errors in the first few pages: I don't want to see more than three errors in a whole novel, and I've been known to throw books and fanzines across the room for consistently bad punctuation.

As far as I'm concerned, the bottom line is that the medium should be transparent, so as not to throw the reader out of the story--which means that any deviations from standard English should be done with a specific purpose, and not just out of ignorance or laziness.