# Minor Details that Annoy You in Fiction
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 3, 2013, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016 "2013-06-03T09:13:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/21 "2013-06-03T19:37:23Z")
Sue Grafton has made the decision to keep her long-running Kinsey Millhone detective series planted in the late 80’s when it started. As I recall, it was to avoid having all the traditional gum-shoe detective stuff spoiled by cell-phones and Google and stuff. However, in the one that I’m reading now, which is supposed to be set in 1988 with flashbacks to 1969 or thereabouts, she keeps inserting distracting anachronisms like having a bunch of conservative 1960’s country clubbers drinking Merlot and having a wannabe hippie chick in the same era talking about quinoa. Tofu, I could buy, but quinoa came later. She also has 1960s gardener using a leaf blower, which can’t be right.
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### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/22 "2013-06-03T19:49:20Z")
Events with dates attached that couldn’t have happened make me crazy.
In Justin Cronin’s The Passage, the first half of the book takes place in 2020 and features a little girl showing an aptitude for math when watching the “shopping for prizes” part of Wheel of Fortune. But Wheel of Fortune hasn’t used the “shopping for prizes” format since 1990.
Later in the book, a character goes to a big suburban library that still uses due date cards that need to be stamped by a librarian. A public library of any halfway decent size did away with due date cards years ago, which would make this practice about 20-30 years out of date in The Passage.
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### Author:  [@Apocalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apocalypso)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/23 "2013-06-03T20:02:33Z")
> [@Terr](#):
>
> Overuse of certain words / phrases. R. R. Martin’s (I think) “he’s not wrong”. “Wheel of Time”'s Nynaeve “tugs her braid”. Same place - females constantly “sniff”. Most writers have those obsessive word twitches, but good editors probably note them and fix them. But not in R. R. Martin’s and Robert Jordan’s cases.
One of the things that used to really annoy me about Terry Brooks was the use of the phrase “red hair flying”, which I swear he used every 2-3 pages in every single book. His shameless thievery of Tolkien and overuse of plots/characters/scenes was also pretty bad.
“arched eyebrow” is another one that MANY authors use that bugs me. I am able to do this with either eyebrow, which based on my limited personal experience is not something that many can do. In books it’s shorthand for “giving someone a suprised/questioning/skeptical look”, but nearly every single time I’ve done it in real life I’ve been asked “what is that? why are you doing that? what does it mean when you do that eyebrow thing?” and things along those lines. I should just tell them to pick up a book.
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### Author:  [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/24 "2013-06-03T20:06:57Z")
I recently read a book set in Ohio, and there were numerous instances of the author citing plants blooming or producing together that would not happen in Ohio, like strawberries and watermelon.
The other one that REALLY bugged me in the novel was that the father is supposedly a noted professor and scholar of Shakespeare and the author has him misusing the quote “The lady doth protest too much,” which does NOT mean that a person is stating something so vehemently s/he convinces people of the opposite. Any Shakespearean scholar worth his salt would know that.
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### Author:  [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/25 "2013-06-03T20:16:15Z")
This is relatively recent, so I will spoiler it. In the thriller _Sharp Objects_,
[spoiler]A murderer makes a miniature replica of an ivory floor out of the teeth of her victims. It’s the sort of thing that implies it was supposed to be a clue “hidden in plain sight” – it’s the floor of a dollhouse.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out how you could use human teeth for that and have it be even remotely flat, teeth are so lumpy. Even the parts that are relatively smooth, like the front surfaces of our front teeth, have a bit of a curve. And if you only used the smooth parts, you’d need a lot more teeth, plus the floor would have to be recessed to accommodate the rest of the tooth … and I don’t know, it’s just way too complicated.
So instead of being horrified by making a floor out of human teeth, I was all _What are you even TALKING ABOUT?_
[/spoiler]
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### Author:  [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/26 "2013-06-03T20:17:10Z")
Trains that travel on nonexistent routes.
Specifically, trains leaving New York via Grand Central when they would actually use Penn Station. [This article](http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/1979/tv-shows-break-the-laws-of-trains-and-space/) has some good examples…
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### Author:  [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/27 "2013-06-03T20:40:29Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#):
>
> I recall Neil Gaiman being mildly twitted on these boards for making an American character say “pack of cigarettes”
Apparently, the line Gaiman wrote was, “He extended a Peter Stuyvesant soft pack, and I took a cigarette.”
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### Author:  [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/28 "2013-06-03T20:59:13Z")
> [@Terr](#):
>
> Overuse of certain words / phrases. R. R. Martin’s (I think) “he’s not wrong”. “Wheel of Time”'s Nynaeve “tugs her braid”. Same place - females constantly “sniff”. Most writers have those obsessive word twitches, but good editors probably note them and fix them. But not in R. R. Martin’s and Robert Jordan’s cases.
R. A. Salvatore’s “Cleric Quintet”, a 5-book Dungeons & Dragons series about a young cleric named Cadderly. I had read, and thoroughly enjoyed his earlier “Dark Elf Trilogy”, so I thought I’d like his Cleric series. The plot itself was actually good, and that was the only thing that kept me reading. Otherwise, his ridiculous overuse of certain descriptors would have had me throwing the book (it was all five books in one volume) in the trash.
The main character, Cadderly, is the cleric mentioned in the series title. However, through the first couple books, he was reluctant to acknowledge his “cleric-ness”, preferring to think of himself as simply a scholar. And so, over and over and over, Salvatore uses the words, “the young scholar” as his favorite pronoun for referring to Cadderly. “The young scholar said…” “The young scholar looked …” “… to the young scholar”, etc. etc. etc.
Eventually, Cadderly embraces the fact that he’s called to be a cleric, and “the young scholar” is replaced with “the young cleric” repeatedly. Not long after, he meets a dragon. When the dragon asks, “Who are you?”, Cadderly replies, “I’m just a humble priest”. Thereafter, the dragon addresses him as “humble priest” every single time he speaks to him.
Cadderly’s rival is another young man serving in the same church-run library. I can’t remember his name now, but I can certainly remember that he has a “angular” appearance. Because every single time he appears in a scene, Salvatore describes him as “the angular young man”. Sometimes multiple times in the same scene.
Drove. Me. Nuts.
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### Author:  [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/29 "2013-06-03T21:11:47Z")
> [@panache45](#):
>
> Cigarettes are no longer sold by the pack? That’s news to anyone who recently bought a pack.
According to Dave Chappelle, many inner city locations sell “loosies”, or single cigarettes.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/30 "2013-06-03T21:28:37Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#):
>
> Also, I believe [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14317695&postcount=62) is the Neil Gaiman cigarette offense. It’s “packet” they take objection to.
On a related note, no American would say a _sachet of ketchup_; we have _packets of ketchup_. _Sachet_ seems to be a mostly British thing.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/31 "2013-06-03T21:32:49Z")
I’ve been a practicing Catholic for 45 years (or at least, I’ve been going top Mass weekly for 45 years), went to a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school. I’ve known hundreds of priests- and the next one I hear address anyone as “My child” or “My son” will be the first.
Any book, movie or TV show in which a priest addresses ANYONE that way turns me off, and indicates pretty strongly that the writer has never spent 5 minutes around an actual priest.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/32 "2013-06-03T21:40:16Z")
In Dan Brown’s _Flight of the Old Dog_ (a carburetor love novel if there ever was one), he has a US space station parked over the North Pole. In low-Earth orbit. The shuttle drops by.
In _Christine_, Stephen King has Arnie showing off the Fury’s restored engine to the boys, who ooh and ah over “the gleaming pistons socketed in their valves.” His father also thinks he’s stupid for believing the speedometer is driven by the transmission. (It is in virtually all postwar cars including many current models; digital sensors elsewhere are used on some cars now.)
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### Author:  [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/33 "2013-06-03T21:54:20Z")
> [@Apocalypso](#):
>
> “arched eyebrow” is another one that MANY authors use that bugs me. I am able to do this with either eyebrow, which based on my limited personal experience is not something that many can do. In books it’s shorthand for “giving someone a suprised/questioning/skeptical look”, but nearly every single time I’ve done it in real life I’ve been asked “what is that? why are you doing that? what does it mean when you do that eyebrow thing?” and things along those lines. I should just tell them to pick up a book.
I forget which one of the Discworld books this is, but one of them features a villain who spends a lot of time practicing arching a single eyebrow because he feels this will make him seem cool and intimidating. He’s inspired by the Patrician, who can of course already do the eyebrow trick.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/34 "2013-06-03T22:00:53Z")
> [@Odesio](#):
>
> We all read books or watch movies and television programs and sometimes they get minor details incorrect. This thread is all about those minor details that would have little to no consequence on the plot but nevertheless are impossible for you to ignore.
Dan Brown appears to construct his novels almost entirely of these minor inaccuracies – perhaps in an attempt to disguise the major inaccuracies with which he’s cobbled together his main plot.
When I read _Angels and Demons_, they built up so thick and fast that they didn’t just take me out of the story, they took the book out of my hands and propelled it across the room with some force.
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/35 "2013-06-03T22:03:04Z")
In Star Trek: Into Darkness…
As soon as they said the fuel tanks were removed from the torpedoes to make room for the cryo-pods, I thought, “Well, those aren’t going anywhere…” and that just made Sulu’s whole “72 TORPEDOES! DO NOT TEST ME!” speech even more pathetic.
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### Author:  [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/36 "2013-06-03T22:11:49Z")
> [@WotNot](#):
>
> When I read _Angels and Demons_, they built up so thick and fast that they didn’t just take me out of the story, they took the book out of my hands and propelled it across the room with some force.
Oh yes. Like the expert Cryptographer from _The DaVinci Code_ who uses her powers and training to divine that the secret coded words she’s looking at are…backwards. The last time that amazed me was on the back of my box of BooBerry cereal.
Or _Digital Fortress_, the book with 3-fingered security encryption programmerr Ensei Tankado, who used a mysterious partner named NDAKOTA to sell the mysterious encrypted password to his company’s software. Who could this mysterious NDAKOTA possibly be? And what on Earth could the three-fingered programmer’s super secret password possibly be? Give up? It was “three”
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### Author:  [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/37 "2013-06-03T22:27:30Z")
> [@freckafree](#):
>
> I recently read a book set in Ohio, and there were numerous instances of the author citing plants blooming or producing together that would not happen in Ohio, like strawberries and watermelon.
Maybe I’m misreading you, but I grew up in central Ohio and we raised both watermelon and strawberries.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/38 "2013-06-03T22:28:47Z")
> [@Grumman](#):
>
> Two from the same novel:
>
> An Apache being used for medevac. This is an attack helicopter that doesn’t have room to be used as an ambulance.
>
> The phrase “hungry, but not for food” being used after the phrase had been thoroughly ruined by _Fifty Shades of Gray_.
In what way did they use the Apache? I know there is a way to attach downed pilots to the outside using their vest and D-rings. I knew two that got flown out of harms way like that during Desert Storm.
> [@Morbo](#):
>
> Oh yes. Like the expert Cryptographer from _The DaVinci Code_ who uses her powers and training to divine that the secret coded words she’s looking at are…backwards. The last time that amazed me was on the back of my box of BooBerry cereal.
>
> Or _Digital Fortress_, the book with 3-fingered security encryption programmerr Ensei Tankado, who used a mysterious partner named NDAKOTA to sell the mysterious encrypted password to his company’s software. Who could this mysterious NDAKOTA possibly be? And what on Earth could the three-fingered programmer’s super secret password possibly be? Give up? It was “three”
A must read is this “[review](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10049454/Dont-make-fun-of-renowned-Dan-Brown.html)” of his newest book. It is pretty brilliant. I particularly like the reference to Mr Brown’s agent, John Unconvincingname.
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### Author:  [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/39 "2013-06-03T22:34:14Z")
> [@Antinor01](#):
>
> Maybe I’m misreading you, but I grew up in central Ohio and we raised both watermelon and strawberries.
Yes, but they probably weren’t ripe at the same time.
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### Author:  [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/40 "2013-06-03T22:57:33Z")
> [@Morbo](#):
>
> Oh yes. Like the expert Cryptographer from _The DaVinci Code_ who uses her powers and training to divine that the secret coded words she’s looking at are…backwards. The last time that amazed me was on the back of my box of BooBerry cereal.
What really got me about that one was that at the beginning of the book the heroes easily solved an anagram in their heads – IIRC, _while running from the police_. But then they were stumped for some time by a message that had simply been written backwards.
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