# 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:** 3
### Author:  [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/41 "2013-06-03T23:01:50Z")
> [@MLS](#):
>
> Yes, but they probably weren’t ripe at the same time.
I knew there was something I was missing.
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### Author:  [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/42 "2013-06-03T23:01:45Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> 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.
That was fantactic!
> [@](#):
>
> Renowned author Dan Brown gazed admiringly at the pulchritudinous brunette’s blonde tresses, flowing from her head like a stream but made from hair instead of water and without any fish in.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/43 "2013-06-03T23:03:19Z")
> [@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”
Or in _The Lost Symbol_, where the villain gets a “jug of Bunsen-burner fuel - a viscous highly flammable, yet noncombustible oil”.
I’m not going to read any more of his books. I get a headache trying to work out what it is he thinks he’s trying to describe, even when it’s something as mundane as a door.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/44 "2013-06-03T23:03:24Z")
> [@Morbo](#):
>
> That was fantactic!
I know. I had to reread it a few times.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/45 "2013-06-03T23:13:53Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#):
>
> In Dan Brown’s _Flight of the Old Dog_
Correction: Dale Brown. Not to be confused with the other lousy writer named Brown.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/46 "2013-06-03T23:18:21Z")
In one of Simon Hawke’s _Time War_ books, a (time traveling) character complains about the inaccuracy of the media talking about the Chernobyl reactor “burning”, and says it’s probably a matter of scientifically uneducated reporters using burning as an analogy for fission. Except - in reality, the media referred to the Chernobyl reactor as burning because it did burn; one of its many problems was that it used a moderator made of _flammable_ graphite. [Link:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl#Accident)
> [@](#):
>
> On 26 April 1986, at 01:23 (UTC+3), reactor four suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere[23]:73 and ignited the combustible graphite moderator. The _burning graphite moderator_ increased the emission of radioactive particles, carried by the smoke, as the reactor had not been encased by any kind of hard containment vessel.
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### Author:  [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/47 "2013-06-03T23:18:58Z")
> [@Antinor01](#):
>
> Maybe I’m misreading you, but I grew up in central Ohio and we raised both watermelon and strawberries.
But did you have ripe strawberries and ripe watermelons at the same time? In the book, the characters are cutting up ripe strawberries and watermelon they just bought at the local farmer’s market. In NE Ohio, the strawberries are long gone by the time watermelons come in.
ETA:What **MLS** said. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2013, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/48 "2013-06-03T23:52:29Z")
> [@Lamia](#):
>
> 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.
_Making Money_
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/49 "2013-06-04T00:18:37Z")
One thing that’s always annoyed and mildly amused me is the tendency of certain female authors (and it’s _only_ female authors who do this) to refer to a character’s genitals, regardless of gender, as “their sex”. For example; “He pressed his hard sex against her soft sex and they had sex.”
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/50 "2013-06-04T00:22:40Z")
> [@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.
The clue for
Sophia
was pretty obvious, at least it should have been for half the people in the book.
---
### Author:  [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/51 "2013-06-04T00:45:36Z")
> [@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.
Timiothy Zahn in his original _Thrawn_ trilogy had every situation going to hell in a few heartbeats. Especially noticable in the abridged audiobook versions.
He also wrote a series (_Conquerors_ IIRC) in which his alien species’ heart was named a ‘hunn’. So lots of situations went to hell in a ‘hunn beat’ :rolleyes:
I used to be a bit of a Tom Clancy fan until I read the first of the _Op Centre_ books that had an F-117 stealth fighter launching and recovering from an aircraft carrier. :dubious:
I know Clancy just had his name on it rather than writing it himself but having something that badly wrong get to publication under his name was a red-flag for the future and it was the last book of his of any kind I read.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/52 "2013-06-04T02:13:54Z")
Technical errors, like others have said—part of the curse of being a nerd, I guess. It can range anywhere from amusingly annoying to “incisors scraping on a chalkboard” level.
I mean, little “oopses” here and there, I can overlook or laugh off. But it’s when the errors make up _major_ elements of the plot that get me.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s the nitpicker in me that’s more affronted, or the artist. Am I being pedantic about things that _I_ specialize in, but that are secondary to “[the big picture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6l-GWwZZ7c#t=2m02s)”…or am I just noticing that the author is so focused in their big story that they didn’t bother building a world to support it—or even if anything _could_ support it?
And, of course, this depends on the _type_ of work the fiction is. Anything that fancies itself as _halfway_ “serious” is going to get less slack than, say, “Chainsaw Maid V: The Flamesawening!”
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/53 "2013-06-04T02:17:40Z")
In the beginning of _Jurassic Park_, there’s a couple throwaway characters who you never see again. One of them thinks about how crazy it is for the other - his wife - to be worried about her looks since she “was homecoming queen at Rice University.”
(Then their baby is eaten by din[g]os and they’re never heard from again.)
Anyway, the problem there is Rice’s approach to electing Homecoming Queens:
[http://timeline.centennial.rice.edu/entry/367/](http://timeline.centennial.rice.edu/entry/367/)
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### Author:  [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/54 "2013-06-04T02:26:44Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> 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.
On a similar vein (but possibly less minor), Shyalaman’s _Signs_ drove me absolutely nuts trying to figure out what variety of priest/pastor/minister Mel Gibson was supposed to be. Was he Catholic? Then why was he married? Was he protestant? Then why does the chick in the shop ask him to hear her confession? (Though they never actually call it confession, but that’s clearly what it is.)
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/55 "2013-06-04T02:31:17Z")
It’s the mundanities that take me out of a story, details added for flavor (or padding), rather than the big stuff.
Like a teenage boy wearing pajamas to bed in summer, then getting out of bed when he hears a noise and putting on his slippers. Pajamas in summer? Slippers just to walk to a window? Then he sits on the sill of the window – he bends down so his butt is on the sill, and the window is on the first floor. He swings his legs over and is frightened by the drop to the ground. The window is low on the inside – how high can it be on the outside?
It would have been better if the author had said ‘Jimmy climbed out the window’.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/56 "2013-06-04T02:54:42Z")
Forgetting how old their characters are.
I recently read a novel set in 1935 in which a character, the mother of another major character, is said to be in her early 60s. She’s much older than any of the other characters, clearly of another generation. Later, her story is given in detail. She married her husband when she was 19, just before he went off to the war, meaning WWI, and gave birth to her daughter the next year. The daughter is on her third marriage, BTW. The book is set in America, not England.
I spent a long time trying to make any of that work. It can’t. It doesn’t really make any difference to the plot what year she got married, just that she had a daughter, but why make up a backstory that’s clearly impossible? How could any editor let that through?
That’s the worst example I’ve ever encountered, but if you’re the type to work this stuff out - especially in mysteries where the details could be critical - you’ll see it everywhere.
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/57 "2013-06-04T03:32:37Z")
Lots of books irritate me - getting details that can be relatively easily looked up in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica will definitely do it. [No idea why, but I think the 1911 EB was the gold standard of encyclopedias or something, it seems like every library had one and many homes I visited had one. Go figure.]
Books where modern sensibilities are plunked down in people of Ancient Rome, or Medieval England. Believe me, very few people in Imperial Rome would consider 14 years old an unsuitable age for marriage [or sex] - old enough to bleed, old enough to breed. A 14 year old boy was old enough to have been apprenticed for anywhere from 5 to 9 years in much of medieval europe - prolonged childhood is a modern concept.
Can I add craptastic copyediting? Grammer and spelling errors that should be picked up by competent copyeditors, or where the writer needed to be whacked with a brick and reminded that there are rules of spelling and grammer and everybody should be copyedited.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/58 "2013-06-04T07:00:13Z")
> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> Can I add craptastic copyediting? Grammer and spelling errors that should be picked up by competent copyeditors, or where the writer needed to be whacked with a brick and reminded that there are rules of spelling and grammer and everybody should be copyedited.
Did you do that on purpose? Tell me you did that on purpose.
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/59 "2013-06-04T07:14:49Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#):
>
> Then he sits on the sill of the window – he bends down so his butt is on the sill, and the window is on the first floor. He swings his legs over and is frightened by the drop to the ground. The window is low on the inside – how high can it be on the outside?
British English? First floor means second floor.
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### Author:  [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/60 "2013-06-04T07:19:41Z")
Extremely small sense of scale. For example in Timothy Zahn’s _Heir to the Empire_, the right-hand man of Grand Admiral Thrawn is the captain of his flagship-way above dozens of other ranks. Or in the _Hunger Games_ trilogy, the Districts are little more then city-size despite there being only thirteen of them to constitute a whole nation covering North America.
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