# 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:** 7
### Author:  [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2013, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/121 "2013-06-04T23:32:29Z")
It’s the only way his lifting and catching feats makes sense, though. It works for me.
Btw, “Bizarro #1” is part of my childhood canon.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/122 "2013-06-05T00:26:02Z")
> [@AtomicDog](#):
>
> It’s the only way his lifting and catching feats makes sense, though. It works for me..
Well, sorta. Superman can decelerate, balance, and gently tilt to the ground a large commercial aircraft while holding onto the fiberglass nose. But the nose still gets crushed a little. I guess the telekinesis is imperfect. But why is it imperfect in a way that makes it look like he’s handling a balsa wood model?
Anyway, a wizard did it. It’s not as bad as the latest Iron Man movie, where
Iron Man catches a dozen or so people in freefall by having them grab onto each other (with some unexplained hand-clenching electric device), and then decelerating a couple hundred feet above the water. And moving laterally while he’s at it; a maneuver which would only increase the stresses on their arms.
The worst part is that there was a strategy that would have worked, and be exciting and funny, while staying within the established rules. Iron Man’s suit breaks into a dozen or so pieces, each of which has independent propulsion. So the suit should have split into pieces, with each one saving a different individual–one by the arm, another by the leg, etc.–and of course, one by the codpiece. Each piece can then decelerate gently on land.
Yes, they would have had to to advance the giveaway that Stark is in the van, not the suit. No biggie.
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/123 "2013-06-05T00:41:34Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#):
>
> 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’.
If you have to climb stairs to get into the first floor (and this is very common) even just a few of them, then the window is going to be much closer to the floor of the room than the it is to the ground. I certainly wouldn’t have any trouble getting from the floor to a window sill in my house (other than having a screen in the window, which despite being in every window of every house I’ve ever been in never show up in fiction) but it’s far enough from the ground where while I wouldn’t worry about breaking my neck, I would certainly have the possibility of spraining an ankle or something like that on my mind if I jumped out.
I also don’t see why pajamas in summer are odd. Some people wear pajamas, some don’t. Whatever.
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> Forgetting how old their characters are.
Recently saw a really bad example of this in Texas Chainsaw (3-D). The opening scene sets up that the main heroine of the movie was supposed to have been an infant at the time of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, set in 1973. The main action of the movie takes place in 2012 (or later) as you see 2012 as a date on a tombstone. There are Iphones streaming live video at one point in the movie, further saying “this is happening close to today, not 10-15 years ago”. So, the character is nearly 40, right? Wrong! She’s a 20 something hottie hanging with her 20 something friends (Leatherface ensues).
> [@AtomicDog](#):
>
> Superman actually has this. It’s called “tactile telekinesis.”
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> It’s hilarious that when people post about comic books they reference whatever version they read as a kid as canon.
>
> “Tactile telekinesis” was something John Bryne invented in the 1980s. They ditched it as soon as he left the comic. It’s a horrible dirty secret that everyone is too embarrassed to mention today and besides that was 17 reboots ago. But it gets brought up regularly by fans giving away their age.
>
> Of course, I’m someone still angry about Gwen Stacy dying.
Actually Byrne just had some unnamed field doing this sort of thing, and he didn’t really dwell on it.
Tactile telekinesis came along well after Byrne’s run. It was Superboy’s power, given to him by Cadmus as an attempt to replicate Superman’s powers in a human clone when they were unable to actually crack Kryptonian DNA. Of course some hack later changed Superboy’s whole origin so that he actually DID have some of Superman’s DNA (and Lex Luthor’s as well :rolleyes:), but there’ve been at least two reboots since then and I dunno if Superboy even exists anymore.
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### Author:  [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/124 "2013-06-05T01:05:57Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> Well, how about [this?](http://www.stmaryschurch.us/why_an_episcopalian2.html)
>
> “A priest is a person who has been affirmed by the larger community as one designated to convey the means of grace to Christians in the community. Only bishops may ordain priests and deacons. Priests baptize and preside at the Eucharist, preach the Word of God, and hear confessions. It is the priest who pronounces forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ if the bishop is not present … Episcopalians may make private confessions to a priest and indeed some should, but private confession is not obligatory in the Episcopal Church. A general confession of sins is part of each Eucharist. The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis came to make private confession a part of his Christian life as he grew in his faith. We would do well to follow his lead.”
>
> That said, married Episcopalian clergy [can apparently become Catholic priests](http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/MARPRIE.htm).
It’s true, both these things are theoretically possible. I just find it desperately implausible, from my experience, that it would occur to a random non-Catholic shop assistant who doesn’t go to church much that the thing to do in an emergency situation is “clear your conscience” by confessing your sins to your (ex-)pastor.
I suspect what was actually going on there was that Gibson was meant to be an Episcopalian, but that Gibson (a Catholic) and Shyalaman (a Hindu) didn’t actually know much about what Episcopalians do in real life.
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### Author:  [@UncaStuart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncaStuart)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/125 "2013-06-05T01:23:20Z")
The veerrry minor detail that annoyed me in Elmore Leonard’s _52 Pick-Up_ was that the businessman protagonist had been a fighter pilot flying P-47s in WWII, and there was a description of him firing the plane’s six machine guns in aerial combat. Well, other US fighters had four, five, or six machine guns, but the P-47 was known as the badass plane with _eight_ machine guns. Like I said, veerrry minor, but it dropped me right out of the narrative.
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### Author:  [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/126 "2013-06-05T05:55:07Z")
> [@TBG](#):
>
> I also don’t see why pajamas in summer are odd. Some people wear pajamas, some don’t. Whatever.
Having been a teenage boy myself, a teenage boy wearing pajamas would strike me as highly odd.
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### Author:  [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/127 "2013-06-05T07:02:54Z")
> [@Victor\_Charlie](#):
>
> I work in local television and movies about television news NEVER get it right. Hell, even tv shows about television news rarely get it right.
Yes. What really annoys me is when people are shown holding cameras incorrectly. I’ve lost count of the number of times on a TV show or movie that I’ve seen someone shooting with their left hand holding the handle on top of the camera or holding the viewfinder.
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### Author:  [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/128 "2013-06-05T07:29:50Z")
> [@TBG](#):
>
> Tactile telekinesis came along well after Byrne’s run. It was Superboy’s power, given to him by Cadmus as an attempt to replicate Superman’s powers in a human clone when they were unable to actually crack Kryptonian DNA. Of course some hack later changed Superboy’s whole origin so that he actually DID have some of Superman’s DNA (and Lex Luthor’s as well :rolleyes:), but there’ve been at least two reboots since then and I dunno if Superboy even exists anymore.
He does, and trust me, you DON’T want to know what his current origin is.He has DNA composed of three strands (not three sets of chromosomes, mind you, three strands, as in a triple helix), one from each of the three people he was cloned from. (Wouldn’t mixing DNA from more than one person be more like _in vitro_ fertilization than like cloning, anyway? But it’s a major point that he’s a clone because on Krypton, clones were _eeeevil_!) Oh, and who are the three people? Despite early clues that Lex Luthor was one, it turns out his clone-parents are Superman, Lois Lane, and their son from an alternate/possible future.Next time I tell you you don’t want to know something, you’ll listen, won’t you?
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### Author:  [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/129 "2013-06-05T08:30:50Z")
> [@EllisDee](#):
>
> Having been a teenage boy myself, a teenage boy wearing pajamas would strike me as highly odd.
I think I quit wearing pajamas when I was 12.
ETA: I do remember reading an old etiquette book in 6th grade (found it in the school library) and being completely baffled by a rule that said boys should wear a robe when in the hallways at school. It wasn’t until I was much, much older that I realized the “rule” was referring to boarding schools.
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### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/130 "2013-06-05T11:32:45Z")
> [@EllisDee](#):
>
> Having been a teenage boy myself, a teenage boy wearing pajamas would strike me as highly odd.
Couldn’t “pajamas” just refer to the t-shirt/shorts combo that most teenage boys wear to bed?
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### Author:  [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/131 "2013-06-05T14:56:15Z")
> [@Morbo](#):
>
> Or a “.9mm” which I’ve read on occasion. Oooh, scary!
Ha, I know NOTHING about firearms and ammunition, so whenever I have seen that in a book, I have always thought they should give it a better name because it sounds so tiny.
Now I get what the problem is. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/132 "2013-06-05T16:02:30Z")
> [@Diceman](#):
>
> Wow. I doubt that even one person in my acquaintance has ever heard the word _sachet_ before. It simply does not exist in American English, in any context.
I checked on Google Ngrams, and found that sachet is used in American English books: more frequently than “sashay” but less frequently than “sachem” [Google Ngram Viewer: sachet,sashay,sachem](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sachet%2Csashay%2Csachem&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=)
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/133 "2013-06-05T18:23:10Z")
> [@EllisDee](#):
>
> Having been a teenage boy myself, a teenage boy wearing pajamas would strike me as highly odd.
Might be an age-related thing. Every teenaged boy on television in the 1950s wore pajamas. It wasn’t conceivable that they’d wear anything else. That surely was influential. All stores sold pajamas for boys.
We need to know a lot more about the setting of the book AuntiePam read. For a lot of times and places and incomes a teen wearing pajamas strikes me as the right description, even if it’s wrong for lots of others.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/134 "2013-06-05T21:26:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> Might be an age-related thing. Every teenaged boy on television in the 1950s wore pajamas. It wasn’t conceivable that they’d wear anything else. That surely was influential. All stores sold pajamas for boys.
>
> We need to know a lot more about the setting of the book AuntiePam read. For a lot of times and places and incomes a teen wearing pajamas strikes me as the right description, even if it’s wrong for lots of others.
Present day. Mid-July. That’s what made pajama-wearing seem odd.
But this author also said it was dark at 7 p.m. 🙂
As for the window, the pajama-wearing kid saw another kid looking at him through the window. The author had described the other kid as being short. If he’s short enough that his face is seen at the window, there was no reason for pajama kid to be scared of the drop when he went out the window (which had no screen).
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### Author:  [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/135 "2013-06-05T22:16:12Z")
> [@Morbo](#):
>
> We’ve had entire threads on this, but when an author tries to add realism by using geographic details from a place I’ve lived, it’s colossally irritating when they get it wrong. Unfortunately I lived in San Francisco for 15 years, and writers are stinky with abusing San Francisco.
>
> Example: There was a book where the victim is an Army private (or something) that’s stationed at the Presidio. In the first chapter she leaves her house in St. Francis Wood and goes for an early jog along Park Presidio into Golden Gate Park.
>
> This is an author whose research involved looking at a map, then stopping. St. Francis Wood is a neighborhood full of [enormous](https://www.google.com/search?q=st+francis+wood&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47380653,d.cGE&biw=1600&bih=782&wrapid=tlif137037728054810&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=SEyuUZrXBKGCiAKQiIGABQ) houses that in no way anyone but Ray Odierno could afford, and “Park Presidio” is actually 19th Ave, which is one of the busiest streets in the City. Exercising along that street would be like going for a jog down the Schildergasse. And it isn’t even called Park Presidio until you get into the Park, which is like 2 miles from St. Francis Wood. I bet it looked like a perfect choice on paper, though. It was just all so unnecessary - we didn’t need to know anything other than that she went for a jog in GGP.
>
> Oh, and the Presidio was no longer an Army base for _years_ before the story was set.
One of my pet peeves is authors who do the opposite: load up their prose with usually irrelevant local details:
“Barbara turned her blue Lexus right onto Piedmont Avenue, idly contemplating her forthcoming evening with Carter. _Dinner at Bone’s, or perhaps Fogo da Chao_, she thought, pulling into the BP on Pharr, you know, the really big one that always takes forever to make a left out of, _then dancing at Sambuca. Or maybe go casual - ribs at Fatt Matt’s, and live music at Smith’s Olde Bar. Then back to Carter’s loft on 14th St, overlooking Piedmont Park…_”
The subtext seems to be “Hey! Read me! I’m a Local Author!” Anne Rivers Siddons seems to suffer from this, based on the one chapter of _Peachtree Road_ I was able to get through.
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### Author:  [@Tara57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tara57)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/136 "2013-06-05T22:25:12Z")
I didn’t enjoy Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies as much as I expected because the main character, Thomas Cromwell, is referred to as “he” at almost every mention. Very rarely is he named. Every other male character is referred to both by name and “he”. It kept pulling me out of the book. My mind expects “he” to be the most recently referenced male. “He” would be referenced in the middle of the action and it would take me a moment to figure out which “he” the author meant.
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### Author:  [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/137 "2013-06-05T22:35:14Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> Anne Rivers Siddons seems to suffer from this, based on the one chapter of _Peachtree Road_
An Atlanta native once remarked of that book, “She needs to be a lot more specific.”
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### Author:  [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2013, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/138 "2013-06-05T22:53:11Z")
> [@Tara57](#):
>
> I didn’t enjoy Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies as much as I expected because the main character, Thomas Cromwell, is referred to as “he” at almost every mention. Very rarely is he named. Every other male character is referred to both by name and “he”. It kept pulling me out of the book. My mind expects “he” to be the most recently referenced male. “He” would be referenced in the middle of the action and it would take me a moment to figure out which “he” the author meant.
It was a weird annoying quirk, wasn’t it? I didn’t notice it as much in _Bring Up the Bodies_ though. Either I’d gotten used to it or Mantel had dialed it back a bit.
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### Author:  [@ruh-roh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruh-roh)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2013, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/139 "2013-06-06T01:20:41Z")
In almost every space story ever told, gravity is just not a problem. Artificial gravity is apparently so common and easy that it isn’t even worth a mention. Even the smallest of craft have it, and when the big ones break apart it seems to continue to operate, no matter how badly damaged. But step outside the ship, and you are "floating in space.
Okay, there was that one Star Trek movie where it broke. I said “almost” every story.
Hey, if you can control gravity that easily it would seem you could soon (dare I say it)… take over the universe.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2013, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/140 "2013-06-06T04:23:58Z")
The OP specified things that weren’t crucial to the plot, but I still have to give a shout-out to the idiocy of _The Handmaid’s Tale_ where, in a world of declining birth-rates, the handmaids are given three chances to get pregnant (by a 60+ year old man, nonetheless) and if they don’t get preggers by that third time they’re cast off to live in some radioactive/toxic wastelands.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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