One's Gotta Go: A Game

[Nicol]

When I am listening to an audio book they can all go, they are what is most confusing. Otherwise I would drop dream sequences.

[Sarah]

Definitely dream sequences.

[Amanda]

Yeah, I can definitely do without dream sequences as well, there's too much I'd lose with the others.

[Tyler]

Man, I wish 'bouncing rabidly between disparate characters' was on that list. I'm not saying you can't do it - it's a tool to have multiple storylines converge, but it ruins my immersion when it happens every 20 pages.

I guess non-linear narrative would be what I like the least on your list. I'm not a big fan of opening chapter hook followed by 'X years earlier'. I might be grouchy, but the trope feels like a cheap way to get someone interested in your book. Kind of like clickbait. Trust your story - it doesn't need the bait and switch. If it does, you have other problems.

[CBRetriever]

but lots of fantasies and fairy tales start that way:

child cursed at birth then skip to their adulthood
child's parents killed/deposed/etc then skip to their adulthood
person thrown in jail/imprisoned and then skip to release
country conquered by someone, then then skip to adulthood of child raised there
first landing on a planet then skip to established colony

[Tyler]

Yeah, but that's linear jumping, not 'a scene then a cut to X days/years earlier'. The former informs the character and the other is just to hook the reader.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

One's gotta go:

1. Dust jackets
2. Prologues in books
3. Dramatis Personae in books
4. Maps in books

[Bruce]

Dramatis personae, and I really hope you mean the character list at the beginning and not a whole book without characters.

[Bruce]

If not, I’d say ditch the dust jacket.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Bruce wrote: "Dramatis personae, and I really hope you mean the character list at the beginning and not a whole book without characters."

hahaha yes, the character list xD

[Melani]

The only one I care about keeping is 2, the prologues, because they can have something important to say and are a part of the book. The rest are just extra. I'm ok with maps, though I don't really care about them and so they can stay. Damatis Personae can be useful even if I mostly just skip it so that leaves dust jackets. I'm ok with it. The only thing they're really good for is marking the place of where you stopped reading, and sometimes they just get in the way.

[Gabi]

For me the maps can go. I nearly never refer to them while reading.
Or the dust jackets, since I never buy hardcover, if I buy dtb at all.

[Phillip]

I don't buy hardcover. Let the particles of our friends and family accumulate. We don't need dust jackets.

[Anna]

I can happily read my ebooks and audiobooks without a dust jacket 😄

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I love dust jackets. I don't have many hardcover books, but I always feel like they're in fancy dress when they have one 😊

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

It's Maps for me. I've yet to read an epic Fantasy that uses them to determine maximum distances that can travelled in a day and so don't care about them.

Dramatis Personae is useful for slow readers or those that jump from series to series but neither describes me.

Dust jackets get in the way when reading so I take them off/leave them at home. A friend thought I was reading the bible when he spotted me on a train. They save so much time when browsing my shelf for favorites though and are often pretty.

If I could only save one it would be Prologues. I read a book last year with a great prologue that the remainder didn't live up to and I don't regret it one bit.

[CBRetriever]

Dust jackets for me. Too often they get ruffled/torn on the edges and then your bookshelf starts to look tatty

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Keep prologues, ditch the rest.

[Amanda]

Dramatis Personae for me, I'm not going to remember who anyone is anyway, by the time they actually appear in the text, so the only time it means anything to me is when I'm already familiar with the characters anyway. (That said, the one in Seven Surrenders cracked me up.)

I'm another person who takes the dust jacket off while reading because it's just a nuisance, but it does make the book look pretty and I like having the option to use the flap as a bookmark.

[Sarah]

Dust jackets. They're so annoying.

[DivaDiane]

If I can ditch dust jackets while I’m reading the book and have it back (please) when it sits on the shelf, I’ll go with that one. Otherwise, dramatis personae is not something I use often. I love maps and if there is one I look at it often. I find it very hard to translate the written word into a visual, so they help me visualize things, which I do like, if it’s offered.

[YouKneeK]

I definitely want to keep prologues and maps. I primarily read e-books, so I don't care about dust jackets, although I did find them annoying back when I read books that had them. Too much sliding around and coming loose, which then makes them susceptible to crumpling or ripping. Like some others mentioned, I usually ended up taking them off until I was done reading.

I’ve encountered character lists that I found too spoilery, revealing character relationships or roles that don’t form until later in the story, affecting how I read the story up to that point. For example, the character list at the beginning of Robin Hobb’s The Dragon Keeper was horribly spoilery. My encounter with that marked the point when I stopped reading them.

Since spoilers are the root of all evil, I think it’s time to uproot dramatis personae and once again bring spoiler-free goodness to the land. Although in all fairness, I encountered a huge spoiler in the map for both Daughter of the Empire and Servant of the Empire, at least in the Kindle edition, so they aren’t entirely free of evil either. I think it’s less common, though!

[CBRetriever]

character lists at the back of a book are OK though

[Rachel]

Having read my last two new books with their jackets off because the real covers were SO AWESOME... I say get rid of dust jackets! Bring back beautiful hardback designs.

[Raucous]

Anna wrote: "I can happily read my ebooks and audiobooks without a dust jacket 😄"

It would be neat if my ebook reader and audiobook player could optionally show dust jacket images on the cover or case, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go there. I'm not holding my breath waiting for the technology.

[Beth]

Diane wrote: "If I can ditch dust jackets while I’m reading the book and have it back (please) when it sits on the shelf, I’ll go with that one. Otherwise, dramatis personae is not something I use often. I love ..."

+1 on all this, especially the map. I have a hard time picturing wilderness or the outdoors as description--a side product of a lifetime as a 97% indoorsy person, I suspect--and a map helps me picture how things relate to each other, at least on the larger scale.

Of anything, dramatis personae can go. Good enough reason to stop reading books with hundreds of characters. ;)

I like dust jackets. and am another person who removes the dust jacket while reading a book. I am kind of hard on books (all set to go to reader's prison after that confession), so it's nice to have the cover to disguise the scuffs and such after I'm done.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Prisons allow solitude, moments of reflection, and lots of time to read. The appropriate punishment for book maltreatment is being made to socialize constantly. At a club with techno music and no ear plugs. I'm sorry, Beth. It was nice knowing you.

[CBRetriever]

I'd suggest something worse than techno music: electronic music/Musique Concrete compositions like those of Stockhausen (Helicopter Quartet), Varese, John Cage, György Ligeti (Poème symphonique which is entirely created using 100 metronomes) and what ever my husband played one day when I was in the shower. That piece led to me jumping out of the shower and running out of the bathroom convinced the air conditioners was coming through the ceiling.

I did like the Helicopter string quartet and it can be heard and seen on this page:

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-mu...

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

:chortle:

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Y'all are merciless haha!

Okay, here's another set of options for you bloodthirsty wretches ;-)

One's gotta go:

1. Complete silence
2. Page formatting (space at margins for the spine, justified print, paragraph indentations, etc)
3. Reading time without interruptions
4. The ability to change pages yourself (i.e. your Kindle is on a timer, or your audiobook only plays at one speed)

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

I can do without complete silence. I prefer it when reading but when people are around I pop headphones in and drown out their conversations with music that I pay no attention to.

I'd absolutely hate having to wait for the page to turn. And as far as interruptions go I've burnt enough meals whilst reading to know what my priorities are. A lack of page formatting seems truly evil.

Edit:
I didn't answer this correctly. Unless the interruption is physical I can probably ignore it. Page formatting is irksome but workable. Silence is preferred but non-essential so I'll say the ability to change pages myself. Too fast or (worse yet) too slow and it would entirely ruin my reading experience.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Yeah, agreed. In fact I rarely read in complete silence.

[Phillip]

I can drop formatting. I don't care (compared to the other options). I just want a good story. Let the book snobs point a jagged right edge.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Phillip wrote: "I can drop formatting. I don't care (compared to the other options). I just want a good story. Let the book snobs point a jagged right edge."

But the print will go into the margin, too. It's ALL formatting. Which still might be okay with you.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Oh, I remember reading a book with small margins that made reading the words nearest the spine a nightmare. I might have to change my answer.

[Phillip]

I stand by my choice. I'm not going at someone else's place or getting literally taken out of the story for interruptions. Between silence and weird formatting, I choose formatting. The book will have to be more interesting, but the rhythms will eventually be identified and go to the background of my mind. It's like sitting in the front row of a theater. A great opening will have me forget neck discomfort.

[Phillip]

Plus, I mostly read on my Kindle.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

I'm actually not a huge fan of complete silence, so that one can easily go.

[Sha]

Kindle pages on a timer sounds like the opening of a horror movie. //Shivers

[Amanda]

I wasn't wild about the first 3 but #4 literally made me recoil in horror, so I guess I can give up complete silence.

[YouKneeK]

This one’s harder. I like all those things.

I would argue there’s never really complete silence – there’s the sound of your own breathing, however faint. There’s sounds from nature (birds, insects), or the sound of electronics running, or possibly the sound of traffic depending on where you live. But I enjoy my almost complete silence way too much to risk giving it up if the evil person who implements my choice doesn’t agree with my argument!

Reading time without interruptions is pretty important to me also. I feel like my comprehension is worse when I’m reading in fits and starts due to a lot of distractions. Even the expectation of distractions can be a distraction for me.

The ability to change pages myself is important too. If it’s too slow, it would be as bad as having reading time with interruptions because my mind would wander and I’d lose the flow of the story. If it’s too fast, then I’d miss chunks of the story which would be even worse.

So… page formatting it is. It would be unpleasant, especially if there are no paragraph breaks or white space at all and it’s all just one big wall of text, but I can work with it if I must. The other things would be harder for me to live without.

[CBRetriever]

now that there's an option for Kindles to switch from justified to jagged right, there's no excuse to publish an unjustified book (unless it's poetry or a book of letters). My slight OCD suffers with a jagged right edge

I can do w/o the page turning

[DivaDiane]

I don’t remember what it’s like to read uninterrupted, really, and I don’t really need silence to read, so actually, either of those could quite easily go. The other two fill me with horror.

[Melani]

Oh I'm torn. Page formatting like that would be awful. Imagine a world with no paragraph breaks people, that's what you're giving up here. On the other hand, the inability to read at my own speed would be amazingly aggravating. It would break up the story, especially because I read fast, and sentences continue from page to page so not only would it break up the story by interjecting long pauses it would destroy the flow of language the writer created.

I'm ok with not having complete silence as my ability to ignore noise when I'm reading has caused me trouble before. loosing uninterrupted reading time would be annoying, but I could deal. However those other two? I need them both gone and I'm not choosing.

[Leticia]

"Complete silence" or "Reading time without interruptions" are things I have rarely, so they're nothing I would really miss as much as the other two. Of course there are noises that aren't as bad as others. The noise of building a house, or sawing wood nearby are very annoying.

[Beth]

None of the above, definitely. I am easily distracted as is, so 1 and 3 are no-gos, no formatting sounds terrible, and #4 would induce enough anxiety I would never want to read again.

I'll have to go with complete silence. Just let me turn on some white noise (on headphones/earbuds if need be) and I'll be good.

[Michelle]

#4 has got to GO! I think that would be the worst. I am a fast reader, so I would hate not being able to turn my own pages at my own pace. Especially if I'm invested in a particularly good part!

[M.L.]

1. Complete silence. (As in complete dead silence? There never is. It would be weird.)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

M.L. wrote: "1. Complete silence. (As in complete dead silence? There never is. It would be weird.)"

No, like you know. No music, no tv, no one talking around you, no one doing house projects nearby...noises that break your concentration. Not like that room where your own heartbeat is the only thing you can hear and it drives people crazy within an hour or two.

Unless that's what you need, I guess, and then congrats, you're a superhero!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Inspired by a real life event, which one can go?

1. Period marks/full stops
2. Commas
3. Quotation marks
4. Capital letters for anything other than proper nouns