what takes you out of a story?

[dbskyler]

I just finished reading a really good story on Teaspoon that had one tiny flaw: the writer kept referring to the city of Berkeley, California (and once to UC Berkeley), but kept misspelling it as "Berkley." No big deal, right? One little missing "e." Except each and every time I came across the misspelling, it took me straight out of the story.

This particular mistake probably only affected people like myself who are very familiar with Berkeley. But it got me wondering: what takes you out of a story?

For myself, I think the number-one thing is OOC behavior. (Or, to put it more accurately, behavior that I consider OOC, which I recognize may not be the same as what the author considers OOC.) After that, it's misspellings and grammatical mistakes, but this depends on their frequency -- a typo or two isn't a problem, but a consistent error drives me crazy (I start waiting for the next time it will show up). Cultural errors are also big issues for me. Well, since I read mostly in Doctor Who, I probably don't notice a lot of the cultural errors (and maybe even make some myself), but if I do happen to come across one, it takes me right out. Finally, I also have a problem with canon errors, which can be difficult when I'm reading a story that has been jossed. Usually I can think, "Oh, this was written before 'X' happened" and then go on, but I can never not notice the discrepancy.

How about you? What takes you out of a story?

Comments

[shadowturquoise.livejournal.com]

 Coming a bit late to this discussion. My top Doctor Who peeve that throws me (briefly) out of a story is Tardis instead of TARDIS.  I will, however, keep reading. 

One thing that will keep me from being invested in a story is the use of "sound bites" from canon. When characters speak the exact same phrases in a fic that they have spoken in a different setting in an episode it throws me straight into the second Doctor episode The Mind Robber, populated by fictional characters who can only speak words that have been written for them.

Another is extremely long sequences of dialog without identifiers. This can be done well, but if it isn't it is confusing. If the people speaking aren't obvious by voice or context i get lost after 3-4 exchanges and have to count lines to see who is saying what. Maybe I'm just a lazy reader. In any case I've been known to lose interest in a story for that reason

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, "Tardis" bothers me too.

I don't like it either when an author repeats a lot of dialogue that appeared in an episode, regardless of whether it's in the same context or not. I've already seen the episode; why is the author now making me read it? (Of course, that may be hypocritical of me to say since I've put in snippets of episode dialogue myself in fics, but there was a "good" reason, and hopefully I've not put in "a lot," aka "too much.")

The long dialogue sequence thing without clear identifiers is just bad writing, IMO.