Mar. 22nd, 2012

dbskyler: (up to eleven)
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?

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