10 Things I Hate About Your Book

1. It doesn’t make me happy, sad, amused, angry, scared, surprised, relaxed, anxious, hopeful, amorous, enchanted or excited. But not necessarily all at the same time, although I’d like to see you try!
2. It doesn’t explore the five senses. I want to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the narrative!
3. I’m too distracted by your interesting choice of font to get into the story. We like fonts like Cambria, Times New Roman and Garamond.
4. There are no key themes or messages that stay with me after I turn the final page.
5. There either aren’t enough descriptions of the setting to take me there, or there are too many long descriptions that detract from the pace. It’s a fine balance! Setting should be scattered like a trail of crumbs for the reader to follow.
6. The writing is so dense, wordy and lacking in paragraphs I get sweaty just looking at it. I love a good thesaurus result, but naught surpasses a comprehensible, not burdensome tome, i.e. a clean, easy read.
7. All the characters’ names start with the same letter. E.g. Jake told Jared and Jason that James killed Jackson. Three pages in and I’ve already forgotten who the murderer is.
8. There’s no reason to keep reading, no anticipation about what’s to come.
9. There are too many clichés. Find a way to describe ordinary things, people, emotions and situations in unique and unusual ways.
10. I can’t get any work done because all I want to do is read. Jks, I actually love it when that happens!