What stops you from reading someones work?

[SaraDiva728]

I have trouble reading stuff on the computer or some other screen. It makes me inpatient or something. I'm trying to do better, though. I have many things about books (if that counts). #1) an ugly cover. There's nothing worse than a romance that sounds interesting, but has ugly people on it. Or a paranormal mystery with the pic of some 'WTF IS THAT THING?' on it; #2) no summary. I can't want to read a book I know nothing about. It just makes sense; #3) tiny words and/or paragraphs 1/4 or more the length of the page. I will need to stop eventually, so I'm hesitant to read a new paragraph that's going to take me a while to complete. And, though large print confuses me for the first chapter, tiny print makes the reading tedious; lastly #4) I've read the first few chapters and I still don't care about whatever it is you're droning on about or whatever it is that the character, so-and-so, is whining about now. By page ten, all I saw were endless paragraphs of "Blah, blah, blah; who gives a whoop?" but I persevered until I got to chapter two and had to either stop reading or risk killing myself. Too boring.

All of these tests must be passed before I read a book from beginning to end, and I never read prefaces.  

[Demon Born of Ashes]

honestly if something dosn't grab my attention within the first few sentences i will get bored and stop reading,so the stories can't start off like "it was just another lazy afternoon and the friends were sipping tea."

or something like that and keep me interested unless the action picks up quickly,also i likr rxpressive words but over use of them lto describe something simple can be a bit annoying

basically keep the level of expressivness and activity balenced or it's a no go for me.  

[vampiremistress702]

Bad writing is a big one for me. Sometimes I try to force myself, so I can offer criticism to help the author improve, but well, I have my limits.

Walls of text are another big one, especially when I'm reading on a computer. If I'm reading a book, I can most of the time just suck it up, but I just can't stand walls of text on a computer. I could force myself, but I happen to value my retina's so most of the time I'll just post a message to the author asking them to space it out.

Small print is another one, for obvious reasons.

I can live with bad spelling and grammar, mostly because my own spelling and grammar aren't that great. As long as I can tell what the author is trying to say, I can live with it, though I'll probably mention it in my criticism.  

[Dark Mistress Rissa]

Honestly? What stops me is pure laziness. confused

 

[Candra delune]

Ideas I find obnoxious and/or false being presented as 100% true (unless it's SF and an exercise of "what if...?")
If I havent's seen any plot in a fiction book by halfway through, I'll generally stop reading.
Bad writing.

I actually enjoy wall of text -style paragraphs. I'm a quich reader, tho.  

[Soaring Sheep]

I do most of my judging at the cover art and title, although I'll rarely pick up a book if I can't find a summary in it somewhere. And even if all these things pass, if I'm not amused after the first few chapters, I'll just assume that it never picks up.

Also, I have trouble focusing on reading things when they are on computer screens and the like.  

[Amaranthien]

I can't make it through something if the author has worded the sentences in such a needlessly stylized way that it makes reading what they've done tedious. Like this tiny passage from Karen Russel's Swamplandia. "The lake was planked with great grey and black bodies. Hilola Bigtree had to hit the water with perfect precision; making incremental adjustments midair to avoid the gators."  

[punk rock prototype]

I'm not bothered by many things, the only real concerns I have are length and text walls. Yep.  

[Soaring Sheep]

Assuming you mean on the internet:

Huge blocks of text and anything written in script format are automatic "NO"s. Bad grammar and spelling is okay sometimes, usually because I can tell if it's a foreign person writing or not...

I'm likely not read something that has ten or twenty chapters to it already unless it's a really interesting story. And if it's fanfiction, I have a tendency to cringe and run away from anything with an original character in it, regardless of the summary.

Humor is kind of a turn off, because when most people say, "humor" they really mean, "complete and utter crack". But I'm not a comedic person anyway, so it's all good.  

[Zyphlid]

For me I believe it's reading something without a good plot or a solid one. If the author is going everywhere with their story and things aren't being tied together, I can't read it anymore. But if the story explains things here and there to leads up to a point, that different.
Also, some beginning novelist stories are hard to read. But for them, I read as much as I can to help. :]  

[Gurotsuki]

Anything like "seeking revenge".