Top ten things which might turn readers off your novel

I love this – two hundred comments by readers on what turns them off whilst reading a novel: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/05/21/bookish-turn-offs/comment-page-3/#comments

The main beefs seem to be with:

1. Characters they don’t and can’t care about, who are too passive and flat
2. Boring beginnings – first three chapters are key
3. Dull storyworlds
4. Too many points of view or wandering points of view (ie starts in third person closed and goes omniscient)
5. Sexual violence
6. Clunky prose with no unique ‘voice’
7. Preaching of any kind (ie the moral of the story is this and you’d better believe it)
8. Poor writing and/or editing
9. Plot holes
10. Slow pace (they don’t seem to like this!).

I do some of these…. so time to get back to editing.