Ever wonder what a novel’s nightmares would look like, if it could dream? Naturally, I can only guess. But I’d say that the spine-tingling fear of being put down is probably at the top of the list. When a reader pokes his bookmark in between the pages, stretches, yawns, and drops a novel back on his nightstand, it’s a terrifying moment for both novels and novelists alike. This is the moment we’ve worked and sweated and prayed to avoid. And yet it’s a problem that few of us will entirely escape in our careers. This week, I decided to take a highly unscientific poll in an effort to discover the most common reasons a reader stops reading. Below are the bulk of my results, gleaned from Twitter and Facebook. (If you’re not following me for updates, tips, helpful links, and inspiring quotes on either of these sites, you can do so by clicking the links or the logos in the right-hand column.)

1. Unworthy Characters
At the top of the list of complaints was the unworthy character. Nothing makes a reader slap a book down faster than a boring, unrealistic character:

Jen Brubacher: I don’t care about the characters, and so I don’t need to know what happens to them next.
Jane Lebak: Mile-long sentences ornamented with clichés, flat characters, cardboard villains, author relying on gimmicks. Yeah. Not reading.
Adriela Ashford: Boring characters. I’ll tolerate a lot as far as contrived storylines go, but if the characters aren’t likable, fugetaboutit.

2. Lack of Plot Progression / Poor Pacing
People read because they care about characters; but they also read because they want to be entertained by the unexpected twists and careening turns of the plot. Let them down, bore them with clichés, or put them to sleep with nonevents, and they’re not likely to stick around:

Lorna G. Poston: Unbelievable plot, unless it’s a fantasy; underdeveloped storyline. I stopped reading a book just recently. It was a nice story, but nothing happened and the scenes didn’t fit together. I ended up not caring what happened to the main character.
Jodie Bailey: Problems that could have been solved in the first ten pages, but they drag out for 300.
Naomi Musch: PREDICTABILITY. I may know that it’s going to end well, but I don’t want to be a chapter ahead of the author the entire way. That makes the journey so dull!

3. Gratuitous Sex, Language, and Violence
Literature and movies are saturated with gratuitous situations these days, but most readers don’t appreciate being pummeled with unnecessary violence, language, and sexual situations:

Tommie Lyn: I don’t like offensive language. Some authors seem to flaunt it, like a little boy saying, “Look at me! I know how to cuss!” and I won’t read them.
Holly Heisey : Gratuitous sex/violence will make me put it down.

4. Too Much Description
The days of Dickens’s and Austen’s pages and pages of descriptive settings are long gone. Readers today want the scene sketched in a minimum of details:

Tamera Kraft: Long flowery descriptions or narrative that doesn’t do anything to further the story. Too much and I’ll set it down in a heartbeat.
Coralee Walther: Going into so much detail that you lose the flow of the story or it becomes really boring.
Kristina Seleshanko : Dry writing. That’s a big vague, I realize, but usually it means too much description and not enough action.

5. No Emotional Connection
Readers want stories to last beyond just mere entertainment value. They want to connect with stories and characters on a deeper level. In other words, they want to read stories that matter to them personally:

Tommie Lyn: If it’s “wooden,” i.e., creates no emotion in me. It may be technically perfect… and beautiful prose… but if there’s no human element behind those well-chosen words that touches my heart as well as my brain, I can’t seem to get into it, and I’ll put it down.
MarChessa Taylor: A good story evokes an emotion from you, even if you’ve never been in the life situations mentioned therein; you find yourself in the story or imagining it with pictures in your mind. You find yourself relating or getting excited about getting to the next page.

6. Poor Dialogue
Dialogue should easily be one of the best parts of any story. Readers love moving, witty, realistic dialogue. What they don’t love are forced and clichéd conversations:

Adriela Ashford: If the dialogue is too stuffy, slangy, or forced, I won’t read it. And overuse of names. In real life, we don’t constantly call each other by our proper names—why would we in a book?

7. Too Preachy
Even as they desire to be moved by deep and powerful themes, readers are adamant in their dislike of “preachiness.” Trying to force an agenda on a reader will get your book nowhere but dusty:

Holly Heisey: I don’t like books that try to cram a message down your throat.

Although this list of ours certainly isn’t exhaustible, it’s a good place to start in our quest to keep readers pawing through our pages as fast they as they can. What’s your opinion? What’s the most common reason you stop reading a story?

By K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland