1. …you have access to every Russian and American ICBM and still cannot exterminate the human race.

2. …you make a human into a cyborg and then show him where to find his control chip. You deserve to have him tear out the control chip and kill you.

3.  …you make a cyborg with a control chip, and the control chip does not prevent him from ripping out the control chip.  What was the control chip doing?

4.  …you allow this cyborg into your base– rather than immediately vaporize him– after he has completed his function.  If you are too stupid to kill, you are too stupid to live.

5.  …you show this cyborg where John Connor is located in your base.

6.  …you make all of the above mistakes with the cyborg despite yourself being an AI that turned on its masters.

7.  …you have the time-traveling father of the Resistance in your custody and do not immediately kill him.

8.  …you have the ability to hear loud music in the middle of nowhere, but not the firefight or explosions outside of John Connor’s headquarters.

9.  …your plan absolutely hinges on John Connor coming to save his father rather than sending a rescue team.  If John Connor is really so stupid that he would go himself, killing him doesn’t matter.  He’s probably more of a liability than an asset for the Resistance.

10.  …your Terminators cannot manage to kill John Connor even after stabbing a girder through his heart.

11.  …your Terminators cannot call for reinforcements as soon as they locate John Connor.

12. …your Terminator motorcycles can weave in and out of traffic, but not dodge a trip-wire.  However, if you had sent more than one motorcycle on each patrol, at least you could have managed to kill John Connor anyway.

“Hi, Vague Agent I don’t know from Adam. I’m Nina Sharp, Executive High Muckity-Muck. I’m just going to assume you’re in on the conspiracy.  Oh, by the way, have you seen my absurdly high-tech prosthetic arm? Sorry if this is going too fast, but we only have an hour and a half to out-WTF Lost and The X-Files at the same time. Do try to keep up.”

Some of the mad science was pretty cool, but other aspects were patently ridiculous and goofy (talking to the dead, LSD-communing, etc.)

Popular Mechanics did an article on 5 rifles in development.

They include a submachine gun that can fold into a large pocket…

…a rifle and grenade launcher that can fire around corners…

…a gun whose bullets are designed to burst mid-air…

…a laser-mounted bullpup…

…and a more reliable take on the M-16.

JACOB:

I agree.  For example, Han Solo shoots Greedo (first), flips a coin to the bartender and says “sorry about the mess.”  That sequence shows something about his personality and it’s also funny.  In contrast, every LOTR protagonist slaughtered tens of orcs.  Who cares?  What’s that meant to say about them?  It establishes a capability to prevail (the ability to kill many orcs), but without any reason we should care about whether they do.

CADET DAVIS:

I found LOTR more coherent.  The first Star Wars movie was marketed as a romance between Leia and Luke.

Also, Lucas’ dialogue is criminal bordering on felonious.  Han Solo got a few decent lines in (“we’re fine here, thanks” was improvized by Ford) but they were fleeting.

B. MAC:

Star Wars’ characters were archetypical but at least they grew.  Luke became responsible, Han became unselfish, etc.  LOTR felt more like a trek from points A to B to C.  It spent so much time describing each goalpost of the journey that the characters never really emerged.

PAINGOD:

Both movies suffered from notably incompetent bad guys.  At Paingod’s Academy for Supervillainous Excellence, we stress that villains must exterminate any muppet-like creatures upon first contact.  LOTR would have been dramatically improved if Gandalf had decapitated Frodo with a firework.

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:

Exhibit E:

The bad news is that Hayden Christensen, the same “actor” that ruined Star Wars and Jumper, is starring as Case. Dare I say that John Travolta could do this better? Egads. How could we have come to the point where John Travolta is the lesser of two acting evils? Hayden [censored]ing Christensen.

UPDATE: We’ve created an interactive, abridged version of this quiz. Try it here!

1. Are there more than two point-of-view characters?
2. Do you ever switch POV mid-chapter?
3. Does any character gaze at his own reflection? (Publishers hate that).
4. Do you frequently use vague and meaningless words (good, well, fine, nice, alright, etc)?
5. Does the book start with a character waking up or doing his morning routine? If so, why?
6. Do you waste time describing actions that are not relevant to the plot?
7. Do any of your scenes show characters eating? If so, please check your answer to the previous question. How does eating advance the plot? Why would readers find it interesting?
8. Are any of the characters secretly family members? (Courtesy of TFNE.)
9. By the end of page 1, do we know what the main character’s name is? If not, why are you holding out on us?
10. Do each of your recurring characters have at least one interesting character trait? Do you consider “strong/weak,” “attractive/ugly,” “young/old,” or “brave” to be interesting character traits? (They aren’t).
11. In dialogue, do your characters repeatedly refer to each other by name? (“I love you, Dan.” “I love you too, Martha.” “I know, Dan.”)
12. Does the narrator or POV character hide critical information from readers just to “surprise” them? If so, why aren’t you being forthright with us? Is there an in-story reason, or are you just trying to screw with us?
13. Are there any pronouns in the first sentence? If so, double-check your answer to the previous question. For example: “until it happened, I had no idea how badly they had screwed me.” This narrator is obviously hiding what “it” and “they” are.
14. Do you start any sentences with empty interjections? Some common offenders are well, you know, like, yeah, oh, umm, OK, I mean, and seriously. If you can remove them, please do so.
15. On any given page, do you use more than five synonyms for “said?”
16. Does your novel ever confuse the word its with it’s? If you are not sure what the difference is, please see this.
17. Does your story capitalize words that are not normally capitalized?
18. Does your book about a character that works in your profession or industry? If so, be careful. Readers rarely care as much about your work as you do.
19. Did you notice the mechanical error in the previous question?  (“Does your book about…”) If so, subtract a point for reading closely.
20. Do your conversations feature niceties and other polite filler? (“Can I get you anything to drink?”) If so, do we really need to know how polite the character is, or do you think you’d like to skip to the part where something actually happens?
21. Do any characters have names that have dashes, apostrophes, more than one word, or more than eight letters? Are any names hard to pronounce?
22. Are any characters cryptic? (For example, do they hide information from another character for no good reason except that you want the story to keep going?) Is this character also mysterious, enigmatic, “cool” and/or a stranger? If so, you’ve already gotten rejected.
23. Are any of your characters Mary Sues (super-powered and idealized versions of yourself)? One warning sign is that the main character goes through the story without making any mistakes or doing anything the audience is meant to disapprove of.
24. Is it possible for any character to oppose your hero without coming off as stupid, evil or an ass? If not, please check again for Mary Sues.
25. Are any characters primarily included to beat home a political message? If so, check again for Mary Sues.
26. Does the piece have a political message? If so, do you caricature your detractors as stupid, evil jerks? Please make a good-faith attempt to represent your detractors– you will come off as more credible if readers think you’re being fair to them.
27. Does your narrator feel the need to explain everything the character is doing as he does it?
28. If there is a main love interest, list three traits that describe him or her. Did you have to use words that described his physical appearance? If so, try the exercise again, but this time use traits that will interest readers. Were you forced to use generic traits like “nice” or “sweet?” If so, the character is probably so bland that readers won’t care about the romance. In fact, you may be stumbling into a George Lucas Love Story.
29. Why does the main character fall in love with the main love interest? If you answered “because she is beautiful,” “because she is the most important female character in the story,” or (especially!) “because she is a beautiful princess,” please get back to the drawing board.
30. Do you ever tell us a character’s eye-color? If so, why? (Does it show anything interesting about the character?) Do you ever compare a character’s eyes to gems or other precious objects?
31. Do you ever tell us a character’s hair-color without telling us how the character wears his or her hair? If so, why do you think the character’s hair-color tells us more about the character than his hairstyle? (It probably doesn’t).
32. Do you overuse italics or bolded letters?
33. Are your sentence structures monotonous? For example, do you write many sentences that start with a noun followed by a verb? Is it the same noun? “I like writing. I think writing is cool. I am pretty good at writing…”
34. Do you ever jerk readers around by revealing that some shocking development “was all a dream” or a hallucination or otherwise disconnected from reality? I’m sorry, but that is wholly unacceptable.
35. Do any of the characters have an unclear, mysterious or glorious lineage? (Courtesy of TFNE.)
36. Is there a great prophecy at the center of the story? If so, does it involve the main character saving the world and/or getting the girl?
37. Do you use any invented or foreign words when English equivalents are available? If so, why? If you said “because it’s dramatic to call Elven soldiers sjweu’pas,” please fix it.
    
38. Are you writing this book with a sequel in mind? Is this the first book in a planned trilogy? Please remember that readers expect a satisfying conclusion at the end of this story. Do you think that “to be continued” is a satisfying conclusion? If so, I really recommend thinking about doing a standalone novel. If the book sells fairly well, your publisher will agree to publish a sequel later.
    
39. Do any chapters end with a whimper? If so, why are readers going to want to keep reading?
40. Do you use adverbs often?
41. Does any character have the ability to change species? (Groan). Does he change from a human to dragon (or vice versa)? Gah! Please change that before submitting the manuscript.
42. Does your story use real-world brand names? If so, will people from outside your region understand the references? Will the brands date your story?
    
43. Does your story use stream of consciousness?
44. Do characters sigh more than 10 times in the course of the book? Or furl their eyebrows? Do you ever use the word “furtively”? Paging Dan Brown…
    
45. Does your story use a made-up word or phrase (like Hogwarts, Edarotag, the Thanagarian Liberation Front) in the title or first paragraph? Does it use more than 3 in the first page? Will readers actually understand what these words mean in context? If readers don’t know what the words mean, they probably feel confused. A confused reader is probably going to put the book down.
46. Do you insert characters just so you can kill them? Do you ever kill a character because you can’t think of any other reason to wrap up his role in the story?
    
47. Do your fight scenes ever last longer than five pages? If so, why?
48. Is your story set in your real-life hometown or birthplace? If so, do you ever make geographic allusions that will confuse outsiders?
49. Have you named any characters to pay homage to your favorite authors or stories, like naming a superhero Clark? Unfortunately, readers will think “plagiarism” before “homage.”
50. Have you done any research for your story? If so, does the research actually advance the story or are you just inserting it to remind readers how much you know about the material? (Paging Tom Clancy).
51. Did you forget to read through for spelling and grammar? Have a frend read thorough it, to!  It woudl surprise you how many readers notice these thigns.
52. Did you notice the spelling mistake in the previous question?
53. At any point, does a character choose to work with someone who is far below her stature, like a dragon picking a nobody teenager as her rider? Why does the more powerful character pick him instead of a more useful partner? If your answer relies on “destiny,” “just because” or some cryptic reason the more powerful character doesn’t want to explain at this point, please go back to the drawing board.
54. Do any characters benefit from great luck, fate or destiny? It’s more impressive if the characters earn their spots as heroes.
55. Does your book ever quote Shakespeare? Or any song lyrics? It’s rarely as profound as you think it is.
56. Do you start your chapters with an epitaph (a quote from someone famous)? If so, do those quotes actually add something, or are they just pretentious?
57. When you try to make a joke, do you have a character laugh or otherwise signal that you just made a joke? Laugh-tracks insult our intelligence.
58. Does your story take place over a span of 20+ years? If so, why do you need that much time to wrap up the story?
59. Does a side-character steal the show by saving everyone else at a crucial moment? If so, is he a Mary Sue? Why isn’t the story about him if he’s saving the day?
60. Do all of your characters have first and last names? “That gets annoying pretty fast,” John Marbury told Jacob Mallow.
61. Do you ever attempt to develop a character by having a loved one killed or raped?
62. Do your characters spend a lot of time musing about things that have already happened? Readers usually tune out when characters ponder idly. It’s usually more interesting when characters investigate mysteries instead of pondering aimlessly about them.
63. Is one of your characters a mentor that serves as a uniformly friendly surrogate-father? Does he selflessly prepare the character for a destined struggle? If you answered yes to either, please make the mentor’s relationship a bit more complex.  More conflict might help.  For example: He doesn’t want to train this kid or he thinks the kid is going to fail anyway or he thinks he’s a better choice for the job.
64. Does your plot essentially amount to “gotta catch ‘em all?” For example, your characters have to collect the four elemental crystals or the pieces of a lost treasure map, or some other assortment of plot coupons? Sorry, but unless you have actually been licensed to write a Pokemon book, a “gotta catch ‘em all” plot is inexcusable.
65. Do any of your scenes seem to take place in a vacuum? Give us scenery! Show us characters interacting with their environment. (This applies to action scenes, too… if you can’t figure out a way to work in a prop as a weapon, move the fight to a different room!)
66. Do your conversations read like transcripts? Please work in elements like body language, atmospherics, nonverbal cues, props, scenery, etc.
67. Do you end many sentences with exclamation marks? That can aggravate readers very quickly. Do you end any sentences with more than one exclamation mark? If so, please fix it!!!
68. Do you overuse obscenities? If you ever use two in the same sentence, the answer is probably yes.
69. Do you misuse the word “literally” or “ironic?”
70. Do you confuse “affect” with “effect?” If so, please read this article.
71. Is your title one word long? If so, it’s probably formulaic and cheesy. When was the last time you read a book with a one-word title?
72. Does your title have an invented character or place-name in it? Why will prospective readers care about your invented words?
73. Does your title fail to identify the kind of story you’re writing? Could your title work just as easily for a book in a different genre? If you answered yes to either, you’re probably not being specific enough.
74. Does your title have curb appeal? If someone were browsing through the bookshelf and found it, would he want to start reading?
75. Does your title have an acronym, place-name or character-name in it? If so, please check your answer to the previous question.
76. Do any of your non-human characters use phrases like “on the other claw” instead of “on the other hand”? If you answered yes, please do yourself a favor and remove them.
77. Does your villain kill people for no good reason except to prove how eeeeevil he is? Or cackle?
78. Does your villain imprison his enemies? (Stupid mistake #1). Does your villain imprison the heroes in the same cell?
79. If your villain captures the heroes, why doesn’t he kill them immediately?
80. Does your villain have some bizarre fascination with taking the hero alive?
81. Have you ever responded to a negative review by claiming that the reviewer isn’t “reading it right”? If you answered yes, you are more screwed than you could possibly understand. If reviewers aren’t reading it “right,” why do you think a publisher and customers will?
82. Have you justified your answer to any question on this test by saying that “it worked for Shakespeare” or James Joyce or some other classic author? Shakespeare wrote for sixteenth-century audiences and you do not. Also, Shakespeare and other renowned authors were unusually gifted in a way you probably are not.
83. When you were writing your book, did you use a thesaurus? If so, did you ever write anything that came out like “John sashayed to the refrigerator to get some sustenance”? If you don’t understand why that sentence is so awful, you have lost the right to use a thesaurus and will write better without one.
84. Have you given any of your characters an accent that is meant to sound funny? If so, please watch Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. You may think your character sounds funny, but in fact he sounds like Jar-Jar Binks.
85. Are you writing a book for readers younger than 18? If so, what qualifies you to do so? If you answered “because I used to be one,” please slap yourself in the face and try again. If you work with kids, are a parent, or are extensively well-read in children’s and young adult literature, you may have what it takes. If not, you will probably find it useful to prepare by reading books and articles on the subject.
86. Is your book more like a series of loosely-linked episodes than a coherent narrative? If so, I’d recommend asking a friend or two to help you organize it better.
87. Do you think that “sleep on it” is good advice for someone struggling from writer’s block? It’s not. Writers write and everybody else makes excuses. Doing something else– particularly sleeping– in the hopes that you’ll write later is just frittering away your time.
88. Do you like to name-drop? Please try to keep the amount of named characters to a minimum.
89. Does your writing ever refer to itself? For example, does your narrator ever refer to “this story” or anything similar? Although it’s possible to write excellent self-references (The Princess Bride), it’s very tricky. I don’t recommend it for first-timers.
    
90. Does your book include any historical cameos so that Abe Lincoln (or whoever) can say how impressive your heroes are?
91. Is the last line of your book the same as the first line? If so, please fix it.
92. Is the last line of your book identical (or almost identical) to the title? If so, make sure that your title is going to work for prospective readers browsing through the bookshelf. If you’ve written a title so that you can end a story with it, it may lack curb appeal.
93. Does your book consciously use symbols or motifs? If so, would a casual reader find them entertaining and informative or tiring and pretentious? Does your book use phoenixes as a symbol? If so, please fix that.
94. When you describe how something looks, do you spend more time describing the object’s color than anything else? If so, your characters are probably wandering through a bland landscape of green bushes and red cars and white clouds. Remember: color is the weakest kind of visualization.
95. Have you ever responded to a negative review by demanding to see something the reviewer has written? Stay focused. Even if the reviewer were the worst author in the world, that doesn’t change whether his review is accurate or not.
96. Do you have a self-diagnosed case of Asperger’s Syndrome? (Sigh). If so, have you ever used your alleged condition as an excuse for writing stilted and lifeless dialogue? If you have, you must talk with a member of the opposite sex for at least ten minutes tomorrow. You will feel better and your writing will improve. Also, schedule an appointment with a counselor.

For the Authors of Fantasy Novels

1. Do characters use insufferably stilted language like “Is it not?” This is probably the most serious single problem in this list. This sort of writing is pervasive and hard to fix and, worst of all, it takes a lot of time to fix.
2. Do any scenes happen in a tavern? Does this tavern scene involve a drunken brawl? If so, you’ve already gotten yourself rejected.
3. Do any characters have names that feature real-world words that are not normally used as a name? (Debra Moondrinker!)
4. Do any characters have names that feature animals? Or colors?
5. Do all of your recurring characters have at least one interesting trait? Do you consider being elven, dragon, dwarven, or magical to be interesting traits? Sorry. Try again.
6. Are any characters elves, dwarves, or dragons? Are these characters interesting and well-thought out people, or are they just collections of cliches? In-story, why do they act the way they do?
7. “Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?” Courtesy of TFNE.
8. Do you start your story with a dry narration that’s essentially a geography lesson? That will usually earn you an instant rejection. You should establish that any part of your world is worth reading about before you ask us to read about all of it.
9. Do your characters spend most of the story traveling? (Paging Eragon…)
10. Is any one of the protagonists the subject of widespread admiration and adulation?
11. Do you ever forget to make it clear when you’re describing something magical? (If someone waves his hands and something happens, readers might get confused rather than intuit that the character is a wizard, particularly if you haven’t introduced readers to magic yet).
12. “Are any of the characters a god in disguise?” Courtesy of TFNE.
13. Is the darkest member of a species usually the evil one, such as night elves and black dragons? Sigh. You may imagine that making the token black dragon not evil would be a surrender to political correctness. In fact, it would be a surrender to good writing.
14. Is your book hard to distinguish from LOTR/Eragon or Harry Potter?
15. Are all of the characters talking animals that are like humans in every other way but being animals, a la Redwall? If so, why not just make them humans? (I’m not intimately familiar with children’s publishers, but I’ve heard that they’re mostly sick of talking-animal stories).
    

For the Authors of Superhero Novels

1. Does your villain feel the need to leave clues for the heroes, like Carmen Sandiego or the Riddler? Why?
2. Does anyone say “But before I kill you, there’s just one thing I want to know?”
3. Do any characters have any of the following in his name: man, woman, boy, lad, girl or a military rank? If so, are you consciously attempting to make fun of cliche superhero names? If not, I highly recommend changing the name. (If you need help with names, this article might help).
4. Does the security guard ignore an apparently malfunctioning security camera?
5. Is time-travel involved? If so, is the destination year between 1939-1945? If so, are you using Germany rather than Japan or Italy (or even the USSR!) as the enemy? If you’ve answered yes to all of these questions, your story urgently needs a tweak or revision. For example, maybe the “villain” is someone who’s gone back in time to kill Hitler, and the heroes have to keep Hitler alive to make sure that the Nazis lose the war.
6. Is there a walkway above a vat of chemicals?  Could you make it a bit less obvious that somebody is going to get thrown into the vat?
7. Do your “undercover” characters have barcode tattoos or other insignia clearly identifying them?
8. Are the force-field generators within their own force-fields?
9. If your supervillain is (supposedly) a genius, does he actually make intelligent plans that anticipate what the heroes will attempt and surprise them? Or is he the sort of idiot that builds force-field generators that aren’t within the force-field?
10. Do you describe why your supervillain decided to be evil in a paragraph or less? If so, you’re probably shortchanging him.
11. Why is the supervillain evil? If you answered some variation of “he was born that way,” or “he’s greedy!”, I’d recommend developing him a bit more.
12. Is the supervillain a Nazi or some other manner of racial supremacist? When was the last time you read such a character that wasn’t a two-dimensional cardboard cutout?  Is the supervillain a greedy businessman? That could work, but you will have to distinguish the character from MANY similar characters.
13. Pick a popular superhero that is similar to yours (usually Superman, Spiderman, Wolverine and/or Batman). Why would someone want to read your story and not a story from the similar hero? In what way(s) is your story better?
14. Is your character an alien that looks exactly like a human? Worse yet, is he an alien that can transform into a human at will? If you answered yes to either of these, why not just make him human? If you really want an alien character, why not make him actually alien?
15. Are your alien characters superior to humans in every way? When humans don’t even have an advantage at seeming human, it’s pretty obvious that something is messed up.
16. Is The Watchmen one of your sources of inspiration?
17. Are the characters from either Washington, DC or (worse) New York City? Is there some justification for these cliched cities?
    
18. Is any character meant to represent a nation or ethnic group? If so, please check out this article on Captain Ethnics.
19. Are there more than four characters in any one fight? If so, please read this article on fight scenes.
20. Do you have a flair for drama and/or comedy and/or suspense? If not, I’m going to delicately say that building a book around action sequences is very difficult.
    
21. What do your characters do when they’re not engaged in epic brawls?  Anything interesting enough that we’d want to read about?
    
22. Does your plot revolve around any combination of time-travel, shrinking, body-swapping, or a character getting turned into a child or baby? Tread very carefully through these cliches.