# What is 'Bad Writing' to you?



## Tettsuo (Nov 18, 2015)

Serious question.  I read writers discussion bad writing, but rarely did I understand what bad writing is for those writers.

For me, bad writing has the following qualities:

1 - *Boring. * I have little to no interest in reading it.  If I do finish the book, it's because I just want to finish the GD book for the sake of completion.

2 - *Unbelievable characters. * At no point do I understand why the characters behaves how they do.  Every action they take seems to come out of left field.

3  - *Deus Ex Machina.* I hate this.  If you set it up and fail to follow through, and instead manufacture a solution that's outside of the established world you've provided the reader... you suck.

So, please give examples of 'bad writing'.  Just saying weak prose is not enough for me to actually understand the specifics of your viewpoint/s.  Be specific in your points (repetitive words, overuse of adverbs, poor sentence structure, etc.) so we all can gain an understanding what your see as bad writing.

Can't wait to see what you folks come up with.


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## Gavrushka (Nov 18, 2015)

I think bad prose is more 'not good enough yet' rather than anything else. - It's words that haven't been allowed to ferment long enough, be that for lack of experience or lack of patience. - From personal experience, I'd say that was pretty much all of the self published works I've read, and only one or two of the thousands of traditionally published / represented works. 

What it is that specifically makes it bad varies from book to book, and it could be misuse of words, flat characters or a plot that makes no sense. - I've only come across one self published book which had merit, and that was 'And Remember That I am a Man' by John Bushore, a regular visitor to this site.

The big shudder I get from the dross out there, is that it's mainly a case of a good story that just suffered from lack of investment. - I feel too many 'would-have-been-good' stories and their authors are ruined for lack of patience. - I guess it's just too easy and tempting to throw a story out there before it is ready.


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## Terry D (Nov 18, 2015)

What you see as bad writing, I see as bad story-telling. For me, when you ask about bad writing I think of poor execution of the craft of writing -- the word handling skills. Bad writing, to me, is writing which breaks my immersion in the story, clumsy wording, try-too-hard description, purple prose, poor use of metaphor and simile. Many of the 'rules' we like to argue about so much impact this continuity and flow. 'Ly' adverbs, for instance, aren't bad in themselves, but an over reliance on them makes the writing flaccid and weak. That is what ruins the story for me, how the words are used, not the words themselves.

Bad writing is as lumpy as cold gravy, it does not flow well and it makes me stop reading to figure out what the writer is trying to say. To continue the food analogy, bad writing can be bland and flavorless, or over-spiced in the mis-guided belief that the chili con carne tastes good because the cook used a bunch of habaneros and Scotch bonnet peppers instead of building the dish around the meat and sauce. Bad writing draws attention to itself, it is jarring, it does not flow smoothly.


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## Gavrushka (Nov 18, 2015)

Terry D said:


> What you see as bad writing, I see as bad story-telling. For me, when you ask about bad writing I think of poor execution of the craft of writing -- the word handling skills. Bad writing, to me, is writing which breaks my immersion in the story, clumsy wording, try-too-hard description, purple prose, poor use of metaphor and simile. Many of the 'rules' we like to argue about so much impact this continuity and flow. 'Ly' adverbs, for instance, aren't bad in themselves, but an over reliance on them makes the writing flaccid and weak. That is what ruins the story for me, how the words are used, not the words themselves.
> 
> Bad writing is as lumpy as cold gravy, it does not flow well and it makes me stop reading to figure out what the writer is trying to say. To continue the food analogy, bad writing can be bland and flavorless, or over-spiced in the mis-guided belief that the chili con carne tastes good because the cook used a bunch of habaneros and Scotch bonnet peppers instead of building the dish around the meat and sauce. Bad writing draws attention to itself, it is jarring, it does not flow smoothly.



You should write a cook book... It'd be a bestseller!


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## Minu (Nov 18, 2015)

Well.

1 - *Poor imagery. *It doesn't matter if the person uses five thousand words to describe one thing or two simple sentences, if the imagery is poor I couldn't be bothered. I know the argument of show vs. tell is ongoing in writing but the pen _*is*_ mighter than the sword. However, a number of modern writers lack that skill or billy-club their way through imagery. Gives me a headache to read about some man or woman described in such detail that you know everything, including the color of their underwear, but you have better luck getting a tooth pulled than learning if the room they are standing in has furniture or is utterly vacant. 

2 - *Mary Sues, unbelievable characters, and Deus Ex Machina. *I just role it all into one. In the most basic of breakdowns it is pretty much the same and marks poor writing in my mind. The first two you get characters that can't loss or can't die, etc., etc. and the other one you stumble upon some twist in the plot (or the introduction of some character, new or old) and the three headed Cerberus is suddenly the characters' best friend looking for a belly rub. It's an oops sort of writing style; as in oops I don't want to kill such and such or end the story here so let's, to quote S. Snape, do a bit of "foolish wand waving" and fix it. 

3 - *Outrageous plot themes.* I know writing is the author's playing field but some of the outrageous plots I've read just make it more a tiresome read than anything because it feels as if the author is stumbling over their own two feet & literally making it up as they go along.


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## Schrody (Nov 18, 2015)

This is more the list of things I hate in writing, not necessarily a bad writing, since all those things could've been avoided with more thorough edit:

- Over detailed unnecessary descriptions, e.g. of a house (it often kills my mood as I get lost in the descriptions and lose the clear image I had in my head), not so famous example - "The Stonehenge Legacy"
- Jumping to scenes (I'm often guilty of that but I do edit!), famous example - "The Electric Ant"
- Jumping to scenes with characters (character is at one place and in the next sentence at other without an explanation), famous example - "Fahrenheit 451"
- Excessive use of the same words


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## ppsage (Nov 18, 2015)

I'm assuming we're talking about long-form prose fiction here, because when we say writing, that's all we ever mean. When it comes to that, I'm with Terry, many of these are examples of bad story-telling. Judging the writing would include factors like grammar, vocabulary, syntax, & voice. Most readers who post here apparently judge these elements best when they are most invisible -- when they least 'impede the flow'. This seems a defensible standard for those who require one. I consider, however, that the judgement must be relative to the work, made on a case by case basis. Did the writing work or not?


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## Kyle R (Nov 18, 2015)

It's a moving target for me.

Either I'm entranced by the writing and swept along, or I'm just not feeling it. The reasons tend to vary.

Though, the more passionate the writing, the more I tend to like it. The less passionate the writing seems, the less I tend to enjoy it.

I love it when the writing has momentum, as if the author's pounding away at the keyboard, fast and loose—like a lunatic being dragged along by their own imagination. It's less enjoyable, to me, when the writing feels stuffy, cautious, or manicured to the point of sterility. But there's a tipping point, too. Too much in the free-and-loose zone can turn me off, too.

Overall, I prefer authors with strong, compelling voices. An author who's memorable, rather than one who blends in with the background. And, yeah . . . clean grammar's a must, too. :encouragement:


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## Terry D (Nov 18, 2015)

ppsage said:


> I'm assuming we're talking about long-form prose fiction here, because when we say writing, that's all we ever mean. When it comes to that, I'm with Terry, many of these are examples of bad story-telling. Judging the writing would include factors like grammar, vocabulary, syntax, & voice. Most readers who post here apparently judge these elements best when they are most invisible -- when they least 'impede the flow'. This seems a defensible standard for those who require one. I consider, however, that the judgement must be relative to the work, made on a case by case basis. Did the writing work or not?



For most of my reading this is absolutely correct. I prefer story-first, and let the writing get out of the way. But, in the case of truly great writing, I enjoy noticing the writer's artistry. There's no denying that Cormac McCarthy's writing is most definitely _*NOT*_ invisible, but I love it anyway.


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## KellInkston (Nov 18, 2015)

For me I think it heavily revolves around it being entertaining or not. There are certainly plenty of qualifiers that point to bad writing, but I don't think any of them necessarily make it bad unless it just doesn't grab the reader. I think for fiction, a worthwhile question is "who is it good for?" and "who is it bad for?".

But right, I'm cool with a pretty open definition of enjoyment for a book, but that's probably because I'm allergic to being negative. I love to love things.


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## bookmasta (Nov 18, 2015)

Everything that surmises a bad book to me would be a novel called _Galloping Abs._ Read at your own risk.


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## Red Sonja (Nov 18, 2015)

Actually, bad writing is particularly bad and particularly noticeable - and more easy to provide examples of - in the case of NON-fiction. 

What constitutes "good" and "bad" writing in fiction is sort of a hanging question because everyone can give as many examples of good writing that contains all the big no-nos ("Mary Sue" characters, switching person/tense, telling a story in first-person/present-tense, rotating points of view, etc., etc.) as they can give examples of bad writing in fiction. 

However - well, I'll just ask this question: Have you ever tried to make sense of a set of instructions that was poorly written? Yes (I'm guessing), you have. Technical manuals that appear to have been written by simians, catalog blurbs that make a good product appear bad, and even ADVERTISEMENTS (you would think as much as those guys get paid they would LEARN TO FREAKING SPELL AND PUNCTUATE CORRECTLY) that contain contradictory information and typos. 

Bad writing is simply, across the board, this: Failure to convey the information the writer was trying to convey. 

If a writer of fiction uses an embarrassingly poor simile or metaphor ("her hair reminded him of soft brown string") he does more than simply annoy us with bad writing: He's misinforming us, confusing us, making us pay attention to the wrong things, he's playing us for suckers because here we are reading his stuff and obviously he's no writer at all. 

A novel is an attempt to convey information; a poem is an attempt to convey information; an advertisement is an attempt to convey information; a joke is an attempt to convey information. And so on. All these are as much attempts to communicate as an instruction manual for a cell phone. 

If the writer fails as a communicator, we will react to that in any number of ways: We become bored, we become annoyed, we become confused, we put that writer down and go with something else that satisfies our need for whatever kind of information we were seeking at the time.


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## dale (Nov 18, 2015)

bad writing to me is writing with no heart. have you ever heard a person start telling a story and then it all blanks
out in your head and then you turn to go get another beer and ignore everything they say? that's like bad writing.
if you wanna get up in mid-page and get another beer because you're so bored? throw the book away. it ain't worth
a shit.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

Deus Ex Machina.... *DING* 

Hahahaha. Excuse my reference.

For me, time=quality. 

If you wrote something quickly... the reader can tell.

After however many re-writes and whatever editing process you go through, the improvement is normally between 300-1000% better. 

I don't like reading a book knowing it was written quickly. 

Even people with little writing experience can spend a good amount of time polishing it, and have something very entertaining to read.

But if even a master wordsmith churns something out quickly... ewwww.


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## dale (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> Deus Ex Machina.... *DING*
> 
> Hahahaha. Excuse my reference.
> 
> ...



robert louis stevenson wrote Jekyll and Hyde in 3 days. he actually wrote it in 3 days, then his wife read it and it horrified her so much, that he tore it up and wrote it again in 3 more days. it's my favorite book. he must have been on fire writing that. i would love to be able to read the 1st version he shredded. but my point is.....my best work comes when i'm "on fire" like that.  it just so rarely happens to me.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

dale said:


> robert louis stevenson wrote Jekyll and Hyde in 3 days. he actually wrote it in 3 days, then his wife read it and it horrified her so much, that he tore it up and wrote it again in 3 more days. it's my favorite book. he must have been on fire writing that. i would love to be able to read the 1st version he shredded. but my point is.....my best work comes when i'm "on fire" like that.  it just so rarely happens to me.



True, some nigh-divine flashes of inspiration do come, when the writing gods choose to give us a break. 

Also, why have I heard thousands of Jekyll and Hyde references, yet never bothered to even learn what it is? ....Nah, I'm good.


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## Bishop (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> Also, why have I heard thousands of Jekyll and Hyde references, yet never bothered to even learn what it is? ....Nah, I'm good.



If you've never read Jekyll and Hyde, you really ought to. Not saying it's a do this or you're not a writer thing... just a recommendation. It's a classic for a reason. It's very short, and if you have a long afternoon I bet you could finish it in one sitting and I promise it would not be time wasted.


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## dale (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> True, some nigh-divine flashes of inspiration do come, when the writing gods choose to give us a break.
> 
> Also, why have I heard thousands of Jekyll and Hyde references, yet never bothered to even learn what it is? ....Nah, I'm good.



lol. ya see? this is where i wanna debate a topic and get myself in trouble. but the classics are NECESSARY in my opinion, if a writer wants to be worth a shit at all. i am the writer i am today because i adore the classics. and when i 1st started? i went overboard with it, i admit. i actually tried to BE poe. i actually tried to BE lovecraft and steinbeck. i had to lose that attitude...but...modern society has done such a wonderful job of completely bastardizing the english language? that if you don't have at least a minimal influence from a classic author? you're probably gonna read like total pulp garbage.


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## Aquilo (Nov 18, 2015)

bookmasta said:


> Everything that surmises a bad book to me would be a novel called _Galloping Abs._ Read at your own risk.



As in... Galloping Abs?! :rofl: ​
*Nods* Oh lord yes.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

dale said:


> lol. ya see? this is where i wanna debate a topic and get myself in trouble. but the classics are NECESSARY in my opinion, if a writer wants to be worth a shit at all. i am the writer i am today because i adore the classics. and when i 1st started? i went overboard with it, i admit. i actually tried to BE poe. i actually tried to BE lovecraft and steinbeck. i had to lose that attitude...but...modern society has done such a wonderful job of completely bastardizing the english language? that if you don't have at least a minimal influence from a classic author? you're probably gonna read like total pulp garbage.



As long as it's smoother than 'WHEREFORE ART THOU...' 



Bishop said:


> If you've never read Jekyll and Hyde, you really ought to. Not saying it's a do this or you're not a writer thing... just a recommendation. It's a classic for a reason. It's very short, and if you have a long afternoon I bet you could finish it in one sitting and I promise it would not be time wasted.



Ehh, As for my reasons, I've just heard about the theme...

As much as I love nods to the paranormal, and mental illness... many of those old writers genuinely scare me. 

Being eccentric, the way they lived, acted... and how many of them died. 

Being insane might be fun sometimes, but having demons isn't. 

Of course, most don't believe in that sort of thing. But, JUST IN CASE, I like to stay away from anything drawing from such inspiration...


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## dale (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> As long as it's smoother than 'WHEREFORE ART THOU...'
> 
> 
> 
> ...


ohhhh. i think i understand now. it's the demons. that's why most of today's writers suck so bad. they don't know how to embrace the demons.  ya see? i knew there was something wrong going on in today's so called "art/lit" world. you people think you actually do this without demons.  ha ha. the joke's on you.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

dale said:


> ohhhh. i think i understand now. it's the demons. that's why most of today's writers suck so bad. they don't know how to embrace the demons.  ya see? i knew there was something wrong going on in today's so called "art/lit" world. you people think you actually do this without demons.  ha ha. the joke's on you.



...Oh, It's been such a long time since I felt such instant, genuine regret. Didn't miss the feeling. Pardon me, I'll just go back to youtube...


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## dale (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> ...Oh, It's been such a long time since I felt such instant, genuine regret. Didn't miss the feeling. Pardon me, I'll just go back to youtube...



oh yeah. i love youtube. i'm litening to disintegration by the cure there now.


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## el309 (Nov 18, 2015)

Bad writing for me is definitely when the book is just boring and dragged out. As in, the author wants to keep expanding their story to the point where it just gets really bland. Another minor annoyance for me is when the character is obviously the author, but with a new coat of paint. And often times, the character is a May-Sue/Stu; they are treated like they are something special, when in reality the character is just some loser. When it comes to the writing itself, it has to be when the writer uses certain words too many times. It gets repetitive and feels reused to me. There are other irks but these are the major ones for me.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 18, 2015)

Clan of the Cave Bear.

The Prosecution rests.


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## Stormcat (Nov 18, 2015)

For me, Bad writing is first and foremost a bad story. I'm fairly certain the other people here have covered the more minute aspects of it, But I see the Plot as the keystone of the book. Most of the "bad" writers I've seen in my writing groups simply don't know where their plot is going.

I've told many people before: Description is like butter, It must be spread around evenly. I once read a story where all I seemed to glean from the one female character was she loved all things sea turtle related. No mention at all to her values, her backstory, or even her relationships to the main characters. Meanwhile, the three male leads all got compelling backstories, quirks, and physical descriptions. Sea turtle girl, who was allegedly one of the main characters too, gets none of that.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

el309 said:


> And often times, the character is a May-Sue/Stu; they are treated like they are something special, when in reality the character is just some loser.



*Cough* Harry Potter *Cough*


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## Stormcat (Nov 18, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> *Cough* Harry Potter *Cough*



I was thinking more along the lines of Bella Swan.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 18, 2015)

Stormcat said:


> I was thinking more along the lines of Bella Swan.



^Let the church say amen! 

But I swear, One day I will finally teach the rest of the world about the sins of harry potter... oh well... today is not that day...


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## JustRob (Nov 19, 2015)

T.S.Bowman said:


> Clan of the Cave Bear.
> 
> The Prosecution rests.



_The Land Of Painted Caves_. In her earlier books Auel had evidently carried out extensive research and her first novel _Clan of the Cave Bear _was well received. I certainly enjoyed it enough to buy the later books in the series but the last, published many years after the previous ones, was clearly padded out with trivia,_ like poetry_, because Auel had run out of story. I never finished reading it. Maybe that's the definition of bad writing, the sort that shouts out that it was written to be published, not to be read, by an author who doesn't need to try any more. 

The premise in _Clan of the Cave Bear, _the assumption that a race without a spoken language must lack intelligence and organisation, was an interesting one to be tackled in a first novel and the detailed research added relevant body to the plot. It is just as easy to assume that a race with a written language must have intelligence, but it is often that very writing that proves otherwise. There are plenty of published books, by established authors who find it hard to stop writing when they've lost their edge and have run out of fresh ideas, that I would put above this one in a list of badly written books. 

"New York Times Best Seller" is the curse applied to such literature apparently. Maybe Auel was so smitten. After overcoming all the obstacles to start writing and get published the even bigger challenge that authors face is evidently stopping writing when they're finished. Old writers never die because they keep on getting published whatever they trot out.

I rest my case.


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## Deleted member 56686 (Nov 19, 2015)

Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury-enough said


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## dale (Nov 19, 2015)

mrmustard615 said:


> Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury-enough said



i tried and tried to finish that book just because i bought it. i couldn't do it.


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## Terry D (Nov 19, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> For me, time=quality.
> 
> If you wrote something quickly... the reader can tell.
> 
> ...



Many good novels were written quickly. I doubt you could tell that _A Clockwork Orange_ was written in less than a month, or Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_ in less than six weeks. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote _The Gambler_ in a matter of days. Some writers need time to produce good work others do not.


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## voltigeur (Nov 19, 2015)

I agree with other posters that most bad writing is bad story telling. I think that is something missed in most "how to" discussion on how to write. 

My biggest pet peeve is bad grammar and constant contradiction being passed off as "Writer's voice". 

The only reason I don't harp too hard on grammar with new writers is that it is the easiest issue to fix.


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## Schrody (Nov 19, 2015)

*WARNING: ADULT THEMES
*
Concerning the bad writing... Article about the worst sex scenes...


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## shadowwalker (Nov 19, 2015)

For me, bad writing is solely about the mechanics. Some stories I find boring simply because the story doesn't interest me - it doesn't mean it won't interest someone else. But other stories are boring because they are written so laboriously, where you can feel every bit of sweat the author dripped in forcing the story out. Bad writing is in stories which never get to the point (I've read stories where we're introduced to an idea, travel around it for several pages, and then it suddenly drops out of sight and the story just moves on, as though the writer him/herself forgot what point they were trying to make.). And last, I suppose, are "message stories" where the author pounds their personal opinions/morals into every single keystroke.


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## 20oz (Nov 19, 2015)

It's not illegible. Case closed.


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## InstituteMan (Nov 19, 2015)

I find writing can be bad in different ways. Sometimes they are all present at the same time, but sometimes a piece of writing suffers from only a single flaw (in my eyes, at least).

Some stories are *conceptually flawed*. Maybe the plot is unbelievable. Maybe the topic is boring. Clan of the Cave Bear was mentioned above. That's a book I had to read in college. I actually enjoyed it up until the "memory" bit about Neanderthal females being able to remember everything that their maternal line experienced. That was just too implausible for me to accept.

Some stories are *structurally flawed*. This happens to my first drafts often (heck, maybe my final drafts, too :friendly_wink: ). I'll open with a boring bit or focus on the wrong character as a protagonist. These are stories that are fixable by moving the the pieces or changing the focus of the work.

Some stories are *executed poorly*. These are the stories with flawed grammar or clumsy words. These are sometimes the hardest to fix, because the sheer number of small issues create a death by a thousand cuts; fixing all of them can be near impossible.

Anyhow, this is a subjective topic, so everyone will have a different view that is 'right' for them, but it's fun to see what everyone thinks.


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## Hairball (Nov 19, 2015)

Harlequin romances. Yuck!!

A friend gave me several of these once. I got through maybe a third of one, and off they went to the used bookstore.


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## Stormcat (Nov 19, 2015)

Hairball said:


> Harlequin romances. Yuck!!
> 
> A friend gave me several of these once. I got through maybe a third of one, and off they went to the used bookstore.



For me, it's any romance. Whether it's Jane Austen, Harlequin, or 50 Shades. I just can't get into them for some reason. My rating of a romance novel could be anywhere from "meh" to "I am seriously going to burn this thing so no one else has to suffer through it".


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## kingofeli (Nov 19, 2015)

What makes something "bad writing" to me:
- Unrealistic groups, such as books where somehow all of the main characters are white, cisgender, and heterosexual, in a setting that is normally full of diversity (see: any book set in the US)
- Sloppy grammar/writing
- (doesn't apply to prose) Lack of punctuation/capitalization
- Bad spelling
- Inability for the story to flow; the scenes feel choppy and disconnected
- Unoriginal writing. There are a million books out there about werewolves, make yours different somehow. I'm also tired of seeing the same two people fall in love all the time in romance stories
- "Dark and mysterious" boyfriend who is actually just abusive (Edward Cullen)
- Characters reduced to tropes ("Sassy black woman", where that's all she is and isn't given any character development/background)
- Excessive description of unimportant things (listen Tolkien, I know you like trees. But you don't need to dedicate 10 pages describing the forest)

More to be added probably.


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## Sam (Nov 19, 2015)

_Lack of plot. _

I can't recall the amount of stories I've read where nothing happens; or, that is to say, where things happen but they have no interconnectedness or relevance to one another. I recently read a friend's novelette. She's a hairdresser in real life, so her story is about, you guessed it, a hairdresser. Approximately three-quarters of the book is about this woman going about her everyday life: cutting people's hair, styling for weddings, etcetera. But nothing happens. Ten pages from the end, a man comes in for a trim and she falls in love with him. He asks her when she gets off, waits for her, and he drives her to the airport where his private plane awaits. They then jet off around the world. 

*Boring*. Where is the plot? Where is the conflict? Where is the drama and excitement? 

_Poor research. _

Just because it's a fictional story, that doesn't mean you can get away with non-sensical claims. "Just make something up" is bad advice, especially when you have at your fingertips the greatest research device the world has ever known. When I started writing, all I had was World Book encyclopaedias and libraries. That didn't stop me from doing all the research I could, because authenticity is important. Writers used to have to get on a plane and visit a place if they wanted to research it. Now, all you have to do is go to Google street view. 

No excuse for poor research. 

_Characters who have no purpose. _

One of the main tropes of thrillers, mysteries, and crime novels is the assignation of a sidekick or 'love interest' for the main character. It's a tried and tested cliche, but most of the time it's also trite and annoying. Oftentimes, the character is flat, purposeless, and one-dimensional. But because it's what people expect, it gets rehashed all the time, and it's not just bad writing. It's crappy writing. It's blase writing. Have such a character if you want, but make them more than a bloody love interest. 

_Characters who have no flaws, insecurities, or doubts. _

What's worse than a Mary Sue? A Mary Sue 2.0. A character without flaws, doubt, or insecurities is, to my mind at least, an artificial insert; an authorial attempt at vicariously living out a fantasy. Humans are flawed -- it's what makes them human. They have doubts and insecurities -- it's what makes them real. And they have dreams, goals, and vices -- it's what makes them memorable and relatable. 

_Decisions and actions that don't make sense, or that run counter to a character's personality. 

_If Macy from across the street is a colossal bitch, chances are that she won't be rescuing strays and feeding the homeless after ten pages. If Tod is a shy, pacifistic shoesalesman, he won't be going postal after fifteen. Characters who make decisions that go against their entire persona and moral code, and then are explained away by virtue of some convenient excuse, are horrible creations. They are examples in self-contradiction. 

These all amount to bad writing in my book. Many have nothing to do with writing per se, but the act of putting one word in front of another -- or, that is to say, the right word in front of another -- is never truly bad writing, no matter how bad it seems. It can be fixed. Easily, but with a conscious effort. Bad writing, to my mind, is the inability to tell a story that matters, excites, and challenges a reader on a multitude of levels.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 19, 2015)

JustRob said:


> _The Land Of Painted Caves_. In her earlier books Auel had evidently carried out extensive research and her first novel _Clan of the Cave Bear _was well received. I certainly enjoyed it enough to buy the later books in the series but the last, published many years after the previous ones, was clearly padded out with trivia,_ like poetry_, because Auel had run out of story. I never finished reading it. Maybe that's the definition of bad writing, the sort that shouts out that it was written to be published, not to be read, by an author who doesn't need to try any more.
> 
> The premise in _Clan of the Cave Bear, _the assumption that a race without a spoken language must lack intelligence and organisation, was an interesting one to be tackled in a first novel and the detailed research added relevant body to the plot. It is just as easy to assume that a race with a written language must have intelligence, but it is often that very writing that proves otherwise. There are plenty of published books, by established authors who find it hard to stop writing when they've lost their edge and have run out of fresh ideas, that I would put above this one in a list of badly written books.
> 
> ...



My issue has nothing to do with the story. I found the premise rather interesting as well.

My problem with that book is the execution of the premise and her nasty habit of using 5000 words to describe something that could have been done in 500. 

While I liked the idea behind it, the writing itself bored me to tears.


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## EmmaSohan (Nov 19, 2015)

The worst -- getting near the end and realizing I'm reading first book of a trilogy (and I got no warning) and there's no resolution. It's just a giant rip-off.

An unfilling ending comes in second, but I find now that if the writer can't write a good ending, I have given up on the book about a quarter way through and am just skipping to the ending.

Recently, I have been setting down books for being too boring and then realizing -- the characters and plot should have been interesting to me. (The character sketches and synopsis were interesting to some publisher.) When I look more closely, the book is always poorly written.


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## Wandering Man (Nov 19, 2015)

I dislike blatant manipulation of the readers emotions. Gratuitous "tear Jerking?"


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 19, 2015)

Terry D said:


> Many good novels were written quickly. I doubt you could tell that _A Clockwork Orange_ was written in less than a month, or Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_ in less than six weeks. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote _The Gambler_ in a matter of days. Some writers need time to produce good work others do not.



Ewww. 

Yes, I'm disagreeing with billions of people...

Stone me if you will, as long as I don't have to finish reading...


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## shadowwalker (Nov 19, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> For me, time=quality.
> 
> If you wrote something quickly... the reader can tell.
> 
> ...



But do you decide a book is bad before or after you find out how long it took to write it? 

Just as with everything else about writing, each writer has their own way of doing things, and the same writer can do different things for different books. I have no problem with how long it took the writer to finish a book - not as long as I enjoy it. If I do, I don't really care how long it took. If I don't, well, I don't really care how long it took.


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## dale (Nov 19, 2015)

Wandering Man said:


> I dislike blatant manipulation of the readers emotions. Gratuitous "tear Jerking?"



i was gonna mention something like this earlier. i think every writer throws part of himself into his work.
we all have opinions and feelings that naturally come into our "fictional worlds". i notice i do it myself. but some
writers really overplay this card to the point of "preaching". and it annoys me. i mean..."ok, anne rice...i know your son
is gay....you don't need to keep going on these pro-homo tirades in your books. it's getting on my nerves." 
or even if it's something i agree with by the author...it grates on me. i understand we all have our feelings on shit
and it's gonna seep into our work. but don't make it such a damn cause that it distracts from the story itself.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 20, 2015)

shadowwalker said:


> But do you decide a book is bad before or after you find out how long it took to write it?
> 
> Just as with everything else about writing, each writer has their own way of doing things, and the same writer can do different things for different books. I have no problem with how long it took the writer to finish a book - not as long as I enjoy it. If I do, I don't really care how long it took. If I don't, well, I don't really care how long it took.



I just meant it has a different feel that I don't like. Like it's missing something.

But that's why I'm me, and you're you, and not anyone else... if i was someone else, I'd go crazy! Life is grand. <3


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## Gavrushka (Nov 20, 2015)

EmmaSohan said:


> The worst -- getting near the end and realizing I'm reading first book of a trilogy (and I got no warning) and there's no resolution. It's just a giant rip-off.
> 
> An unfilling ending comes in second, but I find now that if the writer can't write a good ending, I have given up on the book about a quarter way through and am just skipping to the ending.
> 
> Recently, I have been setting down books for being too boring and then realizing -- the characters and plot should have been interesting to me. (The character sketches and synopsis were interesting to some publisher.) When I look more closely, the book is always poorly written.



Oh agreed. Investing so much of my time, just to find the writing fizzled out, is unacceptable and shows a complete lack of empathy from the writer (assuming my view is commonplace).

And there's often something about subsequent novels in a series, especially where the opening novel was the one that propelled the writer to fame... Their writing changes, and there's a smugness, pomposity and even verbosity about it, as if they've overcompensated for all those years of insecurity while seeking representation. - Has anyone ever read the 'Demon Cycle' quadrilogy by Peter Brett? - It's a fantastic series, but book 2 is very different to the opener. - It's, well, self indulgent and even a little flabby (but still exceptional and enjoyable.) - I guess a writer can't help but get carried away, especially if their opening novel is well received.


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## Bishop (Nov 20, 2015)

Sam said:


> What's worse than a Mary Sue?



*Someone trying to sell me on the idea that a college senior in an urban United States university has never used a computer, does not have an iPod, and gets a job right out of college with nothing but an undergraduate English degree. 

*But seriously, Sam. #AgreeWithEverythingYouSaid (yet again)


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## Terry D (Nov 20, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> Ewww.
> 
> Yes, I'm disagreeing with billions of people...
> 
> Stone me if you will, as long as I don't have to finish reading...



I have no idea what you are disagreeing with. Those are all solid, published novels, written quickly. Your claim was that quick = bad, I'm suggesting that you would not be able to tell these books were written quickly. I don't care if you think they deserve a "Ewww" (have you even read one of them?) that's a subjective opinion. I understand that for many younger readers literature didn't exist before Choose You Own Adventure and Goosebumps.


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## JustRob (Nov 20, 2015)

T.S.Bowman said:


> My problem with that book is the execution of the premise and her nasty habit of using 5000 words to describe something that could have been done in 500.



Oh yes, that word count thing. I suppose that over the years I've spent so much time scanning through thick reference manuals for information that my way of reading isn't particularly sensitive to word bloat. That's probably why I don't fully appreciate the emphasis in these forums on making every word count. I suppose I don't exactly read sequentially but glean information from the pages somehow. When I beta read someone's WIP recently they were surprised at how rapidly I finished reading and gave my comments. Asked to check that another novel was correctly formatted for my E-Reader I flipped quickly through all the pages and then told the writer that they were consistently use the wrong spelling for one word. My mother worked in a print shop and had a remarkable eye for detail, but I doubt that it's a genetic thing. Anyway, excess words just encourage me to shift the eyeballing warp drive up a notch or two. They're no problem so long as they're spelled correctly. There are limits though. If you felt that _The Clan of The Cave Bear _was too wordy then you'd definitely agree with me that _The Land Of Painted Caves_ should never have been written at all. Once Ms. Auel got into her stride there was no stopping her.

Bad writing iritates the reader, but as not all readers are the same any specific writing is not necessarily inherently bad.




EmmaSohan said:


> The worst -- getting near the end and realizing I'm reading first book of a trilogy (and I got no warning) and there's no resolution. It's just a giant rip-off.
> 
> An unfilling ending comes in second, but I find now that if the writer can't write a good ending, I have given up on the book about a quarter way through and am just skipping to the ending.



Where is the official place for issuing warnings about trilogies? Is there a convention on this? I am writing a very long story and hope that by the end of the trilogy the reader will realise why it can never end in the sense of a comprehensive resolution. Indeed, the reader may have trouble discovering what it is that they expect to get resolved. Maybe that is an aspect of my writing, that the reader isn't presented with a problem followed by a resolution but rather discovers what the story has resolved even though they may not have seen it as a problem beforehand. 

I only describe my work as a trilogy because publishers have conventions about the length of books, especially by new authors, so I have to declare somewhere to be the "end of a book" but that is not to my liking and I would consider my first novel to be a complete rip-off were it to be published as a free-standing work. Maybe I should find some magazine somewhere to publish my work in instalments instead of as "books". Maybe there's even a self-publishing website somewhere that takes that approach. If not let's start one. Someone could make a mint out of it. 

As ever writers are at the mercy of their publishers. At the extreme consider Peter F.Hamilton's space opera _The Night's Dawn Trilogy _where each "book" topped a thousand pages. By reducing the font size some publishers were able to squeeze these tomes into their machinery in the UK but in the US the first edition of _The Reality Dysfunction, _the first book in the trilogy_,_ was broken up into two volumes. I hope that they were only sold as a set.

I noticed that one of those manifold writers of "New York Times Best Sellers" is in the habit of putting the beginning of his next book involving the same main character at the end of the previous one. Does this count as not ending with a resolution? If one issue is resolved one chapter from the end of a story but another arises is that a rip-off? The biggest issue in my first novel gets resolved halfway through, so should I end the story there rather than continuing with the other half? At what point in the story does the reader feel that they've had their money's worth? Even at the very end of the trilogy I add an extra chapter which tantalisingly puts extra ideas into the reader's head, ideas which will never get resolved, but I do warn them not to read it because the original story has ended. What do you think they will do, read it anyway and be frustrated or resist the temptation even though they may actually have paid for the privilege? (In my dreams!) 

Is a happy ending ever really the end anyway? At the beginning of my story I describe it as a fairy tale, maybe the sort that should end "They all lived happily ever after" but I go on to address that idea in detail, how anyone could live happily ever after. Should I be penalised for coming to the conclusion that they did all live happily ever after after all two books later?

I know what you mean, but sometimes things are more complicated.


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## Stormcat (Nov 20, 2015)

I feel this story is worth sharing:

http://notalwaysright.com/his-lawyers-should-have-the-book-thrown-at-them/33693


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## bazz cargo (Nov 20, 2015)

Sorry, don't get it. 

As long as it is easy to read and interesting it will do.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 21, 2015)

Terry D said:


> I have no idea what you are disagreeing with. Those are all solid, published novels, written quickly. Your claim was that quick = bad, I'm suggesting that you would not be able to tell these books were written quickly. I don't care if you think they deserve a "Ewww" (have you even read one of them?) that's a subjective opinion. I understand that for many younger readers literature didn't exist before Choose You Own Adventure and Goosebumps.



I had only come across plot summaries and was fairly uninterested/disgusted with everything that took place within those stories. 

And, equally and oppositely, do I care if someone, or many people, would think that a they are amazing, as that is also a subjective opinion? Of many people, sure... 

...But tons of people love Justin Bieber's music. Shall I also take their advice, and buy his CD? 

Yes I know....bad analogy. Sorry about that. :upset: *Cough* 

I also particularly enjoy making a special effort to come across as light-hearted, only to receive suggestions that I'd ever read a choose-your-own or... one of those stupid books.


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## Bishop (Nov 21, 2015)

Crowley K. Jarvis said:


> I had only come across plot summaries and was fairly uninterested/disgusted with everything that took place within those stories.



Not to put words in Terry's mouth, but I think he's making the point that quality novels can be done quickly. Frankenstein was, similarly, a rapidly-written book that stood the test of time. I think, despite your own objections, you can understand that these novels are considered classics, and their impact on generations alone gives them an earmark of quality.

To go to your music analogy, I don't enjoy listening to the Beatles, but I can appreciate their works were quality based solely on the impact it's had on others. Not my cup of tea, but it's certainly not "bad".


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Nov 21, 2015)

Bishop said:


> Not to put words in Terry's mouth, but I think he's making the point that quality novels can be done quickly. Frankenstein was, similarly, a rapidly-written book that stood the test of time. I think, despite your own objections, you can understand that these novels are considered classics, and their impact on generations alone gives them an earmark of quality.
> 
> To go to your music analogy, I don't enjoy listening to the Beatles, but I can appreciate their works were quality based solely on the impact it's had on others. Not my cup of tea, but it's certainly not "bad".



I liked the Beatles music, lyrics, and the themes... just not their singing voices. 

And of course, I don't mean to completely disregard what are considered classics. I would probably read them anyway. I'll clear some time for it, I've been slacking on reading.

It's just, to me, they seem rather pointless. 

To elaborate a little, as far as the plot, especially the endings... all three, coincidentally, seemed to have that in common. Clockwork orange... uhh... great, I guess? As I lay dying... the entire goal, the family... The Gambler... was that the entire point?

That's probably my own problem of course. Searching for meaning. I've always felt it was necessary. What do I gather from a story? 

It can be presented in the most interesting way, written masterfully... but, what's the point? Without that, it's nothing but pretty words to describe some events from some perspectives.

Sorry, I don't mean to be all debateful, or come across as peeved at all. 

Maybe it's a consequence of always reading the plot first. Iunno.


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## Kyle R (Nov 21, 2015)

Crowley K. Davis said:
			
		

> And of course, I don't mean to completely disregard what are considered classics.



You don't have to apologize for disliking classics. We're all entitled to our own likes and dislikes. :encouragement:

Me? I was never really a fan of the literary classics. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner? My eyes glaze over with boredom.

But venture into the classic SF/F authors? Like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, C.S. Lewis, and Robert Louis Stevenson? Oh boy. Nostalgia abounds. These were the literary heroes of my childhood. As soon as I opened one of their books, I knew I was in for an adventure.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 21, 2015)

I was never big on reading the classics either. I had to plow my way through Moby Dick only with great effort. Same with many other classic novels.

Crowley...I read much like you do I think. Perhaps not with the same speed, though. I often find myself skipping paragraphs of seeing only key words in them. Especially when something is being described to me. Most of the time I simply don't care what color the damn walls are or what kind of silverware is on the table.

In the case of Clan Of The Cave Bear, I found myself skipping entire PAGES because of her long winded descriptions. I only got halfway through the book and never bothered even trying to read another from her.


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## shadowwalker (Nov 21, 2015)

T.S.Bowman said:


> In the case of Clan Of The Cave Bear, I found myself skipping entire PAGES because of her long winded descriptions. I only got halfway through the book and never bothered even trying to read another from her.



That's me with Tom Clancy and his detailed descriptions of various technologies and organizations (read INFODUMPS). Out of all his books I've read, I've probably actually read half.


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## Jeko (Nov 21, 2015)

'Bad writing' is when the objective nature of the narrative is communicated unsatisfyingly (both short/long term) and there's an unsatisfying scope (both short/long term) for the reader's active involvement with the text. 

That's it. That covers anything else you can say about 'bad writing'.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 21, 2015)

shadowwalker said:


> That's me with Tom Clancy and his detailed descriptions of various technologies and organizations (read INFODUMPS). Out of all his books I've read, I've probably actually read half.



Yeah. He's another one that drives me batty. I have tried to read several of his. I even managed to get through a couple of them. Bjt, like you, I probably only really read about half of the words.


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## The Green Shield (Nov 22, 2015)

Here are a few of my not-favorite things in writing:
-> Long-winded lectures about events that happened before the book that doesn't pertain to the plot. I'm reading _A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms_ by George R.R. Martin and, with all respect to him, I'm struggling to get through a section where one of the secondary character spends *PAGES* waxing lyrical about some ancient battle that I honestly don't care about. Hell, even Dunk (the protagonist), can barely stand listening to the story. I found myself asking: "How does this pertain to the plot about a queen from a rival house damming up the river so the house Dunk works for is dying of thirst??"

-> Characters who are supposedly fully-grown adults begin acting like they're in high school (or younger!) Or they're supposed to be super smart, but for the sake of drama they apparently drop a few IQs and begin making stupid decisions that they otherwise would not make.

-> Excess of purple-prose.


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## Jeko (Nov 22, 2015)

> Characters who are supposedly fully-grown adults begin acting like they're in high school (or younger!) Or they're supposed to be super smart, but for the sake of drama they apparently drop a few IQs and begin making stupid decisions that they otherwise would not make.



I actually love it when this happens. Modern psychology and psychoanalysis points us to seeing the adult and child rather blurred. Some great works of literature have fantastic adult characters that significantly behave like children, and the aim of those works is often to draw attention to that blurring in order to question human nature.

Look at _Alice in Wonderland_, for instance, or Henry James' _What Maisie Knew_. Who are the real adults/children in those stories?

If you want psychological realism, you're going to get the infantile in the mature and vice versa, because that's how people are. What you're after is a kind of psychological idealism, and while that's fine to be desired, it can't constitute 'good' or 'bad' writing.


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## shadowwalker (Nov 22, 2015)

That brings up something that bugs me, although I suppose it technically isn't bad writing - just lousy logic. It's when characters refuse to listen to/trust people they supposedly know very well, and instead believe complete strangers. To me, it's kind of a Deus ex machina, because if the characters did believe the known person instead of the stranger, the whole thing would fall apart. (It's especially prevalent in TV series, and it drives me absolutely mad!)


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## voltigeur (Nov 22, 2015)

> That's me with Tom Clancy and his detailed descriptions of various technologies and organizations (read INFODUMPS). Out of all his books I've read, I've probably actually read half.



When I read Tom Clancy as a writer I found his early technique was genius. In his early works there wasn't that much detail. If you worked in the military in the areas he wrote about you filled in a lot of blanks. If you didn't work in the military he told you much more than you knew so you perceived a ton of detail. 

But even in his later work when he responded to the reputation I don't see this as bad writing so much as it was writing to an audience. The techno thriller genre was written for people who wanted tons of technical detail. 

So was it bad writing or just not his core audience?


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## shadowwalker (Nov 22, 2015)

voltigeur said:


> So was it bad writing or just not his core audience?



I think the latter, quite honestly. That said, I was totally into his writing until I hit those patches, then it was skim skim skim - ah, back to the actual story... A happy medium would have been nice.


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## JustRob (Nov 22, 2015)

I dislike a writer including irrelevant devices in their story just to demonstrate their versatility. Yes, we dress up our characters in idiosyncrasies to flesh them out but some things seem to me to be going too far. I've already mentioned poetry popping up in stories but another distraction is jokes. I admit that I incorporate jokes into my writing but they are always in context and serve a purpose, often to make a connection with something elsewhere in the story. A feature of my writing is the occurrence of spooky coincidences and in particular jokes tend to come back and haunt people. That's no surprise given that since I've started writing my own life has been plagued by spooky coincidences. In contrast I was reading a series of books from one author a while back and whenever the detective in them rang a certain colleague that character would always insist on telling a joke before they could discuss the intended subject. I just don't know why the writer did it. The jokes were completely out of context. It was fortunate that the detective didn't meet any of his contacts at a theatre or I may have had to read through the resident comic's entire repertoire, or rather the writer's, before the story moved on. It was a shame as the books were quite reasonable apart from that one quirk.

Is it too much to ask that jokes go in joke books, poetry in poetry books and stories in story books?  Of course my own writing is an anthology of spooky coincidences.


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## Sam (Nov 23, 2015)

shadowwalker said:


> I think the latter, quite honestly. That said, I was totally into his writing until I hit those patches, then it was skim skim skim - ah, back to the actual story... A happy medium would have been nice.



I think it's a mixture of both, if I'm being honest. 

Clancy's first six novels are among the finest thrillers ever penned. There's a certain amount of needless technical information, yes, but nothing quite as extreme as the six novels he penned before his death. Pretty much everything after the '90s and _Rainbow Six _is complete dross, and not just because of the technical aspects and the info dumps. From _The Bear and the Dragon _onwards, Clancy gets into the annoying habit of preaching -- proselytising, one might even say. His political leaning comes through in abundance, and there are many polemic passages about other political parties to whom he is in stark opposition. It is one of the cardinal sins of writing and it leaves a bitter aftertaste. 

Moreover, he begins to rehash a lot of the themes and plots he wrote about at the start of his career (_The Bear and the Dragon _is _Red Storm Rising; __The Teeth of the Tiger _is _Clear and Present Danger_) and the writing never lives up to the ghosts of his past. It's not on the same level as any of the books from the '80s and '90s. For that reason, I think Clancy got into bad habits and his writing suffered for it. 

Still, the first six -- you could not wish to read a more incredible half-dozen novels.


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## T.S.Bowman (Nov 23, 2015)

> Is it too much to ask that jokes go in joke books, poetry in poetry books and stories in story books?  Of course my own writing is an anthology of spooky coincidences.



I am not writing a joke book, nor do I feel my work is a joke. But there is quite a lot of humor involved in my story.

Should I, by your statement, remove the jokes from my story because I am not writing a joke book? Should I make my story much more serious because it's a story book?

I think, as with all things writing, it depends on what you are trying to do. 

So, in all actuality, it may very well be too much to ask.


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## midnightpoet (Nov 23, 2015)

There are some great examples under "new bad writing competition" thread under the WF "Challenges" section.:joker:


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## patskywriter (Nov 28, 2015)

So many people have already said this in different ways … but I’ll add my two bits. For me, one example of bad writing is simply putting down words that really don’t have to be written. There’s a local radio interviewer who has a 5-member staff at his disposal (I tend to fly by the seat of my pants as a solo practitioner). The staff provides him with all kinds of background information for his interviews. He then takes that information, and simply because he has it on hand, he awkwardly inserts it into his interviews where it's not needed. He acts as if the information will go to waste otherwise. Don't write like that. It's obvious, awkward, and unnecessary … and it annoys the reader.


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## Wandering Man (Nov 28, 2015)

So, you are telling me that, as I sit here poking away with each of my eight fingers and two thumbs, on this black Microsoft ergonomic keyboard with a special switch that allows me to go back and forth between the normal function on my function keys with white lettering and the extra special functions on those same keys printed with blue icons, that it is possibly possible to insert too much detail into a story?


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## patskywriter (Nov 28, 2015)

Wandering Man said:


> So, you are telling me that, as I sit here poking away with each of my eight fingers and two thumbs, on this black Microsoft ergonomic keyboard with a special switch that allows me to go back and forth between the normal function on my function keys with white lettering and the extra special functions on those same keys printed with blue icons, that it is possibly possible to insert too much detail into a story?



Hey, you didn't mention the sounds that striking those duo-purpose keys make, and whether they reverberate when you type in a room that's void of rugs and curtains.


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## Newman (Dec 1, 2015)

Tettsuo said:


> Serious question.  I read writers discussion bad writing, but rarely did I understand what bad writing is for those writers.
> 
> For me, bad writing has the following qualities:
> 
> ...




For me, it's not the bad writing so much as the lack of a clear, well defined message/journey/quest (however you want to put it). If that sorts itself out, so does a lot of the bad writing.

You can write better in later drafts. What you can't do is write better around a bad story.


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## Jeko (Dec 1, 2015)

> What you can't do is write better around a bad story.



I've always found that your own writing of the story affects the way you see it, so while 'story' and 'narrative' are separate parts of fiction, they get blurred together a lot in the process of creativity and control.


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## EmmaSohan (Dec 1, 2015)

Cadence said:


> I've always found that your own writing of the story affects the way you see it, so while 'story' and 'narrative' are separate parts of fiction, they get blurred together a lot in the process of creativity and control.



Having a story and telling a story get blurred for me too. I mean, if you can get a famous book from the idea _Guy Tries to Catch a Fish_, isn't it really important _how _the story is told?

Really, I'm right now trying to rewrite a conversation, and I already have everything except making it believable and interesting and full of emotion and coherent and not repetitive. And it all feels like too much.

Or I was reading a book where the author left out a dramatic pause, so that a critical event could be read as just another fact. So she had a great scene, but she just didn't get it on the page right, turning it into just a good scene.


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## violinguy (Dec 1, 2015)

Good fiction, to me, needs to tell a story.  The story doesn't even have to be believable, just good.  3-act structure if you will.  A good and interesting story trumps most other deficiencies.  Obviously a good story with terrible characters can't succeed, but I seem to enjoy books that tell a good story from beginning to end.  An example of outstanding storytelling, while not written fiction, is the film _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_.  It was shown to a creative writing class of mine years ago and it holds up well against some of the finest written films of today.

Deus ex Machina is another big problem.  I totally believe in surprise endings, and unexpected resolutions, but for F@#$'s sake, I hate "comic book" resolutions, or better yet, the "thank God we invented the XXX."  Walking Dead fans recognize this as "Dumpster ex Machina."  I won't go into detail for those who aren't caught up.

Finally, below is a big one for me as well.



shadowwalker said:


> That brings up something that bugs me, although I suppose it technically isn't bad writing - just lousy logic. It's when characters refuse to listen to/trust people they supposedly know very well, and instead believe complete strangers. To me, it's kind of a Deus ex machina, because if the characters did believe the known person instead of the stranger, the whole thing would fall apart. (It's especially prevalent in TV series, and it drives me absolutely mad!)



Characters need to be true to themselves.  If an author creates a character with copious detail and then has that character stray away from himself to lead a reader somewhere, I don't like it.  It's cheap and not even worthy of the worst comic book writers (I both love and read comic books well into my 40s, but some of the cliffhangers and their resolutions are awful).


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## Tettsuo (Dec 2, 2015)

Newman said:


> For me, it's not the bad writing so much as the lack of a clear, well defined message/journey/quest (however you want to put it). If that sorts itself out, so does a lot of the bad writing.
> 
> You can write better in later drafts. What you can't do is write better around a bad story.



If you writing isn't clear and well defined, that's bad writing.  It doesn't matter how well you put words together, if it doesn't make sense it's nothing but gibberish.


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