How to Write Badly

My personal philosophy is that there are no bad writers.  Like most crafts, writing is an art that improves with experience.  Natural talent may help, but even without it anyone that aspires to be a writer can improve until they achieve success. 

            But while there are no bad writers per se, there is definitely a lot of bad writing out there, some of which was probably written by yours truly.  Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

            What do I consider bad writing? 

             Bad writing means that no matter how suspenseful the story line, or how much you want to know what happens, you put the book down permanently.  Even if you have a burning desire to know how it all works out, you can’t suffer through another hundred pages to find out.

            Bad writing may contain the following:

1) Lengthy Descriptions

            You’re not writing your fifth grade composition on A Snowy Day.  You do not have to use up every adjective you know.  School is over.  Your teacher is no longer your audience. 

            People do not want to read long boring ass thousand word descriptions about the sunset, the hills, the sky at midnight, or the pimple on your bum.  I swear to you.  They don’t. 

            I understand that you’ve been led to believe your words should paint a picture.  That’s incorrect.  Your words should invoke a picture.  Unless your reader has been blind from birth (and if so telling them the exact shade of blue of the sky is pointless) they’ve seen sunsets, beaches, cars, people, houses etc.  A sentence or two is all you need to trigger this image.  Giving them a highly detailed five hundred word description of your Uncle’s vintage Corvette doesn’t paint a picture for your readers, it makes them skip two pages of your book.

            If your reader finds themselves having to skip too many pages, they’ll skip it altogether.

            Beware the wordy description no one wants.

2. Too Many Words

            Remember back when you were assigned a ten page paper on The Life Cycle of the Hummingbird and found yourself adding all kinds of useless filler words and empty pointless sentences to stretch it out? 

            Or when your teacher (or professor) insisted on having everything spelled out?

            Yeah, that’s not this.  Your audience doesn’t want to read a lot of useless filler, nor are they stupid.  If you write, “I realized we were out of milk.  I jumped into my car and drove to the store to get milk.  Once I arrived at the store to get the milk, when I tried to park my car, I noticed the parking lot was crowded.  I got out of my car, went into the store, and got milk," your reader wants to pull out their hair.

            How boring and annoying is that?  Instead, “I realized we were out of milk, so I jumped into my car and drove to the supermarket.  The parking lot was crowded, but I found a space and went into the store.”

            Your reader isn’t stupid.  They can make inferences.  Too many words interrupt the flow of the story. Then your audience remembers they had a load of laundry to do and puts down the book. 

            Less is more.  Your reader is impatient.  Cut all useless words out of your manuscript.  Yes, in some cases, that means sacrificing grammar in the process. Do it. 

            This can be painful.  It often entails cutting scenes that you’re proud of writing.  Anything that isn’t directly relevant to the story has to go.  Readers don’t want your off-topic tangents.  They’re ruthless. Too much of that and they're gone.  And they won't be back.

3. Too Many Adverbs

            If your characters say things sternly, angrily, firmly, softly, you need to lose that habit pronto.  Why?  Using too many adverbs of the “ly” variety is the mark of the amateur writer.  This one small detail distinguishes you from a skilled, experienced professional at a glance.

            Yeah, this one surprised me too. When I first heard this, I scoffed.  I believe in breaking rules.  After mulling it over a few days, I went back to edit my manuscript, and discovered, much to my chagrin, that none of my characters ever just said anything.  No, they said it furiously, or slowly, or tearfully, etc. etc.

            I am not kidding when I tell you this is glaring.  Since entering the world of Indie publishing, I’ve actually encountered sites that will not promote your book if your sample is lousy with adverbs.  It’s that big of a deal.

            Why?  Like too many words, it’s another interruption in the flow of the story.

4. Using Big Words

            Never use a five million dollar word when a twenty-five cent one will do.

            No one cares how you dazzled the teachers with your articulate vocabulary.  Use words familiar to your audience, because no, they won’t see this as an opportunity to learn something.  They’ll see it as an annoyance.  No one feels like putting their book down to go in search of the dictionary to look up a word.  And even if they’re reading on a device, they don’t want to have to stop reading.  It’s irritating.  They’re reading your book for pleasure.  It’s not assigned reading for Literature 101, it’s a leisure activity. If your book is riddled with words not in common usage, it’s a difficult read and most people won’t bother.  And they won’t buy any of your books in the future, either.  No one wants to read anything that makes them feel stupid.

            Bigger is not better.  Don’t write to inflate your own ego.  People don’t care about the size of an author’s vocabulary, they care about the story.  Write to your audience, not to impress your tenth grade honors English teacher.

5. Publishing A First Draft

            I read a lot of Indie works through my Amazon Prime subscription, and although it’s rare, I occasionally stumble upon this pitfall.  Guess what: readers can tell if you phone it in.  We know a first draft when we see one.  It’s filled with off topic digressions and typos that spell check wouldn’t catch…things like “through” instead of “threw.”  Often characters are undeveloped. 

            Case in point, when I wrote my semi-autobiographical novel The Playground, the teacher wasn’t a defined character in the first couple of drafts.  She didn’t have a name; I just referred to her as “the teacher.”  When I was re-reading my work, I realized that she was a major character and thus she became Ms. Frizz.  This oversight was due to my central focus being the bullying experiences of Rachel, a character based on me.  It was only when I was able to get several drafts in that I could be more objective and see what my story was lacking.

6.  Using the Wrong Medium

            If you envision your work as a movie or a television show, then you should be writing a screenplay or a script, not a book.

            This is a no brainer.  It’s the rare book that becomes either.  If you want your work to be performed, you need to present it in a manner conducive to this end. Trying to be an author when you’re a playwright at heart is a bit like trying to write a symphony when you prefer to write books. 

            Shakespeare is considered a literary giant, but he’s not known for his novels.

            A lot of writers default to being authors, because that appears to be the easiest setting.  It’s not.  Not if you want to write a television show.  Writing a screenplay or a script may take a bit more know-how than sitting before a blank screen and typing, but in the end, it’s not more difficult.  Books are massive undertakings that require a tremendous amount of work.  Learning how to write a screenplay or a script isn’t expending more effort than it would take to write a book.  Out there on the world wide web there are classes, tutorials, samples, and everything else you would need to learn right at your fingertips.  Don’t sell yourself short by taking what you erroneously see as “the easy way out.”

7. Sexist or Racist Overtones

            This can be a toughie, because books are written with a context in mind.  If you’re writing a book about nineteenth century Atlanta, there are limits to how you can portray women and people of different races without sacrificing authenticity.

            That being said, it boils my blood to read something set in the twenty-first century that portrays women as helpless pieces of ass and the only minority is Pete, the janitor.  Watch out for this.  We tap into the subconscious when we write, and often there are notions floating around in there that are a result of social conditioning.  And I’m not immune to it.  Recently, when editing my latest work, I bristled at how many times I referred to grown adult women as “girls.”  I wrote the first draft of this manuscript in September, before the “me too” movement” really got going.  Now I’m hyperaware of women being degraded, as well as the fact that often I unwittingly do it myself.

            Writing can change society.  What messages are you giving society in your work?  Is it one of empowerment, or the opposite?  A few simple changes can eliminate racist or sexist overtones in your work without altering the finished product. 

            Think it doesn’t matter?  Consider the ongoing furor over Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  The book is about the friendship that develops between a runaway slave, Jim, and Huckleberry, and the things they have in common that unite them.  The overall theme is everyone is human underneath, no matter what the color of their skin. 

            This novel was written in the nineteenth century and is part of the literary canon.  I read it in high school.  However, Twain’s overall message is being lost due to his repeated usage of offensive racist language, which is a tragedy. 

            Now people want to ban his book.

            You do not want the message of your book lost over something similar.  Avoid offensive portrayals if possible.

8. Mocking or Making Fun of Other Artists

            When confronted with a blank page and a blinking cursor, if all you can come up with is bashing someone else’s work, you need to head back to the drawing board.

            It’s not nice, it’s unprofessional, and no matter how funny and snarky you think it is, it’s not cool.  Only losers engage in this behavior. Seriously, that’s the message you wish to give the world with your writing?  Not to rip off Walk the Line or anything, but if you had only one chance to write one article, your only message to the world…is that what you’d choose to write?  Surely you have something better to say.

            Well, there you have it.  My list of what makes writing bad.  Keep in mind, it’s just my opinion.  And, believe it or not, bad writing can be successful.  I’d give you the name of a series of books I think are horribly written that has achieved phenomenal success, but then I’d be violating #8.  Oh well.  None of us are perfect.  The good news is bad writing doesn’t have to stay bad.  There’s always the chance to do a rewrite.

Do you have anything to add?  Feel free to tell me in the comment section!