# How strongly do you react to really bad writing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [May 5, 2022, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020 "2022-05-05T17:26:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/81 "2022-05-07T00:08:15Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > the “inside info” he had gleaned would be scattered randomly throughout, usually doing little or nothing to advance the plot Just for general amusement – and keeping in mind that it’s been a long time since I read these books so my memory may be hazy – here are a couple of examples of what I mean. In _Airport_, there was a little old lady who was caught trying to board a flight without a ticket. She was brought before an airline official and expressed surprise, since she had always used her “system” to fly for free to visit her children. Hailey was expounding on the fact that back in the day before airport security, the airlines were notoriously lax about security in general, and the real “ticket” to get on a plane was not the ticket itself, but a boarding pass, which was often nothing more than a flight number scrawled on the ticket folder. Hailey had also learned that airlines were extremely reluctant to prosecute or do anything that garnered bad publicity, so in the novel, the airline official just rolled her eyes, sighed, let the old lady go, and then, IIRC, went and had sex with another airline official. This is all typical Hailey. Another one I remember is that in _Wheels_, a newly developed car turned out to have serious vibration problems at a certain speed. The engineers developed a fix. Our Hero the automotive executive asked what the modification would cost. He was told something like “about ten dollars”. In the novel, the executive then had fits of hysterics about this incredible cost, and the book goes on at great length to explain how even a few cents in the manufacturing cost of a mass-production car makes a huge difference to the bottom line (still true today). I believe the executive then went off to have sex with someone. Point is, IIRC, none of those things had anything much to do with the plot, such as it was. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/82 "2022-05-07T00:15:20Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > > [@Nonsuch](#): > > > > Donna Tartt’s _The Goldfinch_ is the worst book I ever forced myself to finish, but it had nothing to do with the prose, which was actually fine, just the plot, characters … you know, everything else. > > I couldn’t make myself do it. It felt like the reading equivalent of an ironman course where you have to go over every obstacle twice, people throw adjectives at you, all your team-mates are arseholes, and you never even signed up to an ironman course in the first place. But…but Stephen King said the book “connects with the heart as well as the mind”. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/83 "2022-05-07T00:28:53Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > Funny you should mention Robert Louis Stevenson. A few years ago I bought a copy of “Treasure Island” to read to my grandkids, because what kid doesn’t like a pirate story? The sentence structure was frequently so twisty that I would have to stop in the middle of a sentence, read it to myself until I could parse it correctly, then continue reading out loud. I got frustrated trying to read the story, and the grandkids got frustrated listening to me try to read it. I think we stopped after about three chapters. Maybe that kind of writing was the standard back then, but it’s excruciating to try to read it today. (Much like James Fenimore Cooper.) Oh, man. Oh, _man._ The first few chapters are a little slow, I’ll give you that. But the book is exquisite, once you get into the rhythm. When I was in school to become a teacher, my kid-lit class required every student to choose a week to do a read-aloud. Most students chose something like _Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus_ or _Harold and the Purple Crayon_.and it was all sweet and bland. Then it was my turn. And for a couple days in advance I practiced the chapter [The First Blow](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/120/120-h/120-h.htm#link2H_4_0019). And during class I stood and paced and read the book, pitching my voice high and wheedling for Long John Silver, and hoarse and quavering with indignation for Tom, and quiet after the birds exploded from the bush–then nearly barking out the sudden attack and brutal murder– Holy shit. I held that class in the palm of my hand. As someone that’s read many many dozens of chapter books aloud, take my word: read-alouds don’t get better than _Treasure Island._ ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/84 "2022-05-07T00:37:02Z")
Oh, another writer that I’ve put down before because of writing: Brandon Sanderson. Some of his books are enjoyable schlock. But one of them started with this portentous History of Fantasyland, some Silmarrilion knockoff bullshit, in which the immortal wizards or whatever swear a mighty Oathpact to one another, and I just couldn’t even. I assume that after they Finishcompleted swearing their Oathpact, they all Leftwent to Supperdinner in a Groupbunch. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/85 "2022-05-07T00:51:23Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > But…but Stephen King said the book “connects with the heart as well as the mind”. So does the vagus nerve, but this was merely vague and got on my nerves. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/86 "2022-05-07T04:27:49Z")
Depends. Do I have to read it? Any reason to think it will be worthwhile for other reasons? Some types of poor writing are easier to tolerate than others. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/87 "2022-05-07T04:49:31Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > > [@carrps](#): > > > > This makes me sad. I love both Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine. I’ve read a bunch of her books. Liked some more than others, but I haven’t hated any of them and I’ve loved a few. > > No need to be sad just because other people don’t like the things you like. _De gustibus non disputandum est._ _Dark Corners_ isn’t a good sample of Rendell’s real talent. It’s the last book she wrote before her death at age 85, and published posthumously, so possibly she didn’t edit as much as she could have, or she was losing her touch. I’ve read almost all of her books, including the Barbara Vines, and some are clunkers, but when she’s at the top of her game, she’s excellent. And my answer to the OP: yes, there are books that I’ll just reject because the writing is really bad, but sometimes I’m willing to put up with some of it if there are redeeming features. I’ve read the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy and _War and Peace_ several times, but for the rereads I’ve just skipped through the heavy parts and looked at the parts I enjoy. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/88 "2022-05-07T04:58:29Z")
Oh wow. VERY strongly. I haven’t read modern fiction, other than Murakami and McCall-Smith, for decades. Reading my way through a century of Nobel Prize winners–which I’ve doing for 20+ years now, and I’ve read _maybe_ a third of them–has completely spoiled my tolerance for insigificant writing. Every time I pick up an Oprah book, or Pulitzer winner, or the book “everyone” is reading, I’m off it within a page or two. Even all the sincerest recommendations from people I respect, I just cant. Elmore Leonard is the closest to an exception I can think of. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/89 "2022-05-07T14:44:32Z")
One thing that takes me out of the story is pretentiousness. You have a character who’s supposed to be an ordinary teenage girl, or an uneducated working-class woman, and her perspective is full of high-flying literary metaphors - so you can’t believe it’s the character’s thoughts but that of a creative-writing major trying to impress her professor. Arthur Hailey: I miss him. His books give you something you just don’t get nowadays: the excitement and drama arising naturally from the daily routine of characters doing their jobs competently, who: - aren’t law enforcement or private detectives - are not being stalked by a killer - have not had a loved one disappear mysteriously, and - who don’t obsess over their relationships to the exclusion of everything else. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/90 "2022-05-07T15:52:02Z")
- who don’t take chunks of time out in the middle of a mystery for loong lunches over which to discuss relationships, wardrobes and general life angst. Lawrence Block was good at sprinkling in short meals that actually advanced the plot, while making you hungry for the food. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/91 "2022-05-07T17:47:53Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Are you willing to deal with it long enough to get through a fiction or non-fiction work in hopes that the story/subject will be worthwhile, or do you give up because you can’t cope with the pain? I give up because I can’t cope with the pain. > [@Grrr](#): > > The book starts out with some cool world building. But then it just keeps on with the world building and doesn’t stop. It never gets to the actual story until like the last four chapters. That’s not the sort of bad writing I mean, though. I might or might not give up on something for that reason – would depend on whether I was interested enough in the world building. I mean the sort of thing in the OP’s example, or other versions in which the problem is the language itself – I remember, for example, giving up very early on something in which the author (I can’t remember who) kept using Long Obscure Words – and when I went and looked some of them up in a dictionary, it became clear that the author hadn’t bothered to do that, and clearly had no idea what they actually meant. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > The older I get the less patience I have for books that aren’t working for me. It was a great day in my life when I realized that there was nothing wrong with taking a book back to the library without having read it. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > it depends: both on _in what way_ it’s bad (and there are many different ways that writing can be bad), and on whether there’s enough that the writer does well to make up for the badness. That’s true. But if the badness is bad enough, I’m unlikely to hang in there long enough to figure out whether there’s something else being done well. – It doesn’t always make me stop reading, but it throws me out of the book and seriously decreases both my enjoyment of it and my trust in it when an author gets specific facts wrong; sometimes even if it’s a single thing that I recognize as wrong and a relatively trivial thing in the story as a whole. If I know they got that detail utterly wrong, then anything else they say, if I don’t otherwise know that it’s accurate, I can’t put any faith in.(Obviously this only applies in some contexts – if the oak trees in a fantasy keep their leaves all winter, I’m going to assume the author did that on purpose; or at least give them the benefit of the doubt about it.) > [@carnut](#): > > I once burned a paperback that was poorly written. I didn’t get halfway through it. It was that bad. I was carefully raised to think that one must never burn books (because of historical – and come to think of it current – connotations) but that under extreme provocation it’s permissible to throw a book in the garbage. I’ve thrown out maybe three books in my life. I won’t throw one out for bad writing, or for accidentally getting facts wrong. Only for utterly terrible content. > [@SciFiSam](#): > > > [@Jackmannii](#): > > > > But…but Stephen King said the book “connects with the heart as well as the mind”. > > So does the vagus nerve, but this was merely vague and got on my nerves. I want to thank you for that but it’s hard to type when you can’t stop laughing! ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/92 "2022-05-07T21:41:51Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I was carefully raised to think that one must never burn books I guess I wasn’t carefully raised then. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/93 "2022-05-07T21:55:51Z")
How strongly? Very very strongly. Even excellent writing can bore me or irritate me, if I don’t care for the premise, or the personality of the writer, or the protagonist. Poor writing I might read a couple paragraphs to make sure and then I’m out of there. I just can’t read junk any more. I used to be able to. I’ve been tossed from several discussion fora for asking for better grammar and punctuation. Fine with me. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/94 "2022-05-07T22:03:49Z")
Sorry – didn’t mean it that way! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/95 "2022-05-07T22:32:53Z")
Forgiven, especially as I’m sure you didn’t read this thing. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2022, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/96 "2022-05-07T22:46:54Z")
> [@gkster](#): > > _Dark Corners_ isn’t a good sample of Rendell’s real talent. It’s the last book she wrote before her death at age 85, and published posthumously, so possibly she didn’t edit as much as she could have, or she was losing her touch. I’ve read almost all of her books, including the Barbara Vines, and some are clunkers, but when she’s at the top of her game, she’s excellent. So why did King praise it so highly? Helping out a friend? Felt sorry for her? Money? (Not expecting an answer, just puzzled.) ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/97 "2022-05-08T04:49:24Z")
@commasense I don’t know what Poundstone et al had to say about _Dark Corners_ so can’t address their complaints directly, and it’s been a few years since I read the book. All I remember about it is that it was unsettling but I didn’t think it was worth rereading, which I’ve done with many of her other books. But looking at the first chapters on Google books, it looks like typical Rendell to me: a slow start, matter-of-fact, with hints of menace and creepiness and things gradually starting to go wrong before disaster strikes. It didn’t strike me as really bad writing at all, but I can see readers getting turned off by an opening that’s a bit flat and slow. King is far from the only person to praise the book highly, which he may have done because he liked its creepiness and because he wasn’t bothered by what others saw as bad writing. There are enthusiastic reviews from the Boston Globe and Washington Post as well. The fact that Rendell had a great track record and that it was her last book may account for the reviews being more positive than they might have otherwise been. > **[Dark Corners](https://books.google.com/books?id=4sL_BgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&hl=en)** > > “A spectacularly creepy and macabre tale” (Entertainment Weekly) of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and of one life’s fateful unraveling—from Ruth Rendell, “one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation” (People),... ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/98 "2022-05-08T05:30:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I’m surprised no one has mentioned Arthur Hailey, author of industry-centered fiction like _Hotel_ , _Airport_ , _Wheels_ , and similar dreck. I admit that when I was a kid Hailey was sort of a guilty pleasure, but then, so were _The Hardy Boys_ . I read Hardy Boys when I was in 5th and 6th grades, and I didn’t consider them a guilty pleasure. But I started them when I lived in Africa so I couldn’t be too picky. I never felt guilty about reading them. I was too young to assess their quality, but I read about 35 of the 50’s - 60’s Nancy Drew books to my daughter, and I could see the scaffolding. All programmatic. Throw in a bad guy, a crime, a location, and out comes a book. ---
**Author:** ![dummygladhands71](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c0e974/32.png) [@dummygladhands71](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dummygladhands71)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/99 "2022-05-08T05:40:39Z")
Danielle Steel’s writing is so bad, it makes my teeth hurt. Seriously. I suspect because I grind and grit my teeth at her prose. Another thing that will make me throw a book into the thrift store bag is shitty foreshadowing. If an author thinks they are oh so cleverly hinting at something, and I guess it right off, and am proved right in the next chapter or two, book, meet thrift store pile. ETA: I was bookless on a long flight and had noticed people reading “The Girl on the Train”, so I bought it on layover. What crap. Stuck on a flight, I threw it into the flight attendant’s trash bag with great prejudice, as we were landing. ---
**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2022, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020/100 "2022-05-08T05:48:34Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > King is an author I often think of in terms of “needs a good editor.” He’s used 500+ pages to write what would have been several decent 250pp books. He has good editors. He just doesn’t have to listen to them, so he often doesn’t. For me, if I’m not enjoying a book, I put it down, and I’ll likely never pick it up again. There are a surprising (again, to me) number of people who steadfastly read every book they crack the cover on, even if they hate it. It’s like a point of honor with them. Life’s too short. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-strongly-do-you-react-to-really-bad-writing/964020.md?page=6)