What aspect of bad writing bothers you the most?

Cafe Society
21

I’m good at suspending disbelief for a bit of hokum, and most recognised TV and movie tropes don’t really bother me. But there are a few that bother me because they manage to combine several faults, such as being massively implausible and truly ‘we couldn’t care less’ insulting to the reader or viewers’ intelligence and just a big waste of time.

A simple, very common example is this: the good guy is stealthily exploring the bad guys’ lair. He notices a couple of ‘guards’ coming his way so he quickly ducks back, flattens himself against a wall and keeps still. The ‘guards’ walk past and the hero can proceed with his mission. Okay, so, first of all, this ‘plan’ would only work if he had omniscient awareness of where these guards were going to go or not going to go. Secondly, everyone has some peripheral vision and awareness, so the guards would not just walk past. Thirdly, given that we know the ‘guards’ are just going to walk past, and the hero will be able to carry on, isn’t this just a big waste of a minute of screen time? It’s not suspenseful or plausible, it’s just a minute that could have been spent showing us something interesting.

One that quite often crops up in literature is poor description of the physical layout of a given location when this is crucial to the plot. In some stories, especially crime stories, it might be very important to understand the exact layout of several rooms in a house, say, or the exact configuration of various passages and where they lead. Yet some authors offers very poor descriptions of the kind that are only clear to someone (e.g. the author) who already understands the layout he is trying to describe. G.K. Chesterton was a great writer and the Father Brown stories are deservedly praised, but in many of his stories he fails to give good descriptions of physical layout when this is actually crucial to solving the mystery.

22

Word repetition bugs me the most. An otherwise good novel I recently read used the word “spavined” three separate times, for example, and I was unreasonably annoyed.

A David Weber book I read earlier this year was so bad that I downloaded the electronic copy and did a word search to confirm my impression of the ridiculous number of times he repeated certain words and phrases. (Some form of the word “grin” was used 79 times.)

I have to be careful about reading too many of an author’s books in a row because I’ll start to notice his pet phrasing.

23

“The aspect of bad writing that bothers me the most,” intoned Jjimm, “as I also answered in a thread that was on the Straight Dope Message Board, an Internet forum with the slogan ‘Fighting ignorance’, is when a character’s dialog is used exclusively for exposition and nothing else. This is observable in several execrable books by Dan Brown, which remain inexplicably popular, and frequently top the New York Times bestseller list, in addition to book popularity polls in many other countries.”

“That is very interesting,” Malleus, Incus, Stapes! commented. “Do you have any other gripes or complaints?”

“Yes,” Jjimm went on. "It is when dialog is reported without word contractions, meaning that people’s reported speech is not in the least bit believable. It is not written in a way that people actually speak, but in a way that conveys the information that an author might have inside his or her head, making the characters appear to speak in a ridiculously stilted manner. It is irritating.

“Additionally, the desperate search for synonyms to the word ‘said’ leads to bizarre, often misleading, and occasionally absurd tone within the scene,” he ejaculated.

“Well,” Malleus, Incus, Stapes! exclaimed, “is that the end of your list of complaints and issues?”

"No. That is the tip of the iceberg of a much longer list. As an aside, the dialog in most fantasy fiction makes me want to stab eyeballs.

“But the stabbing shall not be done,” he concluded, ruefully. “It is not right. The Oracles of Madeupzor do not portend it is favorable… at least not tonight.” With those words still echoing around the hall, he disappeared swiftly into the black darkness, like a guttering torch being extinguished by a monk’s cowl.

24

This bugs me too, but I tend to not notice it until I’ve read the book a few times.

Example…I’m rereading Colleen McCullough’s *Masters of Rome *series. Fantastic books, she spent decades of research before she started writing, and I really enjoy them.

But.

She has a tendency to use dialogue to explain things to her readers. For instance, she has Gaius Marius “reminding” the Senate how many soldiers make up a cohort, a legion, etc. I doubt seriously Roman senators needed reminding, but she was doing it to explain to the reader. Also, she has a tribune of the plebs cry out “I call for a contio, a preliminary discussion!” Again, I think Romans knew what a contio was. She has one senator telling another what the urban praetor’s repsonsibilities were…I think she gets better as she goes along, but it does seem rather obvious in the first book.

Now, when a Roman senator has to explain how Rome works to a foreign king, that sort of makes sense. But between Romans? It’s makes for some awkward reading.

25

There’s this book I read a long time ago - I think it was by Weiss & Hickman - that I still think of as the “grimly” book. The word must have apeared at least once per page.

26

I think this depends on how it’s written. In general terms I agree with you, but Betty “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” Smith does an excellent job at describing very minor things about the characters and does it in a way that really helps you visualize the situation.

27

I agree with pretty much all of the above. For me the biggest offender is the author paying so much attention to how s/he is telling the story that I never come to care about the story itself. Snow Falling on Cedars is the example I cite most often. It’s beautifully constructed from a use of language standpoint, but I never once came to remotely care about the characters or what was happening to any of them.

It’s like food from the fair for me, tasty but not at all satisfying or filling.

28

Agree with A Reader’s Manifesto, do you? :slight_smile:

29

Beyond the most atrocious of the above-listed offenses–which are the type of thing to prevent me from reading a book at all–the most annoying thing for me is when I’m reading a book and the author uses words that he thinks sound fancy or intimidatingly smart, but he’s not really sure how to use them correctly. It’s like he decides to upgrade a word from mundane to writerly, so he just goes to a thesaurus, picks the most obscure sounding synonym, and simply plugs it in place, with no sense of slightly different usage or tone. No examples come to mind, but if this thread is still around the next time I come across one I’ll return with it.

30

Among several other things mentioned, I hate fake cliffhangers. This happens often in “thrillers.” For example, the story is winding along and…:

*“Brick McHugelarge entered the room stealthily, found the light switch, and turned it on quietly…to find himself facing the wrong end of a shotgun!”

[chapter end]

[turn page]

[new chapter]

“Brick smiled. ‘Nice peashooter, slim,’ he quipped.” etc.*

WTF? Nothing happened between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of this one! Why did you feel the need to manipulate me to achieve a sense of surprise or tension? If you can’t do it with the writing, don’t bother with the fucking chapter structure. Grrr.

31

Ooh, good one. Sometimes it seems like an author will use an adverb to modify a verb or adjective *instead of *picking the correct verb or adjective in the first place.

32

I loved jjimm’s example above and I’d love to see more of the long list of complaints set out in this way.

33

That too. It’s okay for kid’s books, but when used in adult novels it makes it feel like it’s directed at an eight-year-old.

34

since this is clearly a fiction thread, but:
Does bad writing bother anyone in nonfiction? Do you notice it? Or do you expect less? Do you, for example, just keep banging your head against a textbook because you’ll need to know it?

In other words, is good writing something of a recreational amenity?

35

Hell yes.

I translate for a living, and I’ve found out that I have a lot more fun translating legal documents than I do financial statements - because as a rule, lawyers are much better writers than accountants.

36

I disagree with this one. First, it’s sometimes important to the story that a character be considered unusually beautiful or ugly by others, but there’s no way a writer can predict the exact combination of physical traits that you the reader will find most or least attractive. Second and more importantly, bad writers LOVE to describe what characters look like, and they’ll do so at great length. I’d much prefer that a bad writer just say “He was the best-looking guy in school” and get it over with rather than go on and on in drooling detail.

For some reason bad writers especially love to describe the eye color of their characters. There are people who I’ve known for years whose eye color I could not describe with confidence, but in bad fiction everyone spends a lot of time noticing and thinking about the eye colors of others.

37

Ha! I thought I was weird when I realized I have trouble remembering people’s eye color. I remember watching a movie where a girl who was trying to test her boyfriend’s love for her closed her eyes and said “what color are my eyes?” He couldn’t answer. I got so scared that any boyfriend I had wouldn’t love me if I couldn’t remember what color his eyes were.

Took me quite a few years to realize that it was all horseshit.

I do remember my boyfriend’s eye color, but that’s mostly because it’s such a strange combination (sort of a gray/gold mix).

Another thing that bugs me: when characters have unique physical characteristics (like eyes that change colors, or “natural” fire-engine red hair) that aren’t significant to the plot. They’re just there because the author thinks they’re cool. I don’t care how awesome your character’s looks supposedly are–tell us WHY the character looks as unusual as he/she does.

38

Pulp fantasy writers complete inability to wrap up a plot. They just drag on and on and on and on . . . you get the idea.

For some strange reason, I recently slogged through Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series. Seven books to just wrap things up. The book covered less than two months of time but it took a couple of thousand pages. I think she used at least 500 of those to describe how perfectly beautiful the main character’s boyfriend was. She’s now onto book 8. It ends in a cliff hanger as bad as the first six. It also contains a plot device so unbelievable I had to laugh when it first showed up. I turned to my husband and told him about the plot device. He laughed, “next thing you know she’ll be having an alien love child.”

Nope. “That was three books ago.”

I would also love it if chick lit writers would please do away with the perfectly wonderful best friend? You know the flamboyant, high energy gal who’s been with the heroine through thick and thin and has a perfect sense of style and knows a Jimmy Choo from a Manalo Blanik. (or whatever.)

But most importantly, STOP with the present tense crap! It doesn’t make your book more literary. It’s just annoying.

39

I know it’s less of a big deal because it’s fan fiction, but every time someone in a thread about lines from stories you love quotes a certain line, I nearly hurt myself rolling my eyes. See, the author decided to use the interesting word “scapegrace” but apparently didn’t look it up. Nor did most of the readers. I did, though. It means a complete rogue or rascal; a habitually unscrupulous person. I’ll admit I’m not completely certain, but I’m about 95% sure that saying “[character] was full of scapegrace” isn’t a valid usage of the word;)

Have you read this book? It’s not well written at all, and that jumps right out at you. Things ramble off point only to be picked up and repeated again almost word for word in later chapters. And, she seems to believe that domestic ferrets are vicious, dangerous animals.

40

I’ve read a few books where it’s very, very obvious that the author wants someone to make a movie out of it. Like the way the narrative shifts back and forth from one “scene” to another. I know the existence of movies has changed the way people conceive of plots and characters and narratives in general, and that’s totally legitimate. But when you read something that’s supposed to be a novel, and there’s no doubt whatsoever that the author had the screenplay firmly in mind when he wrote it, that’s distracting to me. Michael Crichton was supposedly famous for this, and the one book of his I read, Timeline, was definitely guilty. In fact, I think they did make a movie out of it, but it wasn’t a big hit.