I’m reading Stephen King’s The Stand right now. It’s the first King book I’ve ever read. The premise is interesting, but dang, that is some seriously crappy writing.
I nominate Nicholas Sparks for sticky, gooey, glurgey goodness.
It’s not the Guardian but the Literary Review that gives out the Bad Sex Award. It was originally created by its then editor, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn’s son and a figure not much known for his fondness for the Guardian. Only fair that its sterling efforts in such matters be accurately credited.
I was re-reading this recently too and I was thinking that too - specifically, I was wondering at one point, “is he getting paid by the word here?” And yet he’s got a good story in there. I think his writing skill improved greatly over the years.
Same could be said for Stephanie Meyer of the Twilight series - the writing is mediocre, but the premise and plot obviously appeal to a lot of readers.
My nomination for bad contemporary fiction author:
Sidney Sheldon (or even worse, his ghost-writing corpse)
King’s all over the place. His nonfiction lets his breezy, chatty style shine, and it sometimes works in certain kinds of horror. But when he’s trying for a dark mood, I just don’t think he suceeds all that well, and often his plots are so godawful stupid (I’m looking at you, demon-possessed washing machine, and murderous finger sticking out of a drain, and Chatty Teeth) that no prose could possibly save them.
Morrissey wrote his “Autobiography” a few years ago which was not a great work of art but was still quite beautiful. I think the praise he got from that effort sadly might have inspired him to write something else. I will check out List of the Lost.
Man, the word count is killing me. At one point he has a character narrate the entire story of how he got from New York to Boulder, which I already read that whole story. I don’t have to read this character’s narration of the same story I just read.
Plus, the narrative voice. Sometimes it’s third-person objective. Sometimes it’s third-person subjective (ooh, we even got third-person subjective from the POV of a dog!). Sometimes it’s an epistolary (or whatever it’s called). It’s just this hodgepodge of stuff thrown together.
And I think he writes shitty dialogue. People just don’t talk like that. Everybody sounds the same. They all have a veritable rolodex of handy historical or literary references to pepper in their dialogue. They’re all long-winded and prone to speechifying.
But, like you said, there’s a pretty good story in there. I don’t know. This is the only King book I’ve ever read, so maybe he does improve. I just remember a classmate in high school was reading this and swore up and down that King was a genius author who could have been the next Shakespeare if he hadn’t chosen to write horror. And I’m reading this, and I want to go back in time and yell at that person.
I remember liking Sue Grafton’s ability to draw a character, though that was about twenty years ago. I don’t think she can come close to the badness this thread seeks, unless she’s gotten a lot worse in the last two decades.
As for Morrissey, well, I think he wants that purple prose award, really badly. He hadn’t had a dream in a long time, and for once in his life, it’d be nice to get what he wants. 
James Redfield.
ETA: Of “The Celestine Prophecy” infamy.
Our very own Boyo Jim is a gifted and award winning bad writer.
If I ever require a new posting name, I will definitely choose bulbous salutation.
Risking bringing in a author whom I (largely) like, and tend to wax boring about – Harry Turtledove. There are plenty of people who consider Turtledove to be one of the most utterly dreadful English-language writers of fiction plying their trade today; furthermore, many of his fans – myself included – are of the opinion that when he’s good, he’s very good; but he has a few quite glaring, often-displayed, flaws.
One such, which numerous Turtledove fans seem to agree on: he can’t write sex scenes to save his life, but nevertheless does come up with rather a lot of sex scenes. Nothing as outright grotesque and ludicrous as the Morrissey material quoted in this thread; but generally reckoned as expressed in an embarrassingly awkward, goofy way, and highly unrealistic. (No quotes – sorry !) While I personally, can happily do without detailed sex scenes by any author; those by Turtledove have not struck me as being particularly “off” – but I seem to disagree here, with many who otherwise mostly like the guy’s writings.
The question, as others have pointed out, needs qualifiers. There are plenty of Bad Writers around. By the Darwinian process of agenting and editing, most of these don’t see print (unless they self-publish, or post on the internet). There are best-selling writers whose offerings are incredibly bad for various reasons. There are writers with bad plots, or bad characterization. Or those who, despite the existence of copy editors and the like, still have terrible grammar or awkward sentences. There are plenty of candidates, many listed above. For multiple crimes, and because he’s such a highly visible example, I’d go with Dan Brown as a leading contender.
If you go by number of titles times the awfulness of his output, and only count living writers (even if they aren’t currently writing), then I think Lionel Fanthorpe wins, hands down. No matter how bad you think James Patterson or Sue Grafton, or even Dan Brown are, they cannot approach the absurdity of his prose. No one else ever used a thesaurus to such ill effect.
You think I’m making him up? You think he can’t be that bad, or have a name like that? Think again. Lionel Fanthorpe wrote over 150 novels, mostly science fiction and fantasy, under a number of pseudonyms. They were published in the UK and the US, sometimes multiple printings (something which boggles my mind).
See some of his output here:
I maintain a file of Bad Writing Examples, and quite a few of them are Fanthorpe’s.
A runner-up, by the way, is Don Pendleton, author of the Mack Bolan: Executioner series, but also of some free-standing stuff, including bad science fiction. He produced about 100 books. Unlike Fanthorpe, though, Pendleton died about twenty years ago.
Neal Stephenson. His early books were tolerable, now it’s become boring drivel.
I was going to post something like this- I thought his autobiography was like one long extended Smith’s lyric. It was very touching in places. I am not much of an autobiography reader so can’t compare it but liked it a lot.
I don’t think I’ll try his fiction though- I think he’s a pretty narrow minded person . Even in his autobiography, I felt he is very strongly entrenched in his own world without making allowances for different viewpoints. Not a good place to be for a fiction writer IMHO.
Oh hell yes. Did you know they made a movie of that dreck?
Shadily?
Anne Rice writes some of the most turgid, convoluted, and over-dramatic prose I’ve ever read.