# Worst successful writers and authors **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 7, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077 "2015-04-07T22:13:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/21 "2015-04-08T06:55:37Z")
Anne Rice anyone? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/22 "2015-04-08T08:05:46Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > There are a lot of stinkers out there. A couple of summers ago, looking for a dumb beach read, I checked out a spy novel by Ludlum. I was expecting dumb, but not that dumb. I couldn’t get past the third page. It was freakin’ awful. Ludlum does overuse italics to a surprising degree. Or at least I think he does, from the one page I partly read. ---
**Author:** ![RobDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f07891/32.png) [@RobDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobDog)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/23 "2015-04-08T08:15:11Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Ludlum does overuse italics to a surprising degree. > > Or at least I think he does, from the one page I partly read. Those weren’t italics. It was your brain fighting with your eyes to make it stop. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/24 "2015-04-08T09:15:47Z")
Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series. He writes good action scenes, but his plots are ridiculously absurd, his mysteries are ridiculously obvious, his love scenes are painful, and he actually invents cliches – Reacher will start saying some stupid new catch phrase early in the book, and keep on saying it, over and over. David Weber, author of several SF and fantasy series, also writes good action scenes, but has become so wordy that I skim up to two thirds of each book, especially the later ones. You’ll have a line of dialog (and his characters sound almost exactly the same, whether they’re fighting from horseback in a fantasy novel or from the bridge of a starship in an SF novel), then three pages of exposition, then another line of dialog, then another three pages of exposition. But in both cases, I read most of their books. They’re the junk food of books. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/25 "2015-04-08T09:17:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > E.E. “Doc” Smith was a huge success, by genre standards, in the Golden Age of SF, and for his imagination he deserved it. But his prose style **hurts!** QX, **BG**? _Really_ QX? ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/26 "2015-04-08T09:43:37Z")
Danielle Steele. Danielle Steele. Danielle Steele. Stephen King has some great ideas but he needs an editor with big enough balls to cut his manuscripts in half. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/27 "2015-04-08T10:29:52Z")
Sara Douglass. A very popular fantasy author from Australia whose writing was purely horrible. She died recently, and I don’t care. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/28 "2015-04-08T10:42:51Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > …Tom Clancy had some great stories, but badly needed an editor. Almost all of his books could be improved by shedding 200 pages and removing statements and descriptions he’s repeated several times. You misspelled **Stephen King**. I would also add **Dan Brown**. And **Stieg Larsson**. mmm ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/29 "2015-04-08T11:14:25Z")
Another vote for Dan fucking Brown. I DL’ed The Da Vinci Code free for Kindle and read it. At free, it still cost too much. The fact that shit has made him very very rich is proof there is no God. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/30 "2015-04-08T11:35:54Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Anne Rice anyone? Oh god yes. Turgid prose, FTW! Stephanie Myer (Twilight author). Just goes on and on… ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/31 "2015-04-08T11:54:25Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Anne Rice anyone? THANK YOU! Her first book wasn’t bad, but it seems like it just tapped into a vampire thing at the verge of the wave. It’s not bad, but my god, it’s not good. It was fun. I’ve tried to read all of the others and yawn, yawn YAWN. BUT! Everytime someone finds out I love to read and they ask “ooooh, have you read Fifty Shades of Gray?” Depending on the person: “I can find better erotica online for free.” “\ No.” “Ooh, no! But have you read Anne Rice’s erotica? It’s good. Like really good.” Her vampire stuff is not great, but omg, her erotica is so holy majoley. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/32 "2015-04-08T11:54:28Z")
No discussion of this sort can be complete without mentioning the Reverend Robert Lionel Fanthorpe. I’ve mentioned him before on this Board, but your first reaction was probably “Who?” The man wrote about 180 books that have been published and (to my astonishment) re-published, often more than once. Regardless of what you may think of Dan Brown, or Tom Clancy, or James Patterson, or Clive Cussler, these people are GODS compared to the awfulness that is Fanthorpe. His name (and his many, many pseudonyms) has become a standing joke in the SF community. Fanthorpe literally wrote to word count, often abruptly ending a story when the limit was reached. If he needed to pad his work out, it looks as if he literally opened a thesaurus and started stacking synonymous adjectives. I’m not joking or exaggerating. Don’t believe me? > [@](#): > > BIG and round, like a great silver full moon it came out of the sky. First as big as a sixpence, then the size of half a crown. Then the size of a saucer; the size of a dinner plate, and still growing as it descended. Huge . . . vast . . . and somehow terrifying. > > ``` > It seemed to blot out the stars and to blot out the blue velvet of their canopy. It seemed to be an alien thing of the night, and yet for all that there was a strange, terrifying, alien beauty about its gleaming symmetry. > > The great disc ship . . . the unearthly thing, skimming slowly down, like a coin tossed by a careless god, into the abyss of nothingness. A silver coin skimming across a universe; spinning across a galaxy. Down, down . . . down . . . a great silver spinning thing. A ship, an alien ship, a strange unearthly thing, something that was cold and hard and terrible. Something that was beyond man ... that was different from man . . . that seemed to have neither part nor parcel with the ordinary human world. Something frightening, frightening because it was strange; strange because it was frightening. > > It came through the sky, a round, spinning plate of a ship, a flying saucer out of the sky, down through the blue vault of air; down through the dark forests of night; down to the sleeping, unsuspecting countryside below, then it was no longer a thing apart. It had touched down. Softly as a feather landing in a cushion of air. > > ``` Or this: > [@](#): > > Beyond the sea a coastline, Greek coastline. Rugged, rocky, tortuous. A coastline as strong and as forthright as the nation who lived beyond it. The brilliant cunning of the Greek mind-as twisted as the inlets of their coastline, with its promontories, its peninsulas and its gulfs. Beyond the coastline fields. Cultivated fields; beyond the fields, mountains-high, forbidding, frightening, dangerous, and in the fields and the mountains, men . . . Men in the cities too. Men in the cities and in the towns. Men of Athens, men of Corinth, men of Medara, men of the Peloponnesus, men of the great northern mainland, men of Naxos, men of the islands, men of Greece. Farmers, artificers, craftsmen, sailors, politicians, democrats, oligarchs, tyrants; living together in a great tangled heap of humanity. A heap of humanity that led the world in its own time, and whose influence extended for five millennia into the future. The World of ancient Greece. A world of gladness and beauty. A world of pain, and savagery, and death. A world very much like our own, a mixed world, a perplexing world. A world in which everything was different except basic human emotions. A world where there were secrets. These are both from this site: [Lionel Fanthorpe Text Library](http://peltorro.com/examples.htm) , but I can assure you there are many more., I’ve collected a file of examples of his stuff. The worst part: He’s still alive, and could put out more of this tomorrow, if he wanted. ---
**Author:** ![MoonMoon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonmoon/32/2959_2.png) [@MoonMoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MoonMoon)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/33 "2015-04-08T12:10:04Z")
> [@Doctor\_Why\_Bother](#): > > James Patterson is just atrocious. Repetitive, cliche ridden prose, infantile exposition, unintentionally hilarious descriptions, characters so thin they’re practically water soluble…just a lousy, lousy writer through and through. Yet he’s the most successful writer in the world! > > I’m a writer myself and I’m friends with several other writers, and all of us on our worst day are a thousand times better than James Patterson, but all our accumulated success, past, present, and future, probably wouldn’t equal what that hack sells in a fortnight. I actually bought one of his books a few months ago purely so that, on those days when I’m feeling a bit too self-critical, I can remind myself what _really_ bad writing looks like. He’s the winner, hands down. I take great personal offense to his existence. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/34 "2015-04-08T12:35:31Z")
Hay Harrison. Much talent, wrote two or three of the finest short stories in sf, at least one very good trilogy… and then churned out semiliterate drivel for decades. The last SSR book was so bad even by his own standards that I’m considering throwing it away. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/35 "2015-04-08T12:41:09Z")
J.R.R. Tolkien. There’s no way in hell he would have been able to sell LOTR if he submitted it today: way too wordy, way too long, big, long rambling walk across a swamp absolutely killing any momentum for the entire middle third of the book… More of a movie writer than a book writer, but George Lucas. He’s the big idea guy, no problem with that, but he had the idea over 40 years ago and he just… kept… writing… ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/36 "2015-04-08T12:44:17Z")
Robin Cook. I read one book by him, _Toxin_. Horrible, horrible prose, unbelievable characters, action scenes that were physically impossible. I remember one in which the hero is sitting in a car in a parking lot, watching something through a window of a building. He observes the bad guy start to do something evil to someone, and gets out of his car, runs up the stairs, and stops the bad guy before the punch lands, or something. I’m a bit hazy. And, of course, Dan Brown, who’s gotten a few mentions above. I’m not sure James Patterson belongs here. Not that his books aren’t terrible, but I think it’s been a long time since he actually wrote any of them. He’s basically the manager (and owner) of a book mill, churning out crap under his name. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/37 "2015-04-08T12:56:14Z")
> [@BrassyPhrase](#): > > THANK YOU! Her first book wasn’t bad, but it seems like it just tapped into a vampire thing at the verge of the wave. It’s not bad, but my god, it’s not good. It was fun. I’ve tried to read all of the others and yawn, yawn YAWN. > > BUT! Everytime someone finds out I love to read and they ask “ooooh, have you read Fifty Shades of Gray?” > > Depending on the person: > > “I can find better erotica online for free.” > “\ No.” > “Ooh, no! But have you read Anne Rice’s erotica? It’s good. Like really good.” > > Her vampire stuff is not great, but omg, her erotica is so holy majoley. Anne Rice has some skill–but she’s one of those who sold enough books to dispense with an editor. Sorry, Anne–your work still needs editing. For flat out dreadful–but successful–Dan Brown leads my list. But it’s a long list… ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/38 "2015-04-08T13:00:09Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Ludlum does overuse italics to a surprising degree. > > Or at least I think he does, from the one page I partly read. _Madness_ _Insanity_ ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/39 "2015-04-08T13:37:46Z")
Ayn Rand. Leaving aside any discussion of her Objectivist philosophy, her prose fiction writing is dreadful - leaden, plodding stories filled with ludicrous incidents and melodramatic speeches. For someone who claimed such lofty intellectual prowess, her books read like the worst soap operas replete with the most cartoonishly two-dimensional characters. The heroes are all “manly men”, the heroines are clearly Mary-Sue stand-ins for Rand herself and the villains are all mustache twirling Snidely Whiplashes. I can only presume that Rand thought writing a 1200 page novel rather than a 12 page short story would make her ideas seem more epic, so she monotonously rehashes the same basic situations and dialogue again and again and again, on and on and on, over and over, ad infinitum, ad naseum… ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077/40 "2015-04-08T13:56:38Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > Surprised no one mentioned E.L. James Came in to do just that. $100s of millions for dreck. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-successful-writers-and-authors/717077.md?page=3)