Bad Writing

[DrFaroohk]

Whether it's a book, a short story, a riddle, a Tv show or a movie, I really hate bad writing. What do I consider bad writing? Well for starters...


1) Easily avoidable bad things. You ever watch a movie and think "Wait a minute, why did he do that? All he had to do was do this and everything would be fine." Then there's someone who says "well that would n't be a very interesting movie". But that's bad writing. Someone needs to be able to draw out a plot for something without having dumb, easily overcome obstacles that seem impossible.

One good example I see is someone havign something important to say, like "don't open that door, there's a bomb!" but instead, all he ever says "You gotta listen to me! Please! Listen! I gotta tell you something! Just listen! I gotta tell you something! Something terribly important! Here let's go in here and ta - " BOOM.

2) Transparent exposition - I HATE THIS more than almost anything. Exposition is necessary to get the story out, but there's better ways to do it than just by looking at the camera and telling me. Like, introduce a new character who realistically has no idea what's going on, then tell it to him. Good enough for me.

3) Attention to detail. If book one is set in 1980, and book 2 takes place 5 years later, it'd better be 1985 in your next book. And if character was 20 years old in book 1, he'd better be 25 in book 2. Those hannibal lecter books are AWFUL about that.

4) No ending. "And then I woke up." BULLSHIT. Get back into the studio and make me a closing scene. I didn't want to watch a day in the life on an ambulance driver. I wanted to watch a movie with a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. A plot. An obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. With an ENDING.

5) Sort of like #3, but dealing with flashbacks and prequel type stuff. First of all, not all your characters have to know each other. Second of all, everything should happen the way it's set up. Don't tell me you kidnapped a kid and the show me in the flashback it was an accident.

[Rageaholic]

Whether it's a book, a short story, a riddle, a Tv show or a movie, I really hate bad writing. What do I consider bad writing? Well for starters...


1) Easily avoidable bad things. You ever watch a movie and think "Wait a minute, why did he do that? All he had to do was do this and everything would be fine." Then there's someone who says "well that would n't be a very interesting movie". But that's bad writing. Someone needs to be able to draw out a plot for something without having dumb, easily overcome obstacles that seem impossible.

One good example I see is someone havign something important to say, like "don't open that door, there's a bomb!" but instead, all he ever says "You gotta listen to me! Please! Listen! I gotta tell you something! Just listen! I gotta tell you something! Something terribly important! Here let's go in here and ta - " BOOM.

This is a problem with any fiction involving overly powerful abilities. Like if a character can teleport to any place in time, you'd think they'd teleport to the villains hideout, shoot him in the head, and then go back. Or if they can just wish for anything, why don't they just wish for everything to be back to normal?

4) No ending. "And then I woke up." BULLSHIT. Get back into the studio and make me a closing scene. I didn't want to watch a day in the life on an ambulance driver. I wanted to watch a movie with a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. A plot. An obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. With an ENDING.

THAT DRIVES ME NUTS.

What's even worse is when they have important events happen off screen like they were nothing. These movies are almost always defended by those saying that it was the intent of the directors, that they were deliberately plotted that way to get some hidden message that I am too dumb to comprehend. I call bullshit. What gets me even worse are that movies that are actually plotted with a beginning middle and end are looked down on by these people for being too "formuliac". FORMULIAC? It's basic story telling 101! I can't fault anyone for having different tastes, but when they act like basic story structure is a bad thing, and that true art is incomprehensible

GAH!!

[Andara Bledin]

#1 would destroy pretty much every Superman story ever. The man can move superfast, which would actually solve about 90% of the problems he faces, and yet he almost never does.

^-.-^

[DrFaroohk]

And that's just plain bad writing. I've read some fantasy novels where one hero is abnormally powerful, or has some abnormally powerful weapon or object, like a magic ring or something ,and they never use it. Like Gandalf. Sure, there's a reason given why he doesn't just nuke everything, but still...there's a lot of Gandalfs out there who refuse to do anything useful.

Speaking of fantasy, I got another one to add. It's when, in a sort of fantasy book, they try to extend it too long. Usually there's an obstacle at first, like "kill the Big Bad's Lieutenant." Then there's "Ok, we did that, we're stronger, let's kill the Big Bad's Captain." so then they kill him, and eventually, they get to see the Big Bad himself! It's usually some sort of god like creature that controls everything ever and has the ability to nuke the universe. But amazingly, our hero overcomes the darkness and restores light to the world.

And then....they fight a dragon. WTF is the obsession with dragons. I like dragons too, but dragons should be mid-level bosses, not the end all be all evil power in the world.

[Andara Bledin]

Well, unless the dragon is one of the gods, and a dragon is just the form it took.

*ahem*

How about the serial, "This person is the biggest, baddest enemy ever!" Well, until next week (or year, in the case of one particular show which managed to make a 5-minute fight scene last 26 episodes that I won't name *coughDBZcough*) when they meet the latest in a long string of most evil things in the universe, every one worse than the last. 9.9

^-.-^

[Salted Grump]

#1 would destroy pretty much every Superman story ever. The man can move superfast, which would actually solve about 90% of the problems he faces, and yet he almost never does.

^-.-^

World of Cardboard; If Superman actually cut loose and moved at top speed, the collateral damage to buildings (and people) would be staggering; Needless to say, for the Big Red S, that stuff doesn't sit right.

So, Justified in that he basically has a mental 'power limiter' and can only really cut loose in areas that are essentially devoid of human habitation.

The few times he does have to use Superspeed offensively, it's actually pretty scary; you get a sense that if he whiffed a punch at that speed the pressure wave would pulp an Innocent Bystander.

[Ginger Tea]

2) Transparent exposition - I HATE THIS more than almost anything. Exposition is necessary to get the story out, but there's better ways to do it than just by looking at the camera and telling me. Like, introduce a new character who realistically has no idea what's going on, then tell it to him. Good enough for me.

The main reason Dr Who had a companion was so he could explain who what where when and why to them and by proxy us.

4) No ending. "And then I woke up." BULLSHIT. Get back into the studio and make me a closing scene. I didn't want to watch a day in the life on an ambulance driver. I wanted to watch a movie with a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. A plot. An obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. With an ENDING.

Tell me these movies, I want to see an endingless movie
No country for old men shocked me when it abrubtly finished, a film finally satisfied my desire for an unresolved story which wasn't written as a two or three parter.

I don't like the "it was all just a dream" endings, but I do like movies with ambiguous endings or unresolved issues, life isn't wrapped up in a little package, bad guys win all the time but rarely in the movies.
Broken arrow would have been better had Travolta just detonated the bomb in the middle of nowhere after his escape route was destroyed, I would have.

This is a problem with any fiction involving overly powerful abilities. Like if a character can teleport to any place in time, you'd think they'd teleport to the villains hideout, shoot him in the head, and then go back. Or if they can just wish for anything, why don't they just wish for everything to be back to normal?

Shitty as it was, the first (iir they made more) Wishmaster movie did just that.

On a side note: would Momento or Pulp Fiction work if they were in a linear narative?

[AdminAssistant]

On a side note: would Momento or Pulp Fiction work if they were in a linear narative?

Not at all. With Pulp Fiction it's stylistic - that is, Tarantino doesn't really work in linear narratives, ever. If Pulp Fiction were linear, then the ending would be "Zed's dead, baby" and that would suck.

[Kheldarson]

5) Sort of like #3, but dealing with flashbacks and prequel type stuff. First of all, not all your characters have to know each other. Second of all, everything should happen the way it's set up. Don't tell me you kidnapped a kid and the show me in the flashback it was an accident.

I dunno...I could see your example working. Essentially you're thrown into the story with a frantic "kidnapper" and the kid and you can tell the kidnapper's trying to find a way out of this role without getting into uber-trouble, but this keeps forcing him to play up the role more and more. But you'd have to have the right sequence of events that would lead to the accidental kidnapping.

[anakhouri]

Oh my God, I feel this. I am a writer, so it's hard for me not to read other writers critically. I drive myself crazy thinking, "I would have phrased that differently".

I hate big obvious blocks of exposition. I hate tense changes. I hate basic grammar mistakes/typos. I hate bad dialogue. I read a book once where a guy compared an alien creature's blood to 'Frost Gatorade'. I stopped reading right there.

[Ginger Tea]

I too am an off and on writer, if I ever finished my main book it would be so disjointed for anyone to proof read as I wrote it out of chronological order, some pages are hand written others on another PC, hell the first drafts arn't even accessable as they are on 3" disc's from an Amstrad 1912 circa 91 and I only have print outs to go by (somewhere).

But I also hate renaming things for the sake of it, simple things like the Hoobs (a childrens TV show that used to be on when I finishd the night shift in the late 90's) called us Humans 'Tinley Peeps' which to be honest would suit the mechanical side characters better.
AFAIK non wizards are called Muggles in the harry potter books? why?

Then my biggest gripe is the socerers apprentise trilogy (not to be confused with the disney one) I cannot remember her name, but the authour renamed all animals for no reason, so we had sheep walking around, but instead of saying something with the word sheep in it, she then has to explain what a sheep is after calling it something else. broke my apreciation having to look up my mental conversion list as she never had one in the back.

[Andara Bledin]

AFAIK non wizards are called Muggles in the harry potter books? why?

Do you know of a word in the English language that denotes a human that lacks the ability to work magic? We have one for a person who can, but not one specifically for a person who can't, so one had to be created for the purpose.

Oh my God, I feel this. I am a writer, so it's hard for me not to read other writers critically. I drive myself crazy thinking, "I would have phrased that differently".

If you ever want your inner editor to run rampant on a book, read The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing by Minda Webber. It's a humorous horror romance that's actually got some clever ideas, but the grammar, sentence structure, punctuation.... If I ever meet the person who edited it and allowed it to go out like that, I'm going to ask them how they hell they keep their job.

^-.-^

[Ginger Tea]

Do you know of a word in the English language that denotes a human that lacks the ability to work magic? We have one for a person who can, but not one specifically for a person who can't, so one had to be created for the purpose.

Normal human beings?
That's why I don't see the point of muggle, same as why babylon 5's psi cor called everyone else mundanes.

edit:
one word?
People

[DrFaroohk]

Two more thoughts -

On the punctuation and grammar one, I read a book called "Sentinel Event" I think, written by some nobody who had it self published, and literally the guy had no clue how to end a sentence, use commas, he was changing thoughts in mid sentence and kept running on, random commas placed, all throughout his novel, and I do believe it was one giant sentence, a bunch of words thrown together haphazardly.

Second, on the bad dialogue, as a hobbyist of writing (I like to write little short stories about randomness from time to time) I find it hard to write good dialogue. Sometimes it looks great on paper, but then you try to imagine two people actually saying it, and its just....awful. I can't think of anything to compare it to. Help me out here.

[Ginger Tea]

I used to semi eaves drop on co workers when I worked at a bakery to see how other people talked as I was raised in various places and had no fixed dialect, where as everyone else had a mancunian accent, I wasn't making an effort to listen to what they were saying just how they spoke, it helped me flow conversations better if I imagined it being read out by co workers and not dry read and flat, but as if it was comming out of their mouths as a real conversation.

It's not fool proof, but I can compare pre bakery dialogue to times where I was working and they do flow better. My story wasn't meant to be some epic serise of conflict and resolution, just following a few guys around doing stuff. even if it meant talking about stupid crap.

I cannot do this now as all break conversations are in Polish or Lithuanian, so although there is a rythm I can follow, there is no context. Plus I've taken to listening to music at breaks or taking them later than everyone else if I've got stuff to finish first.