bad writing

[WICKES]

Can everyone post some passages of writing that stink. It can be just a sentence if you like. I do love a bit of bad prose! It can be any sort of prose you like- only condition is it mustn't be by someone who was delibrately writing badly to win one of those bad writing contests. If the writing is by someone generally revered you get double points, but it can be anyone- the worse the better.

[Tsuyoiko]

I guess it's not exactly news, but Dan Brown is a bad writer ;)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.
A telephone was ringing in the darkness-a tinny, unfamiliar ring. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Squinting at his surroundings he saw a plush Renaissance bedroom with Louis XVI furniture, hand-frescoed walls, and a colossal mahogany four-poster bed.
Where the hell am I?
The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.
Slowly, the fog began to lift.
Langdon picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Monsieur Langdon?" a man's voice said. "I hope I have not awoken you?"
Dazed, Langdon looked at the bedside clock. It was 12:32 A.M. He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.
"This is the concierge, monsieur. I apologize for this intrusion, but you have a visitor. He insists it is urgent."
Langdon still felt fuzzy. A visitor? His eyes focused now on a crumpled flyer on his bedside table.

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
proudly presents
an evening with Robert Langdon
Professor of Religious Symbology, Harvard University


This is so bad it's not even good.

He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on.

Well, what else will he do after fumbling for the lamp if not turn it on? Talk about stating the obvious :sick:

Where the hell am I?
The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.

A good writer would spend a couple of paragraphs describing the scene, and leave it up to our intelligence to work out where he is. Dan Brown gives us this clumsy reveal.

He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.

Cliche :brickwall

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
proudly presents
an evening with Robert Langdon
Professor of Religious Symbology, Harvard University

Nothing like getting straight to the point and letting us know exactly who we're dealing with :lol:

[Tsuyoiko]

For double points, how about The Thorn by William Wordsworth:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Wordsworth.thorn.html

Particularly this bit:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide

:lol:

[LitNetIsGreat]

The crisp April air whipped through the open wndow of the Citroen ZX as it skimmed south past the Opera House and crossed Place Vendome.
The Citroen navigated the chaos with authority, its dissonant two-tone siren parting the traffic like a knife.
As the Citroen accelerated southward across the city, the illuminated profile of the Eiffle Tower appeared, shooting skyward to the distance in the right.
When they reached the intersection at Rue de Rivoli, the traffic light was red, but the Citroen didn't slow.
The Citroen swerved left now, angling west down the park's central boulevard. Curling around a circular pond, the driver cut across a desolate avenue out into a wide quadrangle beyond.

The Da Vinci Code chapter 3 pp. 31-33.

I have gone for the obvious (or one of them) highly unoriginal, dull, cliché similes and phrases - "crisp April air?" "like a knife?" etc, etc, boring prose full of non sequiturs that don't tally and quite possibly plagiarised from another writer (allegedly). Probably paid to advertise a certain brand of car into the bargain as can be seen from these extracts - and don't even get me started on the plot, I was forced to read this for a University module on pop lit. :bawling:

[weltanschauung]

i f#%@^$ hate jean genet, it's just so decadent and false.

" Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile. "

"Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it."

"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me. "

YAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNN

just pick anything and it sucks from start to finish.

[blp]

Graphic novel writer Alan Moore is widely lauded as the genius of the genre and his book Watchmen is considered a masterpiece. I can't understand why:



[From Rorschach's notebook:] The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!".... and I'll look down and whisper "no".

EDIT:
As an aside:

There has been some great writing in comics, but not in the places where it's touted these days. Anyone interested in seeing what can be done by writers in the medium would do well to look at George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Robert Crumb, early Judge Dredd series such as The Cursed Earth and, especially, The Judge Child, Moebius (Jean Giraud], especially The Airtight Garage and Shore Leave as well as his The Long Tomorrow, written by Alien writer Dan O'bannon, Rod Kiergegaard Jr.'s Rock Opera, Nicole Claveloux and Dick Matena. Not that the last four artist's are that easy to find.

[WICKES]

:thumbs_up Some great replies, thanks everyone! You have probably all heard of Amanda McKittrick Ros: she was an Irish writer of the Edwardian period and is famousy one of the worst writers of all time. She was succesful though and sold enough books to buy a house with the profits.

This is a passage from her most famous book, quoted on wikipedia and is Ros trying to explain that her heroine earnt money by doing needlework (I think!):

"She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to the faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness"

:confused: er, you mean she did some needlework to supplement her father's small income?

[WICKES]

For double points, how about The Thorn by William Wordsworth:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Wordsworth.thorn.html

Particularly this bit:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide

:lol:


An english literature professor told us Wordsworth was the greatest poet and wise man of the 19th century, so you deserve some kind of award for uncovering this! I wish I was still at university so I could read it to him.:D

[wessexgirl]

For double points, how about The Thorn by William Wordsworth:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Wordsworth.thorn.html

Particularly this bit:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide

:lol:

We can all have an off day :lol:!

[LitNetIsGreat]

"She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to the faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness"


No way. You have just made that up for a laugh, that can't be for real, "faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness??????" "blunt edge eyed the reely??????" :lol::lol:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide

:lol:Oh dear old William, no, no. :bawling:

[Hank Stamper]

I guess it's not exactly news, but Dan Brown is a bad writer ;)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.
A telephone was ringing in the darkness-a tinny, unfamiliar ring. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Squinting at his surroundings he saw a plush Renaissance bedroom with Louis XVI furniture, hand-frescoed walls, and a colossal mahogany four-poster bed.
Where the hell am I?
The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.
Slowly, the fog began to lift.
Langdon picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Monsieur Langdon?" a man's voice said. "I hope I have not awoken you?"
Dazed, Langdon looked at the bedside clock. It was 12:32 A.M. He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.
"This is the concierge, monsieur. I apologize for this intrusion, but you have a visitor. He insists it is urgent."
Langdon still felt fuzzy. A visitor? His eyes focused now on a crumpled flyer on his bedside table.

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
proudly presents
an evening with Robert Langdon
Professor of Religious Symbology, Harvard University


This is so bad it's not even good.

He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on.

Well, what else will he do after fumbling for the lamp if not turn it on? Talk about stating the obvious :sick:

Where the hell am I?
The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.

A good writer would spend a couple of paragraphs describing the scene, and leave it up to our intelligence to work out where he is. Dan Brown gives us this clumsy reveal.

He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.

Cliche :brickwall

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
proudly presents
an evening with Robert Langdon
Professor of Religious Symbology, Harvard University

Nothing like getting straight to the point and letting us know exactly who we're dealing with :lol:

ive never read any dan brown (clearly with good reason).. but that really is exceptionally bad!

[Mag Master 21]

The Da Vinci Code chapter 3 pp. 31-33.

I have gone for the obvious (or one of them) highly unoriginal, dull, cliché similes and phrases - "crisp April air?" "like a knife?" etc, etc, boring prose full of non sequiturs that don't tally and quite possibly plagiarised from another writer (allegedly). Probably paid to advertise a certain brand of car into the bargain as can be seen from these extracts - and don't even get me started on the plot, I was forced to read this for a University module on pop lit. :bawling:

I'm still wondering how a knife can part traffic.

[amb]

How about this passage from a book I despise:

"Hypotheses pinned me down, as Gulliver was pinned by the countless threads of the Lilliputians. All I knew was that I ached for Julie, I was mad for her, the world that day had no other meaning; so I strode down to the school like some vengeance-brewing chieftain in an Icelandic saga..."

Yes, that would be Fowles' The Magus. Now, perhaps this silly bit of prose was deliberate; I, when reading it for the first and only time, thought about the narrator, and what he could've meant to the story, and it is entirely possible that I've missed something substantial about his mode of narration. I should read it again to better determine, but.....

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

:lol: @ Da Vinci Code posts.

I'll remember all of this when I'm annotating Twilight for my masters.

[WICKES]

This might be controversial, but I've always thought the ending to The Old Man and the Sea was dreadful- the last line I mean:

"the old man was dreaming about the lions"

It is so lazy and implausible. For a start he would be SO tired he'd just crash into a deep, dreamless sleep for the next 10 hours. It is the sort of thing a schoolboy would write to finish a short story for his literature class- like "and then I woke up and realised it had all been a dream".

[sixsmith]

Most novelists have a terrible time describing sex. Not surprisingly bad novelists fare the worst. From Gregory David Robert's ridiculous 'Shantaram'

'I pressed my lips against the sky, and licked the stars into my mouth. She took my body into hers, and every movement was an incantation. Our breathing was like the whole world chanting prayers. Sweat ran in rivulets to ravines of pleasure. Every moment was a satin skin cascade. Within the velvet cloaks of tenderness, our backs convulsed in quivering heat, pushing heat, pushing muscles to complete what minds begin and bodies always win. I was hers. She was mine. My body was her chariot, and she drove it into the sun. Her body was my river, and I became the sea. And the wailing moan that drove our lips together, at the end, was the world of hope and sorrow that ecstasy wrings from lovers as it floods their souls with bliss.

[PoeticPassions]

Another Hemingway blunder:
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." (from A FAREWELL TO ARMS)

I find it dry and dull, and he overuses the word "very."

oh and I really never liked Wordsworth much... I don't understand what the big deal was/is? I don't care much for his poems about nature...

[LitNetIsGreat]

I'm still wondering how a knife can part traffic.

It's a magic knife.

[PoeticPassions]

actually, that wasn't a metaphor... an actual, giant-sized knife attacked the city...

it totally makes sense now

[LitNetIsGreat]

actually, that wasn't a metaphor... an actual, giant-sized knife attacked the city...

it totally makes sense now

That wouldn't be out of the place much in the course of the plot. Would have probably improved it.


oh and I really never liked Wordsworth much... I don't understand what the big deal was/is? I don't care much for his poems about nature...

Well it's a personal choice of course, I think there is much joy to be found there, but at the same time some woes too. Wordsworth is far from a perfect poet and couldn't hope to live up to his own high poetic ideals.

[Lokasenna]

Thouroughly agree about the Wordsworth bit - "The Thorn" is hideous. And, in a similar vein, look up his "Simon Lee" which is equally bad, and contains such joys as:

"Of years he has upon his back,
No doubt, a burthen weighty;
He says he is three score and ten,
But others say he's eighty."

and

"Full five and twenty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And, though he has but one eye left,
His cheek is like a cherry."

Hard to believe one of the greatest poets in history could come out with drivel like this... This was the first Wordsworth I ever read - thank goodness Tintern Abbey followed soon afterwards...

[PoeticPassions]

That wouldn't be out of the place much in the course of the plot. Would have probably improved it.



Well it's a personal choice of course, I think there is much joy to be found there, but at the same time some woes too. Wordsworth is far from a perfect poet and couldn't hope to live up to his own high poetic ideals.

Of course, it is all about choice. Besides, poetry usually plays on emotions and on the imagination, so what moves me may not move you...
I have always liked Coleridge much more in any case... or that less joyful side of romanticism (Blake, Shelley, etc)

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hard to believe one of the greatest poets in history could come out with drivel like this... This was the first Wordsworth I ever read - thank goodness Tintern Abbey followed soon afterwards...

Yes, I must admit I have not come across this rubbish by Wordsworth before, it does seem a planet away from the magic of Tintern Abbey.


"Of years he has upon his back,
No doubt, a burthen weighty;
He says he is three score and ten,
But others say he's eighty."

:lol::bawling:

[PoeticPassions]

Oh I don't know how I could have forgotten about Nicholas Sparks and all of his ultra-cheesiness. I once made the mistake of reading The Notebook, and it was just awful... sooo awful that I think it might have traumatized me (and I refuse to see the movie, thought I think that the book was so bad that the movie might actually be better?).

Here are a few quotes from Nicholas Sparks:

"And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love."

:sick:

"In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life." ~ The Notebook

[Emil Miller]

"In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life." ~ The Notebook

Pretty grotesque but he's right about the potholed streets, you should try driving around where I live.

[wessexgirl]

Most novelists have a terrible time describing sex. Not surprisingly bad novelists fare the worst. From Gregory David Robert's ridiculous 'Shantaram'

'I pressed my lips against the sky, and licked the stars into my mouth. She took my body into hers, and every movement was an incantation. Our breathing was like the whole world chanting prayers. Sweat ran in rivulets to ravines of pleasure. Every moment was a satin skin cascade. Within the velvet cloaks of tenderness, our backs convulsed in quivering heat, pushing heat, pushing muscles to complete what minds begin and bodies always win. I was hers. She was mine. My body was her chariot, and she drove it into the sun. Her body was my river, and I became the sea. And the wailing moan that drove our lips together, at the end, was the world of hope and sorrow that ecstasy wrings from lovers as it floods their souls with bliss.

:sick:

This reminded me of the bad sex award (in literature :lol:). Take a look at this item.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/28/awardsandprizes.badsexaward

The surprising thing is, the article says its awarded for literary fiction. How on earth is Alan Titchmarsh on that list then? For those who don't know him, he's a cheesy gardener/tv presenter, the so-called "housewives favourite" :yawnb: who has taken to writing books.

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=wessexgirl;670718]:sick:

This reminded me of the bad sex award (in literature :lol:). Take a look at this item.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/28/awardsandprizes.badsexaward

What on earth makes them do it ? The updyke extract is hilarious; I have to go into town this evening and I hope it doesn't come to mind while I am on the train, because I will just burst out laughing.

[mono]

This might be controversial, but I've always thought the ending to The Old Man and the Sea was dreadful- the last line I mean:

"the old man was dreaming about the lions"

It is so lazy and implausible. For a start he would be SO tired he'd just crash into a deep, dreamless sleep for the next 10 hours. It is the sort of thing a schoolboy would write to finish a short story for his literature class- like "and then I woke up and realised it had all been a dream".

Another Hemingway blunder:
"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." (from A FAREWELL TO ARMS)

I find it dry and dull, and he overuses the word "very."
Ouch, ouch! My two favorite novels by Hemingway! :eek2:
Oh well, to each their own . . .

As for me, pick up any book by Gore Vidal, Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, or James Redfield, and . . . YIKES! Just plain not my type.

[amb]

Ouch, ouch! My two favorite novels by Hemingway! :eek2:
Oh well, to each their own . . .

As for me, pick up any book by Gore Vidal, Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, or James Redfield, and . . . YIKES! Just plain not my type.

Eco? Why do you say? I thought the (translated) writing in The Name of the Rose and in Foucault's Pendulum was actually quite nice (though it's been a while). I did not especially care for the story of Foucault's, but I never thought the writing was poor.

[PeterL]

For double points, how about The Thorn by William Wordsworth:

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Wordsworth.thorn.html

Particularly this bit:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide

:lol:

That's pretty bad, but I think that "The Leech Gatherer" may be worse. Read it for yourself: http://www.netpoets.com/classic/poems/073010.htm

In this poem that you cited, I especially like "a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry". It reminds me of Waldon Puddle.

[Sepulchrave]

Graphic novel writer Alan Moore is widely lauded as the genius of the genre and his book Watchmen is considered a masterpiece. I can't understand why:

Out of curiousity, what do you specifically dislike about that extract?


'I pressed my lips against the sky, and licked the stars into my mouth. She took my body into hers, and every movement was an incantation. Our breathing was like the whole world chanting prayers. Sweat ran in rivulets to ravines of pleasure. Every moment was a satin skin cascade. Within the velvet cloaks of tenderness, our backs convulsed in quivering heat, pushing heat, pushing muscles to complete what minds begin and bodies always win. I was hers. She was mine. My body was her chariot, and she drove it into the sun. Her body was my river, and I became the sea. And the wailing moan that drove our lips together, at the end, was the world of hope and sorrow that ecstasy wrings from lovers as it floods their souls with bliss.

Jesus.

[PoeticPassions]

[QUOTE=wessexgirl;670718]:sick:

This reminded me of the bad sex award (in literature :lol:). Take a look at this item.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/nov/28/awardsandprizes.badsexaward

What on earth makes them do it ? The updyke extract is hilarious; I have to go into town this evening and I hope it doesn't come to mind while I am on the train, because I will just burst out laughing.

Marquez!!??? Up for the bad sex award?? Oh no, not you Marquez... noooooooo (the horror! the horror!)

:D

[Drkshadow03]

Out of curiousity, what do you specifically dislike about that extract?

Jesus.

Yes. I liked The Watchman quote that was supposed to be an example of bad writing.

[Veva]

I just came across something quite comparable in Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm, gosh>
...I felt the heat of her body through her clothes. It was so intense, I almost came. I put my arms around her and lifted her. Put my knee against her skirts and pushed against her sex and I put my tongue in her mouth...

I do not say it is bad... I just have problems to imagine it as a quite serious or even romatnic situation... :p

[Emil Miller]

I just came across something quite comparable in Anne Rice's Blackwood Farm, gosh>
...I felt the heat of her body through her clothes. It was so intense, I almost came. I put my arms around her and lifted her. Put my knee against her skirts and pushed against her sex and I put my tongue in her mouth...

I do not say it is bad... I just have problems to imagine it as a quite serious or even romatnic situation... :p

Yep,
it's bad.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Bad writing has never been so interesting, very entertaining everyone, but the flipside of this is that some of these writers have become millionaires because of it. This to me is simply wrong.

Edit on that: of course life is determined by the markets so we mustn't grumble.

[Emil Miller]

Bad writing has never been so interesting, very entertaining everyone, but the flipside of this is that some of these writers have become millionaires because of it. This to me is simply wrong.

Edit on that: of course life is determined by the markets so we mustn't grumble.

Trash writing is analogous to trash music, both rely on the media conditioned Pavlovian response to publicity. It is the herd instinct that is at play here,
i.e. if everyone is doing it, it must be right. It may be true that man is a social animal but, all too often, he is more animal than social. The publicity boys know this and the result is the blind acceptance of whatever the media present to a pathetically gullible public.But if that's what makes them happy, it's their money rather than mine that is going into the pockets of over-publicised nobodys, so I just let them get on with it and enjoy the good stuff.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Trash writing is analogous to trash music, both rely on the media conditioned Pavlovian response to publicity. It is the herd instinct that is at play here,
i.e. if everyone is doing it, it must be right. It may be true that man is a social animal but, all too often, he is more animal than social. The publicity boys know this and the result is the blind acceptance of whatever the media present to a pathetically gullible public.But if that's what makes them happy, it's their money rather than mine that is going into the pockets of over-publicised nobodys, so I just let them get on with it and enjoy the good stuff.

Yes, good points, music to my ears. There is so much I would like to comment upon regarding the massssss media and the public, but I will leave that little dig for another time. It's good to know that I am not alone in my thoughts.

[kelby_lake]

i f#%@^$ hate jean genet, it's just so decadent and false.

" Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile. "

"Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it."

"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me. "

YAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNNNNN

just pick anything and it sucks from start to finish.


Yeah, he scares me a bit with the whole kinkiness. Tried to read The Balcony ha ha :)

And basically the whole of Twilight and its chums.