Reactions to bad writing vary so much from one reader to the next that, collectively, they almost form a personality test. Which manifestations of “badness” in a novel are absolute deal breakers for you, sins you simply won’t tolerate?
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cardboard characters, bad prose, and a predictable storyline…all combined. I can be forgiving of at least one of these in a novel if other good elements are in place but if they are all there together: Goodbye.
A boring storyline stops me cold, no matter how good the technical aspects of the writing. I am irritated by poor sentence construction and strings of choppy, simple noun-verb sentences. Books with too much technical description used to do it, but I've just learned to skip over that stuff.
The deadly sins: Clichés in any of several dimensions. Pretentiousness — usually as a result of a writerly inferiority complex, not ambition. (I tend to credit ambitious failures.)But simple boredom probably stops me more than anything, and as often as not, I think this is just caused by a difference in taste. I suppose this could be mitigated, but only so far. Not every book is for every reader, right?
Writers that spend too much time on tangents lose me. Also, I tired of one green writer who went out of his way using the Roget to substitute lofty words wherever possible…very contrived and tiring. Finally, fiction authors that don't do their research.
What a great idea, I see so many blogs where people are giving advice on how to write better, but the people we really need to ask are the readers they are the only people that can advise on how to write better!
For me it has to be unrealistic dialogue – I go absolutely crazy when I read an author’s attempt to write in a voice that clearly isn’t natural for them. I remember reading one book where the author was trying to sound like a young American man, and kept lacing what was supposed to be an up-and-coming businessman and college graduate’s dialogue with terms like: Dude, bro, homey, etc.
It was enough to make me set down the novel for good.
Thank you! Couldn’t agree more.
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