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Every aspiring writer should read terrible books (2022) [video]
- fumeux_fume 3y agoThe man is an absolute treasure. A group of friends and I used to have a terrible book club. We read a lot of crap but it made me better understand what I valued in good writing. It was fun and surprisingly insightful.
- oreally 3y agoam interested, do you have a listing of terrible books?
- gnulinux 3y agoDisclaimer: I'm not a writer, but I do write music. I think there are two types "bad" writing and I think people have a hard time having nuanced discussion about this. First category is what I would personally describe "uninspired". These are works created by artists who arguably have either (1) too little exposure to prior art, or (2) too inexperienced with core skills of writing. So, in terms of my field, these artists probably (1) didn't expose themselves to enough music, or read enough music, or (2) didn't practice how to construct and write music enough times that they're comfortable. Examples of "uninspired" works include student works (i.e. practice works written by people to gain skills), works whose only purpose is to make money and there is no other consideration (this is probably very debatable), or works created by people who are unreasonably unexposed to the prior art (e.g. someone who has sufficient writing skills who is writing a novel, but really only read 2 novels before.) Second "bad" category is what I would describe writing that is too stylish where aesthetic choices aren't appealing. This is when creator (1) is sufficiently exposed to prior art and (2) is experienced enough to produce works similar to prior art. Now, this gets very tricky because the problem with these works -- i.e. what separates them from Category 1 -- is that the work itself needs to convince the observer of these qualities, which can oftentimes be very hard. Unfortunately, I cannot give examples from literature, but to give an example from the history of music writing: oftentimes people listen to works of Schoenberg and they complain it sounds horrific, dissonant, random and ugly etc etc... However, if you look at the work closely, you'll find choices that are only consistent with thorough understanding of the prior art and an experimental desire to create something entirely novel. Now, it is "ugly" (for some, of course) but it is well-informed. In other words, it convinces most that the artist was able to create something "prettier" but for whatever reason decided not to. Unpacking this is important when consuming "bad art" because each category teaches you something else. When you consume Category 1 "bad art" you need to pick up (1) in what ways this work is unaware of prior art, and (2) in what ways this creator is inexperienced. This can be crucial to understand points where you struggle. E.g. you look at some student works, and you see consistent patterns that diverge from prior art -- consistent patterns are not explained with creativity. This can be a good reminder to work on these skills. When it comes to Category 2, it's more complicated. This kind of art can be jarring, but can be the most useful kind of art you can consume to perfect your skills. These can show prior experiments, and how various styles work. You don't have to enjoy it, but it will be useful to see. E.g. slow movies may not be your favorite, but if you're filmmaker you likely want to sit through the entire "2001" movie. Ultimately, it's up to you, and up to your relationship with your art. I personally consume a lot of art I dislike and think it's important to expand my understanding how things work. An artist is not just the work, but also the entire lifetime spent on observing, and critically thinking about other humans' art. So, the answer ultimately lies in you.
- thunderbong 3y agoI found your comment to be very insightful. I realise that a lot of the developers I see fall in the first category, primarily due to a lack of experience. The challenge I see in a lot of software in corporate environments is that, unlike music, the code written due to lack of awareness / experience becomes technical debt as the software keeps growing over time.
- woolion 3y agoGreat analysis, that hits a number of very good points! In particular it's interesting that you call the first category "uninspired" rather than "lacking skills". A lot of people equate this "uninspired" category with "lacking in personal expression". Typically a really skillful artist can generally make something absolutely mechanical _feel_ personal, whereas an unskilled artist cannot make anything sound personal. There are also specific genres that skew the perception in one way or the other, that will change the threshold of skill for something to be considered "personal" or not. The second category is interesting if you can identify how problems introduced by the rule-breaking elements could be solved. Any "art rule" solves a problem, and determining an alternative solution for it can lead to a breakthrough. Keyword is "can", there's a lot of experiment required. But in many cases it at least helps understanding better why the "rule" is useful.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoThat's a very useful distinction. A lot of pop used to be - maybe still is. It works because its self-expression connects strongly with an audience. In music, the people with the technical skills often work in support roles as session musicians, producers, and arrangers. They lack individual expression and charisma but have the skills needed to polish someone else's work. The same applies to books. Dan Brown and Twilight are terrible writing but they give middle-of-the-bell-curve readers experiences that mean something to them. Most art aims higher, but the middle of the bell curve is where the big money is. True mediocrity comes from having very limited technical skill - probably imitative in a narrow niche - and no ability to connect with an audience. I think that applies to most academic attempts at serial music. The style is a bit of an oddity because the rules were contrived rather than evolved. And (IMO) that kind of dissonance has a very limited expressive range. Schoenberg could get away with it, but there was a fad in 50s to 70s where that kind of serialism became academic orthodoxy. The result was hours and hours of music by clever educated people with absolutely no cultural relevance outside of academia.
- fodkodrasz 3y agoRead The Dosadi Experiment from Frank Herbert. It is a scratch at best, it is terrible. Was recommended for me by some Dune fans.
- Robin_Message 3y agoWhat's wrong with the Dosadi Experiment? I remember enjoying reading it and finding the worldbuilding really interesting and the drama kept me reading. But I am a sucker for Frank Herbert so maybe I missed the flaws.
- fodkodrasz 3y agoAs I said: it is/feels like a sketch. The prose (often) reads like notes which should be rewritten, and filled with depth, and life. Also the story is bad, there is too much "deus ex machina". Also no characters one can relate to. Sounds like you read a totally different book than me :P. If I had read it and the Dune without knowing their authors, I could not have told them they were written by the same person. Especially not that it was written after the Dune, where he has proved he can write well.
- offices 3y agoBut most of your first paragraph also describes Dune!
- touisteur 3y agoSee, Dosadi is one of my favorite books. It's not perfect by any means but a concentrate of Herbert tropes with interesting plot lines. Like most Herbert it's very much for a young adult / adolescent public (this not being a negative, it's pretty thin on many axes, focused on delivering the tropes in a enthusiastic way). The other Herbert 'destination, jesus' book cycle is harder to swallow though.
- fumeux_fume 3y agoWe never kept a list, but 50 Shades, Flowers in the Attic, the Greg Brady Autobiography and Satanic Panic were some notables. Everyone had their own taste for bad writing and read from books like Heroes Are My Weakness to others like A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay (which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser).
- dsign 3y ago> A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay I just read that one, bought straight from Amazon. It's so bad that it made me chuckle. > Which actually turned out to be a big crowd pleaser Crowds are weird.
- dale_glass 3y agoFor an intentionally terrible book, there's Atlanta Nights (https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat https://archive.org/details/atlantanights0000teat ). A bunch of authors got together to write the worst book possible. It has pretty much every kind of awful prose in existence, including an early case of AI generation. For awful but readable books: Most anything by Dan Brown, but for the audience here, Digital Fortress will make you tear your hair out in frustration if you know anything at all about cryptography. The climax of the book seems to be made for a movie and is a completely nonsensical sequence in which people stare at a screen showing attackers breaking through a firewall, as if it were a wall that can be slowly drilled through. For me that was the book that did it. If Dan Brown couldn't take 10 minutes to research the simplest basics of the subject he based his book around, imagine what the quality of the rest of the work is like. Ender's Game I rate as a fairly enjoyable but puerile teenage power fantasy. But after that comes Speaker for the Dead, which to me is absolutely awful. Ender turns into this insufferably saintly martyr, who acts as some sort of Gordon Ramsay, only fixing an awful colony instead of a restaurant. Everyone in the book is insufferable and a complete moron, except for Ender of course who knows how to fix all those awful people. Oh, and it justifies domestic abuse. And maybe Battlefield Earth. I've never read the entire thing, but here's a quote: “His valet! In the rush of getting him off, his clumsy damned valet had put the wrong boots on him. Oh, when he got home ... when he got home he would have the oaf punctured! Worse. Dragged through the streets and bitten to death by small children.”
- jiggawatts 3y agoBattlefield Earth brings back a memory: it was the first book I had read where I realised that authors can have serious mental problems. Most books are written by sane, intelligent, and educated people. The books you'll read in a high school library are also curated by librarians. There's an expectation of quality you don't notice until suddenly you pick up a book at the local council library authored by someone with some serious untreated mental issues. After that revelation I started noticing the author of a book instead of just paying attention to the content of the book. Similarly to L Ron Hubbard, I found The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson impossible to finish. There's something deeply wrong about him that I can't quite put my finger on. (I did finish his Gap Cycle series, but felt dirty in my brain after.) I picked up The Dragonriders of Pern series based purely on the dragon on the cover and just started reading. A few chapters in, I though to myself: "This is written by a woman, isn't it?", flipped to the cover page and lo-and-behold: "Anne McCaffrey" -- I had guessed correctly!
- runeofdoom 3y agoThe Eye of of Argon by Jim Theis is legendarily awful in SF circles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Argon
- silvester23 3y agoYou might enjoy the podcast "372 pages we'll never get back". It's basically a bad book club. The title is a reference to the first book they cover which is Ready Player One. They are on Book 23 or so at the moment, more or less alternating between books by "big" authors like Dan Brown or Sean Penn and super obscure stuff like Harry Potter-Twilight-crossover fan fiction.
- dagw 3y agoThe interesting question that often gets overlooked when lumping all these together as 'bad books' is why do some of these 'bad books' turn their authors into multi-millionaires, and not others. For that matter why is it almost only 'bad books' that turn their authors into multi-millionaires. Ready Player One is no doubt badly written and Bad Art (full disclosure, I didn't manage to finish it), but it is also one of the more successful and beloved sci-fi books from the last 15 years and shouldn't that in a way make it a Very Good Book.
- chris_wot 3y agoWhat’s wrong with it?
- linksnapzz 3y agoNerdstench suffusing every page.
- chris_wot 3y ago“Nerdstench”?
- cocacola1 3y agoHe should write some bad books. Jokes aside, though, Moore is probably a top 10 author for me. I don't think I've read anything of his that I haven't enjoyed, and what I have read, I've enjoyed heads & shoulders above – and remember much more in detail, thanks to the book nature of it all – anything else.
- thx 3y agofav ones (?) beyond Watchmen
- bexsella 3y agoNot who you were asking, but I'm a big Moore fan as well: * From Hell (Some might be put off by the original comic's black and white art, but there was a recent release that colourised them by the original illustrator) * Providence * Jerusalem * V for Vendetta
- cocacola1 3y agoThere are the obvious ones: From Hell, V for Vendetta, and The Killing Joke, but I especially enjoyed his interpretation of Superman in For the Man Who has Everything and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, which are 2 of my favorite Superman stories. But I most appreciate him for Swamp Thing, because that’s where we got our first appearance of John Constantine.
- kristopolous 3y agoI find it inspiring because it shows how low the bar is with persistence and effort
- devjab 3y agoThere is probably an audience for most things. I’ve read around 200 Warhammer books, I had to just say duck it and rate then on their own scale otherwise they’d all be 1-2/5 on my goodreads account, but I was there when Horus slew the emperor and I gave the experience 5/5.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt was a dark and stormy night. The characters were one-dimensional clichés who died just as quickly as they arrived. There was no continuity at all, no foreshadowing, and a snap ending. Even more impressively, suspension of disbelief was impossible because it jumped around like a fucking ping-pong-ball without any purpose, detail, or depth; saying "fuck you" to the entire genre of magical realism. In addition, it was marketed as a sci-fi western romance novel mystery adventure detective novel. Also, they had a terrible editor. But thankfully, they also had a terrible literary agent, so no one but a retired grandmother of 5 read it after purchasing it without thinking for 50 cents at the library's book sale. The end. PS: Also, have a plain dust jacket. Never nuclear pink, orange, or yellow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lsmeducation 3y agoI read the internet regularly, does that count?
- suzzer99 3y agoI used to do standup comedy at the mostly amateur level. One woman who was always at the same shows was so unfunny, she could suck the life out of any room. I always tried to study her, thinking that if I could understand the essence of why she was so deeply unfunny, I could understand the secret to being funny. Sadly I could never figure it out. Her unfunniness was inscrutable.
- O_nlogn 3y agoI've never done standup but am a big fan and want to try at some point. I'm glad you mentioned your experience, this thread made me think of the show "Kill Tony" (a podcast where randomly selected comedians do 60 seconds). The quality of comedians ranges from terrible to excellent, but I feel watching those terrible performances has taught me more about the art form than I could have learned only watching headliners who've perfected the craft. The line between weirding everyone out and making them laugh is a fine one, and it helps to see many examples of people failing to fall on the right side.
- Borrible 3y agoThe joke on briliant comedians is often clinical depression.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoCan you post some examples of her unfunny jokes?
- chaps 3y agoSure, it's a knock-knock joke though. You start.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoKnock knock...
- chaps 3y ago
- nottorp 3y agoIsn't it ironic that this advice is in a ... video?
- chris_wot 3y agoNo?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atleastoptimal 3y agoAlso I recommend reading mediocre books. Especially first time authors. They're the best way to be on the other side of someone reading your first book. It's easy for anyone with a college education to avoid being truly terrible, but the middling eternity of mediocrity is a far harder to navigate out of.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoI recently stopped reading such a book. It wasn't terrible and had no blatant flaws, but it also had nothing good either. It was all just meh. Music can also like this -- there is a big gap between being able to make something that isn't bad and making something that is actually good.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoSalieri vs Mozart phenomenon. Listening to Salieri's music, there's nothing ostensibly bad about it. People use labels like "forgettable", "bland", or anything else that seems more like labeling a symptom without analyzing the cause. The cause being, why do two pieces, both without any notable faults and in a music theory sense well-made, have two significantly different reactions and impact in the general musical consciousness over centuries? What defines the genius that keeps people playing Mozart's pieces over and over, and only play Salieri's when they're trying to make a contrived point about him not being that bad?
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoFor an infinite treasure trove of mediocrity (and the odd surprise), there's fanfiction archives like AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/ https://archiveofourown.org/).
- Mezzie 3y agoDefinitely mind the tags and ratings if you mine AO3 for anything.
- tstrimple 3y ago
- tzury 3y agoSo, reading really bad code should aspire great developers, right?
- wsc981 3y agoMany useful lessons can be learned on what not to do: https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code
- sebstefan 3y agoThere's always someone to defend some of the bad APIs in, say, PHP, so that might be indicative that we could face the issue that being able to tell when some code's bad is already a gated skill, compared to being able to tell that a book is written badly
- robertlagrant 3y agoDefinitely interacting with a bad API design is a good way to avoid some pitfalls. Sadly the only way to fully learn all of them is to make an API and then coach people on using it for 10 years.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoHow would we know to recognize an antipattern without reading them?
- svat 3y agoYes actually! Knuth says he got into computer science because he could see that the example programs in the IBM 650 manual were not very good, and he thought "if I, a college student just getting started with computers, can do better than the professionals, then maybe I have some talent for it". Years later, he learned that the programs in the manual were just bad; almost anyone could do better.
- Ekaros 3y agoI think there might be also a point with decent enough books that go horribly horribly wrong at some point. Forever Free is great example... It really shows how multiple Deus Ex Machina can ruin the whole thing...
- Borrible 3y agoA problem that should not be underestimated is that many aspiring writers do not know how to recognize a bad book, which is why they write many of them themselves.
- watwut 3y agoI kinda tried that with speaking and it blew back immensely and honestly only harmed me. Focusing on other people faults and trying to avoid them made me super aware of any theoretical imperfection in what I was doing without making me able to do something actually good. I was not improving at all, I was just increasingly scared to do anything, because more and more words/acts whatever resembled something bad someone have done.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoI've had a similar thing trying to learn 'what not to do' from various management types I've had the displeasure to report to. It's the longest possible path to learning how to do it right. There are an infinite number of wrong options, but precious few right ones. Just not stepping on the same land mines that someone else did step on doesn't mean you'll avoid the rest of the ones spread throughout the minefield. Much better to follow and learn the path of someone who knows the clear path. The avoidance of specific bad can also equal bad. Just a different flavour.
- circlefavshape 3y agoI guy I know self-published a book, and it was obvious more or less from the first page that he'd never actually read more than a handful of books in his life Right at the start there's a scene with a bunch of people in a nightclub, and when describing someone he uses the phrase "with a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle" - a colloquial phrase in Ireland meaning someone looks sour (see https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Face%20like%20a%20bulldog%20licking%20piss%20off%20a%20nettle https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Face%20like%...) ... but he misplaced a comma, and the sentence he actually wrote was "Maria, of course, standing close by with a face like a bulldog, licking piss off a nettle." Terrible book, but almost worth reading just for that image
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoOne other issue is that a lot of people don't proofread or have someone proofread their self-published book / story, and that's still at the amateur level; anything beyond that, you need an editor. Editors have read a lot of books. More than most authors will have. They have also read and improved on terrible books. They get everything, literally raw and unedited.
- linksnapzz 3y agoBulwer-Lytton material right there...sign him up!
- cafard 3y agoDon't most aspiring writers already do so, for some value of terrible? S.J. Perelman wrote a series of pieces, "Cloudland Revisited" about the books and movies that thrilled him when he was young but didn't stand up to later reading or viewing. Mark Twain's essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is a classic, though on the other hand you might want to have a look at D.H. Lawrence and Yvor Winters on Cooper before giving up entirely.
- weeksie 3y agoThe best way to read terrible fiction is to join a critique group and read other amateurs. This is good because you can run across different levels of writers: * People who have no business writing and have no idea what they're doing. These are not going to give you much, which is why you want to keep to groups that have some gatekeeping. * Beginners who are not that talented but can develop skill. These people are good because you can see what it looks like to go from nothing to something, even if that something isn't great * Untalented people who are workhorses and can do the job: these people are probably the most valuable "bad writers" * Talented people who suck. These people are also amazing because you can see the power of skill as it develops * Talented people who are very good. (These won't be in your group) But really all this about "analyze why the book sucks" is a red herring. What is far more instructive is understanding why something that you don't like is appealing. If you can find what works in something you don't like, it's a lot more likely that you'll be able to understand that technique. Best selling thrillers with bad dialog and paper characters? Great. That means you can focus on the pacing and plot and understand why the book works despite its obvious flaws. That's harder though because it isn't just stroking your own ego by saying "aw I could do that"
- touisteur 3y agoOne of the worst, and best reading experiences I get is anything long-form Frédéric Beigbeder. It's all over the place, always too much, showing off (both in style, dialogues, plots...), inconsistent, I find myself shaking my head or sighing most of the book, every damn time. And then, the bastard manages to turn his stories around and do something often good, sometimes great of it. Not sure whether it's on purpose or he's just a short-story stretching too much... But if you read most of it, it's very very bad. But add the endings or the small moments of grace and suddenly it's great. Ugh.
- j7ake 3y agoAre the English translations as good as the original French?
- touisteur 3y agoNo idea. I should look one day. I really hated most José Saramago for a long time until I leveled up in Portuguese and went to read in the original and... I would add shitty translations to the hefty list of crap horrible terrible books. Most Bulgakov translations, I guess, too. I hear I'm supposed to enjoy and understand some of it, one day, with a good translation... Edit: I worry that they won't translate well, no. Edit2: I think he got inspired by Don Delillo a bit, so you might get a taste there (I remember feeling very much similar ending his books).
- bowsamic 3y agoHe has a great Dudley accent (even though he's from Northampton)
- greenie_beans 3y agofaulkner said it first
- Octokiddie 3y agoHas anyone ever written a book on what makes bad writing?