post itt writers you think are bad

To the bald version, that is

Very realistic a modern 21st century gen alpha always are arguing over coupons at the supermarket

(Cyberpunkly/tiltokly): “I believe this said 20 cents off two bruh.”

reading that fuccboi review made me wonder what tao lin is up to....

Tao Lin
@tao_lin
My medicinal pet leeches may be dying of oxygen deprivation at the mail store due to Labor Day and due to me not picking them up on Saturday.
7:33 PM · Sep 2, 2024
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He was going to die, that was quite obvious. Hugo Langley tried to examine this fact dispassionately. The left wing of the Blenheim bomber was on fire and flames licked at the cabin. Behind him, his navigator, Flight Lieutenant Phipps, lay slumped forward over his instruments. A trickle of blood ran down one side of his face, seeping from under his flight helmet. And Gunner Blackburn was already dead, shot in the rear gun bay by the first wave of Messerschmitts. Hugo wasn't sure whether he himself had been hit. Adrenaline was still pumping so violently through his system that it was hard to tell. He stared down at his blood-spattered trousers, wondering if the blood was his own or came from Phipps.

"Bugger," he muttered. He hadn't wanted it to end this way, this soon. He had looked forward to inheriting Langley Hall and the title someday, enjoying the status in the neighbourhood as the squire, Sir Hugo Langley.

incredible work from 'rhys bowen'

Particularly enjoying '"Bugger," he muttered' with its cadence of 'Murder She Wrote'

'shot in the rear gun bay' *snort*

That was Snowden's secret, that he would never be Mayor

What's bad about that? Full of cliches, but I could get from the beginning to the end, at least.

Unrelatedly, I was going to suggest Jill Lepore, if only because she's one of those Michiko Kakutani types, i.e. a not-very-funny writer who keeps putting jokes into their copy. Also her features have that "I haven't quite worked out my main subject" thing that Malcolm Gladwell used to do so (equally) irritatingly.

i quite enjoyed mookie’s link to the dan brown review - fish in a barrel but they still taste good

https://archive.is/HeBJy

I also don’t see anything objectionable about Fizzle’s quote. I pretty quickly figured out where I was, what was going on and something about the character. Sadly that is more than I could say for many random passages from contemporary literary fiction.

xp to three days ago -- read the conroe review until i hit the quotes from the book, one of which milo z posted. i could not believe they were real, lmao what trash

the rhys bowen quote is terrible writing imo

So I guess Hardy Boys and Tom Swift are terrible writing?

i didn't even say that rhys bowen was terrible writing, just that passage. read the OP and stop being so defensive

Ok. Still don’t know why it’s terrible..

Sorry if that was a bit pointed. I’m probably just grumpy from recent attempts to read lauded novels that are so overwritten that the story gets buried under the pick-me prose style.

gritty war realism tone, but also wodehousian satirical jollity? can we have both? let's find out!

evelyn augh

I mean, if all you want is “ I pretty quickly figured out where I was, what was going on and something about the character”, then good writing would be things like:

John, a nice man who was also a thief, stood in a big wet room called an aquarium, planning to steal a wet thing called a fish.

Never steal anything wet

Particularly enjoying '"Bugger," he muttered' with its cadence of 'Murder She Wrote'

The writing in that rhys bowen excerpt was entirely adequate to its purpose, in that it had a useful amount of vivid detail, painted a clear picture of what was happening to the character and made the character's reaction quite clear. But the character's reaction was so incommensurate with the details that preceded it that it was a purely stupid caricature of the Old Etonian stiff upper lip.

I give it a mixed review. Bowen can write well enough, but has a dull and impoverished imagination.

How is it possible to "write well enough" and yet have a dull and impoverished imagination? Good writing requires imagination.

The writer who uses the name Rhys Bowen also publishes a series called "Her Royal Spyness", so I think they can fuck off.

Clunky info dump in the middle of an action scene always the mark of a dreadful hack imo, reflected Bananaman Begins as he clambered over the dead hijacker to grapple with the controls of the 737

I've read a lot of bad sci-fi (and bad press releases in my job) and as a result prize any writer who can write basic, legible sentences, imaginative or otherwise.

Obviously I'd rather be stuck on a desert island with a single Iain M Banks novel (bad sentence writer) or Riddley Walker than the complete past and future works of Rhys Bowen. But legibility isn't nothing! There's leagues between that silly Bowen paragraph and, e.g., a Dan Brown preposition soup.

I will accept "Hugo wasn't sure whether he himself had been hit" is a crap sentence.

I suppose there's not much risk of any ILXor picking up a Tom Hindle crime novel, but the one I had to read for book club did seem to do well enough that he's published two more since, so: whole plot hinges on a last minute reveal about the main character being duplicitous but since it's written in that same character's internal monologue it makes absolutely no sense that he'd be self censoring this until the last page. There's also a bit where he says something like "I followed, not even swerving to sniff the delicious smells coming from the dining room", thus implying that usually this impeccable detective just wanders off whenever he smells food - amusing but not the intended effect.

Glad he can sniff smells

if that bowen thing was a schoolboy novel from the 40s it would be acceptable. actually it sounds like its a from a brit kid novel from the 20s.

anne helen petersen

Never steal anything wet

― Bad Bairns (Boring, Maryland)

i always appreciate a good _Catalina Caper_ reference

It's a phrase I never thought I could use in conversation

This is simplifying things a bit but I generally prefer a compelling story plainly told to a nothing-burger told with great sophistication.

I don't really know anything about this guy, but good Lord

I think we can all agree, regardless of ideology, that Chuck Wendig should face capital punishment for this contribution. pic.twitter.com/N8AACIoigR

— Good Tweetman (@Goodtweet_man) September 5, 2024

i remember the ‘00s where every other dude blogger wrote like that

lol omg

Feh indeed

I've read and enjoyed two of Wendig's books, Wanderers and The Book of Accidents, but everything else I'm aware of him being involved with (a ton of Star Wars shit, apparently?) marks him as must-avoid otherwise.

i remember the ‘00s where every other dude blogger wrote like that

Yeah. I'm also reminded of certain ILXors from back then.

I fuckin wrote like that back then alright lol, but yes, it is 2024 and capital punishment is about right

This is simplifying things a bit but I generally prefer a compelling story plainly told to a nothing-burger told with great sophistication.

I would tend to go the other way - don't really care about plot if the writing's beautiful - but I do think that's tougher to pull off in English than, say, French or Portuguese.

horror writers tend to be suuuuuuuuuuper geeky/cringe whenever they write anything that isn't a story or novel. stephen king being an exception. he has written good stuff on writing and books and movies. but he can also make you cringe. they are lost in their childhood minds. actually sci-fi writers (men) are like this too. they somehow miss a lot about modern life when they write about it. they have very narrow viewpoints which i always find surprising about people who have such wild and often truly creative imaginations.

Yeah, the only SF writers I can think of who aren't complete nightmares on social media are William Gibson (posts links to interesting articles about weird technology stuff) and Samuel Delany (posts pictures of himself and his boyfriend/husband being happy and old together).

i always assume any columnist writing about porn is simply making good on the lie they told their spouse about why they were visiting The Sites

like goddammit now i have to convince my editor to let me write this and i don’t even have an angle.. how many words can i waste at the top here hmmm

writing about porn is like dancing with a fish on a bicycle.